Ten Years After - The Making of Dartanbeck.com

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Oh, and the last one (just above) is also using VWD to simulate the top and bottom of her outfit, whereas the "Funny Spin" above that uses conforming figures.

    I've made some pretty fun discoveries about VWD that might be a real game-changer for a lot of you. report coming soon.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    ...and here's a version of the latest changes on a newer design

     

    that's awesome Dart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Thanks! :)

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202

    I have been rather busy and have not been having much time for any computer work un less Im at Work so it has been wonderful to see the energy that you are putting back into this now that you are back.

    Thanks Man! How's your daughter doing in her studies, or is that a career now?

    She entered a book concept into the Keycolours contest but wa not in the top 20 out of about 500 so now she is moving on to other things with the intent of completing the book and trying the indipendant publishers here in Canada. Currently she is doing the Digital Art Live course for DAZ Studio Rigging. She is learning lots which is good. then she can try her hand at content creation and see if she can strt earning money that way not to mention building skills.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Very cool!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Time to celebrate (for me)!

    Trying to get this curly, long hair to render without spazzing out has been a long journey. The last version of hair I was rendering was made much less curly to avoid these spastic glitches. I was noticing some rather unnatural stiff behavior around the shoulders - caused by having just too much force (from the Point Forces) pulling the longer hair downward and inward.

    So this test, which I only had two precious hours to set up and get to rendering, is the first try at altering the falloff and strength of some of these forces using the same hair setting in the earlier image that I could only get to spaz out in an animation.

    I'm quite happy with the results.

    It looks great (to me) resized (much smaller) and turned into a gif like this, but it's much better in the original, full-sized animation render (png sequence)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    The glitch that we see in this one is the restart of the loop. It's not a seemless loop, as far as dynamics go.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    A new simulation test promo video

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited November 2020

    It features Rosie 5 as Artemis Knight, along with TheAntFarm's awesome Biobotic, who is in the control chair frantically navigating a way out of this mess!

    The music is entitled "Dartanbeck.com", which I put together as an opening title for my stuff. I think it works pretty well, since it keeps these little videos less than a minute long.

    About the video - Rosie 5 is Artemis Knight (ArtemisX and Liquid Knight), piloting her ship using Ravnheart's Marcoor Control Room, with TheAntFarm's Biobotic, frantically trying to navigate them out of this mess. Petipet's massive Dominators rain down from above to devastate and destroy Inception8's Project Xion City (the final three images/links below - Xion sets 1, 2 and 3) 

    Images/links are in the order they appear in the above statement

           

    Rosie's version of Artemis Knight is using KookNfat's The J-Suit as the bodysuit, still using ArtemisX's gloves and boots, and guns if the need arrises!

    The belt is from 4blueyes' Elf Age Light

     

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,921

    A new simulation test promo video

    that's a double wow, great music, great effects, great woman with attitude - great everything :)

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Thanks HW!

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202

    Rosie is rady to kick but and take some names......

     

    Looks really good.

    Glad to see you making progress on something you have been working on for so long.

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 7,527
    Headwax said:

    A new simulation test promo video

    that's a double wow, great music, great effects, great woman with attitude - great everything :)

     

    +1 yes

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Thanks guys!

    Yeah, I kinda started all over again with this new computer. I just wasn't happy with my previous work anymore. Somehow I ended up changing Rosie's appearance to something I just didn't understand or like. Not entirely sure how that happened. I loved the Rosie 4 that I had when I started the Carrara Info Manual, but since then....

    Then there was thre hiiatus I took in order to learn about film making, visual effects and the software to use for all of that. In that time I've learned a Lot. Made me wish I'd have known that stuff from the beginning! LOL

    But I'm having a lot of fun now - and I feel like I have a direction to follow. 

    I still feel an awful lot of value in those first years, however. I've learned a lot of Carrara techniques and was able to build up a much more complex and cohesive library of goods. It makes a big difference when I get to grab just what I need when I need it!

