Snowball Fight - Animated Short WIP

Just because I’m completely preoccupied with networking school, doesnt mean I still can’t have some Blender fun in my downtime. :slight_smile: This is the start of a very simple animated short I’m working on, where a snowman instigates a snowball fight between 2 kids. It should be fairly funny, but overall, somewhat simple. I’ll post some screenies as I progress.

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/9523/snowscene2ji1.th.jpg

So far, it looks really good. I love the branches and the snowman, and the lighting and textures are superb. Also, the story sounds promising. The only crit I have would be that the tree trunk looks a bit too shiny. Other than that, everything looks amazing. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. Good luck!

Ok, I added some more detail to the snowman, and he’s got a lot of texture work to be done yet. But, his arms are completely rigged and ready to be animated. I’ll work on his facial expressions tomorrow and continue adding more detail. I’ll also start the kids models too. I’ve edited the storyline a little bit too, but I’ll keep it a secret till the final release is made.

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/2710/snowscene4gv8.th.jpg

Looking good!

Quick idea:
Maybe use a noise or cloud texture to give some sparkling effect to the snow?
Could look nice maybe…
//Mathias

Yeah, what bsinger said. I hope your rendertimes arent too long.

The render times on the full resolution (1600 x 900) is a little less then 1min/frame. I was thinking over the project last night and I got to wondering how I would animated the deformations in the snow after a snowball was picked up. The snow will probably be pretty challenging, especially with animating the flying snowballs. I’ve worked with the Fluid system before but it’ll be interesting to see how I can make it simulate a snowball splat. I might also look into softbodies for the effect. Any suggestions are greatly welcomed.