CGI Techniques - some questions
Moderator: Spectrum Strike Force
1) I was really impressed by the bike chase in The Achilles Messenger and was wondering about that shot of the biker who tries to follow Scarlet across the roof of the farmhouse and gets thrown off and goes head over heels across the roof. Was that stunt achieved via motion capture?
2) How is the illusion of weight added to people and objects? Is it down to the skill of the animators or the software being used?
3) Do the animators ever talk to the writers on the show about what's possible with the techniques they're using and does this ever throw up ideas for stories?
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1.) I'm pretty sure that whole sequence was all keyframe (hand) animated - whilst motion capture is an invaluable tool for speeding up the production process, it's still limited in some of the things it can do - basically anything involving characters in "typical" situations - walking, talking, running, jumping, climbing etc. is possible to mo-cap but more exotic stuff (like the scene you mentioned and say, the R.A.T. from Rat Trap) has to be keyframed.
it's a testimony to the skill of our animators here that a lot of stuff that people think is mo-cap is actually keyframed
2.) All vehicle animations are done by hand by the animators - there's no magic buttons for getting this stuff right - again, it's purely down to the skill of the animator doing the shot.
3.) When I joined Captain Scarlet - just as we were finishing episode 1, all the scripts had already been written and approved. Where the collaboration does come in is between the director and the teams - each director will have his own specific vision of how the episode should look/work and they'll spend a lot of time with ALL the artists working on the show - modellers, animators, lighting etc. to make sure that vision makes it to the screen.
If you're interested, I'll elaborate more on the production process some other time but right now my render's just finished
Andrew G. Morgan ~ CG Plumber
Cityscape 3D
Old Street, UK.
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Aegis
- Skybase Tech
- Posts: 111
- Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:45 am
- Location: Skybase
So the rider coming off his bike was keyframed not mo-cap? Wow, that's impressive. You're damn right, it is a testimony to the skill of the animators. Get those guys a beer. I never realised that anything 'exotic' like that would be keyframed. If anything I thought the exotic stuff would be the mo-capped stuff. Shows how much I know! I guess the cool shot of Destiny crashing through the window in Achilles Messenger was also keyframed, huh?
Thanks for the clarification re the scripts. I didn't realise they'd all been written beforehand. I think the point I was trying to make was that there might be things that the CG crew know they can do given their skills and the software at their disposal that the writers may not. Hence, if the writers sat down with the team and mulled over the possibilities then that may in itself throw up ideas for stories or stuff for cool action sequences.
Aegis wrote:If you're interested, I'll elaborate more on the production process some other time
Are you kidding?!! I should think the entire forum membership, not just myself, would love that
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