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Announcing Macross Aria: a CGI fan film project


chillyche

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Thanks, man. I'm pretty proud of how those came out. If I could just muster the dedication to throw some wrinkles and details on that suit, that'd be finished. Anyway, right now I'm rebooting the female body base mesh. Checked out your gallery. There's some cool stuff in there. I've only messed around with poser a few times, so I'm not really sure what the workflow is.

Besides modelers, we're still looking for texture artists, concept artists, storyboard artists, as well as some web folks (I put all the eggs into the Mercury's Word website basket, and have been ignoring the macrossaria.com site), and some additional writers for Mercury's Word content.

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How is this project coming, last time I contributed anything, don't know if it was of use, was almost two years ago I believe. It's been a long time since I peeked around the boards here until a few weeks ago to look up toy releases and not long after the earthquake to find out info besides the mass hysteria the media seemed to be cashing in on.

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How is this project coming, last time I contributed anything, don't know if it was of use, was almost two years ago I believe. It's been a long time since I peeked around the boards here until a few weeks ago to look up toy releases and not long after the earthquake to find out info besides the mass hysteria the media seemed to be cashing in on.

We're still alive. I think a lot of us have been caught up in real life stuff for a bit, so progress definitely slowed in March, after some pretty exciting months. If you check out the ning site, we've got a lot of cool images and WIPs going on. But, it's still in the getting built phase.

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Yeah, like Hik said, we've got our main cast designed -- that was a big hold up in production, our concept art. Outside commitments lead to a string of bad luck with our first few artists, but Cannon_Fodder really nailed it, bringing the characters to life, fleshing them out, helping to push the world of Aria further. The other big development, which happened last fall, was we launched the first edition of Mercury's Word, our in-universe publication. We've got a lot more planned for that outlet, which essentially will bring viewers up to date on the happenings of the Macross universe right before the events portrayed in Aria. It's sort of a prequel/backstory kinda thing.

I've been splitting my free time between my music video and Aria, so I've been going more slowly recently, but also because free time has been a bit scarce. Once I reboot the Alex model, the thing that would really help would be to get another modeler on-board who can do characters or at least consult.

Edited by chillyche
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  • 3 weeks later...

Gah! Computer just took a massive dump in the bed. Massive. All Aria files are secure (living on an external HD that is mirrored on yet another external HD), but operating system and software... that's the big question right now.

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Gah! Computer just took a massive dump in the bed. Massive. All Aria files are secure (living on an external HD that is mirrored on yet another external HD), but operating system and software... that's the big question right now.

Is it just software, or hardware? I've got a lot of my stuff backed up as well. You may want to also use one of those online backup companies. Some are really inexpensive, and you can backup your entire computer and files for a low price. Plus, if you lose your pc, or your HDD get stolen, or whatever unfortunate event (God forbid that happening), you still have a secure off site storage for your files.

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Is it just software, or hardware? I've got a lot of my stuff backed up as well. You may want to also use one of those online backup companies. Some are really inexpensive, and you can backup your entire computer and files for a low price. Plus, if you lose your pc, or your HDD get stolen, or whatever unfortunate event (God forbid that happening), you still have a secure off site storage for your files.

Just be sure your ISP doesn't have bandwidth caps. That can bite you in the ass mid-month when you run out of bandwidth due to online backup and can't access the internet anymore.

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Is it just software, or hardware?

Not even sure at this point. A bunch of stuff all happened at once. The thing started acting very wonky, which could have been a software issue, or a hardware issue. Then I decided to look for new drivers for stuff, and saw my video and BIOS were hopelessly out of date, so, for some reason I updated all that. So now I'm trying to deduce if THAT messed it up more, or if it's already messed up beyond that.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi chillyche:

Some fellow on youtube sent me a sample of their amazing CGI work that they posted on youtube in January. I wasn't even looking for this and it just drops into my youtube mailbox. I thought you could have a look at their video and see if you would like to ask them for assistance on the Macross Aria project. He said he and his team are interested in doing more anime CGI projects.

Edited by boinger
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Yeah, I got your PM, this thing is incredible. I just JUST finished this months long thing I'd been on. They actually were going to have us come in today, but MTV didn't want the liability of asking people to work in a potential hurricane. So, day off. I hope to get back to CGI stuff in the coming week. And I'd love to holler at this artist, because wow.

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Hi chillyche:

Some fellow on youtube sent me a sample of their amazing CGI work that they posted on youtube in January. I wasn't even looking for this and it just drops into my youtube mailbox. I thought you could have a look at their video and see if you would like to ask them for assistance on the Macross Aria project. He said he and his team are interested in doing more anime CGI projects.