    Of course, it didn't help matter that I started playing around with Genesis 3 and 8! Um, Dart... what on Earth are you Doing?!!! LOL

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    truly lifts renders to an artform angel

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    Mystiarra said:

    truly lifts renders to an artform angel

    My thing does?  Thanks!

    In this one I purposely oversaturated the colors and when beyond bright with the bloom, even though the controls wanted to let me wash it out even further! LOL

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited November 2020

    Well, I hope this works out okay.

    I just spent the day recording myself working in Carrara for a new video. It goes like this:

    1. I bring in Rosie 5 and hide her hair from working view
    2. I load an aniBlock
    3. Tweak and change parts of the animation using simple pose-control morphs
    4. Set the camera
    5. Run a simulation for the tight-fitting underclothing
    6. Load in an M4 jacket that looks really cool and set the shaders
    7. Remove the jacket from its rigging and scale it to fit Rosie 5
    8. Run a simulation for the jacket
    9. Unhide the hair, drape and simulate the hair layers
    10. Set the render mode to Movie > Sequenced PNG w/Alpha
    11. Save that scene
    12. Open a city scene that I had made earlier using an EnvironKit Base (for atmosphere and lighting - even though I made it a night scene)
    13. Adjust the animations of the vehicles in the scene to make a cool animated backdrop for the Rosie 5 scene
    14. Set the camera, the render mode and save the scene
    15. Load both scenes into the Batch Queue and initiate render

    So that brings us to where I am right now - waiting for the renders to finish.

    Next I'll record going into DaVinci Resolve where we'll put the two renders together and decide how to blend them, what added effects to add, etc., and likely put in some sort of foreground fog or something. We'll see.

    During the actual simulations I'll be speeding up and/or otherwise editing the recorded footage down to something that doesn't make us wait - but hopefully showing enough that we can see exactly what's going on. I will be showing some of the simulation process in real time simply to show how quickly it all works.

    If the trimming/time change helps bring the timing down enough, I'm kicking around the idea of adding more recording of other simulation attempts that I've done for more ideas, but the current plan is to just leave those for another video just on VWD simulations.

    The hair in this one again will just be showing that I'm draping and simulating with very little details in how the thing actually works. Fear not, there is going to be a video that focuses on designing dynamic hair for animated purposes. The biggest thing I do in this one is to enlarge some of the invisible collision objects to make up for the jacket size.

    Well, if it turns out, you should be able to see it tomorrow sometime.

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026

    Wow, that is an excellent step by step for your workflow.  Admit that I don't always follow some of your examples because I don't have all the same programs.  That list really makes it clear where my gaps are.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited November 2020
    Diomede said:

    Wow, that is an excellent step by step for your workflow.  Admit that I don't always follow some of your examples because I don't have all the same programs.  That list really makes it clear where my gaps are.

    Well, as we start learning to stitch this stuff together to make a final product, we discover all kinds of different tools to accomplish similar missions. We all have our own comfort zones for working with art! :)

    So, I messed up one of the renders last night, forgetting to put lights in motion and deleting a temporary key frame... argh! But I got it finished, everything as above completed except for stitching it all together into a cohesive tutorial, which I'm working on now. Might not get it done tonight, but I'm going to try!

    Here's the example VWD/Carrara Hair job we're doing for our pretend client:

    We first simulated the J-Suit nice and tight to Rosie 5. Then we edited Michael 4's Steampunk Cowboy long coat into a prop, resized it to fit Rosie 5, and simulated that. 

    Then we made her hair visible in the work screen again, draped and simulated that. And this was the very first time I ran the hair simulation with these new settings and, guess what? It turned out better than any of my previous hair simulations to date!!! The moral of the story? Umm... 

    Oh... okay. Where was I?

