Project Updates - Where Have I Been and What Am I Doing?

TET all dressed for the
Peanuts Movie.

It's been almost a month since I last posted in this blog largely due to a family matter that involved travelling back to Western Australia from South Australia to actually be with my family over there. Rest assured I haven't forgotten about this blog and things are still happening on my projects.

JAC Cat
CrazyTalk Animator 2
"I just do eyes..."

Last time I updated you on this character I was drawing hands...so many hands... it's one of the things Reallusion don't actually make clear in their advertising that their character templates are much more involved than drawing seven character views.

Even less obvious is all the work that goes into giving the character a wide variety of facial expressions and the ability to lip sync. After finishing the hands I'm now creating eyes... so many eyes... I feel like that bio-engineer from the movie Blade Runner that says "Eyes, I just do eyes."

Replacing the Dummy Template Eyes with Cats Eyes in five view angles.

Fortunately the eyes are a little less complex than hands so I'm hoping it won't take quite so long. Unfortunately, after that I have to do the nose and the mouth. Thank goodness cats don't have eyebrows because I'd have them to do too.

Hoot Game Creating

The game staring TheseStars' Hoot the Owl is still progressing slowly. As I mentioned last update I've been stuck on the player control system for Hoot for several weeks (more) now. Yesterday, I finally had a break through after rebuilding the control system from scratch using the most promising techniques I've been experimenting with.

Screen Shot of the demo level I've been using to work out Hoot's control system.
That pink box will be Hoot in the finished game.

Turns out building it from scratch instead of trying to plug someone else's code into what I had done so far did just the trick. My control system for the game feels very simple but allows Hoot to really move around and interact within the game levels. I'm sure it's going to be very addictive and hopefully I'll be able to show a proper example of the game real soon.

Still Learning, Learning, Learning...

Last update I was learning Silo 2 so I could create 3D characters for Reallusion's iClone. Well I went through multiple video tutorials and even paid for a Silo course with Digital Tutors (now known as PluralSight) that was excellent. I was all ready to get started after watching some of the best, creating models over several weeks, except I forgot all the basics...F**K! Now I'll have to do a quick refresher before I can really doing anything.

I did have a rough go at importing something from Silo into iClone via 3DXchange and it seems like it's possible. Just need to work out how to use 3DXchange correctly now.

I've also been trying to learn Anime Studio Pro 11 and not gotten much further than the introductory basics. Largely because the tutorials I'm following are the ones that come with the software as a PDF file.

I know SmithMicro have many great video tutorials on their channel but the playlists are confusing and don't seem to be in any kind of progressive order of learning. I could buy their video training course but this is made up of videos already freely available on their YouTube channel. I refuse to pay nearly US$50.00 just to have the tutorials, maybe, sorted into some kind of logical order.

That's about it for the moment. I'm hoping to add a new animated project to the mix now that I finished my iClone, Animation 4 Business promotional video but I've yet to decide what. Hopefully one of my own projects this time.

Anyway, now you're all caught up. I hope to get back to weekly posts to this blog starting from now.

Comments

LTX Studio (Beta): AI-Powered Visual Storytelling, From Script to Screen in One App.

LTX Studio can generate consistent characters across storyboard panels - even if one character is a dragon! W hile text to image, and text to video (and image to video) AI tend to be getting a lot of the press, the real exciting aspect of generative AI implementation is how it can be used to speed up creator workflow. Being able to realize your creative vision in a shorter length of time can lead to more ambitious projects. Particularly if you're a team of one, with a very limited budget, but you one day dream of creating your own epic animated feature film. LTX Studio (beta), a new 'all-in-one' AI film making tool, is not going to let you realize that dream from a single text prompt but, by bringing a bunch of generative AI technologies together, the developers have created a one platform workflow that can help anyone rapidly visualize and deliver a story from initial idea to finished film in days rather than weeks (depending upon how ambitious the project is). Even bette...

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D...

TikTok's 360 Microwave Meme and How You Can Use It For 2D Animated Character Turnarounds

360 Microwave Meme Stills from PixVerse. The center images are the original character images used to generate the turnarounds. T ikTok art drama, where wannabe artists, who have no clue about professional art practices, but are still happy to gatekeep their idea of how professional artists work, is reason enough to stay off the platform. I have no doubt there are a few insufferable professionals on there gatekeeping too. Case in point, TikTok's 360 Microwave Meme , which I discovered through a suggested video on YouTube called, The Microwave Art Drama Breaking the Art Community on TikTok by art drama showcaser, Mohammed Agbadi . Apparently TikTok's animation community is livid that using this effect on your 2D character to achieve a fully animated, 360 degree turnaround, is just the absolute lowest thing you can do. You cannot, in good conscience, call yourself an artist, or an animator, if you do this, and, even worse, post it on TikTok. In retaliation 'real' artist/...

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se...

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would...

Review: Toon Boom Harmony 14 - What I learned in 21 Days

Toon Boom Harmony is widely considered the industry standard for primarily 2D animation. You don't get to be that if your software isn't exceptional. However, industry standard and exceptional usually translates to steep learning curve and probably contains more features than I'll ever use. So, in reviewing the latest version, Harmony 14, I'm setting out to answer two questions; How easy is it to learn the basics and is it software an independent artist/animator, like myself, should seriously consider as their go to, 2D animation studio of choice?

Dollars Mocap: Full Body Webcam Motion Capture (Including Hands and Fingers) For iClone and Cartoon Animator

Even though I should be further away from the camera Dollars Mocap MONO still does a good job of tracking my arms, hands and fingers. Ever since I wrote my series on becoming a VTuber , discovering it was possible to do full body motion capture, including hands and fingers, with just software and a webcam, I've been on the look out for any motion capture software that can bring that functionality to Cartoon Animator. Dollars Mocap is a low cost motion capture application with a free trial that I learned about through the YouTube Channel Digital Puppets and their test video . It can record full body, upper body, arms and hands, and facial mocap from a live video source or pre-recorded video. Investigating further, I discovered not only does Dollars Mocap have a free iClone7, iClone8 character profile file download (look for it at the bottom of the main program download page), so you can use the saved motions with iClone8, they've also got a demo video for how to convert your...

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog