Are we having fun yet? Seriously! I am having a grand time with the Millennium Horse model. If you saw yesterday's project, I got the horse and the guy realistically into the same shot. Today's project was to get the boy on the horse. The whole thing revolves around really knowing your bones animation. There's a little icon on the icon bar at the top of the screen. Looks like a dogbone, a chew toy. When you click that, it brings the elements in the image alive -- you can select them and move them around with the mouse.Turned out to be dead easy to get the rider on the horse; and I had the presence of mind to save a separate project while I was there: delete the horse from the scene and save it as Rider-ONLY ... which means I can then (he he he) merge the pre-posed Rider into any new horse scene, and I'm already halfway there to having a mounted horserider.
There were two toughies about this shot, and one was the bloody lighting. I guess I still have a lot to learn about lighting, because I'm still flying Seat of Pants Airlines, making it up as I go along. I know, I know, I know, I bought the damned book, FIGURES, CHARACTERS AND AVATARS, and I assume it's all in there. I just haven't had time to look. Yet. So I just basically fiddle with the lights and look for patterns ... this is how I learn to do things.
The second thing was a lot easier to do -- as soon as I saw the problem. Have a look at yesterday's render. See the shed off to the left, galvo glaring in the sun? Didn't matter in the previous pic, because it's part of the image. But the way I wanted to frame this one up, you had this bright glaring object right on the edge of the shot, which is (to quote James Hook) bad form. To get rid of it, I didn't want to mess about painting ... out of time! ... so I went back into Serif and put in a mask, which is basically a black oval with a fuzzy edge, witting between the border and the shed. It's actually there, you just don't notice it.
And just in case you think the rider is offset to far to *his* right on the horse ... looks are deceiving. Here's the top view, without the background:
So there you go: bareback rider. And you bet your life, it's fun!
Jade, 11 November
