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Thanks for all the comments guys, yeahh I like the topic of food and drink for an image contest great subject for still life. Finally uploaded my short to YouTube, after many months of hard work, I give you a whopping 1:4 minutes of distraction.

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

Hi Guys, About 4 months ago I started working on a short animation (keeping up with the Mid Term Goals in my profile 😄 ) I'm getting close to posting the final video, so I might as well get the ball rolling. Will be posting some Time-Lapse videos here in the comings weeks as well. Cheers.

Thanks to RobCat for cajolling me out of hibernation. He is such a tireless hero of A:M! I sort of 'dropped-out' during covid... life got weird, as it does. After 35 years in TV graphics (started in film production as there was no computers...) and found A:M around 1997 after seeing a Greg Rostami demo at Siggraph in LA. Had a LOT of fun and always felt like AM was just a toy to be played with. I used it for many years professionally, and after covid and health setbacks I took a break from the business and just did other things and never really went back. I'd like to get back into 'playing' again now. I am inspired by the entries for the 'finish the...' cvontest. GREAT WORKS! I am poking around the forum, lots of memories, great people! Its been 5 years... I'm BACK!

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.

At long last... the results of the "Finish the Unfinished" Image Contest! See all the entries, hear the winners interviewed and, yes... The Big Scratch-Off! Congratulations to the medalists and a BIG THANKS to everyone who entered! Get yourself a soda, fire up the big screen and... FINISH THE UNFINISHED! There was more than one winner in the Big Scratch-Off... you'll have to watch it to know who you are! Send me a PM on the forum and I will arrange to PayPal you your winnings! @Shelton @johnl3d @Goss @Roger @ChuckGram @R Reynolds @Vance G @wedgeeguy @Michael Brennan @svetlik @createo @Madfox @Rodney @Tom

Well done guys, great work.

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,

here is one I just uploaded to reddit/r/retrocgi I made barney with this idea in my head. sometimes you just got to get an idea out

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!

