Not an update: Just a confirmation that I am in fact still working on this Real life tends to get in the way from time to time, but none-the-less I'm committed to getting at least the first few segments finished by the end of the summer
Ok. Got a little sidetracked, but I'm back at it. Decided the sets for Earth Outpost 7 didn't "feel" real enough. And since it's meant to be a big part of the first scene, thought I may as well work on that.. I think next I need to knock out some high detail characters.. I've got a pretty good pipeline for generating lightwave compatible character rigs at this point, so getting them rigged shouldn't be much of an issue
Once again you have amazed me with your work. Have you put together a trailer yet. Did I miss it? Great job.
thanks!! I'll see if I can get some animating done this weekend. Still planning on having the first scene or two done by the end of the summer Anyone have any thoughts regarding the style of characters? This guy (see below) and the person in the EVA suit (see previous youtube video) are basically the only two characters in the first scene.. so I'm going to treat the character design/style as preliminary for the time being
I had that pop up last week. I discontinued IE7 and went to Chrome. Not sure if there was a self-installing update to IE that screwed up the laptop, but no matter. Chrome appears to work just as well, if not faster.
That's slightly odd then, because I am using Chrome. I have the same issue with Safari and Firefox, but strangely it works fine in mobile-safari
I'm good story-wise for the first half, resolving it without starting an interstellar war may take some creative plot wrangling though. For now I'm still trying to get the two pre-credits scenes finished I don't want to give away the story too much, but the two scenes alluded to above take place on Earth Outpost 7 and on Delta Vega. Hopefully the first scene will attract enough attention that I'll be able to recruit some additional voice actors for the Vega scene
Hmmm.... Working on a few lip syncing tests. Getting mouth motion to match up to dialog is actually pretty easy to automate, but surprisingly hard to make look natural. I'm basically loading up the audio and using it to drive lip movement, which works but I think the audio needs to be pre-smoothed to get it to look less abrupt. Once I've got that worked out I'm going to start rendering out shots for the first scene. It looks like this scene is going to work out to be a little over 3 minutes, so in terms of render time... that's only about 5400 frames. Seems reasonable that I'll be done by the end of August.
Hmmmm... well, trying to lip sync dialog to animated characters turned out to be a big enough hassle that I'm now pretty much abandoning the idea entirely. It just looks far too dodgy. I guess that leaves me with three options: 1) Never show anyone's face when they're talking 2) Wait out the Q4 release of LightWave's latest iteration and hope that between Genoma and Soft Body dynamics character animation won't be so awkward in LightWave 11.5 or 3) Give up on animated characters entirely Option 1 seems far too hokey, Option 2 requires that "Q4 2012" actually happens before 2013 and either way requires some waiting, and Option 3 requires actors.. which balloons this project way beyond it's original scope. Oh well.
BTW I'm highly grateful for the support I've received throughout. And I'm loath to throw in the towel on this one. So I'm officially not considering this "on hold". I just need to figure out how to move forward with it, and am open to any suggestions people may have.
Let us know if you need any voice actors if you go that route, or if there's anything we can do to help!
Wondered what was happening with this. Sorry to hear it's proving difficult, but confident you'll make it work.
Have you seen Star Trek: Aurora? IMO, Tim Vining has set the bar for computer animated Star Trek fan films. For the level of realism he appeared to be shooting for, I believe Tim's finished product displayed excellent lip syncing.
I am going to keep trying, but right now the lip sync issues I'm having are a pretty big setback. I agree though, Aurora pulled it off pretty well. It's certainly possible to do, but it's a matter of finding the right animation pipeline.
Thanks for the update. Please realize that Hold is not abandon, and even long term hold or abandon... well, Yorktown was in that group for a long time. Take the time you need to figure out your next move.