Future Animators

[iheartanimators]

Hi, I was told that it would be ok to put this up - it is a thread for all the young inspired future animators can show their work to the pros, to get feedback and tips.

My brother, Gregory, is really interested in animation. He has been doing some cute little sprite animations of Mario and Luigi, but he has also started on 3D animations. He's taken some screen shots of them. They obviously aren't as quality as yours, as he is only just starting with no help from textbooks or online tutorials, and on programs like Blender and Anim8or that are so old they refuse to load on my computer...

He animated these on Beneton Movie Gif

http://oi51.tinypic.com/xlhw60.jpg
http://oi55.tinypic.com/141dfp.jpg

They are just a start... he's got the basic principle down I suppose?

And these are the ones he has done in 3D - anim8or

Mutant Solar System

Cartoon hand


Gold Sponge


Dirty Sponge


If he could get hold of a newer computer and software I imagine it would get pretty amazing

Gregory is 12.

Thanks Any feedback would be great.

[ChAzZa]

Thats really cool. Good work, Tell him i'm impressed and to keep at it 

[Bridgey-Didge]

Really cool Gregory! Keep up the good work!

[John]

Blender3D is free and amazing. If he wanted to develop his skills further, that would be a great platform to start with.

http://www.blender.org/

[Ben Wotton]

Yeah check this out,



Done in Blender. Although the UI and structure of the program is a little awkward it is a powerful program.

[rowan]

It's cool that you're getting into it so soon, Blender is very capable as that video proves but you don't need to compromise. Maya for students is free with a 3 year license, no piracy, no cheating, even a school student such as yourself can sign up for it look around here http://students.autodesk.com/ this version isn't limited either, except of course you cant use it professionally. There is also a version of Side Effects Houdini http://www.sidefx.com/ called apprentice which only costs $99 that has only a few limitations (you still get to render HD with no watermark  ), it would make a good christmas present perhaps, and would allow you to explore the field more without knowing one day you'll have to switch program. Good luck.

<3 Rowan

[iheartanimators]

We'll keep it in mind, poor computer can't handle it right now!

Here is an egg plant

[Eddynator]

Nice stuff there. I remember playing around with blender when i first started , making a gummi man thing like most beginners who never opened a 3d app .Although the interface was bonkers and made me scared of 3d I had fun.  Don't dismiss any tutorials though even if you do them and don't finish you still gain valuable skills.  keep it up ! 

[Matto]

(Oh god, a necro post.)

Anyway, I'm Matthew. I'm not sure if any of you remember me, but I'm that kid who has been out to the campus a few times, including the time when Chris Landreth visited.

I've obtained Autodesk Maya 2010 and I won Mudbox 2010 in the raffle at the Australian International Animation Festival 2010.
I've also got Flash, but getting the motivation to animate can be hard.

Anyway, I thought I'd show some of my stuff off here so you all don't forget about me.

This is a project I'm working on for my Certificate II in IT Tools for New Media



This is an A3 poster for the game DUST 514, an upcoming MMOFPS for Xbox360 and PS3 developed by CCP. The main selling point of this is that both plaatforms will be playing together as well as linking with the PC MMO Eve Online.

I'm using shipmodels from EVE Online as well as some space station models I've flipped around to make a cityscape, all rendered in Maya.
The explosion and plasma beam are done in photoshop though.

The textures are ripped from the game files with a program officially endorsed by CCP. There are some things I'm having trouble with thouhg. The ships ingame have glowing parts, but I'm not sure how to do that in Maya.


Anyway, here's the main Maya part:

This is the beginnings of some sci-fi armor I'm modelling so I can have some figures in the poster there. It's my first attempt at modelling, I think it's ok for a first go.
I plan to subdivide it to make it a bit smoother then putting it in mudbox to do the details and texture. (That's what mudox is for, right?)

After that's been done, Maya-rendered EVE Online spaceships are going to fill the upper part of the poster.

[Ben Wotton]

Hey matt, wow you are certainly ahead of the game.

Some cool stuff you've got going on there. In maya there is an option in the shader's attributes to give a glow (under the 'special effects' tab)

And yes mudbox is a digital sculpting program used for high resolution detail. You mostly export the results as displacement maps or normal maps as the geometry is too high poly.

If you really want to be ready for this subject then look into After Effects and Nuke. A great resource is www.videocopilot.net

[Georgie]

Hi Matt,

Great to see you're still keen! In case you haven't heard yet; this year's Animation Festival is on from the 13th to the 15th of May (but no more walking away with the best prizes!!!). Hope to see you there!

Kind regards,
Georgie.

[Patrick M]

If you want to start looking into Nuke, you can access a PLE (Personal Learning Edition) from the Foundry website - http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/ple/.  As for Adobe After Effects, the only way to get this is by paying for a educational license, but first grab the 30 day trial from the Adobe website if you haven't used this package before - I'm pretty sure they have a trial for AE, just can't get at any until Version 5.5 is released about 2 weeks.

[Matto]

I got the PLe of nuke and the tutorial PDF. Although I don't have a use for it at the moment apart from learning how to use it, I can see how it can be really useful. The node based compositing makes so much sense.
I've also already got After Effects. Don't ask how.

On another note, I lost that helmet I was working on. That was pretty frustrating, but I've managed to redo it. The only problem is that I've got some weird shadows, as you can see in the attached image.

The way I modelled this helmet was to use 3 flat planes, then the soft modification and the sculpt geometry tools to shape them. Then I combined the polygons and used the merge edge and merge vertex tools.
Unfortunately the edges where I joined the polygons are easily visible. I tried smoothing the model, but as you can see on the right, it produced some weird shadow effects.
How do I fix this?

[rowan]

It's probably face normals (display, polygons, face normals, then use normals in polygon menu set to correct), but this thread isn't really for this kind of discussion, probably hit CG society up or something like that for this kind of issue  . This is a course inquiries thread for prospective students not a tech assist thread.

Good luck,

<3 Rowan