I've been messing about with a 'watchfolder' script (in python) that monitors a directory and when it finds a new sequence of PNG images it converts the sequence to MP4 video and moves the PNG sequence to a datetime stamped directory inside a 'processed' directory. There are a number of things that are still rough about the program. Firstly, the majority of people will not install python, set it up, run python programs etc. right? Correct. So, I compiled it into an executable .exe file. That seems to work pretty well. The python script has a watchfolder.ini file where users can quickly adjust settings. If no .ini file is found default locations and values are used. [settings] watch_dir = F:/watch_folder ffmpeg_path = ffmpeg framerate = 24 timeout = 5 video_basename = video max_runtime_minutes = 30 reset_timeout_on_video = true Here we can see: - The script uses a specific directory/folder so that's where the PNG sequence would need to be rendered to - The script uses FFMPEG for the conversion and the path here suggests it is in the users environmental settings. Perhaps better to specifically state where the FFMPEG executable files are located. For example: C:/ffmpeg/bin - Framerate can be changed to allow more (or less) frames to be generated. - The timeout is in seconds and suggests how long the utility waits to see if another frame is being generated. If frames are expected to take longer than 5 seconds to render this value should be increased. - The base name of the output video can be changed here (it's just named video by default and new videos get incremented with a number each time a new video is created (video1.mp4, video2.mp4, etc.) - Max runtime (if set) limits how long the watchfolder program will monitor the folder. - The timer for the max runtime can be set to refresh each time a new video is created so a new 30 minute timer starts. Set to false if a reset of the timer is not desired. The actual python script: import os import time import shutil import keyboard import subprocess import re from datetime import datetime import configparser # === DEFAULT CONFIG === DEFAULTS = { "watch_dir": "F:/watch_folder", "ffmpeg_path": "ffmpeg", "framerate": "24", "timeout": "5", "video_basename": "video", "max_runtime_minutes": "0", "reset_timeout_on_video": "false" } INI_FILE = "watchfolder.ini" def load_config(): config = configparser.ConfigParser() if not os.path.exists(INI_FILE): config["settings"] = DEFAULTS with open(INI_FILE, "w") as f: config.write(f) print(f"[i] Created default {INI_FILE}") else: config.read(INI_FILE) for key, val in DEFAULTS.items(): if key not in config["settings"]: config["settings"][key] = val return config["settings"] def get_png_files(watch_dir): return sorted([f for f in os.listdir(watch_dir) if f.lower().endswith('.png')]) def get_next_video_filename(watch_dir, basename): count = 1 while True: candidate = f"{basename}_{count:04d}.mp4" if not os.path.exists(os.path.join(watch_dir, candidate)): return candidate count += 1 def guess_pattern(filename): match = re.search(r"([^.]+)\.(\d+)\.png$", filename) if match: prefix, digits = match.groups() return f"{prefix}.%0{len(digits)}d.png" return None def convert_sequence_to_mp4(watch_dir, first_file, ffmpeg_path, framerate, video_basename): pattern = guess_pattern(first_file) if not pattern: print(f"[!] Could not determine pattern from {first_file}") return output_name = get_next_video_filename(watch_dir, video_basename) output_path = os.path.join(watch_dir, output_name) print(f"[+] Converting to MP4: {output_name}") try: subprocess.run([ ffmpeg_path, "-y", "-framerate", str(framerate), "-i", pattern, "-c:v", "libx264", "-pix_fmt", "yuv420p", output_path ], cwd=watch_dir, check=True) print(f"[✓] Video saved as: {output_name}") except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e: print(f"[!] FFmpeg failed: {e}") def move_sequence_to_archive(watch_dir, png_files): now = datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S") archive_dir = os.path.join(watch_dir, "processed", now) os.makedirs(archive_dir, exist_ok=True) for f in png_files: shutil.move(os.path.join(watch_dir, f), os.path.join(archive_dir, f)) print(f"[→] Moved PNGs to: {archive_dir}") def monitor(settings): watch_dir = settings["watch_dir"] ffmpeg_path = settings["ffmpeg_path"] framerate = int(settings.get("framerate", 24)) timeout = int(settings.get("timeout", 5)) video_basename = settings["video_basename"] max_runtime = int(settings.get("max_runtime_minutes", "0").strip()) * 60 reset_on_video = settings.get("reset_timeout_on_video", "false").lower() == "true" print(f"👁️ Monitoring folder: {watch_dir}") print(f"[i] FFmpeg: {ffmpeg_path}, timeout: {timeout}s, framerate: {framerate}fps") if max_runtime > 0: print(f"[i] Will auto-exit after {max_runtime // 60} minutes (unless reset)") start_time = time.time() previous_files = set(get_png_files(watch_dir)) last_change_time = time.time() while True: # Check for Escape key press if keyboard.is_pressed("esc"): print("[✋] Escape key pressed. Exiting.") break time.sleep(1) # Auto-exit if timer exceeded if max_runtime > 0 and (time.time() - start_time > max_runtime): print("[!] Max runtime reached. Exiting.") break current_files = set(get_png_files(watch_dir)) if current_files != previous_files: previous_files = current_files last_change_time = time.time() continue if current_files and (time.time() - last_change_time > timeout): png_files = sorted(current_files) print(f"[⏳] Sequence complete: {len(png_files)} files") convert_sequence_to_mp4(watch_dir, png_files[0], ffmpeg_path, framerate, video_basename) move_sequence_to_archive(watch_dir, png_files) previous_files = set() last_change_time = time.time() if reset_on_video: print("[i] Timer reset after video creation.") start_time = time.time() print("[✓] Monitoring stopped.") if __name__ == "__main__": try: settings = load_config() monitor(settings) except KeyboardInterrupt: print("\n[✓] Monitoring stopped by user.") My take is that this option for a hotwatch directory and execution of ffmpeg script would be best added to Animation:Master itself but if there is interest we can pursue this and more. This script only converts PNG sequences to MP4 video but all manner of video formats is possible and even gif animation. The utility currently does not have an interface/GUI but that would be a next step that allows the user to adjust settings in the interface and even opt for different outputs. Here's the sequence I was testing with: video_0017.mp4

Congratulations everyone! Excellent work.

