Ten thousand four hundrerd and 52 vertices came out to play, upon a wire mesh one day.
They had such enormous fun…that they called for another vertex to tweak…
Have you seen a digital animation movie/commercial/whatever recenlty?, have you ever wondered how´s it done? Sit back pals and listen. Lets say that we want to make a character, let´s call him Bob, a digital animator (Ale in this case) builds the body structure with a wiremesh, just as if it was made with a real life wiremesh taken out of a fence; the wiremesh itself is in fact many dots (vertices) connected togheter, so Ale has to create, move around, tweak and check from every possible angle that Bob´s vertices are where they should be; did I say that Bob has 17530 vertices?. Then the textures are applied to it, coordinates over the surface have to be defined to do this properly, that is, the vertices have to be tweaked over the texture map (an image, for ejample a face) so the lips are red, wrinkles lay where they should and nails look polished, oh, yes; Ale has to draw the textures. Then Bob feels like moving, so Ale has to build up a skeleton, below Bob´s wiremesh skin Ale lays up the main bones, the knee bone connects to the leg bone and so forth, up to the head; Bob, let´s say it´s not the brightest dummy around, so he doesn´t know that the bones Ale has so lovingly laid are his, so Ale has to tell Bob´s wiremesh skin how to move with the bones, so Ale pick one bone and says, this vertex moves with this bone, but what if a vertex is between two bones?, the the vertex shares the movement of both bones, let´s say, 60-40, this has to be done, by hand to all the vertices. Did I say Bob has 17530 vertices?
So here I am, after 13 hours tweaking vertices around Bob´s skeleton; my back hurts, my eyes, no longer hurt and that worries me, I really need a shower, but it´s almost 1 AM and seems that I´ll spend an hour or so browsing the boards… somedays my life sucks
Next time you meet a digital animator give him a hug and tell him how important (yeah, sure) is his job and how much you appreciate it. :rolleyes:
Ale, would you happen to know of any good free 3D modelers in the style of Poser(like, it gives you a fully shaded figure at the start with fairly easy to learn controls)?
All the free ones I encountered were lacking in having an easy enough interface/commands for a begginer.
… Bob?
Reboot!
Seriously, as a long-time fan of Mainframe’s work, and one of the few people who know where the RL Planet Pizza is… (Blue Sky, near where I am, did some of the work. There happens to be a joint named Planet Pizza near them. I’m not sure it’s a concidence…)
Aslan, check THIS site for a list of free 3D programs, I´ve had good comments about Anim8or. Also Wings 3D seems like a good start. Don´t expect anything like Poser thou, in fact between digital artist Poser is Evil, with capital “E”.
Dropzone: if you think that a crash 5 minutes after starting the rendering is bad, you should experience a crash 5 minutes BEFORE the rendering is finished. :mad:
Particlewill: 3 years is not that long, last year I lost a goldfish TEN years old, I swear, and I had to sacrifice it because it was suffering quite a bit for buoyancy problems.
Ryle Dup: check sites like 3D Total there you can find tutorials and forums where you can ask for help.
As for Poser, my exposure to it has been through being on the renderosity.com mailing list. Every Monday morning I’d risk my job to prove to myself that I was not the most pathetic loserboy on the planet. There are vast numbers of geeks designing their own girlfriends: slightly crosseyed, with a Hitler moustache of pubic hair and looking like they have breast implants. Silly me; I thought I’d get tips from that site on rendering home theaters. Instead I get softcore porn and dungeons and my only customer with a dungeon went broke in 2001.
