(Animation) From Flop to Foot to Flat
Animation Link: https://mega.nz/file/47Y2yChB#NyECP.....byFZyQfLq8QFhI
Here is also a version that takes up less space (39 MB compared to 53) but cannot be previewed on MEGA: https://mega.nz/file/cnJgyIYR#0kyC7.....R5AcctINKk2zJ4
Midway through his stroll through the city, Nevix remembers he has someone stuck to his flipflop and decides to scrape him off. Unfortunately for the poor soul, Nevix wasn't the only macro in town who isn't watching his step.
This was an animation commission for both NevixRaptor and DragonDan1989! It was originally going to be just a quick still render but it eventually ballooned into an entire animation, my longest one to date. I've gotten comfortable with making looping animations for games over the past few months, but longer, more cinematic animations are still pretty intimidating. It took all month just to make 44 seconds of animation, with a generous amount of it being comprised of incorporating a walk cycle looped several times for two of the characters. Feature creep in animation is absolutely a thing, and I need to practice getting more organized and planning things out an advanced so that it doesn't cause things to get out of control again. Regardless, I ultimately learned a lot while making this, and I'm glad that it turned out the way it did!
The background environment is from: https://unrealengine.com/marketplac.....ygon-city-pack
Here is also a version that takes up less space (39 MB compared to 53) but cannot be previewed on MEGA: https://mega.nz/file/cnJgyIYR#0kyC7.....R5AcctINKk2zJ4
Midway through his stroll through the city, Nevix remembers he has someone stuck to his flipflop and decides to scrape him off. Unfortunately for the poor soul, Nevix wasn't the only macro in town who isn't watching his step.
This was an animation commission for both NevixRaptor and DragonDan1989! It was originally going to be just a quick still render but it eventually ballooned into an entire animation, my longest one to date. I've gotten comfortable with making looping animations for games over the past few months, but longer, more cinematic animations are still pretty intimidating. It took all month just to make 44 seconds of animation, with a generous amount of it being comprised of incorporating a walk cycle looped several times for two of the characters. Feature creep in animation is absolutely a thing, and I need to practice getting more organized and planning things out an advanced so that it doesn't cause things to get out of control again. Regardless, I ultimately learned a lot while making this, and I'm glad that it turned out the way it did!
The background environment is from: https://unrealengine.com/marketplac.....ygon-city-pack
Category Artwork (Digital) / Macro / Micro
Species Snake / Serpent
Gender Male
Size 1280 x 720px
Amazing work as always bud, I understand feature creep and it can get you bogged down but you nailed it with this
You really stomp that lizard good, Big Guy! ^^
Nice !
By curiosity, how do you make your cities ? I mean this one, like did you make it ?
By curiosity, how do you make your cities ? I mean this one, like did you make it ?
I did not make this city! It is a free asset pack you can get for Unreal Engine 4: https://www.unrealengine.com/market.....ygon-city-pack
I took a class on Maya years back and I've been in love with it ever since, and I am staring to render animations in UE4 because of how blazing fast it is compared to an offline renderer like Renderman. People with far more patience than I have can do some awesome stuff in Blender but for me personally I don't think I could ever get as good at it as I am in Maya right now.
It's an offline production renderer, like Cycles! Pixar uses it to render their movies and it's free for non-commercial use: https://renderman.pixar.com/product
I think there's a Blender version but it's a little finnicky/unofficial due to licensing conflicts (Blender's open-source license dictates that any plugins must also be open-source, and since Renderman isn't it has to interact with the program indirectly to work around that).
I like to use it for still screenshots because it is easy to get very high-quality lighting set up, but it isn't GPU accelerated so it's not very feasible to render long animations on just a single computer, so that's why I've learned to use UE4 for animations.
I think there's a Blender version but it's a little finnicky/unofficial due to licensing conflicts (Blender's open-source license dictates that any plugins must also be open-source, and since Renderman isn't it has to interact with the program indirectly to work around that).
