If Only 3D Animation Were This Easy [video] | Hacker News Reader

If Only 3D Animation Were This Easy [video]

kotaku.com

86 pointstylerlh33 comments

The dance moves were 1920s-style Charleston and Susie-Q followed by the Bees Knees (sometimes called breeze-in-the-knees). Interestingly, back in the Savoy Ballroom days, true Lindy Hoppers could tell if someone really knew their stuff by whether or not they raised their foot during a Susie-Q. From 1:02 to 1:05, the character's right foot appears slightly raised. Obviously not a true Lindy Hopper. ;-)

Lifted foot aside, the body motion for the vernacular jazz dance moves is quite authentic. Nice work.

Care to explain what you mean by the lifted foot? Are you talking about pivoting on the heel, and lifting the front part of the foot, during the Susie Q? If so, I've never heard of this being seen as a sign of knowing their stuff or not. I just considered it a variation, some people pivot on the heel, some on the front part.

Lifting the ball of the foot while pivoting, rather than resting it on the ground. The pivot is always on the heel, as far as I know. Raising the front of the foot off the floor is not following Frankie's form, if you will. Here's a good demonstration by Al and Leon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psZB6t4P-QI

Watch the front foot. There's a very slight momentary lift (during the set-up for the slide), but the slide action occurs along the ground.

That was really well done and funny! The ending comment had me laughing.

It reminds me of a similar video Animator vs. Animation.

Link for anyone interested: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/animator

It's interesting to go back and look at some of the semi-old-school viral content once in a while.

I'm a little surprised Albino Blacksheep (and fetchfido.co.uk apparently) is still running to be honest.

I love this. Can anyone recommend me a good blender tutorial? From very basics to character rigging and the more advanced stuff? Also going into scripting?

I mostly learned Blender myself (3 years ago...good times). I remember using this: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

It also recommends this book:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Blending_Into_Pytho...

for scripting (though it's still a WIP).

Back then it had far less chapters, and so I had to mostly rely on the documentation/experience, but it seems like it's got much more stuff now, so you should really check it out! Happy Blendering.

Thanks!

http://www.blendercookie.com

Lots of free stuff there. The membership is ridiculously worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ISWHLfP8U

Am I the only one asking the right question? This video is not a just-for-fun video. It is a cry from the animators of this world that they want better tools. We, as tool builders, programmers, need to listen to this. There is a problem here that can be addressed. There is a market here that can be capitalized.We are all a bunch of hackers here. What is it that is preventing us from creating tools that make creating animations even easier?

What is it that is preventing us from creating tools that make creating animations even easier?

Probably the fact that this is a hard problem. Seriously, hundreds if not thousands of people are working on creating tools for animators, for 3D software companies, movie and game studios. If it was easy, it would have been solved by now.

Not really true. They are still building tools that were like other older tools ( but with more complexity ). As far as I can tell nobody ( nobody I know) is thinking "How can I make this easy ? " Most of the tools these days are build around the same thought process. I will build a tool like Intellij but will add 2 extra features like cloud sync and another thing. But that is not what we need to do. That wont "change the game". Everytime we look at something and plan to disrupt it, we cant disrupt it by adding one more feature to a product that already exists. You need to think ground up. This also relates to people not thinking big. Its a hard problem. I understand that it is. But, someone has to go after the hard problems. I am looking for that someone.

If we look at Brett Victors inspirational videos the one thing I can take away is "Change the game". If we play the same game as before things wont change much. So, creating animations is a hard problem to solve. But, can someone change the game ? For centuries, extracting aluminium out of its alloy was a hard problem, or extracting mica. Once it was done, it changed the game.

Speaking as someone with 17 years' professional animation experience, I've seen a lot of people try to come up with newer, better, easier ways to do animation. I've tried most of them, because my workflow revolves around doing things in the fastest, easiest way possible.

What am I currently using? 3D Studio Max. (and Motionbuilder, and some high-end mocap technology, and a lot of outsourcing.)

Seriously, it's a hard problem. I'm not saying "don't try", but it's a hard problem.

Have you had a look at the Source Movie Maker from Valve? http://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/

It's by for the most interesting development for animation that I've seen for years. In about an hour I was able to produce 15 sec of reasonable good animation the first time I used it.

Their process is more akin to Photoshop than anything else as it's a destructive process rather than procedural.

I found it quite enlightening.

Seems like the animator attached motion capture to the rig. Awesome job. Very awesome if the animator did everything manually.

Judging by the logo at the end, I'd say this was a project for a character animation class--so no mocap. :)

Motion capture doesn't look animated.

NaturalMotion's Euphoria engine is one step in this direction. http://www.naturalmotion.com/products/euphoria/

What 3D design/animation package was that done in? It's too blurry for me to tell. Looks a little like Blender but I haven't played with it in years now.

The video shows Autodesk Maya 2013 (as you can see in the window's titlebar and the task manager). It seems fair to assume that the video itself was made using it, too.

I'm stuck on a bus to BKK with only an iPhone, so I can't watch high-res or zoom. Thanks for answering my Q. Great animation.

Is Maya a good starting point for someone who wants to get into 3D animation and modelling?

No. I tried starting with Maya once and the cornucopia of options left me stumped.

Blank canvases can do that sometimes ;)

Although the principal is more or less the same, the available animation packages vary significantly in the way they do things. If you are planning to work professionally, I would consider choosing the package carefully. Maya is probably the most widespread software for VFX, commercial animation and series work. 3DS Max seems to be used most in architectual visualisation and Softimage is very popular with animators and modellers although, a common workflow is to export out of Softimage into Maya for rendering. Cinema 4D is meant to be easy to use and seems to be most commonly used by people who have experience in graphic design /motion graphics and by smaller animation houses.

If you plan to do animation professionally, I would advise against using Blender.

At work MotionBuilder is the king, while Maya is for modelling.

Yeah, I'd call Motionbuilder the king for character animation, too. Lovely tool.

Nice work, until the annoying scream. Thanks we have ctrl + w

Very nice. Wish he would have changed the 0.1 fps though

Oh god. The comments on Kotaku.

Indeed... I hope these guys are joking:

«I just watched the video, but I'm confused: What program do I have to use to communicate with my computer like this?»

«This is not real and such systems do not exist.»

«You can't be serious»

Well the first one is the beginning of a comment thread, the other two are replies to the top one. If you click the top one you see that there are multiple replies and he appears to be a troll.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com