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Dirge: new anim, Zbrush/Maya/Photoshop/AFX

Hi all…

Just completed a new personal project/animation made primarily with Zbrush and Maya. Based on a character sketch, the project evolved into having a more complex environment as it had been awhile since I had focused on something other than just a character/creature. My respect for environment artists definitely went up as it is a lot of work, but a lot of fun! Everything was base meshed in Maya then sculpted in Zbrush, where the time split is probably 10/90 as the base meshes were very simple. Texturing was done in Photoshop and rendered with Mental Ray using multiple passes. The final anim was composited in After Effects and incorporates a combination of dynamic (dust/ember particles, instanced bugs flying around) and live-action elements. The final project is 2560x1600, 24fps to display on a framed/wall mounted 30" display, and the final still is 6000x3750 (30"x48") printed on canvas and hung at Gnomon. Dirge was made in my free time over the summer, so hard to say how much time was put into it, but quite a bit! Now it is time for something way simpler. Heh.

To see a higher res version of the image, and the anim, click here.

Thanks for viewing… :slight_smile:

-Alex
[Dirge_1600x1000.jpg[/attach]–>%3Cbr%20/%3E%0A%3Cbr%20/%3E%0A%3C/font%3E"]
](http://%3Cfont%20color=%22#9A9A9A%22%3EDirge_1600x1000.jpgZBC1.jpg

Attachments

Dirge_1600x1000.jpg

1 Like

Well that was damn excellent. Those little bugs fluttering around the place was an awesome piece of icing.

Love it! But… busy, busy, busy. Desperately needs a compositional focal point.

But I still love it!

:+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:

Very Cool - what a lot of work! Thanks for Sharing…

mann SICK.!!!

i luv the animation of his breathing how was that done?

This is great! I love the creature design. Much respect for that presentation with the animation. It makes the image much more compelling. Almost hypnotic at some point. I wish I could see that displayed as you described it.

First of all thank you for your contribution to the 3D world in general :+1:

I love the concept of this deamon. Your style really comes out in it. As far as the animation, I think a better incorporation of the emon to the background would be much nicer. I feel that the front layer (demon) has too much contrast and hue, whereas the background seems really warm and inviting :laughing:

All in all great!
:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

Sweet. Made my day.

Really awesome. Could use a little depth of field to maybe?

-edit- Oh wow it’s you. :lol: I look forward to the 9000 hour super in depth tutorial on the making of this

At 1:24 into the animation I was like “****, i’m made” :lol:

One thing is to see a great sculpt, a better one is to see it alive.

the atmosphere is startling. very beautiful and strange! loved it.
i hate to ask this almost unrelated question but i’ve never made any large prints of my digital work. you printed your piece at 125dpi which seems way too low to me. but i know if you did it, then it must be awesome. is that because it was canvas and not glossy paper? how low can the dpi be on large prints? also, how large was the texture on your creature (4096x4096)? thanks.

Bad ass man. I love the atmosphere and the sound design is spot on. I love how you drop the little stingers when he taps his staff or a flame shoots up. And the little locusty beetles give it quite an apocalyptic feel. Very alive environment.

Crazy awesome man!!!, it was just amazing to see it looping on that badass frame at the gallery… cant wait to see your next!.

Alvaro.

but also a lot of help from background music and effects. Yes is moves, but the animation is too poor to get excited. More variation in color or less details should make the scene more accessible.
Anyway congratulations :+1:

Absolutely fantastic!! Thanks for sharing! :+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

I hope hell looks and sounds like that.

Awesome work!

great effort mate!, love the look of him… u said u used maya? is he fully rigged or anything? i’d love to animate him, he looks fun.

SadamHu: Thanks!

EricShawn: Yeah, I agree but it was intentional. Being a permanent loop on a hanging screen, I wanted there to be stuff to look at everywhere, as opposed to a film shot where the audience only has a few seconds to read the image. But thanks for the thumbs up!

SixxPixels: Thanks!

tyrellcorp: The breathing was done with a blendshape. I duplicated the character, put a lattice on his torso, made a cluster out of the center lattice points, weighted the points, then scaled up the cluster. I then wrote an expression on the blendshape attribute so that he would keep breathing: (sin(time) + 1)/2; The sin of time goes from ‘-1’ to ‘1’. Adding ‘1’ makes it positive, so 0-2. Then dividing by 2 makes it go from 0-1.

Beneto: Thank you! It is cool to see a 2560x1600 anim on a big monitor… I’d never rendered or played back such a high-res anim before…

cherub_rock: thanks for your feedback. My hope is that everything I do I get a little better, but I still have much to learn!

Sleet: Thanks!

KillahPriest: Thanks… haha. Dunno if I will make a making of. Didn’t record any of it as I really just wanted to make something for fun. Regarding depth of field, as I mentioned earlier, I intentionally wanted to allow the viewer to look around, so I kept the dof to a minimum.

VictorCS: Cool… thanks! I figured that I’d have the second minute be a little different to reward people who stuck around that long. Heh.

rightnut51: In my experience, the larger the print, the more far away someone will probably be when they look at it. For example, most billboards are 72dpi. I rendered at 6000x3750, resized in Photoshop to 8k and printed at 150dpi. Even up close the canvas print looks fine as canvas is not as tight as photo paper.

Darkrusader: Thanks! The sound has a Lustmord track in the bg (with his permission: http://www.lustmord.com) and then I added some sound fx on top… found a bunch of cool sound clips online. Yep, those are locusts! They were a lot of fun to make… using Maya’s particle instancer.

SeanJM: Heh… well, we actually made a Dirge screensaver that you can download for free from Gnomon. http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/freebies/screensaver/dirge_ss.html

BuendiaCG: Alvaro! Thanks so much man… your stuff is killer. Can’t wait to see the new thing you were telling me about!

Bas Mazur: Well, I guess the music and effects are meant to help… its why they’re there. Heh. Remember, this is meant to be wall art, nothing narrative and with too much character movement it became distracting which is why he doesn’t move much. And in the end, I’m not a very good animator. But thanks for the feedback!

Joao Alberto: Thank you!

T Woods: Heh. Thanks!

AdamShaw.vfx: Yeah, everything is put together and animated in Maya, rendered with Mental Ray. Yep, he’s rigged… had no choice. Definitely one of my least favorite things to do but it doesn’t take too long. I think I spent about a day rigging him as I didn’t need to worry about a lot of things that that would have taken more time… such as if he raised his arms up high, or grabbed onto the scythe with his other hand… I tried to keep it simple.

Thanks everyone for the feedback… very very much appreciated! I’ll try to post some wip images this weekend.

-Alex

excellent, looks like something out of diablo or something like that, maybe like an end boss.

cool,I like it very much!:+1: :smiley: