Topic: blender wip psy ambient trance music video project

[silicone_milk]

Trippy stuff. I really liked the glassy one (2nd shot)

[ratty redemption]

thanks for the tip kat. i have checked the armature modifier and envelopes are disabled. i've never actually used those as i don't really understand them, so i just work with vertex groups.

i think in this case blender was just getting confused as to the bones rotating within the mesh, because in my first attempts at rigging this, after 90 or 180 degrees rotations, parts of the mesh would snap into a weird deformation. but at least it's consistently working now i rearranged the deforming bones and added in more controllers.

and thanks very much for the compliment, one of the aims of these is to look alien/otherworldly.

re the more noisy videos, are you referring to one of the three i posted yesterday, or the older ones?

other than the highly reflective/metallic ones, most of my videos have a deforming psy cloud background, which often has a high frequency, intricate pattern mixed in with the clouds.

[ratty redemption]

he he, thanks milk, that is one of the other main things i aim for with my psy art.

here's another of the reflective ones:

[kat]

Be mindful that if you bring in an old *.blend file that 360º rotation might actually be 180º on the positive, then the remainder -180º (if you image a clock face, from 12 to 6 is 180, then from 6 back up to 12 is -180 because that latter rotates on the opposite side of the centre-line), if that happens bones can flip and rotate in odd ways. I can't remember if this approach to rotation was 'fixed' in the new versions of Blender or not.

[ratty redemption]

interesting, thanks kat. and i built this using 2.66a but those degrees would explain the snapping of some of the deformations, i guess, since my f curves go from 0-360 degrees.

[ratty redemption]

i've been working on some more of my alien creatures. i decided not to use spline ik's for the one with the tentacles, as i'm still not sure how best to animate them.

so all of these creatures use the minimum amount of deforming bones i could get away with, that and my old pc performs better now, as i often have more of these models on screen.

[kat]

Very trippy! Object movement is interesting, the whole thing looks like it's a scene from some weird nature program about alien life-forms.

[ratty redemption]

cool, thanks very much kat. and that is the atmosphere i've been aiming for.

david attenborough ftw, he he.

[ratty redemption]

here's another variation of this camera set:

[ratty redemption]

oops, i haven't updated this topic in a long time, here's some still images of the latest rigging i built for my small alien tentacle creature:

[ratty redemption]

and here's a simple opengl lighting render (no material textures) of the new rigs in action:



and this is my new fractal based material. the fractal isn't animated yet, but does have a multicolored high frequency layer that swirls around the fractal.

[ratty redemption]

i've recently been collaborating with some more 2d fractal artists on da, who have kindly let me manipulate their still renders in the 12 year old free app called winmorph.

i then color cycled and video edited the various clips in blender. currently these two examples are 2d, although i'm currently working on some 3d versions that will follow on from these.

[kat]

That's pretty effective considering it's relative simplicity.

[ratty redemption]

thanks a lot kat.

it's deliberately retro in some aspects, and originally i was producing animations similar to this nearly 25 years ago. showing my age there, he he.

but then when i got into 3d work, i didn't really think of recreating or updating that style until recently. also these animations seems to be growing in equal popularity on da among both the fractal community and the hippy, stoner rock communities. all of which i was also pleasantly surprised by. plus these take considerably less time to produce than the more complex 3d ones. saying that, i'm intending on combing the tech and styles for some future music videos.

and the fractal artists are apparently enjoying seeing their 2d still images being brought to life, in the animated sense. and they now have hundreds of in between frames that they can choose from if they want to upload a series of stills to their respective galleries on da, so it's been an enjoyable and fruitful collaboration so far.

[ratty redemption]

here's the next two videos in this fractal material series, both start off looking like the older 2d videos, but then slowly morph into being more 3d: