Yesterday, stumbled upon nasty bug in blender 2.48(a). Explode modifier behaves really differently comparing to 2.47. This is the simple example file:
You can see what the parts of exploded object detached not only from object itself, but also from nearest area (which is 1,5-2 times larger than the object). The things become even worse when spin and rotation applied to particles.
It took me some time to figure out the cause of the problem - SubSurf modifier. It was applied before particles modifier, but if we swap their order things will return in place.
Another way to fix the problem - is just to apply SubSurf modifier to mesh. Anyway, in blender 2.47 Explode worked with SubSurf irrespective to their order. A bug? Or bug fix?
Finally managed to incorporate latest changes into demo storyboard paper.
We left numbers of the existing scenes untouched and as result numbering across the storyboard became a little inconsistent. It is handy to refer to shots by numbers - each shot in separate directory with corresponding number. So we decided what it’s better to have inconsistent numbers somewhere, rather than mess up with directory renaming (which also involves fixing Makefiles). At the end we have much more important things to do, aren’t we?
Yesterday, genete and dooglus worked on the ugly rotation bug in Synfig and today finally fixed it! This bug was considered as a blocker for us and that fix making me especially happy. Just compare by yourself:
There is not much changes in this snapshot, except the one most noticeable. Yes, my bad, we violated the storyboard. But changes worths that - at the start we need to properly introduce antagonist forces and make them more “uniform” at the same time. Achieving that we got increased tension at the start, while exposing less of direct violence on the screen.
Currently, most of the project development happens in two main directions - producing an adorable layouts for characters and making more detailed animatic. That’s our top priority tasks now among others.
Last month we got much attention from the community. We would like to thank guys at BlenderNation, PlanetBlender and everyone who blogging and spreading the word about us. Thank you!
Here’s a little guide-list for Ivan’s head proportions. You may notice, what I made hairs less curly comparing to previous layout. It looks better for my taste. Also, I followed Banor’s suggestion and removed the sharp chin.
This little video demonstrates some parts of the drawing process:
We finally managed to get rid of terrible color distortions, produced by some video encoders. That was achieved by directly encoding from blender built with ffmpeg support. Footage we render as png image sequence.
It’s time to tell about the way we organizing usage of the same models in various scenes with blender.
Imagine we have a model of… mmm… bike! And as you could see from storyboard bike is appearing on many scenes of Morevna Project demo. We do not want to include the full copy of a bike because every time we will change the original model, we will need to re-insert it into each scene and (sic!) animate it again.
Consider, what it is unavoidable to make changes in the model after it already inserted in the scenes and process of animation already begun. We can’t design the model from start till the very end - there is always something to fix during the usage. Also it could be handy to insert unfinished yet model to the scene to see how it will look, and let one artist to work on the scene and other continue develop model (like we did for truck model in scene 54).
Well, I’m glad to introduce a new website design… Huh?! Someone already noticed? So I’m late. ^_^”
This task was a really challenge for me because… I don’t know, but for some reason it was hard for me.
And, yeah, we migrated to blender 2.46. I know, much time passed by since it come out and 2.47 is already coming, but that reworked particle system (which is really great, by the way) caused much troubles for us. Anyway, it worths so - we really needed the opportunity to properly manage external lib data, especially for Video Sequence Editor which we using to compose all scenes together. Now our project directory tree is completely transferable and we moved towards the improvements in the managing of the rendering process.
Finally managed to incorporate latest changes into demo storyboard paper.
But changes worths that - at the start we need to properly introduce antagonist forces and make them more “uniform” at the same time. Achieving that we got increased tension at the start, while exposing less of direct violence on the screen.
