An experimental digital puppet

Hey everyone,

Ive just got the initial stages of my next digital puppet underway.

Its working title is "Ol Smokey".

Basically, its using particles to create smoke...

Then, the character details are overlayed with alot of transparency.

As you move the mouse, the smoke pillar will aim in the direction of the pointer...aswell as the character details following the pointers position.

When you click on either mouse button, the mouth will open etc.

As I said, it is still in its infancy. The aim being to create a "mystical creature" who either lives in the smoke or who IS the smoke.

The pics dont do it justice, but it will give you the basic idea...

a website with the puppets is comming soon

<img src="http://i29.tinypic.com/2n0poja.jpg">

<img src="http://i29.tinypic.com/2a9pahl.jpg">

I personally can't wait to have a play around with some of these! I know many others are the same. Hopefully you will have some downloadable content, or some videos of it in action at the very least!

Good job!

~Sol

I just looked at this and then tried to do bumpmapped smoke.

And failed.

Any ideas on how to do that?

I just looked at this and then tried to do bumpmapped smoke.

And failed.

Any ideas on how to do that?

You would need to make a custom particle generator that created smoke particles as objects... then have an event that overlayed a bumpmap on each particle.

~Sol

Just incase you may think I bumpmapped my smoke...I didnt.

My puppets need to run on low end computers as well as high end. So I need to keep the effects as simple as possible to enable fast manipulation abilities.

Sorry.

BTW, thanx for the great feedback