I found this animation while I was stumbling around on Vimeo.com. It was captioned 'My first Blender Project', which piqued my interest ;-) I contacted its creator, Cory Collins to learn more about this project.
Cory writes:
I started the Ogre with Blender 2.44 and finished him up with 2.45. It was my first Blender project since buying Tony Mullen's excellent book, "Introduction to Character Animation with Blender". I followed his Captain Blender tutorials, changing what I needed to make my own character. The armature is loosely based on the Capt Blender rig and modified to be similar to the Eggington Rig I had been using in Animation Master. The Ogre model has some softbody muscle jiggling, softbody cloth simulation and fur on his loincloth. I also used some softbody simulation to control his chainlink suspenders, subsurface scattering and UV texture maps on his skin. This was an excellent project to "cut my teeth" on Blender, and I enjoyed trying to use all the features I could to enhance the animation and my understanding of Blender's workflow. I still have a ways to go learning Blender, but I am enjoying the experience. You can download the Oger characters .blend file here:
Links
I am a freelance artist/animator and have created characters and animation for local television commercials and corporate video presentations. I created and animated the CG characters in the feature "Despiser" from Eagle Films and helped animate the award winning "Seven Grandfathers" animation, one of fourteen animations on permanent display at the National Museum of the American Indian inWashington, D.C. I am currently animating for Dusan Kastelic's short film "Chicory and Coffee". You can see my Demo Reel, the Ogre animation and assorted other artwork here.
41 Comments
Well, first post, and a very nice job indeed!
Your first Blender test? NICE! You may be new to Blender, but your skill is coming along very nicely! I have found to my delight that the quality of documentation for Blender, the abilities of Blender itself, and the completed projects have all been heading from 'really good' to 'really great', and this is an example of that. Great work!
Bob
And good morning, thats a pretty great piece of animation there! The softbody and cloth really make it look more realistic. I am definately considering buying the book, but I only just recieved Bassam mancandy DVD.
Keep up the animating!
Very impressive! I purchased the Animation book mentioned in the article a few months ago, but i never was able to truly delve into it. I literally started looking for it once i read the article! Brilliant work! Can't wait to see any future plans with it!
Wow, that's awesome! The character looks great, and the animation is excellent. Keep it up, you've got skills.
and here i thought i was doing pretty well in blender, then this guy comes along with THIS?!? as a TEST?!?!
WOW!! all i can say!
"and here i thought i was doing pretty well in blender, then this guy comes along with THIS?!? as a TEST?!?!"
I agree with Dave!
Amazing work!
Great job Cory! Gosh I wonder what the render times was on that. Thanks for the blend :)
great job man
Pretty much every story has been told on this Earth, pretty much every character type has been described and all is left to the sons of great men and women is to tell the best we can, better than it ever has been recounted
You are doing great at it. :)
Regards
Jean
Charming Person ;)
Well done!
I wish to see that in some Open Game. In some ancient scenery. Great work!
Really nice, it's obvious that Blender isn't his first 3D app ;)
Otherwise, though the book is really good and helpful, he wouldn't have done such a great job with Mullens Book alone on the first try. It's still only a book to introduce basic things of Char Animation.
I know what I'm talking about, I've worked it almost completely through ^^
Ah, great to see this found its way to BlenderNation! I'd mentioned this animation on my Amazon blog page a few weeks ago, but noticed lately that the link was down. I've updated the blog post to point here. And a .blend file too! Thanks!
Thanks everyone for the great comments! Nope, humble, it was not my first 3D project, I've been at it for a long time (thanks for noticing :)). If I remember correctly, Len, render times were fantastic, less than 7 minutes a frame, rendered on my low budget laptop.
Very good work!
I brought your BA thread back to life since I have a question ^^
Hope to see you there, thanks!
very clever with the chains, attaching them to a soft body so they are controlled with gravity is a great idea. great work and thanks for the .blend file
Cool animation, but the Ogre reminds me more on the "Gimp" at the movie "Pulp Fiction" :)
Well I guess after months and months of messing around with the SVN particle builds , this video has just sent me straight back to working on character animations..... again!
Great animation, great textures, and most of all, great that that .blend file was included!
That is a beautiful animation, but unfortunately it looks like his bandwidth has been sapped and I can't download the file until tomorrow.
Lol, if thats his first blender test he must have years of pre experience in 3D + an experienced blender user teaching him.
impressive!
hey cory, what 3d program were you using before you tried out blender (and wildly succeeded) ?
