Animal animation – Horse

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Jose,

Great particles! Very generour od your time. I bet Alan is v.happy!

Ra-ey

[Alan Lorence]

Yes, I am very tired. Oh, you said “happy”.

I am happy to see some new particle images and have been trying to thing of others that would be cool. =)

Crawling lizard? Slithering snake?

Alan.

http://www.wondertouch.com

[Ra-ey Saleh]

Ha, I should really proof-read my messages!
Oh well…
Looking forward to seeing some of the new emitters!

Ra-ey

[Jose Burgos]

So far;
Eagle Fly
Marlin Swim
Horse Run Side View
Horse Run Top View (which I like to simulate a massive pack)

Coming soon;
Cobra Slithering
Deer Running and Jumping
Shark Swim
Donkey Walk
Donkey Kick
Eagle Soar in Circle Pattern view from below

Future;
Sea Turtle Swim
Dolphin Swim
Dolphin Flip
Bass Swim
Crab Walk
Iguana Walk

I was also thinking about some insects like;
Fly
Mosquito
Beetle
Yellow Jack
Cockroach

Glad you like but I am thinking the rest maybe for sale and not free but only a thought right now. Enjoy the four I already posted.

Take care,

Jose Burgos
http://www.burgosfx.com

[Theo Van laar]

Jose,

It would be nice if you could give us a small tutorial how you made these animals.

Theo

[Jose Burgos]

01) Purchase 3D object from Daz3D
02) Look to see if Daz3D has a pose/motion file for said object and if not, see if a BVH file exist for said object. If not and do this anyway, locate reference video footage of animal in motion.
03) Load 3D object into Poser 7 and use Motion/BVH if found of how you want the animation to look or use pose if you found them to make initial pose’s for animation.
04) I try and keep my Particle style animations that will be looped to 24 frames or one sec of film rate. This process can take a lot of time and why many times I use purchased motion/pose or BVH as starting points and hand create the keyframes. I also want to note that I really, really hate Posers animation tools and my main goal is always to be in and out of Poser as quick as possible because it hurts me working in it.
05) Once I have my base animation or just one starting pose of the object, I then use MDD Python script from Vue Scripts https://www.vuescripts.com/_A/index.php?id=1,0,0,1,0,0 and export my geometry and materials to Lightwave format. If I made an animation, then I’ll also bake the animation into a MDD file for use in Lightwave. If not, I will export the pose or poses I made as individual object.
06) I load the object into Lightwave Layout if I made an animation and if not, I load the object I exported into Lightwave Modeler. In Modeler I create either morph targets or skelegons to form a skeleton for the object. I also create weight maps to match.
07) Now in Lightwave layout, I either load the MDD file animation I exported or create an animation. I also sometimes use PLK plug-ins from Kurv Studios to import the Poser skeleton from the original file. This does not always work and why I find myself building my own skeleton.
08) I now complete the looping animation with taking great care to make sure the ending keyframes match the first keyframe if not exactly or close as to make for a loop. I use reference footage to double check my work and save.
09) I now move my camera to frame the object in a manner than will be used as a Particle style animation. Sometimes I match the reference footage and sometimes I just create my own based on an angle from experience.
09) Now I place lights into the scene as well as HDRI environment type images as well as Global Illumination and run some test renders to see results.
10) Once I am happy with everything, I make sure the camera is set to a pixel aspect of 1 and frame of 256×256 and double check animation to make sure the entire object is in frame through out the animation.
11) I render the animation off to OpenEXR files.
12) I also enable a few passes like shading, specular and RGB color,
13) I load the image sequence into Fusion and tweak the colors and overall look using Fusions tools.
14) I render final to a uncompressed avi as well as two others. One being with zero saturation and the other a plain white silhouette all with alpha channel.
15) Load into PI3 using a single particle type emitter and adjust parameters to get the look I was hoping for.

Notes: I have been doing 3D animation for close to 20 years now and all I did was outline the procedure here and not go into depth on any of it. Also the programs I use can be substituted with others like After Effects for Fusion and your favorite 3D program as look as it can import Poser objects. Or you can purchase or model your own objects in the format of your 3D program.

PS The hardest to simulate using particle style animation but to me, the most powerful, is crowds or packs moving. Many times a single animation loop is not enough even with using random start point and color so keep that in mind if you are driving yourself crazy trying to figure out why the particles don’t look right when more than one is being used as in a crowd or pack in motion. On the other hand, sometimes it works like the horse animation viewed from above. Using color, random start point of motion, random size, etc, makes for a decent pack of wild horses running through a valley. Adding some dust particles helps to sell the shot 😉

PPS This whole procedure takes me about one day to create a looping animation and by that I mean 8 hours. The longest part by far is the animation and why I highly suggest reference footage to base the animation too.

Take care,
Jose Burgos

Jose Burgos
http://www.burgosfx.com

[Theo Van laar]

Thanks, I will play around a bit with it.

Theo

[Steve Douglas]

Jose,
Way to go! Thank you very much for these. Can’t wait to see your new animations.
Steve

Steve Douglas

[Steve Douglas]

Jose,
Way to go! Thank you very much for these. Can’t wait to see your new animations.
Steve

Steve Douglas

[Steve Douglas]

Jose,
Way to go! Thank you very much for these. Can’t wait to see your new animations.
Steve

Steve Douglas