New Character Test

[robj]

Just updated my site (http://www.smartcomix.com/) with new content made with Anime Studio:

http://www.smartcomix.com/mov/DudeWalk0 ... 0_mpg4.mov
http://www.smartcomix.com/mov/DudeWalk0 ... _srsn3.mov

The above 2 links are for (respectively) MPEG-4 and Sorenson3 Quicktimes (".mov"s). Please let me know if there are any issues viewing / accessing these links.

Just a quick character test for a new character and background. I also made some other updates as well (2009_2 new demo reel - all 3D; some new illustration - some done with Anime Studio / some not). Lots of changes coming for SMARTcomix ... adding quite a bit more content ... other changes too ... visit often to see the progress - much of which will involve Anime Studio projects currently either in a planning or production phase. Browse around to take it all in.

Thanks ! ... and enjoy ...


Rob

[robj]

Have been informed of issues some are having trying to view the MPEG-4 link while browsing with Firefox. If you are having trouble seeing the animation via the MPEG-4 link, follow the Sorenson3 link:

http://www.smartcomix.com/mov/DudeWalk0 ... _srsn3.mov

The Sorenson3 mov seems to play back consistently (well .. no-one has told me they cannot see it with that link) ... =>

Rob

[lwaxana]

Just checked out your site. Nice animation, and "the black hole incident" was really funny.

I noticed that the first clip in your demo reel uses cartoon-y looking rendering. What program did you use for that?

[robj]

Hi lwaxana,

Just checked out your site. Nice animation, and "the black hole incident" was really funny.

Thank for that. A very old idea of mine (http://www.smartcomix.com/maxcid/img/mc020205_03.jpg) re-worked and animated. I've got many more of those (old comix animated) in the works.

I noticed that the first clip in your demo reel uses cartoon-y looking rendering. What program did you use for that?

The modeling / animation was done with a combination of sPatch (modeling), hamaPatch (modeling), and JPatch (modeling & animation). The version of JPatch (http://www.jpatch.com/) I am using is an old one that supports morph target sets and blending of bezier spline models. It writes out Renderman compliant "rib" files and allows for simple surface / shader assignment and manipulation.

Rendering is done with BMRT ... Blue Moon Rendering Tools ... a stable Renderman solution which is no longer developed or supported. as for the "cartoon-y looking rendering" ... thats the look i was going for. I am using that toon shader quite a bit intermixed with raytraced shadows and other non-toon shaded environments. I pulled it (tebSimpleCartoon.sl ... compiled it with BMRT) from the Affine toolkit - www.affine.org - an excellent Renderman resource. The shader itself is very simple, and allows tweaking of the toon line width and specular highlight. It isn't easy to find on the site, so here's the link to the page describing the shader:

http://www.affine.org/tiffedge.html

Thanks again for taking a look.

Rob

BTW ... mentioned above is sPatch ... a modeler I used. sPatch was created by the same person who authored (and continues to update / support) Moho (now Anime Studio) ... Mike Clifton

[lwaxana]

Cool, Robj! Thanks for all the info.