3D Community Challenge - Moving Meditations [Still a lot of time to submit!]
metaside
Posts: 178
Hey all,
there is a challenge by pwnisher going on with some cool martial arts animations. I worked a bit on my entry:
Let me know if you have any ideas on how to improve it...
Also, check this out for more info on the challenge:
There are project files for Blender and UE5 and some other programs. It was a bit of a hustle to get the animations working in UE5 since the animaitons come without a skeleton and the bone length is very different from G8, but it worked out in the end when adding IK and hiding the feet ;)
If you struggle to make the animations work in UE5, feel free to ask for help here.
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Comments
Looks great! The only thing I noticed, and if you intended it this way then no worries, but the first object that gets destroyed looks like it hits the force bubble, but the others all exploded a little before they touched it. If that was creative intent, then forget I said anything :)
I've been thinking about what I wanted to do for my submission. I love his challenges, so many great and inspiring submissions with some awesome prizes!
I'm not crazy about the limitations, but I'll give it a shot if I can find the time. I've been working on an Avatar: the Last Airbender fan film for the last few months, so I'm sure I can find an animation in the pack that will let me tap into that.
Hey, thank you very much for the feedback! Good catch, not really intended, gonna think about it and maybe make the first drone a bit slower!
And yeah, his challenges are really great, I was very impressed with all the ideas and work when I watched the first one two years ago!
Hah, that really sounds like it's a perfect fit :D
Made another version with sound (and I changed the camera, but only for this youtube video, don't do that for the submission ;) ):
Any other WIPs or finished submissions so far?
Just started messing with it, and I'm having a hard time retargeting these animations onto a Daz figure in C4D.
Not sure about the workflow in C4D, but there are some topics in the "Help" and "Guides" channels in the "Create With Clint" discord about making it work in UE5. I think most solutions involve going through Blender, targeting the animations to a cube and then retargeting with the IK retargeting method in UE5. I guess you could probably go from there into C4D.
Here is one of the helpful videos from the Discord:
It's not perfect though, I got some clipping and had to change the animation a bit and also I'm hiding the feet since even the retargeting with IK functionality didn't give me perfect results...
Love the shake on impact! Nice to see there are other Daz submissions. Still finalizing mine. BTW - I imported the FBX animation to Blender, exported as BVH. Worked out of the box importing the BVH for M4, V4, Genesis and Genesis 2.
Tried copying the animation to G3 & G8. Was close but not good enough. Sometime I might adapt the animation copy to include joint offsets for different skeletons. Until then, the older figures will have to work.
Still getting details in place and determined to only use Daz (except for the blender FBX/BVH conversion, and final video compilation). That's the Michael 4 Skeleton in full undead glory!
Thanks, glad you like it And interesting that it works without problems for all the earlier generations...
Love the idea and scene! The skeleton, ground and plants look great imho! Some ideas for improvement: Maybe put some dirt around the coffin and try some wood textures on it? Also, in terms of composition, maybe put the mauseleum (or a second one) a bit to the side so it's not completely behind the gate and not everything is so concentrated on that one area of the picture/video? Same for the cross, maybe? Just some thoughts of course.
Nice work in any case, looking forward to the next version :D
Thanks Metaside! Was so focused on camera and animation that I missed basic composition. You were right about the casket shader - made a world of difference giving it a more wood like texture. The original one was supposed to be wood but ended up looking like... well... nothing. Shifting the crypts, stones, and adding more balanced out the scene.
Glad that comment was helpful! I think it looks pretty cool now, nice composition! One thing about the wood, it's a nice texture, but somehow it doesn't look old enough imho for something that has been below the surface - like, it's too flat or glossy or not rough and/or dirty enough. You could try a few things: maybe some dirt decals or some kind of overlay texture, or scattering some dirt on the surface, or adding a bumpmap or displacement or normal map or increasing roughness or the strength of normals or displacement if it's already there?
Very cool! I finshed my entry a couple of days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWHbVE5Qe_E
That's awesome! Love the details in the background such as the train and the helicopter! Nice work!
Really nice! What did you use for the water effects?
Everything was done in Unreal Engine. I used a plugin called UIWS. It's advertised as just click a button, but it wouldn't work until it random decided that it did. For the weather, it's another plugin (UDS), but the lightning was random, so I must have rendered the entire thing about 200 times to get a decent bolt at the right moment. One of the benefits of using Unreal is the realtime rendering. I was originally going to have a Daz character (The wanted poster on the wall was originally created using Daz), but I couldn't get anything to transfer into UE5 for some weird reason, and didn't have time to explore why.
Final submission. Thank you for the input @metaside - much better than the early versions!
Awesome, love the new version with the transformation!
I submitted my entry earlier today. I might upload it to Youtube later, but it's pretty close to the second version I posted above. Only added some alien-tentacle things around the buildings in the background...
Heads up for all others, only two days left to submit something!
Here is the Top 100 montage:
Some pretty good stuff in there!
The complete montage is here:
Really crazy how long this thing is. So much great art and interesting concepts in there!
Found my final render at "&t=5678s" if anybody is interested...