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Ask questions. Share experiences. Outline goals and aspirations.
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961 topics in this forum
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As more and more collaborative teams hit the internet to bring their projects to life small and large services are popping up to address that need. In the past I've mentioned a few and several of those have since had significant upgrades. Shotgun (recently purchased by Autodesk) is one that gets the majority of press because they got a head start on their competition and have invested deeply in the features needed to bring projects through production. Frame.io is another of these services. Will it work well for your next project? Answer: It depends. On the low end (the space which most independent creators occupy) where a team of two or three work on a pro…
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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Go check out this software. It's for special effects, compositing and video editing and it's free for the PC and the Mac today only. http://hitfilm.com/express/free The pro version (which adds 3D and particle effects) is also deeply discounted. Go get it quick!
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Flash plugin users (that's almost everyone) on all platforms should update theirs immediately because of a new serious bug discovery that has been discovered. Adobe releases patch for major Flash vulnerability heres how to download it See post #7
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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TED Talks presents a talk with PIXAR's Danielle Feinberg on Lighting in PIXAR films. Well worth the watch (especially for those that had their dreams of being artists crushed as young children): LINK Note that is you see a download link that allows subtitles don't opt for the subtitles as the download appears to fail. Download without subtitles instead or simply stream the playback.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I have this old reference Keyboard shortcuts are they all still the same in V18
Last reply by Maniac, -
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I've been testing out various aspects of A:M that I don't use much and this is one. It's interesting that Chuck Gram mentioned 'Arnold' in another topic and I was wondering if he was watching what I was rendering while he posted! Here's a random STL file downloaded from Thingverse (I had visited there due to Paul Harris's post about 3D printing an animatronic eye setup). The background image (and environment map) is also a random image from the internet. It's from an abandoned theme park (one of Disney's as I recall). Initial chrome Material is from the A:M Library. About the only things that are my own are the lighting and the red eyes which is a little lathed s…
Last reply by blixien, -
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Anyone tried out the newly released Vivaldi 1.0 browser? It has some nice features: https://vivaldi.com/features/ I've just now downloaded but not spend much time looking into it. So far so good. The webpanels and moving back and forth in time should be quite useful.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Here's a site that let you play back youtube video frame by frame and at various speeds. I'm guessing there are some other sites that do the same or similar but this one caught my attention. I'll link with a video to one of Robert Holmen's animations because it's well worth reviewing. Note that linking into the video with frame and timing set is by the parameters added at the end of the link. In this case Time (t) and Speed (s) added as &t=0&s=0.25. http://rowvid.com/?v=pDqKABYtDB0&t=0&s=0.25
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Their 'realtime' render hardware is surely more advanced than mine but... Here's the latest and greatest from Unity 3D who is demo'ing their latest beta via a short video titled 'Adam': http://unity3d.com/pages/adam
Last reply by detbear, -
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I've brought a wav audio file into choreography for lip-syncing and have synced the actions to the file, but when I play the action the sound plays faster than the wav file I've synced the actions to. The time code/frame tells me the wav file is 72 frames in length, but on playback, the sound does not sync with the frame count. It plays much faster. How can I sync the syncs?
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Very interesting. xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0 Kudos to the demo team at Microsoft research who thought of excellent ways to show off the potential while adding new 'features' all the way to the end of the video. I can think of several downsides to such technology but it's hard to deny the potential.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Hi there, every once in a while (mostly in my holidays) I return to A:M and try to make it really work for me. Still dreaming of an animators career, doh. However, one point where I still have huge problems with are Normal and Displacement maps. While mighty and powerfull I was never able to make them really work for me. When I render in A:M I only get unpredictable results, which by far not what I expect. Therefore it woud be nice, if you could tell me what to look for when using this kind of maps. Info about where you do the maps, how you export, what type of Normal adn Displacement maps you us would be also cool! Thanks in advance!
Last reply by Fuchur, -
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Well worth the watch but set aside some time as the interview runs approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a fairly long intro outlining the 'Design by Hand' project headed up by Cooper Hewitt. Part 1 xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00hDSOCQy4s Part 2 xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmUzwM89Fdw John Lasseter, twice fired from Disney Studios recounts the history of animation which culminates in him leading the Disney Studio into the current age of computer animation.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Long time forum member and A:M user Mark Largent (Largento) is prominently interviewed about his A:M production "Stalled Trek: Amutt Time" for "Fan Film Friday" on the Axanar Productions blog. Give it a read! Interview Part 1 Interview Part 2 (includes discussion of A:M!)
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Introductory pricing for 48 hours... $39 vs $60. Aaron continues to put together some of the most direct, accessible and... reasonably priced material on drawing and animation available. This time he tackles human anatomy. https://creatureartteacher.com/product/drawing-human-anatomy/ Here's the promo video: xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOcrsSbYteA The primary reason I think Aaron's approach is superior to many available is his experience with a variety of art mediums but specifically his foundation in animation which brings it all together. Description of content from his site: In this comprehensive 9.5 Hour video course, animator, dir…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Got this program free from SharewareOnSale Thought it might be on interest Called AbstractCurves
Last reply by johnl3d, -
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*Some corrections updates have been applied to this topic since first posting* This is kind of a 'yikes' for me... I've reported on the project management solution known as 'Tactic' by Southpaw Technologies and even explored it a little as I thought it was well worth looking into. In recent times Southpaw had been pushing a tailor made VFX setup of Tactic designed with filmmaking in mind. The 'yikes' of this post is that I just saw the news that Toonboom Animation Inc. has purchased Southpaw** and is rolling out their own version of Project Management named Toon Boom Manager. https://www.toonboom.com/products/manager news release: https://www.toonboo…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Nothing to do with A:M - not even CGI, but a beautifully made and inspiring stop motion short by estian artist Anu-Laura Tuttelberg. Partly done in wet clay, thus the main character had to be completely re-modeled for every frame. No lamps were used in the shooting, only the existing daylight coming through the windows in the studio. https://vimeo.com/89515712
Last reply by Simon Edmondson, -
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I don't know enough to suggest how useful this may be to those who are interested in the gaming aspect of 3D but it's newsworthy so... In short, Amazon has recently released their Lumberyard gaming engine for free. It's based on Cryengine (and will diverge further as times goes on But let's let others more knowledgeable delve into the details: https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/lumberyard-free-is-the-new-black/ I saw that the FBX plugin is expected to be updated in short order and that may provide a path for A:M Users to move assets toward Lumberyard, moreso than what is currently available. If you are into game development it should be of interest if for no other re…
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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- 5 replies
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I'm nowhere near ready to render anything for my movie, but I have been trying to figure out what makes the most sense for a renderfarm: raw performance or performance per watt? Hypothetical renderfarm 1: Xeon-based renderfarm with high GHz high-dollar Xeon cpus (say, 4 8-core Xeons on a quad socket motherboard). Total cost: Probably in the range of $3000-$4500 Hypothetical renderfarm 2: Lower performance AMD cpus with a much lower power requirement (the 25w Kabini quad core at 2ghz comes to mind) --- for an equivalent number of cores, you could do 8 motherboards each with one 25w cpu for a total of 200 watts, compared to 500 watts for the Xeon system (mini…
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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They make this sound like a bit more of a caper than it really is (I'm not sure that the shape of the bust of Nefertiti was a big secret) but now you can get her in inconvenient polygon form, ripe for your retopology experimenting. Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online
Last reply by Rodney, -
- 1 follower
- 6 replies
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Do anybody know the story behind the small animations running next to the abort button when rendering in A:M? Some very nice animation in all of them. Are they made by the same person, are they made specifically for the render window, etc.?
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
- 1 follower
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Net Render draws lens flares with other settings than set in scene. The error has been reported to Mantis, but as usual it is not possible to upload pictures/files, so this post is primarily to upload the attached picture.
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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tried loading a sound into project even tried one from data it does not play ....windows 10 issue?
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I am running Version 18n 64 bit on a computer with 8GB of RAM and an i7 64 bit processor. Sometimes, it takes 10 to 14 hours to save my work. I work in wireframe and sometimes stop and render along the way so that I can see what the patches look like. I am wondering if there is a way to shorten the saving time, or is there a way to know when rendering time for a frame is going to exceed 7 minutes or so, before I press the render button. What happens when I render sometimes is that the computer buffers (twirls) and twirls indefinitely. I try to abort, and the rendering program seems to abort but twirling continues, and I cannot get back to where I can start the 10 to 14 h…
Last reply by Pitcher, -
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Long-ago forum member Zachary Brewster-Geisz's acting career continues to edge upward. Behold, a very favorable mention in the Washington Post review of "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Zach, seen reclining below...
Last reply by itsjustme, -
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xhttps://vimeo.com/93206523 Watch this Was linked to the free FutureLearn animation course
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
- 1 follower
- 2 replies
- 851 views
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Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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While cleaning out the storage are of the theater room, I found an old PC. Not being sure about the PC, I placed a monitor and power cable on it and started it up. It is an XP box and much to my suprise I found several acts and scenes from TWO. After investigating the machine it is one that I set up for Steve Sappington to use Web Render on. It was fun seeing some of the TWO files. Steve
Last reply by Shelton, -
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I'm posting this here not so much to plug the kickstarter but to highlight one of the interviews/demonstrations that relates to it. Over on the Traditionalanimation.com site, Lavalle Lee conducts an interview with Don Bluth, then one with Gary Goldman and then raps up with a few question with both that dovetails into the announcement of the kickstarter. The main event however is saved for last and that is an animation demonstration by Don Bluth with him breaking down a simple animation of DIrk the Daring swinging his sword. A few highlights of the video include: Don demonstrates the traditional art of animation Don uses an exposure sheet and metronome as an aid…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Anyone that is interested in having a 2D animation program, may want to check this link out: http://digicel.net/SpecialOffer.htm The Lite version is only $20 right now and the Studio version is $89.99. They are offering the educational discount to everyone, I'm not sure how long this will last, so if you're interested you better go grab it now.
Last reply by detbear, -
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Last reply by Tore, -
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http://monocle.com/film/culture/new-generation-animators/
Last reply by Tore, -
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Steve Jobs was pretty good at presenting. Most corporate heads are not. Wanna see a painfully long stretch of mirrored posing and mechanical delivery? Skip ahead to 2:00 and watch the CEO of General Motors talk to a crowd... Mary Barra CES Keynote Speech
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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I don't know much about this but saw it and didn't want anyone to miss out if interested. Apparently there is a free online animation course from Futurelearn. Here's the write up: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-animation I don't have specifics but according to the article I gleaned this from the course is free for the next month only. It appears to be part of a bid to get more interest going in online classes after a $200K investment from Creative Skillset.
Last reply by fae_alba, -
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- 17 replies
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I was watching a retrospective documentary that was an extra on the final Clone Wars release and part of it was dedicated to something I found interesting. At a certain point, Lucas realized that in order to keep on schedule, they needed to forego the storyboarding stage and go straight to pre-viz. Lucas went to his guys at ILM and a team was put together to create a piece of software called "Zviz" that would make it easy to create a pre-vis version of the episode first. The tool would not only allow you to import and animate assets, but you could create assets and most importantly, shoot and edit the material. Using Zviz on a laptop, directors could set up or change …
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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Strangely interesting... xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XahbqLdCVhE
Last reply by Rodney, -
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For those of you wanting to move your A:M work into the communal online world and perhaps eventually make a few $ in the process here's a platform that is in early stage of fielding and yet considerably mature underneath the hood. https://www.otakhi.com/pages/overview Here's a current look at the repository: https://www.otakhi.com/pages/home.php This would be for those of you that like to use code as a key component is three.js (javascript) but the platform states that writing javascript is "purely optional**" as the modular approach is designed to be drag and drop. My guess would be that a trip through a program such as Blender would be required to get y…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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- 850 views
Shhhhh... keep this on the lowdown. Recently I was plugging Don Bluth's effort to get his traditional animation project off the ground and this relates to that in a way. How? Way back when, at Don's Masterclass one of the attendees was Keith Osborn who near the end of the course showed me a few secrets of a then hush hush project; Warner Bros Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote when they were first making the move to CG. The highlight of the animation was Keith's work with smears, duplicate limbs, etc. which were all pretty hard to do in most software in that timeframe. Well, seeing ample opportunity to spread the word on his approach and technique, Keith has publish…
Last reply by Rodney, -
- 2 followers
- 10 replies
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Wow, go see this, if nothing else, for the scenery. Actually it is very touching. My wife was crying. Lots of fun.
Last reply by Steveotron, -
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Who better to demonstrate the Dreamworks pipeline for making Animated films than the penguins of madagascar. Learn it. Live it. Love it. Then... go make another animated movie. xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CbG0d_tnSg
Last reply by Fuchur, -
- 3 replies
- 1k views
https://www.facebook.com/aescripts/videos/956695491034110/ AE Scripts has a new hand-drawn cel animator that lives within After Effects... Looks like they have a cool 'decal' mode that tracks to CGI renders like AM would render... If I am seeing it correctly. Have not looed into price yet.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I have applied decals many times. Now I have one that applies fine when I have the patches that it touches selected and the others hidden. When I bring back the other patches, however, the decal becomes spotty on one of the patches where it was fine before. I have tried to apply the decal with the entire figure showing, but when I do that, the patch that rejects the decal will not cover. I have found normals and flipped normals, and everywhere I could find anything about normals I tried to do something. Please tell me what is going on and why the decal will not apply evenly and continue to stick. Thanks.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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I'm still receiving reports that the like system isn't working for folks. The issue on my end is that I don't see any setting that is restricting the use of likes. If you would be so kind... Please like this post and comment if you cannot get it to work with the nature of the error. You can comment if it works as well but that will be assumed by the number of likes. Added: I don't see the 'like' option (presumably) because I'm the originator of this post.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Hi A:M Folks! I'm new to these forums, so I apologize if this has been answered before. I bought Animation:Master out of high school around 2004 and have used it sporadically over the years ever since. (I even managed to get it working on Linux when I stopped using Windows.) Recently, though, when I went to look for it for a new project, my CD was nowhere to be found. To my horror, I realized that I may have accidentally thrown it out with the wrong pile of stuff during an epic cleanup session. (It was very epic cleanup.) Anyway, my question is, being that A:M requires the CD in the tray to load, what is Hash's policy about replacing lost CDs? As I said, it wa…
Last reply by Rodney, -
- 2 followers
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Last reply by Roger, -
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I wondered how it comes when I import models with the *.obj extention I often get a scrambled surface on the skin. For some reason the trivertices don't seem to fit in well and make bad shadows. Does this have a reason, for example the normals are not fit in well, or is it just because of the nature of the object files? Is there a way to get this effect blended so the surface rounds up well again?
Last reply by detbear, -
- 1 follower
- 3 replies
- 990 views
As a kid in the late fifthies/early sixties, I loved watching a stop motion series of very short films on danish tv, starring a dog made of folded (origami style) paper. I think it was british, and each sketch started with a man's hands folding the dog, which then came to life. No dialogue as far as I remember. I have tried to google it, but can't find anything. Could be fun to watch it again. Any of you know the animations?
Last reply by Tore, -
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- 790 views
Welcome.prj
Last reply by Rodney, -
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- 766 views
might this be of interest to someone ? http://graphicshakespeare.tumblr.com/
Last reply by Wildsided,