Any chance to link to the .blend file on an open server?
Esnips must make account. (Which I don't want!)
Personally I don't like the jiggle on the tricep on the left arm,it's to fast,and the skin material is too much waxy(if you have used sss you have to decrease a bi the radius or the scatter color,or the size parameter,maybe is too much specular too)
But its a good test,you are on the right way.
ElBarto: I remember the Gimp from Pulp Fiction, I chuckle every time I see the splash screen for Gimp software on my computer, but this guy was inspired more by the works of Brom and JP Targete.
Eggyolk: I do have years of experience, not all good years, but years :)
jim belushi: I was using Imagine from Impulse years ago, and Animation:Master from Hash.
Thanks again for all the kind comments!
Maximum daily bandwidth exceeded :(
Can anyone host the file somewhere else on a free server please?
Nice touch with the jiggling arm flab, haha!
right, Maximum daily bandwidth exceeded :(
please place the file on another alternative server
Uploaded it to Polorix.
I have added a copyright mention, you REALLY should mark your work as your own, Cory.
Please use a fitting License, for example CC or similar.
I hope it's okay for the author Cory, otherwise I will delete it, no problem.
Have fun
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1273/OgreManCharacter.1.zip
Rendermon: I agree, thanks for the tips.
Coodle: that's cool, I appreciate it.
Sorry folks, I should have checked out e-snips bandwidth, but I didn't know when I put it there how many would download it.
This is some great work, and by all means, THANK YOU for sharing the .blend file. Very much.
Big Kudos, man.
I already gave em in that other stuff at elysiun thread...
I really like orcs animations.. I specially like trembling of meat with the weight of impact , in his left leg.. (I suppose is other softbody there? Not too familiar with softbodies yet my self ) and in the arm(at end of animation) :)
The anatomy is realistic, in a way that is not cliche, no plastic muscles.
keep 'em coming! Most of all as am seing you're building a great portfolio ;)
Nice to see another Animation Master user coming over to Blender. I used to use A:M too, and there are a lot of character animation resources available to A:M users. I learned a lot about character animation from Eggington and Raf Anzovin. But I must say, I'm much prefer Blender now.
Cory. Did you create a similar ogre in Hash? Yours reminds me of one I vaguely remember from my Hash days.
EFace: Yep the muscle jiggling is all softbody. Thanks for your comments!
terence: I'm liking Blender as well. I know of a couple others who have moved over recently. I don't really recall doing anything similar in A:M. I did do a lot of creature stuff though, and one in particular that I used some dynamics constraints to make some jiggling flesh, but it was a six legged creature.
I come from Max and I transfer my knowledge from that one (and some others) to Blender...I am pretty sure you are doing the same, and imho, that is great. Is putting skills of other tools into Blender (as after all, 3d is pretty similar everywhere) .Which I find interesting. I dunno, AM people seems to be really good animating, usually :)
I still remember that ALien song :)
heck, one of these days we should do a collaborative team short with an orcs battle....heck, I am so nostalgic of Warcraft 3 intro movies...hehe. lol
Impressed with your use of softbodies in meat (but...I am not sure, havent look well...just in case it helps you, as am overal *amazed* with that anim...are the chaines staying like in a fixed arc, while they should fall on the body...? I possibly would have never spotted that if the rest wasn't so good...And if there are some other erors, which I haven't looked well(my monitor gamma is so dark while not in production work, that rarely i can see a thing in movies XD) , but the fact is that even if that happens, to me wouldn't be of importance, as the piece works so solid.(heck, when I do a drawing, if had strength, don't worry later if spot some lousy stroke...) )
(btw, eface = extrudeface ;) )
what's with the dozen posts?
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Nice job Cory, your work is very humbling to the rest of us!
-banned ATB from posting comments for spamming-
hi . i like the art work put out there at this wonderful blender community. i come from africa and unfortunately i cant get access to blender books. can anyone out there help. my adress is
lark ireri muchiri
p.o box 332
kianyaga 10301
kenya.
telephone +254721917880
hey larkireri,
why don't you order at amazon? They should have almost every book on Blender, too and they support shipping to Africa.
Have a look at the shipping rates:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=596186
Introducing Char Animation:
http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Character-Animation-Blender-Mullen/dp/0470102608/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202814668&sr=8-5
I hope this works for you.