One so-called brainfart

Funny thing.

I just realised now (after months and months of working with the project) that our animation should have been called Dawn of the Living Dead Pixels instead of ”Night” since none of the action happens during the night.

In the scarce words of Mr. Reeves: ”Whoa!”

j

vkonlpuu

jjjjjjjjja menoks! oluselle, hurah!

—–ja seuraavana aamuna ei paljoa naurattanut.

videopäivitys kuitenkin alla:

-jere

bensa loppu

nih, gaso loppui. Projekti venyy ensi viikkoon helposti, vaikka loppu häämöttää horisontissa. Loma olisi miellyttävää, mutta allekirjoittaneet uskottelevat itselleen sen olevan turhaa hapatusta. huraa.

FALLING DOWN.

-jere

power-up!

ok. The last few days have indeed been something. We’re broke and beaten, but at the same time hilarious as some really hilarious but crooked thing. The project is starting to take form, but will clearly never be complete on friday, our self-made deadline. So’s, we will come back next week, after a little pause. Jussi is using some of his well-earned free days to drink whisky with his alien friends, while me and Peter will stay for next two days of this week to do stuff, and then head for few days of cooling off. BUT, butbutbut, we have some great news! We found ourselves an audio-person! Teemu Huhtiniemi from the same school kindly offered his help and hardware, and we were more than glad to accept. Now we can lay that burden off our hearts, trusting it to Teemu. So, cheers man!

Otherwise today was stressful but rewarding day. We gathered our scenes, fixed some cameras and lights and started to render things for the final version. There are still some problems though, which make up a nice surprise after 2-3 days of rendering. Blah, i don’t even know what to tell. The guys head shines like a motherfucker with a plastic wrap, nails jump all around the room when the timeline is being panned and stuff just seems to disappear. BUT, Jussi finished stuff and could start with the lemmings for the earlier scenes, Peter fixed some problems and we received Teemus offer and i also got something done, so maybe we’re not completely lost, although as i look what i write, it seems like a madman’s diary. Oh well.
Below are some test renders from final scenes without materials and missing walls and stuff.

——

-jere

back in business!

After a pretty rough weekend for all of us, we returned only to laugh our asses off to the hilarious music videos Jussi dug up somewhere (I’ll add the links to the end, cause they’re truly something). On monday we didn’t actually do so much anything else. I made an umbrella for the ending, Jussi fought with the living room and Peter cracked his head with rendering problems. But today has been another story! Jussi has made some huge progress with the infamous living room scene and lemmings are receiving serious violence, which is always fine. Peter modeled our outside-scenery so we’re pretty much ready for the final scene (he also struggled with lights on the first scene). I managed to get a grip of myself too, and produced some new animation for the bathroom scene hurray! I will show some videos below, although they are not the ones I made today (god help me if i could produce some 10secs of animation per day). So, here goes:

[edit: jussi]

I’ll just add my preview rendering here too. Them lemmings are getting some serious beating, like Jere promised. There’s bound to be more violence tho, so stay tuned! There’s some little things I gotta fix in this clip also, but nothing too major. I’m once again getting my hopes up of us finishing this thingie in time. Now that would be something, woo woo!

[/edit: jussi]

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yep, and now you’re probably eagerly waiting for them fine music videos! And remember, I only showed you the door (or technically, Jussi did).

Speak – sometimes
THE HUNGER!
RehDogg – Why must i cry?