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.)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the places I used to frequent most on the Hash website, besides the gallery sections was the "A:M Users" area. They did a great job making it feel like a community of 3D artists. In 1999, I connected with Paul Sterling through A:M Users after seeing he was based in Oakville where I was living at the time. We chatted via email and when we decided to meet for coffee realized we lived literally five minutes away each other! We were both graduates of the Illustration program at Sheridan College and like many college grads continued to live in the city. Paul was working on pitching an animated series based on a script his friend had written and asked if I was interested in helping out. It was called "Guardian Force" unfortunately it never got off the ground partly because Paul started a web design company with his roommate, where I ended up working for the next few years. With the help of the Wayback Machine, I was able to look back to when Paul and I had our websites linked to the A:M Users pages.

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!

Ok, here we go! This is my amateur recreation of ReelFX Murray seen in the Barney show around y2k. I worked on top of the KeeKat bones and fur for inspiration as the same artist (William Young?) may have worked on Murray. All the splines are my own hand (using a Kensington Expert Mouse) and the plug is now a ps/2 mouse port instead of the generic magic one from the show. A:M forum users may use this model any way they like. Just credit me, Yopachi. I'm most active on youtube.com/yopachi I should have a video about it in the near future. Murray the Web-Surfing Mouse 2025 Re Master by Yopachi.zip

Absolutely! Barney hate was at a fever pitch by the late 90s. You could find him in mods or fan-games or easter eggs, like in Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport 1996

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*

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

Hi Everyone! I am enjoying the entries and interviews in Robs fantastic 'Finish the' production! Great work! Cant wait to see who wins... is it too late to enter?

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...

Space Walk Time

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

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

Here is a collection of 22 of the 26 "A moment With Walter Lantz" segments... 0:00 Show 1: Origin of Woody Woodpecker 3:58 Show 2: Drawing Woody with Proportions 8:16 Show 3: Woody's First Appearance 10:52 Show 4: Animal Characters 12:07 Show 5: Drawing with Basic Shapes 16:50 Show 6: Where Do The Stories Come From? 20:00 Show 7: Character Model Sheets 22:15 Show 8: Animating with Emotions and Movement 24:22 Show 9: The Evolution of Woody 26:52 Show 10: The Director's Job 30:56 Show 11: Timing Cartoons with a Metronome 35:05 Show 12: More on Character Movement 37:42 Show 13: How Animation is Filmed 42:17 Show 14: The Animator's Job 46:03 Show 15: Creating Backgrounds for Cartoons 50:07 Show 16: Recording and Timing Voices 52:41 Show 17: The Inking Department 54:28 Show 18: The Painting Department 57:03 Show 20: Further Tips on Drawing 1:01:52 Show 22: Sound Effects in Cartoons 1:05:56 Show 24: Storyboarding a Cartoon 1:10:03 Show 26: Creating New Characters

SOLVED! "adblockplus" extension was blocking it. Anyways here are my Barney splines. Been getting more comfortable with creating toons from scratch. I tried rigging him to the knights bones because Barney was about 6 feet tall. My characters knees always IK outwards when squatting. Not sure how to fix that. barney the dino by yopachi.zip I've been watching some old hash reels and it looks like hash was used on the barney show to animate a "web-surfing mouse" named Murray. Maybe someone should try recreating Murray next. Maybe 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.

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

this as about a 30 minute tinkering frosty.prj

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

newworldexplode3d.mov mp4 version: newworldexplode3d.mp4 redid the animation and slowed is down a little need some comments of what you like or what you think needs tweaking or any questions you may have be glad to answer PRJ: newworldexplode3.zip