"Making of The Viking animation" by "Cemre Ozkurt,2002"
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Bone and morph:

Character doesn't have body so i din't use any Character Studio or sophisticated Bone system.
I Put 2 bones for only Neck and Head. Then i used Skin Modifier to get whole thing.

Then I made some expressions for Animation with Morph. Just like A-E-O-MB-TH-L For mouth.
I also made some expressions for eyebrows. Just like Right is up, Left eyebrow is down foranger,
Right eyebrow for sad, All eyebrows are up.

After that i used these targets into the Morph o magic. Actually Morph o Magic is basicly the same Morph In standart max
but in Morph o Magic you can make different groups and you can key them separatly.
For Example if you work for mouth, you can make a group for mouths and you can key them with only one touch.


lip-Sync:

Actually I thought I made a good job but it was not so good .I used this way to do it.
I put sound under the ViewPort, i watched the Sound waves, I spotted Morph tagets and before 1 or 2 key and i put them. (key them)
Especially MB, FTH, OU, L. These are Important ones. rest of them are in second layer.
First of all, before touching eyes or eyebrows, i put mouth in a sequence with sound. i finished mouths first.
Then I keyyed boned to make head moves.After that muscles and eyelids.

After that, I created couple of new morph target for ears and I shaked them...
Actually, its not a best way to do, Bones or flex much better for realistic shaking. But this time I forget the secondary animations on starting point...
Thats why I used Morph for ear animation... I'm not recommended this method.
For Hairs, I Instance copyed the main hair Piece, I bend the main Piece then other Pieces follow it at the same time.

You can download the first wire frame test of Al Pacino animation
TEST01.Avi (divx4)
4.mb


Lighting and Rendering:

First of all, I tryed the Brazil rendering system for global illumination,Then I try to simulate this lighting.
I created several directional light, and I arrange in a primitive sphere and I rendered couple of time until it was satisfying.
It's really quick simulation for fake global illumination.
After That, I build blue hard light for right side, its a pretty usual sinematic lighting method.
When I was making the upper lights, I pay attention to nose shadow, I like to see this shadow, but not on the lips...
Otherwise it's gonna be strange black area on the important lips.
I also change the eye brightness for correct aspect, Also I change the face brightnes for hard lights..

.... ..

Several renders later, I build the final render frame by frame TGA with alpna channel...


 



Painting-Armour

Back Ground Creation and composition

I drew the backgound with my hands, and I put them on brackground, I just try to decide wich is better.
then I like the Trees, and I start to modelling tree animation...
I also build different kind of example for brackground, Except the trees, for example, stone walls, fires, burning houses, my house and istanbul ferry port...

For tree animation, I loft the Basic lines and I link all of it, and I rotate them...



After that, I open up the After Effetc 5. And I try to found my smog animation in my hard drive, I allready build this in Illussion... Also I used this smoke in my Mustafa Jackson animation before. Then I put this smoke animation on top of the tree layers.



For dusts animation, I used Spray tool in 3dsmax. I bind the wind effect to spay tool, then I render it with alpha channel.


Eventually, I got shaking trees animation, with dust and smoke...
You can also download the tree animations. -Agac Dallari.avi Divx- 500kb


Then, I put the viking animation on top of the trees with After Effects. At that point, I want to Remind the important trick..
when you want to use alpha channel in After effects you have to use %100 black backgound... and when you import the files on after effects,
you have to select black color for matte color.. It will be perfect solution for
alpha combine.
After that, I render this animation with low compress. and I import in Adobe premiere for sound mixing..
Then I export them to Divx avi...


FINISH:

Yeahh, This is it... As you can see, it was pretty easy.
If you wish, you can do same kind of orc for your mother or sister
and you can surprise them... Pueeeehh!!!!

Cheers..

Cemre Ozkurt
http://www.deluxepaint.net/

Download the Al Pacino animation
http://www.3dluvr.com/cemre/image/project/viking/viking_alpacino.avi

main page of Viking Animation.
http://www.3dluvr.com/cemre/image/project/viking/

Special Thanks,
Erman Sinan,
Can Tuncer, Burcak Duruoz.


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