-jere

väsynein päivitys ikinä

olen aivan poikki, sippi ja kuollut, eivätkä kaksi muutakaan sankaria kovinkaan terveiltä enää näytä. Emme ole saaneet edes monitorirusketusta, vaan kasvomme ovat kalmankalpeat.  Jäsenet puutuneina ja hiirikättä lukuunottamatta lihakset surkastuneina ryystimme eilen olutta tuopeista jotka jaksoimme hädin tuskin nostaa. Suunnitelmat muuttuivat jälleen, ja jälleen kerran tajusimme kuinka paljon tekemistä onkaan vielä jäljellä, päivityksestä huolimatta. Uusi juoni menee jotakuinkin seuraavasti: Päästyään vessaansa lukkojen taa sankarimme huoahtaa – mutta vain hetken. Lemmarit puskevat oven läpi, vain kohdatakseen teräsputken ja niin runsaasti väkivaltaa kuin suinkin ehdimme toteuttaa. Tämän jälkeen sisään astuvat räjähtävät lemmarit. Sankari hätääntyy ja nappaa nurkasta sateenvarjon hypäten samalla ikkunasta. Talo on pilvenpiirtäjä, joten putoaminen kestää tovin. Sankarin pudotessa vierestä tippuu sätkivä lemmari katuun päänsä päällä kakkonen. Sankari katsahtaa ylöspäin jolloin kokonainen pilvi lemmareita putoaa hänen ympärilleen avaten pienet varjonsa sarjana, jääden leijailemaan kohtalon uhrin ympärille. Blip, ja ruutu mustaksi. Onnellinen loppu, kaikki hyvin, huraa.  Uudistuneen lopun lisäksi muutakin kannustavaa löytyy. Peterin rendaukset näyttävät siltä että kohta saamme jopa täysinkin valmista materiaalia, Jussi on edistynyt huimasti olohuonekohtauksen parissa ja lemmarit lentelevät pitkin asuntoa, ja itse sain päähahmon lyömään pari kertaa vasaralla seinään.

mutta voihyvaluoja.tk miten paljon voi ihmistä väsyttää!

-jere

syvät synnyt

kuten blogia hiemankin vilkuilleet tietävät, oli projektimme alussa niin massiivinen, että sitä on jo ehditty kahteen otteeseen muuttaa – eikä kahta ilman kolmatta. Koko harjoittelun mysteerinen taustavaikuttaja herra S. kunnioitti meitä vierailullaan samalla hieman ohjaten sokeita lampaitaan. Pyhästä neuvosta lähdemme siis nyt pizzan ja oluen parissa tutkailemaan uudestaan vaihtoehtojamme loppuanimaation toteuttamiseksi. Selkeää on, ettei tämänhetkinen kässäri tule toteutumaan, jotenka uudelleenharkinta on paikallaan. Nyt siis raakaan aivoriiheen, päivityksiä tiedossa sitten puolenyön jälkeen.

-jere

Hakusana viikonvaihteeksi

Ei tällä ole mitään Blenderin kanssa tekemistä, mutta kunhan aamupöhnässä listailen parhaimmat hakukonetermit, joilla meidän blogiin on tullut osumia. Ihan vain teidän viihdykkeeksi. Ja uskokaa tai älkää, mutta näitä ei ole sitten heitetty hatusta hyvien naurujen kalastelemiseksi – nämä ovat aivan totta:

koskettelua

kirous

Samu

samu huber

jalka

sex asiat

pitkä olohuone

sunriseavenue (toim. huom: ja vielä yhteen kirjoitettuna. voi maamme tulevaisuutta…)

dadada

see myself in a 3d hair

pahus

hurray animation

ja lopuksi minun henkilökohtainen suosikkini:

mitä tarkoittaa screwing

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Lisäksi meillä on yleisöarvonnan voittaja! Ei kauaa sen jälkeen, kun kirjoitin tämän postauksen, saimme osuman linkistä joka oli peräisin hakukoneen tuottamista tuloksista termillä ”teen-sex”. WOO! Voi vain kuvitella sen pettymyksen määrää.

Nyt takaisin animaation pariin. Moro, ja hyvää huomenta!

-jussi

hurray, we’re animating

Ok, it’s time for my first english update. After a weekend of some hard labor (moving stuff to a new apartment) it’s actually pretty nice to come back and again start sitting 8 hours a day and fighting those small fights with our animation. Our main character is ready for action, although he still has some issues with himself. Jussi and I are starting to get a hang of animating again (our last episode with moving stuff around being maybe three months away), and some light is already shining through our grisly mental cobwebs. Also, the agreement of cutting animation shorter feels like a mountain rolling off our hearts (if you can say that in english, I don’t know). We feel Hulk Hogan.

