Re: The CGI Thread
That was great.
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That was great.
That ball doesn't have a lot of air, does it, seeing as how it squished it self flat?
I think it was supposed to look cartoony.
Here are to render i made but can anyone tell me why there are patches of hair missing
I weight painted the whole thing red and just used different material groups and vertex groups for the different shades
Do you think you could upload the file? I really can't tell much from a render.
In the meantime, I need a little help myself. I've got a possible setup for my mini-figure's mouth, and it works great, except weird stuff is happening that usually involves one side of the mouth.
What you see there is a "mouth," parented to a 2 dimensional lattice, parented to a Bezier circle. Now, on the right side, the "mouth" is sticking out of the lattice; I don't know why, and it's a real pain in the neck. Also, when the whole mouth compresses horizontally, it all compresses towards that side, instead of towards the middle, like it should. I've got a file uploaded so you can look at it better.
http://www.brixaranimation.com/mouthtest.blend
I've animated the mouth, so just hit Alt-A to see what I'm talking about.
I think I might know what the problem is: it doesn't compress straight back down because it's sticking out on the right side of the mouth. It might be sticking out because the lattice isn't exactly the same size and position as the mouth. It could also be because you are animating the far side of the lattice, not the middle side of it.
I don't really see why you have to use a (complicated) plane lattice to animate it though. Couldn't you just make a lattice the exact same shape and position as the mouth?
Well, it is the same size as the plane, until I apply the Curve Deform to the lattice.
If anyone has any suggestions for an alternative, yet similar way of doing this, that would be great also.
EDIT: Okay, I think I've found something that might work. I've thrown away the lattice completely, and now I'm using Shape Keys on the mouth, and the mouth is parented to a Bezier Circle with Curve Deform, or something like that. I've uploaded a file, so you guys can look and tell me if this will work or not. There is an animation in the .blend file, so be sure to hit Alt-A.
http://www.brixaranimation.com/shapekeys.blend
Last edited by Littlebrick (August 3, 2010 (06:14pm))
I told you just making a mesh that is keyframed would be so much easier. 
Great idea. In the Blender Summer of Documentation thing they used Shape Keys to move the mouth around at different intervals. I think it will work pretty easily, you just need a handy program like Papagayo (which is great for mouth animation timing and shapes by the way. I would highly recommend it.)
Just going to steal the spotlight for moment here...
After finding some impressive designs by dasnewten (in brickshelf and flickr), I decided to make the fighters in my sci-fi side project to be minifig scaled.
So this
Becomes this.
Some alien characters and symbols will be added later.
Wow, that's a really impressive model Lech. It's a great improvement from the smaller, less detailed model.
That is most indeed impressive, Lech. Also, does anyone know how Smeagol composited this shot:
From Philip Heinrich's "Unrenewable"
This may be the wrong thread, & if so, we apologize for that. But since it has a CGI composited shot, we thought it might be on topic. So, if anyone has a link or can tell us how he did that shot, we would greatly appreciate it 
.
@Juggernaut Pictures - If you want to know how he did that shot, then you should probably just read "The Making of Unrenweable." It tells how he did it there.
@Lechnology - That ship is just AMAZING! You did an awesome job compositing it as well. We do have a question though: How to you make gaps in between the LEGO elements? Whenever we render models that we have exported from LEOCad, there are no gaps between the bricks! Could you let us know how you do this?
@Juggernaut Pictures - If you want to know how he did that shot, then you should probably just read "The Making of Unrenweable." It tells how he did it there.
We read it, but it doesn't say how he composited his shot. He mentioned how he made the glob & what program he used to composite, but: user edit: do not how he composited.
Last edited by Juggernaut Pictures (August 5, 2010 (09:42am))
He probably used "Axogon Composer" to composite the shot and mix the CGI with the real LEGO.
well yeah, I filmed on a greenscreen. I think I used Axogon Composer and Compositelab once I had rendered the scum, basically did a little hand masking to get the layers to match up correctly so it looks like it's in the environment.
How to you make gaps in between the LEGO elements? Whenever we render models that we have exported from LEOCad, there are no gaps between the bricks! Could you let us know how you do this?
I used Bevel Edges in Blender. You can do the same thing in Carrara with Fillet but from my experience, it causes unwanted smoothing that makes the light and shadow come off weird on flat surfaces.
Essentially, you can't export straight from LeoCAD without some additional work. I strongly recommend importing the Ldraw models into Blender to do Beveling to save time because applying Bevel to one piece applies to all of the same piece from the Ldraw model, i.e. beveling edges on one 1x2 plate applies to all 1x2 plate in the imported Ldraw model.
If you import the LeoCAD exported 3ds model, all the pieces are individual meshes, one 1x2 plate is a unique mesh. Beveling that mesh model will only be applied to that mesh model and you would end up having to repeat the same thing to the other piece.
Same with Carrara. Once you import the 3ds model, all pieces are individual meshes.
To everyone starting to use CGI bricks, LeoCAD export scales the model down to 0.8. Blender doesn't scale down when you export. For your convenience, don't use LeoCAD for exporting. Use the ldraw importer plugin for Blender to import the ldraw models directly. It has the convenience I've mentioned earlier.
Last edited by Lechnology (August 5, 2010 (03:51pm))
OK. We will have to learn a little bit of Blender-ing it seems (since we have only used Carrara up to this point), but we are confident that we can figure out what you are talking about after some practice. Thanks for the help though!
I want to post some pictures in this topic but can't for the life of me work out how. 
Last edited by GPPProductions (August 8, 2010 (04:31am))
Upload them, copy the URL and add image tags.
Upload them, copy the URL and add image tags.
That's exactly what I did, every time it just shows a blank box with a question mark in it. The pictures aren't private either. Maybe flickr's just having a bad day.
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