[1 - animation] The Jump - 2 hours

[Thomas]

(Français plus bas - French below)

Subject: with the help of the Carrara 4 file in attachment, including a rigged / skinned character and its environment, do a jump animation other the window.

Time limit: 2 hours. Before starting, study how the character is made and how you can animate it.

Extra information: You can change the rigging or add manipulators if you need more. But you can't use another character for this contest.
This contest is a long one, you can try to do a spectacular jump, and not only a simple one. Try to do something original!
Only focus on the animation itself, don't take care of the textures, rendering, etc.

Please, try to post only small size animation files, like around 640x480 and use a good compressor

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Sujet: avec l'aide du fichier en attachement au format Carrara 4, qui inclue un personnage avec ses bones et influences ainsi que son décors, réalisé une animation de saut par dessus la fenêtre.

Limite de temps : 2 heures. Avant de commencer, étudiez le personnage fournit et comment l'animer (utilisation des assistants)

Information supplémentaires : Vous pouvez changer le rigging ou ajouter des manipulateurs, mais vous ne pouvez pas utiliser un autre personnage pour ce challenge.
Ce Challenge est assez long, essayez de faire un saut spectaculaire et pas un simple saut. Essayez d'être original !
Focalisez vous seulement sur l'animation, ne vous préoccupez pas des textures, rendus ou autres !

Merci de poster des animations de petites tailles, autour de 640x480 et pensez à les compresser, dans un format lisible par le plus grand nombre.

[simonced]

hi everyone !

It's my first charactere animation !
I don't like it very much, but I hope I'll find time to give another try !
What do you think ?

I know there is a problem abot the foot in the jump, but no time left to fix it.

The video format is divX 4.52.

[Thomas]

Hey, very nice 'matrix' style! Perhaps you can improve the bounce on the border of the window, and the falling to the floor. It's a little bit rigid. But nice first try !
You can try to do it again from scratch (then, do the speed contest a second time), I'm sure it will be a lot better!

[Grendel]

A quick double backflip, the first turned out better than the second. With the elevation change it is hard to keyframe a beleivable arc and rate of descent while trying to rotate. Fun to try though.

[Thomas]

Nice jump Grendel ! Perhaps not enough "fluid", but it's a good one!
You know, you can start the animation with another position for the character ;)

[bigleu]

Un petit saut qui m'a permis de découvrir la manipulation des "bones".
j'avoue,... j'ai passé plus de 2h. Je voulais avoir quelque chose d'assez fluide et "réaliste", ... hum
Mais maintenant que j'ai compris le principe, je vais essayer d'en faire un autre dans les temps...

[Thomas]

It's not so bad, but it's too slow! Select all your keyframe and press ALT (or CTRL, don't remember), while draging them, to sloow down your animation!

C'est pas si mal, mais trop lent !! Sélectionne toutes tes images clefs et appuis sur ALT (ou CTRL, je ne sais plus) tout en les déplaçant, pour ralentir l'animation.
Sinon, tu vas voir, en faisant deux fois de suite l'"exercice", ca sera bien mieux !
PS: j'ai posté en anglais, car le forum est censé être en anglais

[bigleu]

Hi,
Here is an other try for "my girl" (the character of course). But it's not easy, she does what she wants... well the essential is that she goes trough the window...
see that .mov, you will understand what i mean...

For the second one, i think that the balustrade is too high, but anyway, it's a kind of "artistic" jump... hum...

PS: sorry for my english

[Thomas]

Bouahahahah ! . The animation is not realistic, but damn, it's realy fun !

[simonced]

LOOOOOOOL !!! :D
really fun !
It really looks alive ! Good camera tracking ;)

[mon_stdnt]

Thomas what would be a good compressor for Quicktime? My teacher told the class (few month ago) to use the animation setting form the quicktime options. And whats the max. size for the clip?

[Sardtok]

Animation should only be used if you need an alpha channel for compositing...
I would recommend On2 VP3, a lot of people would probably recommend H.264 (mpeg4)...
If you were doing AVIs I would recommend VP7 (free for non-commercial, best compression around, VP6 is the version used in Flash 8, and was chosen because of its superios quality/compression ratio, and its price compared to for instance H.264 (VP6 has smaller file sizes and better quality than H.264, but is mostly used for shoutcasts, because it's the ideal streaming format, not sure why VP7 hasn't gained the same popularity, as it's an upgraded version))...

[Thomas]

yes, h264 if you have a strong cpu. Or more simply, Sorenson 3 (available in most Quicktime version) and put the quality at 60%

[mon_stdnt]

WoW that compressor is pretty good. The first render I did with Animation Compressor it came out to 26.5mb. Now with the new compressor it came out with 1.12mb with winzip. Amazing.

But the file is still to big to upload ene with winzip and in medium quality. I'll try later cause my computer is heating up. IS HOT in NYC ANd thanx for the quick responds.

[Thomas]

oups, I need to update the attachements limits! Try again in 10 minutes
Edit: try now, it should be ok!

[mon_stdnt]

I was expecting 9mb but 19 is good. here's my entery. I might change the a few things on the next one.

[Thomas]

I love the "flying" part and the fall! But wht is the big black line at the bottom of the movie, visible at the end?

[mon_stdnt]

It was the empty background that was showing, but its weird since the camera didn't go under the enviroment and I streched the model a bit.

I put an infinite plane and added a little more animation, still under 10s.

[JakalDesign]

I wanted to join in on this challenge but didnt want to use Carrara. So I moved the scene into XSI and fully rigged the character. I am going to start on my jump scene tonight... but for anybody that wishes to use XSI for this challenge I have the project available for download.

The Jump

[Thomas]

You're in the good way to do that ;) I'll do some tests with your rig with XSI, I'm waiting to see your result. ?o way, XSI rigging abilities are far away from Carrara !