First "big time" animation - sk8 jedi

[rondo]

Here's an animation that I did. It took about a year to complete (working on and off). I modelled everything - the character is a self-portrait. No motion capture. Also did the music from scratch. It won the Caligari March contest which got me an upgrade to TS6.5!

The pluging "JointMaster" was indispensable for this ani.

http://www.caligari.com/gallery/Anim...im/Winner.mpeg

[TheAllusionist]

rondo,
It is very good, looks a lot like computer game play Love the subject matter. I am old school, still have my Kryptonic Krypstic board with Tracker SixTraxs and Kryptonic Blue Conicals with german precision speed bearings. Now that I am older and a little heavier, my balance ain't what it was, but I use to be really heavy into boarding in my youth and have had a few great boards in by time, from Tony Alva's to DogTown's.

On the computer you could really animate some radical halfpipe or park sequences. Keep up the great work!

[rondo]

Totally influenced by the Tony Hawk PS2 games .. I love em all.

old school - yeah - I hear ya ... I guess I might be classified as middle school ... I sk8ed from 12 to 17 religiously before jobs and bands and girls got in the way.

I'm 30 now and have been back into it for about 3 years. Still can't land a kickflip! Oh well, I'm not in it to be the next Tony Hawk. I just love doing it. Normal people dont understand how difficult of a sport it really is. You can REALLY get wrecked!

Did you happen to see Tony land the 900 when it first happened? Oh man, I still get chills when I see it. It was such an amazing moment for the sport. When else do you hear of someone trying something for 10 years and finally do it! Not only that, but be the FIRST to do it!!

[rondo]

speaking of animating a half pipe scene ... I started to do a snowboarding video, and have yet to finish it. Just was never as happy with it as the sk8 one.

I couldnt even do the snowboarding one if it weren't for motionstudio. Multiple nails YEAH!

Sk8 one would be a little different .. the hard part is keeping the board and rider going the same speed. With this animation, I would just key frame the basic speed, (from point A to point B) then go back and tweak the board and rider for positions/rotations ... but keeping the momentum set earlier.

Expect some ani's from me soon! Gonna have some time on my hands in a week or so.

[TheAllusionist]

I am wondering if setting up a tail bone that had a single horizontal bone in the board so it doesn't deform, would allow you to keep the two objecst linked, but allow you to animate them differently. Connecting the skeleton to the mesh would be the tricky part, the character would probably need to have his legs in the sitting position with good clearance between the feet and the board so that they would not influence one another except for the connecting bone. It the joint to the board bone was freely rotational, your character could do kick flips and aerials, etc. should be relatively easily done. Just some musing off the top of my head.

As far as extreme sports people like Tony Hawk, the xtreme motocrosser that does the complete summersault on his motorcycle blows me away. I use to do some motorcross and the thought of a 250 pound bike pile driving me into the ground gives me a the willeys! LOL

Have a great 3 day weekend!

[rondo]

that tail bone idea sounds very promising. I may have to try that! The weird thing about setting up skeletons is that you can't think about how a real skeleton works some times.

I hear ya about the back flip on the motorcycle. I remember seeing Travis Pastrana try it at a X-games a couple years back ... I thought - oh my god!

The next year, 2 or 3 guys were doing em. I guess the biggest thing between the different riders is how they learn them. Most of the early guys learned them right on the dirt. Now, most riders try everything into foam pits with smaller bikes until they get it dialed-in.

The off-axis 360 is pretty cool too. Tho I saw a guy break both femurs at the last Winter x-games trying one. OUCH!

By the time most of these guys get old, they will be all steel!

[TheAllusionist]

Evil Knevil Syndrome, they must start to like the pain! Like I said, I am old school so I am not up on who is hot and doing what these days, but if I see some xtreme sports on the TV I will watch it for a while. In my skateboarding days....................... the move that gave me the willies was the fakey, I just don't like going backwards fast, and it kind of reminded me of this xtreme motocross move I saw that blew me away! The guy goes into a superman and propels himself upright with his feet landing on the pegs and while his hands are still up in the air, he lands it, with no hands on the bars, fantastic!

It amazes me, that when you specialize in something, there seems to be no limit to what can be accomplished, in my day a table top was the holy grail, now it isn't in their vocabulary, because it isn't radical enough!

Can't wait to see your next piece, you have a unique gamer style going for you and it sets your work apart from the others.