I like to use it for still screenshots because it is easy to get very high-quality lighting set up, but it isn't GPU accelerated so it's not very feasible to render long animations on just a single computer, so that's why I've learned to use UE4 for animations.
This is amazing! <3 Are you thinking of doing alternate angles for this animation?
Thank you, but absolutely not! This was very messily cobbled together and alternate angles would take a lot of time and cleanup to do. Nevix and Dan aren't even animated properly from the waist up, so I would have to go back and animate their chests, arms and faces from scratch if they were ever visible from an alternate camera angle. I will try to do future animations with alternate camera angles in mind next time so I can avoid this issue in the future, though.
Oh my goshhh, this is really damn good!
I especially love the whole being casually scraped off of the flip flop sole, like a teeny little sticker more than anything!
I especially love the whole being casually scraped off of the flip flop sole, like a teeny little sticker more than anything!
Thank you! I am elated at how decent the scraping animation turned out. This was my first time using parent constraints in animation, which is what made Rec stay plastered onto Nevix's foot and then to Nevix's toe before he was flung off of it. Figuring out how to transfer the constraint from the foot to the toe without jerking around or stuttering took a little experimenting, but to my surprise I was able to find a way to not only make it seamless but also easily update it as I was tweaking Nevix's foot animation so it stayed seamless. Animating him bending around Nevix's toeclaw was also easier than I was worried it might be, and I really like how it came out!
I swear, i'm definitely no expert when it comes to that stuff, but i can imagine it's a process in and of itself to like, have a model go from being stuck against one surface, to being stuck against another, without it looking awkward as hell, hahah.
But yeah, you did a good job, either way, for sure!
But yeah, you did a good job, either way, for sure!
I realize how short of a comment this is, but this is really excellent! Great work!
This is the best thing I saw in sooooo long, I love it, this is high Art. Why isn't the world filled with people of your skill
If I had the slightest idea how to do it well then I would love to give my animations sound! I am afraid that audio engineering is an entirely different beast to 3D graphics, though.
Good work! I prefer barepaws instead of shoes/sandals, but the second big guy saved my day :D
Very smooth looking. If you manage to add SFX and ground deformation / imprints one day, this gonna be perfection. I would happily entrust you my model then, if interested (and I manage to export him to UE+Unity)
Very smooth looking. If you manage to add SFX and ground deformation / imprints one day, this gonna be perfection. I would happily entrust you my model then, if interested (and I manage to export him to UE+Unity)
I appreciate that! Sorry I didn't make a barefoot version of this one, but that would have been a lot more difficult since I'd have to tinker with a lot of the animation so that Nevix's toes still line up with Rec's body properly.
I don't know if I'll ever really dip my toes into sound design again. I've tried it before and it is excruciatingly difficult for me, so unless I can find someone to do the sounds for me then I will probably stick to silent animations. I would love to be able to do ground deformation as well, but that takes a lot of setup that I personally just don't have a lot of patience to try to figure out. Maybe one day UE4 or UE5 will make it way easier though and then I would try playing around with it.
Your model looks awesome! I don't know if it would be useable in UE4 or Unity though, that all depends entirely on how it was set up. I appreciate the offer, but right now I'll be starting up a new job soon so I won't have a lot of time to work on personal projects, and I'd like to stick with my own characters for the time being.
I don't know if I'll ever really dip my toes into sound design again. I've tried it before and it is excruciatingly difficult for me, so unless I can find someone to do the sounds for me then I will probably stick to silent animations. I would love to be able to do ground deformation as well, but that takes a lot of setup that I personally just don't have a lot of patience to try to figure out. Maybe one day UE4 or UE5 will make it way easier though and then I would try playing around with it.
Your model looks awesome! I don't know if it would be useable in UE4 or Unity though, that all depends entirely on how it was set up. I appreciate the offer, but right now I'll be starting up a new job soon so I won't have a lot of time to work on personal projects, and I'd like to stick with my own characters for the time being.
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