Christmas Gif 2021 WIP 1 – simple snowman

Forum Archive Christmas Gif 2021 WIP 1 – simple snowman

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  • #14542
    tanya
    Participant

      I just couldn’t come up with an idea for this one, so with not much time left am settling for this.  I wanted a simple animation that looped well.  Going for the simple gif look.  Guess I’ll see what I can do with the deadline fast approaching.  I was glad to see more people do this challenge,  for me they have been a great way to try to apply what I have learned in tutorials and I never would have done a gif otherwise.

      #71633
      Adrian Bellworthy
      Participant

        Nice, I like this, two messages in this Gif,

        Happy Holidays,

        and

        Make sure you wear your mask, and it covers your carrot.

        I’m pleased you are taking part in this @tanya53 

        You have been a regular participant, and you would be missed if we didn’t see your entry.

        This challenge has two parts, the next part is a new year celebration Gif,

        So you can use this part as a practise round for your awesome entry in part two.

        for me they have been a great way to try to apply what I have learned in tutorials and I never would have done a gif otherwise.

        This is exactly what I wanted these challenges to achieve.

        Thankyou for sharing this, and taking part.

        This is why the CGCookie community is so awesome.

        #71634
        spikeyxxx
        Participant

          This is so cool Tanya. I love it!

          #71635
          tanya
          Participant

            day 2 – 

            so much left to do

            –   fix animation. at beginning so looks more like looking around

            –   fix lights

            –  do something with the mask when he takes it off, change shape, probably a shape key

            –  want to keep the simple look, so decide how much detail to addd to the materials, definitely uncertain about this

            –  then the old nemesis lighting, currently I just have world color changed to more white and no lights.  Unsure how to  light up the entire scene, but keep everything still looking simple.  Don’t know yet what 3-point lighting would look at.

            –  camera, focus on snowman, blur trees, or keep all in focus?

            – so many questions and so little time, well off for more coffee.

            #71636
            Adrian Bellworthy
            Participant

              The last point you make is the most important

              more coffee.

              Have a cookie too.

              Personally, I don’t think you need to do much with the lighting for a Gif, I think the global illumination from the world is perfectly acceptable. 

              I’m not sure if you are using Cycles or Eevee, but some AO maybe all you need.

              You say fix the lights, here is what I did for lights changing colors for an idea you could use

              I used a color ramp with the different colors, the value node has a driver based on the frame number, in the value node just type #frame/180, 

              180 being the total number of frames for my animation, you would use however many frames are in your animation.

              The colors are very saturated in the color ramp, they become less saturated the higher the emission strength is above 1.

              I used ease for the interpolation on the color ramp rather than constant because I wanted the light to fade from one color to the next.

              You could just use an emission shader instead of the principled I have used, I used it for a bright colored reflection at the top of the tree.

              You don’t have to do this, but an idea to help you along with time running out.

              #71637
              tanya
              Participant

                @adrian2301 thanks for the suggestions.  I was just thinking about what to do with the tree lights. I am currently rendering in evee, work on a laptop so rendering in cycles can be pretty slow.  For the scream challenge I used cycles, the render was just so much better.  Is it worth doing the render in cycles here or since it is a gif is evee good enough do you think?  I appreciate all the advice and encouragement.

                #71638
                Adrian Bellworthy
                Participant

                  Considering it will be compressed when converting to a GIF, I would go with Eevee.

                  Cycles gives a better realistic result than Eevee, but you will lose this in the GIF.

                  Go with the best you can get with Eevee,

                  It will save you some time also.

                  #71639
                  tanya
                  Participant

                    day 3  –   working lights.  I guess the particle system info node doesn’t work with evee. and of course I want to use evee and my lights are particles.  Probably should have used geometry nodes, but with my learning curve, it wouldn’t have been done until next. xmas.   Could change to cycles, not happening due to the time issue.  So I cobbled something together that. sort of worked using. driver in a sin function,  random number and. a color ramp.

                    status – 

                    trees – done. !!!  Still need to work on the snowman animation a fair amount and decide if I should blur out the trees some, etc.  Decided not to smooth any of the meshes. and stay with that feel.  Staying with this is harder to do then I thought, just want to smooth. it all oud and add more poly’s.  Adding the AO as adrian suggested helped loads.  Definitely will have to try to find some extra free time or maybe a little less sleep for a couple of days to finish, which means I should get to work on it now.

                    #71640
                    Keith
                    Participant

                      I love how his nose springs up after he takes the mask off 😅

                      Great work @tanya53 

                      #71641
                      Adrian Bellworthy
                      Participant

                        Looking great Tanya,

                        I love the nose pop up.

                        #71642
                        tanya
                        Participant

                          last day

                          Animation finished!  Could still be tweaked forever, but have to quit sometime.  Should probably add a few frames in a couple of places, but I want the animation to be smooth and time is pretty much gone.  If I have time tonight might see what happens with blurring the trees some and adding some bloom to the lights.  Ended up using a couple of shape keys (eyes and mask) and using an armature for the snowman.  Last challenge used cycles,  lots of compositing, lots of polygons, this one way less compositing,  less polygons, evee and has animation.  I also must have some of the. worst internet in the world, it is definitely challenged uploading a 7 sec video, takes multiple tries.

                          #71643
                          Adrian Bellworthy
                          Participant

                            A gift for you Tanya, take another day or two, nothing will be judged until after the weekend.

                            Merry Christmas.

                            #71644
                            Adrian Bellworthy
                            Participant

                              Don’t tell anyone but I just changed the date, I meant to do it before anyway.

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