A Neverending Story - or - How I Realize the Course 'Creating Animated Shorts with the Power of AI'

Actual: I reached the rigging part. Rigging with Mixamo is just a clever ruse, you know? It’s there to lull us into the false belief that it’s all so simple.


My Story made with ChatGPT:

Title: “The Wisdom of the Ancient Temple

Setting: A hidden temple in a dense, foggy forest, surrounded by ancient trees and mystical sounds.

Character: An experienced, gray-haired man in his 60s, dressed in simple but practical clothing, with a walking stick and an old, hand-drawn map.

Scene 1: The Entrance to the Temple

The man reaches the hidden entrance of the temple, concealed by overhanging branches. He pauses briefly, takes a deep breath, and enters the dark doorway with a sense of awe and curiosity.

Scene 2: The Discovery of the Chamber

Inside the temple, the man discovers a hidden chamber behind a wall of vines. He uses his walking stick to clear the way and reveals a door surrounded by mysterious symbols.

Scene 3: Solving the Puzzle

In the chamber, the man finds a complex puzzle of ancient characters and mechanisms. He studies the symbols, thoughtfully touches them with his fingers, and eventually solves the puzzle, opening a hidden niche.

Scene 4: The Revelation of the Secret

From the niche, the man takes a small, antique artifact that shines in the dim light of the room. He looks at it in amazement and realizes that it is a key to ancient knowledge.

Scene 5: The Return

The man leaves the temple, the artifact safely in his pocket. He looks back at the temple, his face marked by a smile of deep understanding, before continuing his way through the forest, ready to share his insights.

End: The man disappears into the fog of the forest, the secret of the temple safely in his possession and his heart filled with wisdom and peace.

Shotlist

Scene 1: The Entrance to the Temple

Wide Shot: The man stands in front of the dense, foggy forest, looking at the hidden entrance of the temple.
Close-up: The man touches the overhanging branches and pushes them aside to reveal the entrance.
Over-the-Shoulder Shot: The man looks at the dark entrance, takes a deep breath, and enters the temple.

Scene 2: The Discovery of the Chamber

Pan: The man explores the temple with a flashlight, his hand brushing over the wall, discovering the vines.
Close-up: His hands remove the vines, revealing the door with symbols.
Close-up: The man’s face, his eyes light up as he discovers the door.

Scene 3: Solving the Puzzle

Close-up: The man studies the symbols on the wall.
Over-the-Shoulder Shot: His fingers glide over the symbols as he contemplates.
Close-up: The mechanism unlocks, the niche opens.

Scene 4: The Revelation of the Secret

Close-up: The man carefully takes the artifact from the niche.
Close-up: His face, illuminated by the gentle glow of the artifact.
Wide Shot: The man holds up the artifact, the light illuminating his face and the surrounding walls.

Scene 5: The Return

Wide Shot: The man leaves the temple, looks back.
Close-up: The artifact in his pocket.
Wide Shot: The man walks through the forest, disappearing into the fog.

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Now the 1st realization part:

Several startss have led to the following interim result. I would like to note that I have only processed 30 minutes of video time so far, and it took a whopping 5 live hours to do so. Okay, one can say: Practice makes perfect, and next time, everything will be much faster. But I can already foresee that it will be a very long time to complete this course.

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Very cool story and well done so far on the modeling! Yes it will indeed take some time but will definitely be worth it to create a full animated short!

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It actually looks quite okay to me.

But when I smooth it out with subdivision and smoothing, it looks more like I failed as Frankenstein’s son during the operation. But I’ll keep going for now, maybe there will be some enlightenment that this might still be okay, and later transformations will somehow fix this.

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I did the wrong order. I should have thought first and then make the posting, not the other way around!

One just has to think about what mistake could have been made. It’s so trivial! Face detection shows you what the problem is …

… and after a Shift-N, everything is now at least up to my standards, actually okay!

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Yup it seems like normals were flipped badly. Looks great man!

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Next step: THE MASK!

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Looks great. As long as it’s not “The Son of the Mask” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Making good progress. I got stuck on the AI and making the script then the references. Been messing around with that way too much :smiley:

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As a still learning ear breeder, I am quite satisfied with my result.

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lol at ear breeder. Very well done man! Ears can be the trickiest

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Absolutely fantastic, this finger-part of the tutorial. The detailed way of creating the fingertips is impressive. I’m eager to see how this can be enhanced with the use of materials.

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Very cool Uwe! Looks great my friend! Glad you are enjoying the course so much!

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Something was missing in the last picture. Right! The thumb. It is now there, and the hand is already attached to the arm.

And not only that, in this picture you can see all of Frankenstein’s work put together!

human_v0.1

BTW: The surgery HDRI is from Polyhaven

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Making good progress. Looks like you having fun and hopefully learning lots!!!

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Nice Uwe! Looking great. You got the whole character put together! Next onto rigging! :smiley:

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New to sculpting: my first steps. I’m quite satisfied with the result. And with practice, I’m sure there’s room for improvement. I feel that I’ve particularly succeeded in sculpting the hands and the body itself:

However, I’m really struggling with sculpting the ear. While I find the shaping itself quite decent, attaching it to the body is just not working out well. I’ve illustrated the issue in the following image: I can’t seem to get the transition from the ear to the body right in any of the approaches I’ve tried.

C4

Alex or another expert, do you perhaps have any suggestions on how I should proceed?

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Very well done Uwe! Looks great man. As for the ear, could you share your .blend with me and I can take a look at it and see

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I’ve temporarily provided the blend file with the model for direct download at https://myblenderday.com/tmp/course_model.blend

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So for the ear transitioning to the head right now it’s not working properly because you have a bunch of geometry overlapping and going inside the head. As you can see in the video, first thing is to bring the ear out. I am selecting parts of the ear by going into face select mode and either selecting a face and hitting ctrl+L to select linked or just hover with the mouse and hitting the L key to selecting linked. then hitting ctrl and + on numpad to increase selection so I have the whole ear and the bringing it out.

Then delete those 3 face loops and reconnect the ear by briding the loops. Then you can use the grab brush and the smooth brush to smooth it out and shape it. Of course needs a bit more work than what I did. If the other ear is messed up, you can then just delete half of the mesh and then add a mirror modifier and mirror half the model back in and apply it.

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