Dive Competition Entry

Artwork Works in Progress
1

I’ve decided to try my hand at the Animation Challenge #30

My idea is to have a guy dive off of an absurdly high platform and then hit the ground. He won’t squash though. He’ll be stiff. Straight as an arrow. He’ll then tip over. And explode. For no apparent reason.

Hopefully it will be amusing. :slight_smile:
I’m not going for any sort of good rendering quality, but I do want my staging and motion to be fairly good. Critiques are welcome.

Here’s the initial blocking for the first of the two shots:

http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_shot_1_v1.mp4 145KB MPEG-4

EDIT:

Update:
Here’s all the blocked stuff + explosion edited together. Let me know what you think.
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_1.mp4 593KB MPEG-4

Another update:
This is the same as the above, except the second shot is fully animated. I may still go back and tweak some things, though.
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_2.mp4 640KB MPEG-4

Yet another update:
I added a few more keys and moved on to spline interpolated keys. This is quite a bit sooner than I would want to move on to that stage, but I don’t have much of a choice due to Blender’s lack of object ghosting tools. Things were starting to get too confusing.
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_4.mp4 1MB MPEG-4

Last update:
I’m calling this done. I’ve entered it in the animation challenge, and I’ve also made a thread in the finished projects forum.

2

Wow, it looks super! Good luck man!

3

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_shot_1_v2.mp4 256KB MPEG-4

Just added a bit of personality.

Next I’ll be blocking out the second shot.

4

Its looking great. I’m really enjoying it, there good characterisation. But the board he jumps off needs to move with him imo.

5

Thanks for the crit. However, the platform is intended to be like an olympic concrete diving platform. It’s supposed to be very solid.

Maybe I should make it thicker, though, to make that more clear?

6

I love it! The way he bounces on his toes a little before he jumps… Very cool!

7

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_shot_2_v1.mp4 232KB MPEG-4

This is the initial blocking for the second shot. I haven’t made him explode yet. I’ll add that in later.

8

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_explode.mp4 103KB MPEG-4

Here’s him exploding. I’ll get these strung together now, to see how everything works together.

9

I especially liked the camera work for the diver’s impact, but what really got me was the explosion. I don’t know why but it struck me funny and I’m still laughing at it. How did you make him fragment like that, softbodies?

10

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_1.mp4 593KB MPEG-4

Here’s all the blocked stuff + explosion edited together. Let me know what you think.

11

Nope. No softbodies. All of this is hand animated except the particles.

The real trick to making him fragment was transitioning between the rigged version of the model and a version with all the pieces separate. When I just unparented everything all the parts got screwed up, so I had to reposition everything by hand to the same position the rigged version was in.
After that I just did some keyframes + extrapolated IPO curves on all the body parts.

I’d be more than happy to put my .blend files up once I’m finished, so people can see how I did things.

12

That would be great - I watched your explosion in slow motion with mplayer, and I think you could enter the explosion by itself in the other competetion that running for the best blender explosion :slight_smile:

13

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_2.mp4 640KB MPEG-4

This is the same as the last one, except in this one the second shot is fully animated. I may still go back and tweak some things, though.

14

Quicky update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_shot_1_v3.mp4 275KB MPEG-4

I just added a couple of inbetweens. And they’re not that good. I’ll probably re-do them.

I’m getting tired, so I guess I won’t be finishing this tonight like I hoped. I’ll try to finish it up some time tomorrow.
Good night, everyone.

15

this is gonna be cool, cessen. I’m using your rig for my entry too, <g>

16

LOL

Love this to bits. Really like the build up to the dive, and I think the choice of camera angle whilst the rig is diving is excellent.

Whilst this is still early and blocking, I’d like to suggest that something be done with the camera shake when the rig actually hits the ground.

It’s a tad bit spongy and soft. Doesn’t seem to emphasise the abrupt and sudden coming to a halt.

Carry on as I really wanna see this finished. :smiley:

17

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_rough_3.mp4 683KB MPEG-4

Added camera shake for both the impact and the explosion.

18

heh, I like the random explosion at the end. Made me laugh a little…which is nice.

19

Update:
http://www.cessen.com/storage/temp/dive_shot_1_v4.mp4 298KB MPEG-4

Changed some poses and added some inbetweens. I’m still not happy with this. I guess I’ll just enter whatever I have when the deadline comes around.

(Entering review mode…)

This being one of the first times I’ve animated in Blender, I’m running into some work-flow issues. Namely the lack of a dope-sheet editor and object ghosting. Right now I’m using the NLA editor and dupliframes/key-display respectively to sort-of-kind-of do those things, but especially for ghosting they are poor substitutes.

Maybe I just need to change my work-flow when animating in Blender. I should ask the Orange animators how they work. But still… it seems like at least ghosting is simply a basic animation feature.

20

No dopesheet.

Er… I always thought that was what the ACTIONS pane was for.

Here’s a screengrab of my Blender UI for one project on the go:

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/technoboy/Blender3D/Blender_UI.jpg

Normally I have both the actions pane (set to top right) and the NLA pane (usually below the actions). Sometimes, as in this case, I have the IPO pane if there’s anough screen real estate available.

Could you show us a screengrab of your current Blender UI arrangement?

Oh, and whilst you might not be happy with where your animation is heading, I’ve been plenty happy with your progress and would very much like to see it finished :wink: