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1. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: HOW TO Make a Basic Human Body    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

Trying to print a hard copy of the tut How To Make a BAsic Human Body, when printing the pages IE Expoloer 7 crashes, is it my system or your web site all other pages prints ok.

2. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: Lip Syncing 101    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

Its been a while since I've posted and I thought that I should come back strong, and so I'm going to give a brief tutorial on how to lip sync your model with a sound. There are two ways to do this, and I'm going to highlight the easiest way I know how. This will take a lot of practice and depending how detailed and how much sync you want, can take a very long or very short time. Tools: 3D Studio Max Patience Steps: 1. Start by creating a sphere with 30 segments. Then add a Edit Poly modifier, and under Edge select a radius near the middle of the sphere. 2. With the edge selected, use the Move tool to drag the edges backward. You will see a mouth start to form. 3. Here I would recommend using the transform tool, to shrink the edge along the x axis. This will make the results look better during rendering. 4. In step five we are going to animate the lower portion of the mouth, so for this step add another Edit Poly on the model, and then select Vertex, and then select enough vertexes on the lower part of the mouth, that you feel would create a lower mouth or lower lip. Be sure to look at the pic for this one. 5. Next with the vertexes from the previous step highlighted, added a FFD(box) modifier to the model, and you will see an orange box surrounding the vertexes. 6. For this step, where taking a short break from modeling, to add sound. So under Graph Editors, select TrackView-Curve Editor. Then Right Click on Sound and select Properties and here you can choose a sound that you want to sync your model with. 7. Now right click on the FFD(Box) modifier, and hit Rename. Enter lower mouth into the box. 8. Repeat steps, 4,5, and 7, for the upper mouth. So begin by adding an Edit Poly, selecting vertexes, and then adding a FFD(B0x) modifier, and finally renaming. Make sure that none of your upper mouth vertexes intersect with that of the lower mouth. Or you run the risk of sabotaging your model. 9. Get ready to Sync!!! When you sync you should work you way from the bottom of the top of the modifying chain. So begin with the lower mouth and then the Under the lower mouth, click Control Points, and then select the control points that you want to animate. A good idea is to select all of them and then work your way back as too what works and what doesn't work. Select AutoKey and a frame above one. Now move the control points up and down to create lip movement and match the sound. If ever you do not like the way the mouth is moving, just delete the frames (after frame ...

3. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: Rigging & Creating Movement Part 1    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

Now that you have your model created, we will rig it and make it move. At the end we will make the character walk from point A to point B. For this tutorial, it is best if you use the model that we made before, or one similar to it. I will be using a model that I made from the previous tutorial. Once you are done with rigging, animate your figure in Part 2 of the tutorial. Tools: 3D Studio Max Steps: 1. Create->Systems-> Biped, and now position the mouse so it is at the base of your model Press click and drag the mouse so that the biped system is the same height of the model. 2. Using the rotating tool, position the biped so that it is in proper alignment with the model. Do not forget to look at the Top view to verify that the biped is centered in the model. 3. Using the transform tool and working your way up, enlarge and decrease the biped bones so that it is as similar to the model as possible. 3. Now select the model, and click the MODIFY tab. Select within the drop down menu, PHYSIQUE. 4.Next click on Attach to Node 5. Select the Node in the center of the biped system. The Node is the blue diamond in the middle of the torso. Afterwards a window titled, Physique Initialization will popup. I have never ran into a situation where the default settings weren't adequate, so click initialize. 6. Now deselect the model completely and just as an experiment click on one of shoulders and rotate it. Do not do too many things here, because we are just testing out the joints, and we want to hit undo, so we get back to step 6. Notice the entire arm is now moving. However the hands are not as are the feet. 7. To correct this select the mesh and under PHYSIQUE, select vertex. 8. Now highlight the vertexes on the hand and then ASSIGN to Link, and select the link (in yellow) that marks the hand. Repeat this for the other hand and feet. If you want to make sure every vertex is assigned to a respective link, then do this for every link on the body. Be warned that some vertexes can and will be assigned to two different links especially in the hip area. However some if not must should only be assigned to one. Now you are done rigging your model. In the next tutorial we will make it move. Now would be a good time to get those biped unreal tournament files that I discussed earlier. In the mean time move your model's joints and perfect the model.

4. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: Creating A City    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

How to make a Quick City Block: For this tutorial, I will show you how to first create a city block and then a building for you to place on your grid. Then I'll end by showing you how to create water and foliage areas. Since all building structures are subjectionable you should look at other buildings on google or some source, to get an overal idea of how buidlings are made. I will warn you that it is a little long, so you may want to take this in parts and comeback to take on the rest. So lets get started making our city block: 1.) To begin create a 20 x 20 plane. Next add an Edit Mesh modifier to the plane and select Polygon. 2.) Drag your mouse over a few polygons, that are in a row, and then use ctrl+left click to highlight a few more rows. 3.) While the polygons are selected click Render-> Material Editor. Under Material Editor select the first material ( it's the grayball) double click on the grey box next to Diffuse option and change the color to black. And either drag the black over to the polygons or select the icon within the highlighted yellow box that says apply material. Notice that we have now created roads for our city. Save this city map as "citymap" or by any other name that is easy to remember. Creating the first building. 1.) To do this, first create a new file which we will call building one. 2.) Begin by selecting Gengon from the objects panel under Extended Primitives. Now create your gengon shape (you might have to experiment a little to geta feel for how creating such a shape works). 3.) Now Clone the shape by selecting -> Edit-> Clone-> and Copy (Ctrl+V). Move Change the clone's color to something a little more distinctive than the previous shape. 4.) Scale down the new gengon too about 3/4 the size of the previous object. Then under the modifier panel, increase the height to the height of the overall building that you would like. From now on we will call this the Base of the building and the original gengon a level. 5.) Next make copy clones (Edit-Clone-Copy) the orginal gengon (the main level) and move it along the y axis along the base with space inbetween the levels. Continue clnig the gengons until the base is filled to the top with gengons. Basically your playing that game when you were little to determine which baseball team will bat first. You know the one where two people would move one hand on top of other's until they reached the top. 6.) To add style to the building, select the main level and add an Edit Poly modifier. ...

5. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: Creating the Helmet from 300    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

The movie 300 has been one of the best movies I've seen all year, maybe even the past two years. Persians might be mad at the story, but you can't deny its artistry and I'll take the 300 members of their special effects against a 2000 member army of Persian special effects guys any day (just joking). Anyways, the movie sparked in me a creative spirit to recreate to my best abilities the helmet used on the main character, King Leonidas. So lets get started: Tools: 3D Studio Max Steps: 1.) Create a Line that goes right down the y axis. This will be your reference line when making the helmet, so you want to make the length, the same length that you envision it would be going from the top of the helmet to the tip of the nose, and you want to make sure that it is as straight as possible. (For my tutorial it is pink but for your model it can be whatever color you want) 2.) Next Create another line and make the left hand side of the mask as shown below. After finishing modeling that half of the helmet, you should align it with the pink line. The easiest way to do this turn on the "Snaps Toggle" icon , and drag the upper most vertex to the top of vertex of the pink line, and do the same for the tip of the nose as well. Notice that your helmet is now aligned with the pink line. 3.) Next Clone the Line by clicking Edit->Clone, and make this a Copy clone because we will modify this side ever so slightly to attach it to the other side. Then after cloning, select from the taskbar, Tools and then Mirror, and mirror about the X axis. 4.) I have deleted the pink line, and we going to move the right side, as close as possible to the left one. 5.) Next we are going to select the vertex at the top of the left side, and drag it to its left side counterpart. Then do the same for the tip of the nose. Then Attach the two sides together. 6.) Then select the vertexes at the top and the tip of the nose once again and weld them together. The best way of selecting the vertexes at a given location, lets say the top, is to just drag your mouse across the small area and both will be selected. 7..) We are now going to add more vertexes to the helmet. To do this check the Connect box first, and then select Refine and start placing vertexes around the helmet. Look at the picture below and you would notice that the vertexes are placed symmetrically. (Warning: Use Edit Spline often, as its an easy way of saving your work. Don't be scared to use it for each step of the Outlining Process) 8.) ...

