Looks awesome so far. Can't wait for the animation.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

I'm getting to where I hate using VRay for animation. I can never seem to get rid of the flickering and I don't understand light cache. Oh well, my first animation will just have to be that way.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Use an irradience map and set the preset to high animation. That should get rid of the flickering.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Looks very nice! It reminds me of something the mill did.
[Link to www.youtube.com]

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That's awesome.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Ok, I'm having issues with my animation. I'm wanting to do several short videos of tests...(basic, strength(strong and light), accuracy, etc.) I can not get the "Link Constraint" to work properly. I've gone into a basic scene and tested it on a two objects and it works fine, but when I constrain to any object on my claw, that "child" lags behind, like it's weighted down.. I'm wondering if with all of the combination of "look at constraints" and objects linked to bones and using custom attributes, if it's having a hard time calculating it. Very frustrating. Any suggestions?

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

I'm not sure what you've got happening in the rig but I have found that using lots of wire parameters and especially multiple look at constraints can really hang max up. If you have look at constraints looking at each other it is a particular limitation ive heard people complaining about.
using the expression controller instead of wiring things together is alot more efficient for max to calculate. I'm not sure of your specific problem with link constraint, I'd probably have to have a look at the scene to understand whats going on.

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Ok, this is stupid.. I since I save to different files names every so often, I went to my model to the point where it was all rigged with no textures and no scene and the link constraints work fine.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

you get flickering on places where your objects interact or intersect with other objects? like shadows flickering ?

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein

no, it from the light bounces on the walls.. I got rid of the wall and put up pillars to support the ceiling. I now render at 1 frame per 21 seconds instead of having walls and rendering 1 frame per 3 minutes.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Ok, the first animation is up. This is a basic movement animation.. I've got some other stuff in mind. I put a few sound effects on it, but didn't want to spend too much time on that.

check it out here...

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com] Then click on "Animation"

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

I just saw your site, thank you very much for the banner link! You are pure awesome! haha.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

Hehe.. Hey, I do what I can!

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Thats looking pretty awesome. The flickering like gerard said can be fixed by rendering with the high animation setting but to really nail it in the final render you need to render the arm on a seperate pass with the high animation setting and the background with a cached irradiance map. then comp the two together. Its looking good but maybe you could work on trying to get some subtle follow through into the actions to make it have more weight. its tricky with robot rigs but if he has a little trouble with the box like it sticks a bit. basically something to make the viewer feel like the robot has some personality.

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I agree with that.. That's why I'm working on a series of animations.. This rig is good practice. I've learned a lot just from doing this animation. I didn't want to render on high, but it's an awesome idea about rendering different segments and comping them together. I'll try that on the next simulation. Question about comping though, how do you get shadows on the floor if you render you model separate from the scene.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

if you select all the background elements and go to vray system>object properties. then set them all to matte objects -1.0 alpha contribution and receive shadows checked. you get everything in your reflections and all the GI plus shadows in the alpha channel.
then you render the background with everything else hidden (or deleted). cache an irradiance map using the multi frame incremental option and every tenth frame or so. I think I wrote a step by step for that somewhere on here. You can save the light cache with the flythrough option or render it per frame.

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It would be nice if you could render one frame of each camera angle and comp the render the of animation on it.. If you didn't want shadows of course.

Thanks Tyson.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Yeh, it's looking pretty good, you've got some great camera angles in there. Like Tyson said, it's good to put personality into your animations even if you're animating a machine. If people can identify with it, they will receive it better.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Thanks Steve.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

All right guys.. I need your input!!! I've finished my next animation and spent a little more time creating the right sounds. Click the link below, then select "Animation Gallery". It will play automatically.

Let me know what you think.

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Nice man! Good work the bit at the end seals the deal!

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

Thanks Jamie!

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

No probs mate!

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

Thats very entertaining. I think you successfully gave him a personality there. great work. The sound effects add alot to it aswell, worth the effort for sure. If I was to try and criticise maybe you could add some stiff spring controllers to some of the joints so when he stops dead its got a slight mechanical wobble. the flickering is still there but I guess you are wanting to get it rendered quickly. why not try lighting it without GI just some standard max lights for fill.

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I didn't even think about that.. I may render a still image without GI and put in some Omni lights for fill with vray shadows and see how it looks.. You are correct though, If I had just one camera angle, I would have turn it on high animation and walked away for three days, but with several camera angles, I was very impatient...lol so I rendered on low.. It still took all day, then about 6 hours lining it up in After Effects and creating the sounds. I tackled the hardest sounds last, which was the broken pieces. I had to make 5 different sounds for it to look right. Two High pitched for smaller pieces and Two low pitch for the larger hitting the metal table and a low pitch thud for bouncing on the floor. But it was worth it. I had a lot of fun making it.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

one fill method is to use 10 standard spotlights tinted slightly blue with a multiplier of 0.1 all of them together equaling the brightness value of 1 light at full brightness.
turn on shadow maps and have them very low res like 512, and increase the sample range to 25 to blur them out. place them all around to get into all the dark spots. making them instanced makes it easier to adjust them afterwards.

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Looking good!

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I rendered another version of this animation using omni light and GI turned off.. This time I change the render setting to not be so blurry.

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Thats looking much cleaner. With all the reflective materials the GI isnt really necessary, looks good without it. In terms of rendering a still and comping on top. if you make the sequence all locked off shots. maybe with a few extra cuts to get the right angles you could limit your background frames to 3 or 4 renders. If you render as I said above with shadows in the alpha channel the shadows can move across the still image just fine. thats a trade off well worth considering if you want a detailed background.

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Thanks.. It knocked it down to 14 sec a frame, so it was pretty good.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

That is awesome, I did no what to expect at the end, nice. I figured it would whip out a lathe or something and reshape the piece.

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Chris

Thanks

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]