[Hawkeye_a]

Made it over the past 3 months. had to start from scratch as i had never used 3DSM, so had to learn the software, modelling, animation, rigging and rendering. The professor in the class was a total noob and so i just relied on the text book, which is almost as big as my car.

Let me know what you guys think. The file is approximated 6MB and needs QT.

http://homepage.mac.com/hawkeye_a/.Movies/Eagle.mov

Cheers

[AKcrab]

I thought it was nice. I have NO idea what kind of work goes into creating such a piece, but I assume LOT of work, so nice job.

However, I could offer some tips on tweaking your eagle to act a bit more realistically.

[Hawkeye_a]

Oh hehe...i know it isnt very fluid at all. like...i didnt have too much time to spend on it. The prof showed us modelling for like 2.5 months...and then in the last two weeks he talked about rigid body animation and didnt even bother with skeletons n forward kinematics or inverse kinematics...figured all that out myself....and then rendering took a couple of days. editing took like an hours or so thanks to iMovie .

But yeah...i would have spent a lot more time making it better, but didnt have the time or experience to do it.

Thanks for the encouragement though

[ghporter]

Very cool. When I was in school, the best we could do was basic and generic 2D graphics (and we were GLAD to have them!). I did a real-time clock that featured realistic analog clock hands, including a sweep second hand (ok, it was a stepped second hand, moving once a second), and I felt really good about it. That was TEN years ago, though.

[suvsr4terrorists]

Cool mang. One thing that I'd do was make the water less mirror like, and darker blueish greenish. Ever been to the northwoods? Water never looks like that. Darken it up somehow.

[Zenbone]

Good job, especially when the eagle grabs a fish.

[wdlove]

Good job Hawkeye_a. The thought that the landscape was beautiful and very realistic looking. Music was very appropriate the content.

[ironknee]

very cool...i like how the eagle,when flying over camera...shakes the camera....i like the pollen(?)

when i was in college, "CG" ment pascal lol

good job

[ASIMO]

That body of mercury looks like it is contaminated with water.

B+ for you.

[budster101]

Well done!

[d.fine]

Cool! Nice job! I'm learning a similar app, but I'm nowhere near making something like that

[spatterson]

I think you did an outstanding job. Expecially for your first go with 3d Animation. The only two things that I can say is bring some opacity to the shadows of the eagle, and when you make wide swoops flying through the air, make them less airplane like, and more natural. At this point the eagle is gliding, its almost as the eagle is in attack mode, and making huge sweeps.

Wonderful job mate.

My professor wants me to get invoved with 3d using cinema 4d. If it was a better program that they used, I may consider it. Though I normally specialize in interface design, and flash animation.

[JustAnOl'Broad]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Let me know what you guys think. The file is approximated 6MB and needs QT.

http://homepage.mac.com/hawkeye_a/.Movies/Eagle.mov

Cheers

Very cool.

Just googled 3D SM to see what app that was, and found alot of
links to tutorials. Also, remember seeing a link on Victor Navone's
site some time ago - where he is involved with a tutoring site.
His Alien singing Donna Summer is still a classic creation.

I'd love to have the time to learn to do this.
For a first project I think it's wonderful.
(or as Eddie Izzard would say Awesome!)

[ghporter]

Look here for Victor Navone's site.

[JustAnOl'Broad]

^ Thanks GH; I shoulda googled - but got sidetracked in my bookmarks.
P~

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by JustAnOl'Broad

^ Thanks GH; I shoulda googled - but got sidetracked in my bookmarks.
P~

No sweat. He's got a pretty impressive portfolio-thanks for dropping his name.

[Hawkeye_a]

Thanks guys. yeah it's the first time i touched 3D Studio Max (3DSM)....had to use a Windows machine which made it so uncomfortable.

I wish i had the skill set to make itthe way i saw it in my head. but like we wernt taught anything about skeletal animation or even rigging a model. And hehe...trust me when i say....3DSM isnt a great program. its so friggon hard to get it to do what you want. Ive dabbled with Maya on my PowerBook, and it's workwlow is so much easier to understand...no lessons, no books, and i managed to get an untextured mesh of an eagle to 'fly' with relitave ease when compared to 3DSM.

I think i spent most of my time on the modelling since we only got to animation like 2 weeks before the thing was due. And all we were shown was like rigid body animation (like whole objects moving , rotating and scaling, not using a skeleton). So annoying, cause the class was titled 'Animation' and we were barely shown anything in it. I guess cause the class is based out of the engineering school as opposed to the arts school, there wasnt too much 'creativity' emphasized, which was pretty disappointing for me. (BAsically it was a software tutorial that lasted 3 months )

The water. yes..i know...i tried my best to make it look darker....but when looking at pictures of lakes great lakes, the reflection is almost identical to the landscape. as far as mercury.....hehe....i agree it could have been better.

The eagle....yeah i know it looks kinda robotic, and i tried my best given the timeframe. The others had spaceships, aircrafts and tanks in their presentation...so boring.....the prof. recommended us to do that.... i felt like i was at a star wars convention with ppl designing lasers n stuff..yuck. i wanted a 'nature' scene right from the begining, set to orchestral music... but it also needed a plot so i settled on the eagle since it was challenging enough for me to complete with satisfactory results.

As far as the music yes...it's sounds distinctively 'American' (even though the movie is based in England ) like something off National Geographic.I went through my entire library of music scouring the instrumental tracks to find something suitable, then storyboarding it, to get the music to match the clips.

All good fun...but after using 3DSM....i wouldnt recommend it. I got Maya and dont really mind spending the time to learn it, especially since i dont have to give up my Mac.

Cheers guys. thanks for the encouragement.

[MaxPower2k3]

I love 3DSMax... but i've played around with it for a few years. Never did any lessons besides a few tutorials, but i've taught myself a lot of it. More modeling than animation, though. Tried maya once or twice, but never got into it. By that time, i was used to 3ds max, so maya was a big change.

[nforcer]

Nifty. Why didn't you use a hawk?

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Thanks guys. yeah it's the first time i touched 3D Studio Max (3DSM)....had to use a Windows machine which made it so uncomfortable.

Check out Vue 5 infinite for Mac OS X. You can make more realistic looking nature backgrounds than the ones you had in your movie in a few minutes time.

Look at the demo video, it is sick:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/

[loki74]

I didnt know you were a 3D animator! Thats very cool.

I think it would be really cool if you had some HDRI lighting or radiosity/photon mapping. Also what would be really cool I think is if you were to add transparency and density to the water, that way the deeper it is, the mroe opaque, and the shallower, the more transparent, making the land/sea border mcuh more realistic. Also, the bird seemed quite realistic except for the head... I've never thought about how birds move (never had to animate one) but I think the motion of the head should somehow change... just dont know how...

But I am a nitpicky perfectionist basterd who's damned if he could do better himself, so whatever

And I would add my word aginst 3DSM. They're company (Discreet) has some uncool advertising methods... handing out condoms at SIIGRAPH? (From what I hear anyway...) I currently use Hash Animation:Master. But it was made on windows, and runs sh!tty on mac (I have ranted about this before) I was looking at either Maya (really expensive...) or Strata3D CX.

Anyway, great job!

[spatterson]

Originally Posted by PacHead

Check out Vue 5 infinite for Mac OS X. You can make more realistic looking nature backgrounds than the ones you had in your movie in a few minutes time.

Look at the demo video, it is sick:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/

Ohhh... I have to check it out when I get of work... Cool!

[Hawkeye_a]

Me an animator ?!?! this is the first and only animation or modelling class ive ever taken. I'm a software engineer with specialization in animation (IK in particular) i took this class as an elective cause the whole reason im into computers is because of 3D animation.

But yeah, i guess if you have been using an application for awhile, its tedious to switch to another.

I still regard Maya as the best, although i barely know how to use it. It just seems to be very prevalent in the movie industry and rightly so, it's very customizable and definately more userfriendly than 3DSM imo.

As for other programs, i have maybe 2 hours experience using Strata, back in the OS 9 days. If you guys want to try out this stuff, there's a free opensource 3D app called 'Blender' i downloaded it, but couldnt get around the Ui to figure out how to use it.

PacHead, thanks for that recommendation. ill definately check it out when time permits.

Also as far as the 'look'...i didnt want to go ultra realistic, because the production value needed for that wouldnt have been feasible given the timeframe and experience i had. i settled for a semi-realistic look.

Cheers

[Hash]

Image is fine, but I really hate the music. Its cheesy, military-sounding and in general does not fit your picture at all. It makes me expect the eagle drop bombs and begin aerial fight like some kind of interceptor. Some more natural-sounding, nature-related music could be much better together with sound of wind, you know

[Oneota]

The 3D is fine, but couldn't you extend it by a few seconds so you're not cutting the music off right at its climax?

[The Godfather]

It is GREAT Nice job.

When you get a job in Dreamworks, ILM, Pixar or Disney, send me free tickets

[Hawkeye_a]

fo sizzle muh nizzle.

As far as the music.....hehe....i had to find music that best suited the scene in my head. i was leaning to something like the Dances With Wolves soundtrack (distinctively American, since the bald eagle is like the national bird of the U.S.).

Music choice, Hash, military sounding ? it's from the "robin hood prince of thieves" soundtrack. When i think of 'military' music, i think of the beating of drums....kinda like the music from Braveheart or Gladiator from the war/fighting scenes. I didnt want to use too 'calm' music, cause the scene demanded some sort of 'urgency' what with hunting n all. If i was doing just a flying eagle or calm scene, id choose music like what u recommend.

But like for the purposes of this project i wanted to grab the audiences attentions not bore them for 2 minutes. As far as it matching up...hehe...i wanted to make it fit the music better...but thats the best i could

[Hash]

ok. Anyway, i don't like the music, but its only my personal tastes anyway..

And you should add sound of wind or gliding wings or something else related with the eagle, sea breeze, trees and so on, it will really make your movie better

[Oneota]

I thought the music choice was great, personally. Perfect match!

[loki74]

lol... my only word on the music actually is that I am sick of hearing it!! My "director" (at the time) wanted to use that exact same song for one of out projects--so I ended up listening to it over and over and over and... yeah you get the picture. I had that tune going through my head while I was trying to sleep!

[Hawkeye_a]

same here ... been listening to that tune over and over for about 3 months. But yeah, i think its the best match for the story i had in my head.