Snow leopard

I did a still render of this snow leopard and decided to make a simple rig with some shapekeys for a short animation. It takes 4 1/2 minutes per frame, so it’s almost 24 hours of render. CC welcome!

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Really nice job, good as anything I’ve seen in a movie.
I like how the nose wrinkles, great attention to detail.

This really came out nice Photox. I can’t recall if you modeled teeth, but that would make for a nice addition down the road. But the animation seems very fluid. Also I thought you used a great mix of snow particles, they looked quite natural to me.

@caz, thanks mate! Appreciate it.

@harley, thanks! Unfortunately the mouth is fused shut. I wish I hadn’t done that, but it’s too far down the pipe for any kind of mesh changes. A huge roar would be great. The snow was trickier than I thought, I wound up using planes and a soft mask with transparency, so it’s basically 2-d pre-blurred.

Nice fur! I think the camera feels quite sticky at some points and overall distracting from the leopard, maybe keep the camera static or a gentle move across, but having it move left and right, then at the end it’s going down and left I think, it’s too much movement.
and the the fast blinks are too fast, the appear to snap closed and then open really fast, and are opened too wide after the blink, which is unnatural, but I do like the little squint. I can’t tell if it supposed to be wind he’s fighting against or if he smelt something gross, if wind, then I’d say you need movement on the ears and fur, if smell then I’d suggest making the disgust movement more apparent like a shaking of the head. It’s like he smelt something in the beginning, so I’d go with the latter.
If you going to re-do your render maybe post your animations before renders so we can check it out. The stills came out really great though.

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Pombit thanks. I may, or may not do a finishing touches render on this animation. I’ve got stuff lined up for a few weeks – overnights, etc… If I do I will make the changes you suggest as they are all valid. The nose is just a cat sniffing the air, it’s not disgust just sniffing. The snow falls gently with a tiny breeze, screen left to right, but hardly there.

Nice. I would just change the spacing of the movement a bit to make the head a bit more heavy.
Looks good.

I was taken a back to how good this is. The render and look is absolutly Hollywood!! However the aninmation is slightly on the mechanical side. Overall Very Impressive!!

Thanks guys!

Ok, you’ve all convinced me to take another pass at animating. It’s too mechanical and the jerky camera isn’t helping. the model,fur etc are pretty solid and so if I can just get the movements right it’s a winner. Next pass animation notes:

  1. Blinks more natural.
  2. Simpler and smoother camera motion
  3. Slower and more organic turning of the head with a heavier feel.

wow, this is already wonderful, photox! really love the feeling of it.

Thank you very much Doris! It’s exciting to watch your own creation breath to life. There’s an immediacy to video that draws you in. I have made all changes suggested, and have a higher quality render going for the next couple days. Baring a power outage I should have about 12 seconds on Monday.

Frame 1 (raw)
299 to go…


Saw the note about the mouth being closed. Too bad. I haven’t watched snow leapords much, but ordinary cats rarely give such a slow blink without accompanying it with a yawn. So that gaping yawn was sort of missing for me when I watched the clip. I suppose you could change the blink and expression so he didn’t look sleepy.

Yeah, unfortunately I don’t have time to model a mouth so for the time being it will stay closed. At this point I’m hoping simply improve what is there, perhaps down the road revisit this and give it a full deck to play with.