I wanted to bring this topic from the back shelf and see what people think about the first post. Where are we, what is the next step, how it will happen.

A spanner in the works maybe - but there is a really good file called "Juna" - a female mesh. I threw in the towel some moons ago regarding a facial, but the Juna mesh deserves some study at the very least, if not completely a base for Nia. I have not managed to render the file yet . . . it takes too long for my limited patience else I'd put some shots up.
You can dig up the file if you search for "Juna" in the BA.

Took a look at the mesh. Not bad, though a bit heavy on the density ( 950,000 faces is a bit high, as I would hope that a whole scene would come in around that! ) Also a bit lacking in character. Clean mesh though.

Matt

Yeah - It took me a month of Sundays to figure out that I could simply throw in a new quick & dirty "skin" material to get the mesh to render a lot quicker (or at all). As I am quite fond of playing around with *.bvh's - during the break I will rig it and get some animations. I put on youtube earlier a walk of sorts - and in future I will put another one. This new one isn't the best, but will some camera tricks, we can get away with it. Haha - that's the poor directors lot innit ? While this is (or may be) well off trajectory with any thing to do with the OWF - my assumption is that in future the mesh will be recognised as Nia. Regardless or not - my skills on this animation method will be increased.
So as a sideline - my goal is that I will be able to do some of the scenes as outlined in the storyboard. In future - when a "newer" mesh is available, my approach should help, or at least be "how not to spectaculary do".
Not sure of the time frame, but given my contributions so far this year, I think a year or so.
Your comments is welcome - I will resurect an earlier thread on my progress, or more appropriately open a new one.
My first few steps is to do the clothing and "hair" for the mesh. Earlier we "discovered" that fur/particles do not work for hair. So back to the traditional method. I found that there is a material call "honeycomb" that I can tweak into hair, so while my sub-conscious is positively itching at me for this, I will hair a go.
Oh by the way - my personal is perfect (as always - some of us get blessed many times, and I am one of them(-: )

Kbot,

a couple of thoughts regarding your ideas:

1) if you want to try BVH, then fine, but it might be helpful to try to track the Nia rig to the BVH. This would allow us to use the same rig for both BVH and manually animated sections with ease.

2) The hair particle problem has been solved by a patch that allows us to make the hair small enough whilst still keeping the character at 1m/BU. Looking at Juna's hair, it has to be a nightmare to both model, animate, and render, as the poly count is massive. It's also a very 'cartoon' type hair which doesn't quite fit with the more realistic view of the movie as currently visualised.

Also, Juna uses collision on all of the surfaces, to stop the hair from passing through itself, and the clothes from passing through the skin. This is very slow and probably not necessary for our purposes.

Matt

.....Noted TM. Sheesh that was a quick response.

Anyways, I think the patch you mentioned relates to the H551 version of blender - a copy lives somewhere in my HD.

Regarding the "tracked" approach, what I found is that this works, but not always as the bones/armatures often go strange places. So I "track" to some points that work, and leave others to fate.

What I was thinking of was using a mesh for the hair. My laptop just isn't fast enough (or maybe my patience level tolerant enough), for the strands to render. I'll do a mesh, with opacity at the edges, or least where it needed, and this avoids the strands. I think "gollum" from LOTR had this as the only lock of hair on his head.

Kbot,

I know what you mean about having to leave some points on the rig to fate. In theory, if you get the feet, hands, and pelvis to track, the rest of the rig should follow, and if it doesn't, I can tweak the rig to have a 'BVH' mode. My thoughts are that you should aim to control the fewest possible points on the rig that gives the appropriate level of accuracy.

Not sure what your method is, but if it is to control empties from the BVH file then constrain the rig to those, it may be possible to turn down the constraint level for some of the empties, so that they help to suggest the movement to the rig without 'forcing' it, and causing a conflict with other constraints. Hope that make sense.

You should be able to render strand hair if you turn on 'strand' rendering in the materials pane, and also strand rendering in the render pane. This makes the strands render as flat polygons, rather than 3d, and reduces render time by at least 10-20 times. It doesn't give the most realistic results, but you aren't rendering the final anyway.

Matt

You are quite right in the "not sure" bit - with my method, a lot of camera trickery is involved, but one of the toughest parts in animation is the simple walk & run cycle. And I believe that once these hurdles are overcome, we can progress to other more challenging aspects of animation stage - that is making the character actually "act" in a plausible manner. So instead of spending the hours needs to make a walk/run cycle to build my confidence, and then being deflated with mental exhaustion, not mentioning constructive criticism which my neantherthal brain more picks up as blemish picking, I'll dig at some sample actions, which the director will have to play hard the camera to get some footage, this cuts time on the production front, and at the very least show some progress.
By the way, your help is appreciated TM, but I want to leave the OWF as it is in my time a hobby for now.
Oh . . . and please note, my ideas are quite well in the future - at least six months at my rate.

I feel very guilty in that I have almost nothing to add to the project at this point, given that we are creating concept art, storyboards, and rigs, none of which I am particularly good at. I am most interested in story, animation, and music/sound. Seeing as story development is practically finished, animation and music/sound are seemingly the areas that are left that I want to be involved in. What could I be doing right now in those areas to contribute to the film? Is there anything?

HH,

feel free to try out the rig to do a bit of animation practise. Any flaws in the rig(s) need to be found before we start animation in earnest.

Kbot,

we all have a limited amount of 'play' time and a lot of calls on it. I quite understand if you can't put much ( or even any) time into OWF at the moment. I have to admit I have been very busy with other projects myself.

Matt

Thanks TM - a little pyschological support is always appreciated!