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Well here is the follow up to the previous animation Simple Pleasures For those having issues here is the Youtube link: MP4 version: Simplepleasures2.mp4

[Mod note: Don't miss the many excellent WIP images above this post!] Okay, it took me a while...I think I worked the kinks out. Here is a test render that I'll probably watch a thousand times and second guess most of what I did (1920x1080 MP4 H.264). It's a quick pan around the room....it looked correct on a few players like VLC and Windows Media Player, but one it was washed out (I'm assuming it was the color correction in that one...it's more geared to viewing EXR sequences). If it looks washed out to anyone, let me know. BreakRoomFlyThrough_04_10_2025.mp4

I was nearing the end of my third and final year in Illustration when my teacher approached me with a volunteer assignment outside the usual class projects. In Oakville, there was a summer festival that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s called the Oakville Waterfront Festival. It was a major event at the time, featuring live music, games, food, and craft shows. The previous year, my teacher’s studio had illustrated the festival poster, which featured a 3D rendering of an ice cream cone. Having seen what I was capable of modeling in A:M, he asked for my help in creating a 3D version of the festival’s beloved mascot, "Jake from the Lake." Over the next few weeks, I modeled Jake and his buddy, Fishy, and the rest is history. Below, you can see a screenshot of the final poster, along with the Photoshop revisions my teacher made, including the addition of the ice cream cone from the previous year. It was such an exciting time I had never seen my work in print like that before. The poster was displayed all over the city, featured in newspaper articles, and even printed large scale for bus shelter ads.

MONADA3_207_AlCHEM.mp4

Hello All, For about a mount plus I my real job has been taking over all of my time and I had some personal stuff too. I have fell behind on Animation Master stuff. I'm at work now and have a 4 hour drive back to my office. But I'm going to work through email and PM backlog tonight and tomorrow. I'm really sorry about not being around and I'm back at it

Hey yall! I've had some trouble uploading images to the forum and finally got around to starting my own html page on neocities: yopachi.neocities.org they give you 1gb of free website and it's super fun to make a simple page using LLM as a helper for the code. The site is just one page for now but I'll be adding my worthy splines are as I go. I even made an animated favicon! did you know you can animate favicons?

May you have a festive Ground Hog Day.

Simple Pleasures Well I have rendered the animation. 17 cores at 16 passes utilizing 77% of CPU and 38%, running at 5ghz at 39 Celsius, 1440x1080 resolution, 156 frames, took netrender 59:07 minutes. Here is Hans finding something new For those who can not see it on the forum here is the Youtube link PickupFlower.mp4

Getting in the spirit of Halloween, so played around with an older model and some lighting.

wow cool ! I used it in a video!

Once again I must remind everyone of the sage advice offered by my friend three-finger-Pete ... "If it's explodin' ... Don't be holdin' " ... Have a safe and happy 4th of July! [Mod note: Posted on behalf of password-unremembering forum member.)

In 2001, I was commissioned by a designer friend to create a book illustration for a novel called Angry Young Spaceman. A few years earlier, I had done the back cover illustration for Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask by Jim Munroe. For this next novel, I got to illustrate the front and back cover and even created a short looping animation, which we made available as a screensaver. It's always so fun to work on book illustrations and then go into bookstores and see your work on the shelves. Proudly all made in A:M

In 2002, my friend Paul and I started our own 3D animation studio using the old office that Streamline Media originally occupied. It was one of the most exciting yet stressful times of my life I never thought keeping a sleeping bag in the office closet would be a good idea until then. We were trying many things to promote the studio, Focus Chaos Inc. so I submitted my Valentine's Hash image contest entry to 3D World magazine and then completely forgot about it. It wasn’t until our friend Steve, who rented us the office came in one day and told me he saw my image in a magazine at the bookstore! I still have a copy of the magazine, 3D World May 2002.

A new render of my third assignment for AnimationMentor, 20 years ago this week. Now with my own trombone sound effects! The assignment was that the ball had to do an anticipation into its first leap, then bounce around the obstacles.

The Oakville Waterfront Festival poster design for 1999. Reusing the models from the previous year made things quicker but looking back wish I took more time to clean things up, making the models a little less lumpy. Was a fun project nonetheless,

My first bouncing ball for classwork at Animation Mentor, 20 years ago this week. Now with sound effects! The assignment was to animate a rigid bouncing ball for at least four bounces. It was OK to have it just bounce in place. I had never really done a rigorously accurate bouncing ball before and I wanted to get this as right as I could. Looking at the time stamps of my PRJs, I see that I spent more than 30 hours on this.

Okay....so I have been endlessly tweaking things (I'm still debating the level of bloom). Here is an updated image and I'll post more soon. ------------------- EDIT ------------------- I didn't realize one of my settings was off and made it a little dark...I replaced the original image with the updated version.

Probably the most exciting project I worked on while at my teacher's studio (around 1998/99) was the package design for the ATI Rage Fury video card. I remember hearing they wanted to incorporate an eye-shaped ship created by another animation studio, but we got to design the main character, a sexy cyborg girl with a glowing sword. How cool is that! After modeling the character in A:M, I experimented with a few poses until we settled on the render below followed by further edits in Photoshop for the final packaging. At the studio, they had a storage closet for supplies, as well as a collection of old manuals and software boxes. To this day I still think about some of the marketing slogans printed on those boxes. One was for Electric Image (EAIS) which said: "Render Fast, Retire Young!" That was so cool. Another package had the slogan: "Dream, Create, Astound." One of the best marketing lines a software company could use to inspire an artist!

not mobius mp4 version: MOBIUS3.mp4

Hey everybody. I want to wish you all a great pre-christmas time and have as each year a little treat for you created with A:M, which will hopefully give you a smile or two with each little clip each day till the 24th of December. I hope you have fun and wish you a nice time (don't forget to visit it each day, since there will be a new clip for you each day opened up): https://advent.targomed.de/adventskalender.php?lan=en Best regards *Fuchur*

Hi, everybody. I've not posted much recently, I've been busy with my YouTube stuff for most of the past year, but I've kept tabs on the forums. Hope everyone is doing well. Anyway, I've been working on a bit of something in my downtime so I thought I'd share the work in progress. Still a lot of work to do.

Robert asked me to post a shaded wireframe of the rig in action. It's not a brilliant rigging attempt, and it required a lot of muscle mode tweaking to get it to where it is. It's not really rigged to be animated so much as to get it into the smile position and render it. Sequence 01_2.mp4

Installers: Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit SDK: v19.5 SDK Change Log: Fixed 0007263: Crash on PRJ Save As Fixed 0007262: Crash after adding CPs to Hair Group Fixed 0007266: Freeze on selecting particle emitter Fixed 0007250: Material Preview Orb has false shading Fixed 0007250: Material Preview Orb has false shading Fixed 0007260: CP weighting lost on save and reload happens only if cp's are weighted to the modelbone with a lower weight than the weight for the other bone Fixed 0007256: 5-pointers render badly Fixed 0007258: Renders not saved Fixed 0007257: Crash on Save As Fixed 0007254: Netrender crashes on startup Fixed 0007249: Orient like constraint behave incorrectly Fixed 0007252: NetRender can't start RenderMessengers Fixed 0007251: Decal animated sequence keyframes ignored Fixed 0007248: Animated decals only work when set as "Color" Chaanged: Switched to Microsoft Compiler, because ICX2024 has some problems with MFC and slower than MS both are slower as Intel Classic on Intel CPU's, but Intel Classic is not longer developed (removed from oneAPI) a comparison can be found at http://www.sgross.com/am_test/amforum/Compare_Times.html Start to switch to std::filesystem instead of the old handmade code (over twenty years old , as example with a Win95 tree...) Flock, Volume, Turbulence and Texture plugins revisited and corrected(unused parameters removed, default values corrected, fixed computations) Fixed some bugs for composite (false filenames, not displayed composites) new attempt to fix 0007241 looks like a never ending story

I added the inside of the mouth and did some rigging on the lower half of the face. She can smile now.

I served myself a bit of a hazard job by trying to convert a *.stl file to a low poly object. It obtained about 3 milion verts and 2 miljon faces. The file I needed had a 2000verts 1000 faces limit. So I tried to convert it with MeshLab back to that low count, but as expected there was hardly a form left. So I used Furcher's retopologize methode (thanks for that!). Still a bit of a whirle as the object prop was so dense I could hardly trace the outline. To keep the relief right I know that exporting .OBJ files from AM: to .3DS leads to the half outcome of the model. This needs some clarification. When exporting models from AM: like this OBJ one:2680v /5563t. Importing it in MeshLab and exportin it to 3ds I get a file with 1007v / 2045 tris. And that's precise the limit I needed. Still a bit confused why this works that way. Then I could import it to Quake and give it the right texture. 🐘 calendrius.mp4

The results of the "Finish the Unfinished" Image Contest are finally here! Watch the video at FINISH THE UNFINISHED

thats mad ! you got me digging the crates for old work lol , TVC for Doritoes

Your last comment is exactly my sentiment.... ( " there must be some reason we don't want to do this " ) Trusting Microsoft is a big leap of faith...

Also some old animations created while at Streamline Media. A website header and an animation for a touch screen console. converted to animated gifs so has a bit of dithering.

Some more A:M product renders and graphics created while I worked at Streamline Media.

We talked a bit about Transfer_AW at Live Answer Time today. Steve @Shelton made a lo-res version (left) of his Hans character(right) and rigged him with the TSM2 geometry bones. Transfer_AW interpolates the lo-res CP weights to the hi-res mesh to get smooth deformations of the complex hi-res character. This shows lo-res Hans and hi-res Hans doing the same test action. There are a few places that will need manual CP weight-tweaking but mostly he's ready to go! TransferAWHans.mp4

I hope everyone had a great Holiday, and will have a happy new year! Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit SDK: v19.5 SDK Change Log: Fixed 0007283: Action lost on PRJ Save Fixed 0007279: Splitpatch gone? Fixed 0007286: Can't select target for Group Constraint Fixed 0007281: DarkTree/Symbiont Materials render blank Fixed 0007285: Importing MDL files will result in "No Name" as the name of the model Fixed 0007280: Imported Materials have no name Fixed 0007209: Texture Sequence as a Decal: Image > Timing > Frame is ignored by final renderer

In the early 2000s, I was working with my friend Paul and his roommate, also named Paul at his web design company called Streamline Media. It was a fun little place to work filled with multimedia artists, sound engineers and programmers. We did our fair share of 3D work for websites and print. One of our bigger clients was a local company that made CNC router tables. I had the opportunity to model and sometimes animate their tables using A:M. It wasn't until they asked if we could import some of their CAD files that I realized I needed to start learning a polygon modeler like LightWave 3D. That took me down a different path for a few years. Here are some renders I did for the CNC tables using A:M

My animation for the second assignment at Animation Mentor, 20 years ago this week. Now with sound! The "boings" are done on my cello, the impact on the cube is a whack on a cardboard box and the grinding sound is two bricks scraped against each other.

Hey.., great bone structure, RobCat! For some reason I couldn't conserve the feet targets. This other bone hiearchy shows a lot better. I was forgotten to give the umbrella a good outlook. So I exctracted it to the new mesh and it works a lot better. Thanks for the hint!

Thanks for sharing, Michael! I love your work and remember seeing some of your art as inspiration to get me into 3D. I share your enthusiasm for those illustrators, I’ve still got dozens of trading cards painted by the Hildebrandt brothers. It’s amazing how much of a difference even a little bit of art and illustration training comes through in 3D quality, and the quality really shows in your work!

Not sure about that codec. I used it because the original becomes quiet large.

aftter having to shovel again found snowman model and did quick render snowfolk.prj

I realized that this month is the 26th year of owning and using AM. I bought my first copy in 1999 from CompUSA. From the 6th grade I have always wanted to do animations. I have been around computers since 1977 in High School, and once I got to college I saw that a computer could help me create an animation. I have had Maya, Studio 3d, Infini D, RayDream, Lexicor and one I can not remember from the Silicon Graphics days. But I have always come back to AM. I am hoping once we get moved in the next couple of months I will get back to that dream of creating an animation project. It is funny, as I have been cleaning out for the move I found a render I did of all the characters in Cupids Sick Day and the Coffee Shop. It is crazy how many splines I had on some of the characters. one of the female characters had over 9k patches. Anyway, All of them are my creations except for three which I got off the extra dvd. And I only used parts of those characters. I still have another 20 not shown in the pic that are still being finished. Over the years of had created some 50 +/- characters with AM. Many are not rigged while others are partially rigged. I have about 15 with full rigs and weighted. I have many rigs installed. From Zundle Rig, Holmes Bryan Rig (LiteRig), Mark Skodacek (2008 Rig), David Simmons (squetch Rig), Mack Chappelle's Saucy Rig, my own rig, and of course TSM 2.0. Thank you to all the people who have commented on all the characters through the years and given me inspiration to continue by quest. I will be uploading shortly a continuation of an animation that began many months ago. Thank you Robert Holmen and Chris Daily for pushing me forward and out of my comfort zone. I have learned a great deal about AM and about myself through this process of creating. Happy 26th anniversary to me!!

I have been working on getting ready to move. As a part of that I was looking at computers. I pulled up Cindy from Cupid Sick day. I modeled her 15 years ago. It is hard to believe. In 2012 I re rigged her and the rig holds up nicely.

I don't think I posted a link to this yet, but hey, better late than never.

The Knights Tail story has me thinking its time to get started again. All the rigs are half done. More than likely I will redo the rigs into the TSM2 with some of Roberts add ons. Here is a picture of the team and the only thing missing is Lilly, the damsel in distress.

One more for the day. Archie or Andre, was rigged with TSM. A little more flexibility especially for the bow and arrow.

I found the rendering of Timothy walking. Here is Timothy the Goblin

I wish everyone a Fine New Year and I look forward to seeing you all in 2025!

this as about a 30 minute tinkering frosty.prj

I'm sorry for the delay getting this posted. My work has been out of control. We have a list of systems that need to be replace and very time when think we get ahead. Another systems needs to be replaced. Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit SDK: v19.5 SDK Change Log: Fixed 0007278: Files above 2 GB not correct read Fixed 0007277: ImageIO HDR fails on some supportet files Fixed 0007276: Crash , when obj Files with decals importet Fixed 0007275: RenderServer crashes without notice on this project Fixed 0007267: Feature: node cloner for materials New entrie in the menu for materials "Clone Material" creates a new material with the same attributes New entries in the menu for material attributes "Clone Attribute" creates a new attribute with the same settings "Copy Attribute" copies the settings from this attribute (including childs) into a buffer "Paste Attribute" paste the settings wich are copied before into the now selected attribute the last 2 actions working also between different materials and different projects Fixed 0007272: Dragging Pose causes crash Fixed 0007271: Deleteing unwanted Hair Guides leads to crash Fixed 0007264: Duplicator Wizard causes crash Fixed 0007274: In v19.5c, cannot render an EXR file without a crash Fixed 0007268: Crash during Radiosity render Fixed 0007273: on Path in Chor causes crash

I was lathing a shape and thought I could easily turn it into a giraffe's head... A few hours later this dragon thingy appeared: The motion blur... a bit thick no? I thought I'd be lazy and make the eyelids be patch images that turn on/off. That was probably more work than it should have been if I would have just made actual eyelids. It kinda worked though. Had fun with a few things that won't be particularly apparent such as having the color of the horns change so that the lightest/grayest horn is always in the back (presumably aiding in giving a sense of depth). This guy technically has no mouth although he does have a jaw bone. He really needs a mouth. I was going for flat shaded and almost got what I was after. I need to explore that more and get that approach into muscle memory. He needs a body no? I thought about faking the reason for not having one by adding ripples of blue to indicate water. Added: Definitely needs eyebrows! It was a fun 3D exploration that reminds me that when doodling especially... there is always something more to tweak!

Some video of The Frog doing one of his songs... And some "Lady Birds"...

The "Pinot Vista Tasting Lounge" where outr band has been playing every Wednesday (for 3 years) is giving us our own "Label". Yamhil County, Oregon, has become a tourist destination due to the fact that it is now "Wine Country" Now people can take home a souvenir. A bottle of "Twisted Knickers Private Reserve" Pinor Noir. Here, have a bottle. . .