Elite Guard Arches His Back And Cricks His Neck

[Domarius]

Download Elite Guard having a stretch

 

This animation isn't on the list. I just did it as an excersise. It took me 2 hours because I was warming up to the interface of MotionBuilder, which I haven't used till today.

 

It doesn't have an ending yet, I'm just submitting this to get feedback quickly on the quality of what is there.

 

If you guys suggest things that are wrong I will happily try and improve it.

[New Horizon]

What did you compress it with Dom? I can't see it.

[Springheel]

I think that the neck motion is a little too extreme. It's hard to tell though because the video is very grainy.

[Domarius]

Yeah it is. I can update it with a less compressed one. Xvid will save me time though cause apparently it will get a smaller filesize before looking this grainy.

 

You're totally right about the neck motion - that's one big thing I forgot to try looking at when I was acting it out in the mirror

 

@NH - I can't remember... I've only just had a fresh install and Xvid is the only codec I've manually installed, so i would have thought anyone should be able to view it. It was Indeo Intel something or other... I just chose one at random because I seriously have no idea.

Anyway its quite fitting since I can't see your signature image - its broken

[BlackThief]

I think his shoulders should go up (in direction to the head) as well, otherwise it looks really extreme.

[sparhawk]

I can watch it, but the video is so grainy it's horrible. As to the animation itself. The beginning of it looks not so bad, when he starts to bend, but after that it gets kind of wooden. And the head motion looks pretty extreme. We did that kind of motion as excersises for martial arts training (putting the ear to the shoulder without lifting the shoulders), so it should be possible, but still it looks extreme in this context.

[Domarius]

Well I'm going to post a new one soon, see if you think that's as wooden.

 

I want to set the benchmark for the rest of my work.

[Domarius]

I've updated the link at the top of the thread - the movie is now compressed with Xvid, and I've thrown some more subtleties into the animation to hopefully make it less wooden, and his neck bends at a more realistic angle now.

 

Any more crits please? The more I get now the faster it will be in the long run, cause the kind of level of detail you guys pick on now I'll be looking at in the future.

 

Are we happy for me to continue to create the rest of the anims at this level of quality? Or is there more I need to do to bring it to DarkMod standard?

[Darkness_Falls]

Darn. Can't view -- get a Windows Media error. I was able to view your first video, so you must've used different compression this time around? I'll need to troubleshoot tomorrow or sometime in the future. Can't wait to see the newer version

[sparhawk]

Can't watch it. Media Player encountered an internal error.

[pakmannen]

Works fine for me. But I liked the pixel version! I've always been a fan of pixelart, heh.

As for the animation, looks fine to me.

 

And for all you people who can't watch it, just download ffdshow or something. It includes all the divx and xvid codecs. Never had a problem with it.

 

(Oh, and it doesn't work in Windows Media Player for me. But I use Media Player Classic for video playback, and it works fine there.)

[sparhawk]

And how is one supposed to use this ffshow thing?

[pakmannen]

It's just a collection of codecs. It's handy so that you don't have to download all the xvid and divx versions separately.

 

Download Media Player Classic and see if you can play the file with that one. (It's only an .exe, you don't have to install it)

[sparhawk]

Now if you would tell me how to decompress z7 files.

[Springheel]

I can play it, but it seems to cut off just as the guard starts moving his neck and then he just stands there not moving for the rest of the video? It's still pretty pixelated too...I'm getting ghosting.

[pakmannen]

Hum, download it here instead: Media Player Classic

(What's up with sourceforge? I've always been able to download exe files there before.. Very strange..)

 

Edit: Aha, seems like it's only the latest release that's packaged with z7 (whatever that is)

Choose the second latest one, and download the mpc2kxp6486.zip file

[Domarius]

Just download Xvid guys - I can play the video in plain old Windows Media Player 9, that came with SP2.

 

http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

 

Pakmannen, that's all they should need - works fine for me.

[sparhawk]

Well, it definitely can not be played on W2K and I used paks player as well, where it flickers a lot. I suggest you use something that everybody can use, instead of the newest and shiny stuff where people must switch OS just to be able to see it.

[pakmannen]

Xvid is not exactly new and shiny. It's almost a standard nowadays, and of course you can play it on W2K.

[sparhawk]

I downloaded all the codecs and I still don't see it properly. At least not this particular movie.

[Domarius]

Pak is right - all the vids you download from the P2P networks are mostly Xvid now. The only reason I didn't have it recently still is because I reformatted.

 

It would be good if everyone can play this format because the file sizes are great - it means less time for me spent uploading and more time animating.

 

That's wierd that you can see the walk anim but not this anim.

 

I don't get any flickering either.

[Springheel]

Strange. When I try to play it directly from the link I get an error message. When I save and play it locally, I only see about half before it cuts off and the quality is poor. Yet the walking one is fine.

[Domarius]

AH I WORKED IT OUT - The difference between this vid and the walk one is that (leftover settings from experimentation) this vid is 32bit colour and the walk one is 24bit (which is actually the default). So here goes - I updated this one - try it again.

[Springheel]

Same error for me.

[Domarius]

Um, try again - you made that post while I was still uploading the file. The exact size should be 837 KB (857,494 bytes)