    Right! After we remembered to delete the key frame that cranked Rosie's neck as large around as it can go (to widen the collar of the J-Suit) and set the light rig to follow her running, we set the render room to shoot Sequenced PNG files with Alpha, and gave those images a new folder to live in for now.

    We need a background scene, so we set that up with a bunch of lights on vehicles moving about - even an elevated subway speeding by (the I realize now we can't really see it unless we know to look), set the camera angle appropriately and set that one up in the render room the same as we did with Rosie's simulation project.

    With both scenes saved, we load them up into the Batch Queue and set them to render!

    So then, inspired by Head Wax's awesome new thread, we bring the two renders into DaVinci Resolve!

    Here's a GIF of the final output from DaVinci Resolve/Fusion:

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Well then Daz 3D goes and releases this Brand New Animation tool called Daz Studio 4.14!

    One of you fine folks (you know who you are, you lovely, lovely person! I Love You!!!!) gave me a Gift Card as a donation for my endeavors. Thank You So Much!!!

    So, with the release of the new Studio and me wanting/needing to try it on for size, I used my Gift card on two items that may have changed my world a bit! LOL

    This little lovely by Thorne could very well become Rosie 8! I mean... Wow! They're Sisters!

    I didn't have enough left to get Linday's amazing  Rosie Hair: Classic Long Curly Hair with dForce, But I found another set that is absolutely beautiful and was on sale!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    edited November 2020

    So as soon as my render was finished, I hooked my internet up to my Carrara beast machine, fired up DIM and installed the new DS and Rosie 8 stuff. Don't worry, Rosie 5 and 8 can play and work together!

    I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to tweak out Filament, but for working on animations it's Fan-Freaking-Tastic! Well... I need to watch more videos on it. I put a bunch of them up on my Site's Daz Studio section so I can pound on that stuff when I'm not busy with Carrara.

    Anyway, I had fun tweaking Lara, evolving her into the beginnings of her assumed role to be - maybe and, after saving her to the library as a preset, I ran her on a little scene test mission!

    I was actually planning on trying another Filament render, but I just wasn't getting there. Not that long ago - when I put the videos up on my site, in fact, I saw a nice Daz 3D tutorial on setting up Iray for rendering animations. I couldn't remember everything he said to do, but I got close enough to make this render at a little over one minute per frame - and I didn't really even know what I was doing!

    The actual render is larger and not GIF, but I think this still looks wonderful for the test run that it was - a first ever animated render using Iray!

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Yes, I did a crappy job of animating the hair. After I was done, I realized that there are rigging bones in the hair!!! Next time will be so much better!

    The attire is from 3D Universe's Willow

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Also, there's no postwork done to that Iray render. I adjusted the DOF in the camera itself, which wasn't as easy as it is in Carrara. But then again, I truly don't know what I'm doing in DS yet as far as rendering is concerned.

    Animating was a real Bit.... bummer! I haven't learned where the new animation tools are or what they do yet! Oh man... that part was Dreadful!!!

    Cool to see that this new edition is meant as an animation device - so I'm looking forward to delving deeper.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106
    Diomede said:

    Wow, that is an excellent step by step for your workflow.  Admit that I don't always follow some of your examples because I don't have all the same programs.  That list really makes it clear where my gaps are.

    Then we made her hair visible in the work screen again, draped and simulated that. And this was the very first time I ran the hair simulation with these new settings and, guess what? It turned out better than any of my previous hair simulations to date!!! The moral of the story? Umm... 

    Oh... okay. Where was I?

    Oh poopies!!! Now that I see it again and again, there's obviously still waaaay too much force keeping her hair from having the freedom it should. Still... it's pretty stable. I'll tweak the forces a bit and test again. Madness, I tell you!!!

    LOL! I also can't help but notice that the elevated subway cars are going so fast that it looks like they're going right to left, when they're actually entering the scene from the left!

