Hello everyone. happy new year. i would like to share my latest insomnia project . last night was looking for old useless stuff to delete of my drive and dug up a model of a samurai sword i did way back following a tutorial when i was learning basic modeling. i decided to play a bit with it with the low max rig. i originally intended to do a mean cool samurai but in the process of adding appeal, i started to really have fun with it and thus our fierce cool samurai ended up as a wussy fraidycat

[flash=640,480]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?hl=en&fs=1"[/flash]

would love to hear  your criticisms and comments.

looking good.
could u re-render with a static cam?
the motions kinda distracting.

anything you say Prime
[flash=640,480]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De7uTUofVg0?hl=en&fs=1"[/flash]

aah much beta, thanx.
wussy about sums him up. lol

i guess u still intend to tweak a bit.
a few slight adjustments on the weight shift at the start- when he lifts one leg, the weight should shift slightly to the other leg, and it should prolly flex a bit.

as a foundation, id say its pretty kool.
loved his expressions, seemed suprised that he was the one weilding- and that kinda changed 2 new found confidence at the end.
were those the xpressions u were gunning for?

pretty kool 4 a nites work!

OKX:

i guess u still intend to tweak a bit.
a few slight adjustments on the weight shift at the start- when he lifts one leg, the weight should shift slightly to the other leg, and it should prolly flex a bit.

spot on there on the weight shift thing. it was an area that was a breeze to do for me so i barely went back to refine that part and it registered mentally as a q.c passed part. dont plan to do too much more on this one as im just practising probably just fix that starting part and move on to something new.

OKX:

loved his expressions, seemed suprised that he was the one weilding- and that kinda changed 2 new found confidence at the end.
were those the xpressions u were gunning for?

pretty kool 4 a nites work!

yeah about the expressions its kinda a similar vein. but in my head i was imagining he was on guard duty that night and he was hoping he wouldn't have to finally use his katana being a,  well wussy. however he heard sounds of someone or something right ahead of him lurking behind the bamboo bushes. when his demand for the intruder to come out peacefully and identify himself wasn't heeded and the sound kept approaching. he -in panic- summoned all the courage in him and slashed blindly through the bamboo chutes at the approaching sound only to find out much to his relief that it was just a squirrel ( do they exist in japan?  . whatever!) .
seems a bit long huh but as you know these kinda things help when you are trying to build character. of course i made it all up as i went. an yeah it took up most of the night i must add. luckily had no early engagements today.

Lol , nice poses and expression. my critic will come later.

nice, creative mind uv got there.
Reading thru, u gat the plot 4 a perfect short.

Dont let d project gather dust even if it was just 4 practice.
If uv spent time on it, u may as well polish it- dats my philosophy.

Besides beefing ya demoreel aint a bad idea.
Just downloaded a ninja rig, will play with it n post a clip- just 2 intimidate ur ninja wannabe!

OKX:

Dont let d project gather dust even if it was just 4 practice.
If uv spent time on it, u may as well polish it- dats my philosophy.

thanks okx not a bad suggestion. actually you are right i would make a nice short. hmm.

OKX:

Just downloaded a ninja rig, will play with it n post a clip- just 2 intimidate your ninja wannabe!

OK NOW YOU REALLY HURT HIS FEELINGS  . cant believe u called wussyzuki a ninja. he's a samurai, samurai's are honorable. ninjas do dirty work. he might be a wussy but his body has the the bone structure and the CHI flow of a master warrior! and as his teacher im gonna help him overcome his wussiness and fulfil his destiny .pissing him off has got him more inspired and determined than kanu in a peak milk advert
[flash=200,200]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R30n-ot0Nbo?fs=1&hl=en_US"[/flash].
your ninja warrior is gonna wish he was never born after wussizuki masters and uses the one million dicing technique on him. iki mas!

@ z pix thanks. always a treat to have a prime drop by. hurry up with the criticisms.

a rough
first comes the show off, the whupping comes later.

be afraid, wuss, be very afraid!

UPDATE:
posted d wrong clip. just corrected that.
how dyu get 2 include the u-tube videos in ur post?

@ xothermik

howd u get the sheen thingy on the blade? blur? twas pretty kool.

should be calling u next week on the other thing.

guess the bot got ur reply, cos its a no-show.

thank God u know. just got unbanned. will post my response later hope i dont get banned for no reason again.

OKX:

how dyu get 2 include the u-tube videos in your post?

go to u tube, below the video window you wanna embed, click the embed button,copy link a long html gibberish that looks like this.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value=" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

then delete every thing except the part from the inverted comma before the http to the next inverted comma like this

" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&hl=en_US"

then highlight the whole thing and click insert flash button to get something like this

[flash=200,200]" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&hl=en_US"[/flash]

finally you set the default 200,200 video size to the size you want for your video. i left the kanu vid 200,200 thats why its small.
thats it u r done. click reply and it should be embedded when the page reloads.


yay i didn't get banned this time stupid dumb bot

kool. Thanx

OKX:

@ xothermik
howd u get the sheen thingy on the blade? blur? twas pretty kool.

i was playing the devil may cry game when i had the chance for most of last week and noticed the effect the character's (dante) sword was creating when he strikes. not only did it leave the classic action game trail but also i noticed that it actually distorts the background image so i decided to try and replicate the effect. i used a plugin for max called ghost trails which is widely used for a wide range of effects from this kind to even stuff like car wheel  tracks on road. its quite handy for effects and motion graphics and even could be wired to a particle system for even more advanced and possibly even scripted behaviors. ghost trails uses splines to generate effects so i had to go to sub-object mode of the blade, select an edge, turn it to a spline and link it back to the sword. i then applied the ghost trail modifier which actually generates a thin flat geometry from the chosen spline. i then tweaked it to get the desired length and iterations as well as animate it to appear when i want. the final step is to apply the material that is capable of warping the underlying scene. i applied a glass like material with a noise map in the bump channel to get a wobbly diffraction. of course you cant see this in the samurai vids because they are just previews. but you can definitely see it in the full render. finally i decided to even add a shell modifier to the trail to thicken it a bit and accentuate the effect. i know you use maya and doubt there is ghost trails for maya but of course there are more than one ways to climb a mountain and there willl probably be something on maya native or plugin to achieve the same. i even contemplated how i could do it in max without a plug in and i concluded that an object trajectory converted to a spline and a plane or any geometry extruded along the path using a world space modifier. probably a bit more work but it should work.

sorry it the post is a bit too long.

should be calling u next week on the other thing.

i hope they still dont plan to stick to their january 6th deadline because i dont know how to travel through time in the real world.

still trying to find inspiration to respond to your ballerina ninja

wow.
thot it was just a post- op blur on the blade.
will check out any maya equivalent.
thanx 4 detailing d workflow.

on d deadline thing, they called yesterday asking if d 13th was possible- told them NO!
dunno if that screws the job or not, but we aint magicians.

ballerina?!
heck no! u didnt say that- now the kid gloves r off!
prepare 4 a royal whupping (and thanx 2 ur u-tube tutorial, it will be in full public view!)

@xothermik
Nice anim.If I permitted to say anything, I feel your timing is askew.Build up the anticipation before the sword swing. Insert a moving hold before the xter starts to stand up. Again nice work.

aphek:

If I permitted to say anything

are u kidding? of course u are. i was actually beginning to wonder why you haven't commented yet.

aphek:

I feel your timing is askew.Build up the anticipation before the sword swing. Insert a moving hold before the xter starts to stand up.

as usual objective, concise and academic. thanks dud

final tense moments before confronting the dirty fighting ninja  . finally looks to the heavens for inspiration  and draws his sword!

just starting to smooth out the key poses. as usual love to get your feedback.

hilarious.
im really loving this chap.
seems almost a shame to whup him. lol

great on the facial expressions, again.
prolly a slight adjustment on the arm swing, when his arm swings back after he grabs his katana.
needs a bit more follow-thru with the forearm on the back swing, and a tad in the shoulder.

looking real good.

absolutely right about those silly arms. they were starting to piss me off. ik arms can be such a pain when your character is not leaning, grabbing or pushing stuff. you tend to loose your flow and those organic arcs easily and can be somewhat complicated to work with translation data for swinging arms or limbs in the graph editor. and as if that wasn't hard enough you still have to avoid ik snaps. i just used it on this one because i wanted to evade counter animating him grabbing the sword  when the shoulder moves and stupidly thought i should ik it all the way. im just working on the blend back to fk. works much better already.
  as for that ballerina masquarading as a ninja, he can laugh all he wants. we all know how movies like this end. the soft but good guy always wins  .

Haha. Nice one. Has OKX said, you need to work on the arms there are some funky rotations going on. Keep it up.

thanks partner

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