senior project

[blazecon0]

well, I'm a senior this year, and Ive decided that i want to create a series about our 40 seniors (with juniors being minor characters) and release a short of about 10-20 minutes or so each 9 weeks, shouldn't be to hard . anyway, i want to use this thread to post my work and what not so that you guys can offer tips to improve and ideas to make it better the chars will be made in a style similar to the 'MII' chars from the Nintendo console, but a little more elaborate so that each of our seniors will have there own distinct personality so they don't have to speak in order for ppl to know who they are. this is the first area i need help in, as I've never made a person before any tips on how to go about this or a base character to work off of would be a huge help. thanks ^^

[rellik420]

i think if u want to be really realistic about it. have a photo session. just get your front and side view of each person. u can have like 5 different face models and cover all of the people in ur class. but u should rely on the texture maps (i dont have any idea how thats done but u can google it). that way u will have each person with theyre face wrapped around ur model. it might seem like a bit much and pretty unconventional. but it should only take like 2 mins per person if u have 2 cameras set up and snap a shot both at same time.

i know its alot of pre production but in my head ic that the only way possible. maybe u can talk 2 your teachers and set them up in a week or so and do 10 at a time.

[blazecon0]

eeh, that sounds like a lot of work :p tho im good friends with the principal, so it wouldn't be too difficult to set up, but at the same time the heads are going to basicly be variations of a sphere, so just a face shot from the yearbooks would prolly be all i need. i got a good friend on the yearbook team so it shouldn't be too difficult.

[hihosilver]

I wouldn't expect to get 9-10 min. episodes done.  You'd be surprised what you can fit in 1-2 minutes and how long it actually takes to use up that much time and make that much animation.

[blazecon0]

so i had an awesome model put together, and a kid turns off my power strip.. back to square 1 :/

[lynn22]

When you make awesome models make sure to save every few minutes and make sure that Autosave is checked under File >> Configure

[Arik_the_Red]

One thing to keep in mind, RENDER TIME!   10-20 mins of rendered video can take a fair chunk of calendar time.

[blazecon0]

yea i was thinking about that. fortunatly ill be able to use a more powerful computer when i render. its sad when ur grandma has a better computer than you :p (8 gig monster with a god-like video card:D)

[RudySchneider]

...(8 gig monster with a god-like video card...

Just remember, the video card doesn't mean squat when it comes to rendering.  That's strictly CPU horsepower.

[rellik420]

look up render farms.

im not sure how anim8or handles things. but i think the whole point of making a render farm is to increase cpu power with multiple  computers.

all i know is that it considerably improves render times.

[Arik_the_Red]

I don't believe there is much around in the way of anim8or renderfarms...  I know that blender has them, and cararra, and other higher end programs.  I read where blender has one you can subscribe to for something like $20 a month.

Ericaug had secured a handful of Dell PCs to work on renderfarm processing ideas for cararra.