Our main character was naturally built with help from many sources. His face was modeled with much help from Mr_Bombs tutorial of modeling a human face, with the exception of ears, which were done with help from Michel Rogers tutorial ”Modeling Joan of Arc”, which also helped with the characters body. Nameless tutorial called ”Get a hand!” helped with (no shit) hands, although it proved to be too hard to follow through completely – so our hands are much more simple.

Then it was time for rigging our man. With this the famous Ludwig-rig was very helpful, as was Tony Mullens book ”Introducing character animation with Blender” and many tutorials. ”Rigging a hand and a foot” by Lyubomir Kovachev gave some fine ideas, but it was Ludwig and Mullens book that really helped with the foot rig. Rigging the hands was a real pain, but again Mullens book showed it’s wisdom. Also Siggraph hand rigging demo by Bassam Kurdali proved invaluable.

Skinning was pure torture, and there was no tutorials around to really help that much. We first used envelopes to get the basics, and then weight painting to refine everything. Unfortunately, the guy has a shirt, so whenever he sits, the shirt should be raised. This is hard, because to achieve strong enough effect, the shirt would raise all the time when he walks, which looked really retarded. Some shape keys have been tried, but no real solution has yet been found. Oh well, time will tell.

Facial rigging was mostly done like it is done in Mullens book, with shape keys and ipo drivers. Problems arose when we realised that the guy has to open his mouth sometimes, and we had no inside piece. So, quickly one was crafted, but to fit it with all the shape keys was horrible. After a dosen small adjustments it now works pretty well. Oh, and I almost forgot, there were huge problems with mirroring shape keys from one side to the other, until tolobáns (from blenderartists.org) extremely helpful script was found. After that, mirroring shape keys was like dancing in a cloud of otherworldly pleasures.

So, now the character was ready and we could start animating. Peter was working with the materials of our man while Jussi and I moved him around. Using Blender’s ”link”, we created separate files for the scenes, linking in the environments and the character. Thus, if there was trouble with the character (as there surely were), one could go back to the father-file of the character and fix things, and they would update in the scene-file. For example, we noticed that our character was too long and his head was too small and he looked stupid, which is kind of a problem. So we just scaled down his body, then scaled the bones. With little trouble, it worked, and we were back in business. By using links it also became possible for Peter to work with the textures, lightning and materials with no fear of how to combine stuff later.

So, now we are animating, and as it can sometimes be such horror, it actually is pretty darn enjoyable most of time, especially when compared to rigging’n’skinning. Yippee! Some stuff has proved to be helpful in this stage too. First to be mentioned is without doubt Richard Williamson’s book ”Animator’s survival kit”, which seems to pretty much cover everything under the sun. Also John Lasseter’s stuff at Siggraph site is definitely worth a peek. But ok, now I’ll just shut up and get back to work. I’ll list all the good stuff down below along with a blend file of the character, in case that someone would be interested in checking it out (and by all means, feel free to use it too if you like). Now, i go.

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Jonathan Williamson (aka mr_Bomb): Modeling a face and ear
Michel Roger: Modeling Joan of Arc
some nice human: Get a hand!
Jason Pierce: Ludwig
Lyubomir Kovachev: Rigging a hand and a foot
Bassam Kurdali: Siggraph hand rigging demo
Tolobán: RKVmirror.py (thread at blenderartists.org)
John Lasseter: Tricks to animating characters with a computer
Tony Mullen: Introducing character animation with Blender
Richard Williams: Animator’s survival kit
.blend-file of our character – right-click and ”save as..”

-jere

viikonloppuun!

Tänään on ollut hyvä päivä. Koko viikon taistelin animaation alun kanssa ja nyt se alkaa toimimaan viikonlopun siintäessä silmissä. Koska tänään on yleismaailmallisesti hieno päivä, en viitsi pilata sitä kitisemällä hahmon ongelmista tai omistani. Siispä isken vain alle raakaversion animaation ensimmäisen kohtauksen ensimmäisistä toiminnoista – ihmettelyä ja sohvalle istahdus. Älkäätten ihmetelkö outoa ympäristöä jossa televisiot levitoivat tai hahmoa joka on jättänyt subsurfinsa muualle. Nauttikaa, sillä niin mekin teemme. Ainakin maanantaihin asti.

-jere