    It's just above the green and orange signs above the street - pretty much in the same line as TheAntFarm's M-11 Flea before it comes cruising its way by! I love that vehicle! I made a really cool animation of Rosie 4 jumping out of the back of that thing in this very scene a couple years back.

    I might be too beat to work on the tutorial anymore tonight. If I don't have the energy when I get home from work tomorrow, I do have the weekend off - finally! ;)

  • DesertDudeDesertDude Posts: 1,234

    Dartanbeck - have to say again really cool scenes and tests and thanks for the explanations.

    The Dominator Attack scene is fantastic.

    I have zero experience animating hair. I can barely get hair / fur to do what I want anyway, some simple use of Cut and Brush tools and such and some Shader tweaks. Bravo to you!

    So when I say this, it's just an observation on my part, but it seems like the way the hair behaves - it's like there is a very strong breeze of something, hard to describe. Is there a setting to get less jittery? Overall it looks like it behaves as a head of hair, but at the same time from frame to frame some of the hair makes drastic jumps. Again, just an observation not a criticism from someone who knows nothing of animating hair. smiley

     

  • I agree about the hair.  The same goes for the boobs.  But I am assuming that he is just testing out the range of movement, and will dial them back eventually.

    There are a lot of wooden animations out there.  Better to have plenty of movement options, than not enough.  I imagine that finding a balance is an ongoing challenge. :)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    Dartanbeck - have to say again really cool scenes and tests and thanks for the explanations.

    The Dominator Attack scene is fantastic.

    I have zero experience animating hair. I can barely get hair / fur to do what I want anyway, some simple use of Cut and Brush tools and such and some Shader tweaks. Bravo to you!

    So when I say this, it's just an observation on my part, but it seems like the way the hair behaves - it's like there is a very strong breeze of something, hard to describe. Is there a setting to get less jittery? Overall it looks like it behaves as a head of hair, but at the same time from frame to frame some of the hair makes drastic jumps. Again, just an observation not a criticism from someone who knows nothing of animating hair. smiley

    First of all - Thanks Desert Dude!!! 

    As for the hair glitch, that's something that has kept me from using dynamic hair all along. It seems to come from a combination of the hair being long and curly.

    The last we see of Rosie in the Dominator scene is the newer hair that I was all excited about, but it just doesn't work well for animations. So in my tests anyway, the forces don't seem to do anything at all to quell the jitters, but it does help to keep it from always sliding from the front of the torso to the back.

    The GIF above of Rosie running in the streets uses a version of that newer hair, but:

    1. I backed off on the amount of curl (Kink)
    2. Tried a very similar, but different setup with the forces

    It worked great to help diminish the jitters a bit, but is too strong (even moreso, I feel) with forces holding back the natural movement.

    So I'm going to test it with less force/same curl, but with an open mind to lessening the curl factor if I have to. When I was using a lot less forces, and was getting discouraged that all of the hair in front would immediately fly over her shoulders to her back at the very beginning of a walk (it's a Walk! Long hair doesn't just defy friction and jump t the back like that!) I came up with an idea that works amazingly well -

    Put the entire Rosie setup in a Group after the animation is completed. Set a keyframe at the beginning and drag the group back closer to the starting position at the end, so it's more like she's walking in place, yet within the group, the camera is still moving so it can still be used to redner the same motion outside the group.

    This helped keep the hair in front of the shoulders quite well!

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,106

    I agree about the hair.  The same goes for the boobs.  But I am assuming that he is just testing out the range of movement, and will dial them back eventually.

    There are a lot of wooden animations out there.  Better to have plenty of movement options, than not enough.  I imagine that finding a balance is an ongoing challenge. :)

    Yeah, and it drives me nuts! I never really wanted to add any movement there at all, but I've been told by many that I absolutely have to. I'll end up getting better with being much more subtle. I think that too much movement, that I see all the time in animated boobs, just draws too much attention to them. I'm trying! LOL

  • Carrara hair has always been twitchy

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