Groovy. My 5 year old son was drooling at it.

Anyhow, my one complaint about it is that whenever the background ships are destroyed, they just stop. Period. Loose all forward momentum. Don't get shoved in the direction opposite the side they get hit. :huh:

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Groovy. My 5 year old son was drooling at it.

Anyhow, my one complaint about it is that whenever the background ships are destroyed, they just stop. Period. Loose all forward momentum. Don't get shoved in the direction opposite the side they get hit. :huh:

I noticed that as well. The physics are a bit off on that section, but it's still very good.

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  • 1 month later...

Okay, this is sort of a shameless bump, but sort of not. It's definitely a crosspost but I think it's appropriate.

Haven't had time to relaunch ye olde 3d modeling of late, but having the Macross Bug, I've written a short fan fic. It may very well be part of Aria canon or it may be an in-universe fiction like DYRL. Either way, I hoped that some of the Aria fans would check it out, in addition to the fan fic fans.

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7460839/1/

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  • 1 month later...

Had a chance to spend a little time in 3ds today. I added some folds and wrinkles to Rafe Townsend's flight suit:

It's obviously not done. I'll have to add more gathers around the knees, as well as the belt and legs, and the back needs work.

I've modified the mesh a bit, so I'll have to redo the texture, and also the harness/collar piece is now being occluded by parts of the suit.

post-7376-0-73773900-1322462242_thumb.jpg

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Had a chance to spend a little time in 3ds today. I added some folds and wrinkles to Rafe Townsend's flight suit:

It's obviously not done. I'll have to add more gathers around the knees, as well as the belt and legs, and the back needs work.

I've modified the mesh a bit, so I'll have to redo the texture, and also the harness/collar piece is now being occluded by parts of the suit.

Looks great. Really need to see this project take off. It's been awhile.
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http://vimeo.com/33249768

That's a turn around of the mesh with some more wrinkles added to the suit. I have to redo the texture now. I had stayed home today to receive a package that I scheduled to be delivered. They called me after the scheduled time and said, "so, when do you want your package?" Uh, how about when I scheduled it to be delivered!? Sheesh. Anyway, at home with nothing but Aria (and BBMIOS) to worry about.

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  • 11 months later...

Yeah, I thought I was gonna finish this particular model up this week, but they went from booking me for 1 day to booking me all week and trying to book next week, even though I already told them I had some conflicts. Sheesh.

But, yeah, I'm trying to finish the rigging and skinning on this model and then put together a lil something something.

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I really really do not want to become vaporware! This past year I picked up a lot more regular work, and my girlfriend moved in, so I've had a bit less time to devote to making fan anime. I also spent a month or so working on my other music video project, so, the modeling I've been doing has been divided. I figured I HAVE to finish some Aria stuff soon.

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I can relate. I was really working hard on the update to my site for 3-4 months and then this past month I've barely had time to touch it at all. Just had too many distractions and then started making excuses on top of it. I'm finally starting to get back into it by forcing myself to take on the hardest of the new material and so far the plan is working. Sometimes I guess we just need to stop thinking and do the work :)

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And then a two day booking turns into two weeks and the I have a shoot and then I have meetings with a producer and art director about ANOTHER project I've been trying to get off the ground. Sheesh. Well, in case anybody was wondering, that model up there is mostly completely skinned. Gotta do some blending in the hands and then he'll be ready for some mocap tests. Or for the face rig. Ugh.

(null)

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  • 2 weeks later...



Little rigging test here. There are numerous issues, of course. I literally just applied a stock mocap clip to the rig, and that was that (I mean, after hours of troubleshooting), I didn't adjust anything. Upon viewing the results, I know what sorts of things must be done to fine tune the rig, as well as what would have to be done to help that animation. This is just to test the rig, and see if I can actually animate a dang character. For more, read the about section at the actual Vimeo page. Edited by chillyche
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great animation test! Now that I got a VF-4 coming, I need to order a flight pose stand so I can get you all the angles you need from fighter to gerwalk to battroid and all the inbetweens for transformation and where parts go.

Although I'm sure you'll do more of what like highmoon studios does with a quick mash of parts in a few short frames and walah got a truck!

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Yeah, I watched a lot of their behind the scenes stuff for FoC and I was very impressed with how they rigged their characters. They definitely swap out the models somewhere in the middle of the transformations. The problem with Macross of course, is that models have to move not just from A to B, but from A to B to C. I still think it may be best to swap models, but man, that slow transform in Macross Zero is dope. Still, we'll do what we can do.

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  • 3 years later...

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