Rodney

Many happy returns of the day! Keep on tinkerin'! (I remembered the gray hair this time)

Um... why exactly would that be unpopular or deleted Matt? Rhetorical question. Press on. Press on.

Can you clarify what we are seeing here? (or if preferable I just can read about it in A:M Reports)

For those that might have wondered what legendary Disney animator Glen Keane has been up to since departing Disney, a theatrical release of the immersive application was revealed at Google I/O. Glen was challenged to create a follow up to the very popular and innovative 360 immersive entertainment 'Windy Day' and the result was 'Duet'. The part on 'Duet' to include some technological behind the scenes work as well as the short itself is at the end of this youtube video. Other releases of just the short itself are beginning to appear. As the 'rendering engine' Glen animated at 60 frames per second in order to create the animation for the application. cV8JDSO1NS8#t=54m18s Note: These should start with and play only the short film 'Duet'. If not I apologize as the timecode is fighting me. To view some other related videos: cV8JDSO1NS8#t=38m13s Note: All of the video is well worth watching but the 'Duet' focus isn't until the end of the video. I'll try to insert the proper timecode to start the video at the optimum location. The final/playable application is to be released in the fall. At the 50 minute mark Glen Keane is introduced and draws a character from the film and explains a little of his approach to animation. What is rather amazing about the whole production is that it took a year to create.

Robert may be on to something there with Mirror Bones. Definitely turn that off. Since you are just now starting out with A:M I'll recommend working through the Manual (TaoA:M). Also: If you ever get A:M's interface into a configuration it shouldn't be in you can select Reset from the Help menu. After reset reset A:M. Also, I'm not sure where you are getting the stock character from but you might save that to another place and reopen it from there.

Are you wanting to look through the camera? The image you posted doesn't show anything out of the ordinary other than that you are in a birds eye (i.e. user defined) view.

Yes, using the Project Workspace is highly recommended. There are settings listed there you won't see anywhere else.

Is 'Rear Window' at a place where it can be passed to a final state of production?

Only yours but yours was about to flip over to zero anyway. Er... actually, I do not know. But attacking this logically... The good news is that as long as all the posts from the forum transfer over to the new server everyone's count should remain the same (i.e. accurately reflect the number of posts). The bad news being that the good news is contingent on all of the posts transferring over.

I could be wrong but I didn't see this excellent Back to the Basic 'Pose to Pose' tutorial listed above: http://www.hash.com/two/RCHolmen/PoseToPoseH.mov

Still? If it doesn't look like it does now we can make it look that way, assuming we want such a thing. As for me, I won't know what needs to be tweaked until after the server change is made.

Outstanding.

Project management for multimedia production has been a growing area of interest for many years so it comes as no surprise that Shotgun is positioned in an important niche. I've watched Shotgun since it's initial press release and made note of their quality and the potential to go far. The news was just released that project management software company Shotgun is 'joining' Autodesk. I take this to mean the company is being purchased. This is good news in that it should help bring project management for video production to the fore for many more projects. The cautionary note being that it becomes all the more likely that Shotgun will be at least as proprietary as before and likely more so. In the announcement Shotgun head Don Parker outlines how they set out to find an investor to grow their business but in courting Autodesk discovered a mutually advantageous acquisition instead. This move should embolden other project management companies to move forward to fill gaps created and the move should open the way for more service oriented open source programs to press more deeply into the realm of video production. Of note however, none currently operate as smoothly or as thoroughly as Shotgun. From the last part of the official announcement:

A nice feather in your cap of projects. They were fortunate to have you aboard for the production. The alien was lit well enough that I thought at times it looked like a real world puppet.

There may be a market for a new form of 'wireless'. Translation: That is a lot of wires!