6. Homemade Anime: Tutorial: Creating A Starfield and Comet    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

For a long time I wanted to know how to create a set of comets and a starfield to create dramatic scenes in space. Well I found out how to do the starfield, but the site was in German. I did some work and found out how to create the starfield using the old videopost trick. So lets get started. Tools: 3D Studio Max Steps Creating the Comet 1. Create a sphere of any size, any shape and transform it across the X axis ever so slightly. Then add a Noise modifier to the object, and experiment with the settings. Always check Fractal, and Animate, and finally change the phase to see the effects take place. You can use the settings in the pic as an example. 2. Next go to Material Editor under render, and under the first material change the Diffuse color to a deep brown. 3. Then scroll down and under the same panel you will notice a section called Maps. Expand that section and check the Bump box and increase the value of the Bump to anywhere between 70 and 1000. Then click in the longer box next to it and select Shadow as the map. 4. In the settings for Shadow increase the iterations to 5 and drag and drop the material onto the comet. Creating the Starfield 1. Setup a Camera that targets the Comet. 2. Next under Render select Viewport and click add Scene Event. From the dropdown menu select Camera01. 3. Add an Image Event (its the box with the curvy line through it) and from the Filter Plug in select Starfield. For now the default settings are fine but you can fool around with those and get some cool results. 4. Add an Image output event and click Files and name an output file where you want the file to be saved. Remember two things every time you render the file, this is where your file will be saved. Second, the video post is the only place where you can render and get a starfield. 5. Render this badboy. by clicking on the Running man. You can select a single frame our the complete animation. Depending on your settings for the Starfield, when you create a cool moving animation, your stars will go through a motion blur depending on how fast the animation is moving. 6. This should be your result

7. Homemade Anime: 3D Studio Max and After Effects MashUp    homemadeanime.blogspot.com

Its been a long time since I've written a tutorial and I thought that I should get back to doing what I do best, explaining the simple things that make an animation reel great. So here I'll merge too tricks into one by creating simple loops, followed by using green screen to bring them into Adobe After Effects. Let's get started! Steps: Creating a Loop 1.) Very simple here, to begin let's start by making a sphere. 2.) Now select the motion panel on the right hand side, and click under create key: Position, Rotation, and Scale. Next, select the Y, and then Z axis, and do the same that you did for the X-axis and select position, rotation, and scale. This will create a key frame on frame 1. 3.) To make sure that the sphere ends up at the same spot which it started, move the frame slider, down to about frame 30, and without doing a thing to the sphere, repeat step 2. 4.) Now you can animate your sphere on any of the frames in between 1 and 30 by first selecting the auto key. 5.) Then when you press play you will notice that the sphere always goes back to its original position. Green Screening & Premiere An old Hollywood trick for decades, greenscreening has allowed anyone to be anywhere. Now this little ball will be green screened and placed into Premiere. 1.) Go to Render->Environment and click on the Background Color and change the color to green. The key here is to write down the Red, Green, and Blue values because you will need them in the future. My green values are as follows: R-0 G-255 B-18 2.) Now Render your movie from frames 1-30, and save the file as an AVI file. Afterwards replay your movie in a video player on repeat,so that you can judge the amount of extra frames you need to make the movie look smooth. This could be by rerendering from 1-32 frames or 1-35. Its up to you. 3.) Break out your After Effects. I am using After Effects 7, but any After Effects version should do as long as there is a CHROMA KEY function. 4.) So to begin, double click on the project panel and open a picture that you would like to use for your background. 5.) Now drag the file to the Timeline Panel. Notice that the file now appears in the composition panel, where you can increase or decrease the size. 6.) Now, let's import your movie so repeat steps 4 & 5 and instead of loading a picture, load the AVI that you just rendered. 7.) So its time to get rid of the green, to do this, right click on the file name in the Timeline view, and follow the path: Effect-> Keying -> Color...

8. Homemade Anime: Animated Background    homemadeanime.com