I had forgotten that I put together a terrain test for Papa Bear's fishing hole and just ran across some of the renderings from that test. I can't find the file at present but am sure I have it around here yet. The terrain was actually a test to see how rapidly I could create an outside set starting from top view (plan view) in a Chor while working simultaneously in the Modeling window. I thought that worked quite well. The attache .mov file is actually a representation of all the modes that can be used with the Merge Post Effect via Composite. And of course the settings can be animated (but we can't always see what we've set... not in the Timeline that is... we have to look for the changes in the actual setting. Perhaps I'm still missing something there). I recall being a bit discouraged that I couldn't get the Mix Post Effect to animate so was playing with Merge instead. The rounded rectangles were yet another test where I had placed square patches into a model, dropped that into a Chor and used high glow and low radius to round the corners (Hey, what can I say, it worked). I hesitate to post this here because it might be difficult to tell how it relates to Papa Bear but will post it anyway by way of encouragement to keep pressing on toward the day when your short will be in the can. Added a second image (a quick test of flat shading if I'm not mistaken) merge.mov

Yes! Most folks would not be able to create models like you do even with Bias adjustment! (of course this does make me wonder what awesomeness you'd create *with* bias adjustment)

Note that this (Jason's recovery) may push the judging of the Sci Fi contest back a few days but the deadline of 6 July still remains the same. So... get those Sci Fi entries in early if you can.

Yes, any of the old pre-subscription CD's have to be in the drive to start A:M. After that the CD can be removed. Edit: Just to be clear so there is no confusion for those looking in to this topic, the company that provided the CD security/keying went out of business circa v12 so the CD hasn't been available since then.

Of course that was 14 years ago. Gaming has changed a lot since then. I took a quick glance at your converter. Anyone that can code like that impresses me. (your python code is well organized... you obviously aren't a newbie) I'd love to get to that point of programming but my skills (and general capacity for learning such) are nil. We need to get you connected with some of the folks who have programmed plugins for A:M. That'll certainly get you headed in the right direction.

A converter for Doom would be quite something. It hasn't been since back in 2000 or so since A:M and Doom were in the spotlight together. Here's a snippet from back in 2000 from artist/animator Joe Cosman who modeled/animated for Doom/Duke Nukem and similar games etc. back in the day: Apologies for the length of the above quote. I find it a bit ironic that those in that other forum Joe posted to way back then complained about the length of his post. Could they possibly not have realized they were asking the Joe Cosman of Avalanche fame and suggesting he limit the information he was sharing with them? When someone like Joe shares his insight into game development there really is only one thing to do... let him talk. I hope this hasn't strayed too far off topic but considering your goal is to capture animation and put it into games I thought it might be at least a little bit on topic.

I like Ferdinand's presentation of this very important principle of animation. FcuGgJu8Y6M One of the things I like about the tutorials over at Animator Island is how they (or more specifically Ferdinand Englander) tend to layer in a lot of concepts that are often treated separately. His is a great example of 'learning by teaching' in that Ferdinand gets better and better at animation with every interview he conducts and every tutorial he publishes. More power to him. If you don't frequent Animator Island often it's well worth a visit from time to time: http://www.animatorisland.com/

It looks like you responded prior to my last post. You said: Depending on where you are in A:M you do have some options to export motion/animation data. I haven't used many of these so I can't comment much on how well they work in other applications. Chors/Chor Actions can be exported to: Pi Motion (Camera data?) Python Script (This is mainly for setup I believe... not animation) MDD (movement of geometry)

I might have misunderstood your question. If you want to export to a custom format you might want to investigate the Software Development Kit (SDK). With it you can write custom plugins to import/export to any format.

Someone that is more familiar with gaming should chime in here but in the interim... There are plugins for a variety of formats used in gaming and other formats can be achieved through dedicated converters from one of the primary formats. Standard wizards/plugins for conversion include: .LWO .3DS .OBJ .X Note that in an Action or Choreography an entire sequence of models can be exported. The formats most often used for gaming (that I am aware of) are .X and .OBJ. Of course the ideal format to export to will depend on the gaming engine you target. Check out the Game Development forum area for more specific information. Here's a screen cap of the primary export formats: