Rodney

I enjoyed 3D Painter while I was using it. After moving to my current laptop I didn't contact Filip to reactivate because I thought I might prefer to reactivate it on a new desktop. In assisting Lloyd with 'Woke Up Dead' it would be a good idea for me to reactivate it again. I'm all about purchasing anew if Filip puts out a new version! What I was working out just before getting disconnected with 3D Painter before was a workflow that allowed me to paint displacement maps in 3D Painter (as regular painted layers not displacement) and see the displaced results almost immediately in A:M. Sadly, that was probably two years ago.

I like the sound of that. I hope you'll keep your presence in those other locations. Those will be necessary to keep folks navigating to your new site. Keep good notes on the process. I expect there will be others who will want a similar treatment for their stories and characters. To hear the sound of new ideas rattling around, I take it you are almost done with the "Wobbling Dead"?

Being able to paint directly onto models in layers (and use the PSD format) is no small thing. I'm not suggesting Mari isn't worth the price. I'm quite sure it is.

A W E S O M E ! (Coolest banner image image I've seen in quite awhile. Excellent use of space and perspective.) That tome would certainly be a testament to your creativity.

And rather unfortunately for us starts at $1995.

Interesting. It seems to me that the primary user variable would be one of scale. The user would know and opt for the desired increase in the fidelity/scale which would take longer to compute out to greater decimals. In other words, the (fast) default might be .3 but the user could crank that up to .333333... (or whatever percentage desired) to obtain greater subdivision/resolution of detail.

Hear! Hear! Congratulations!

Nice. Another scene with a viewmaster feel to it. From initial idea to storytelling animation in two days... that's an impressive workflow you've got going there.

Nice refinements Paul! Looking good.

You should be able to edit all of your posts but posting a new collection in a new post should work too. Jason has indicated that storage isn't an issue and IMO this goes double/triple for the special topics. There is a reason they are special topics after all.

Wow. What a difference AO makes! Nicely done.

Very nice John!

Kat, I think it's great that you are embracing compositing in your workflow. That will be tremendously useful in the long run. Is there someplace we can find more imagery and scenes from earlier in your production? In going back through your topic I see that most of the movies and images you posted are missing. I hope the missing files aren't something I did on my end. If nothing else from time to time I use what imagery I can find to update your banner.

Looking very good! How much more feedback are you looking for? Are you striving to go all the way to a perfect likeness here or just good enough to call your own? At this point my main suggestion is a minor one which would be to extend the belly's color all the way up to the neck. If you want to add a tuft of hair I refer you to Keekat's chest splinage for an ideal approach. In the classic 'Be Largento' tradition it would be appropriate for me to recommend adjusting the splineage so that the belly follows the spline path (and vice versa if you prefer). This is one of the primary benefits to patched based modeling over polygonal approaches because these patch regions/groups greatly aid us later should we want to add/perfect decals/textures/fur etc. Approaching the various shapes of the character without adding any decals at the initial modeling stage really seals the deal on optimization of spline continuity as well and having the characters primary shapes defined by the patches themselves will also help to make the character much easier to animate. One of the secrets to animation is changing shapes from frame to frame so it will really help to define... to absolutely know... what those shapes are. If looking to push ol' Humphrey even closer to perfection I refer you to my last draw over (and post) which suggests tapering the fingers and toes. Oh, and what the heck... a darker/blacker nose. The nose should echo the color of the eyebrows to create a triangle of interest that draws attention to the face where the character's expressions are. Rock on Paul!

(Didn't see Robert's post... I'm sure he's provided a proper solution) Attached is my attempt to reconcile your trouble. Replaced my model with a project file that has a new model in it. I've added Robert's model (locked) beside mine as a general reference. It appears we were following the same approach. My greater concern at this point would be how the Makerbot/STL conversion deals with internal and 5 point patches. hingeV2_11d.prj

The primary problem I see is that the center object has parts that are only one patch thick. The secondary problem is that parts of the object aren't closed. It's easy enough to close the ends but we'd need to know what your target is in order to finish the piece. Are the two rectangles off to the side suppose to be part of (attached to) the hinge?

Added my 2 cents... Of course you should! I suppose the underlying question is, "Do you have a story you are itching to tell?"

Well, I'm not talking about being unrealistic. Unrealistic is being an artist in the first place. There is a big difference between being artistic and being commercial. The first will always tend toward exploitation by the second. Why? Because money is involved in the equation and people will want the product without acceding the proper credit or compensation. So what to do about it? Be timely and be bold but be realistic in your expectations. Expect to be exploited because you will be exploited if successful. But again... and you aren't required to believe this... you define what success is.

You are on a roll here! I wish I had your talent in the modeling department. Keep it up Dan!

Nice! Folks like to give the old HB cartoons a hard time but they are great stuff IMO. And the lessons of limited animation are highly applicable to computer animation. I wish the classic HB shows were playing today instead of some of the craziness they've been showing. Aside: Seeing Huckleberry here reminds me of Martin's story about taking his software to HB and pitching its use to them. I am confident they'd still be in business today if they would have taken him up on his offer.

Don't shut up until after you've added your report to A:M Reports! That would defeat the whole point of your request.

I must assume there is some reason that the default interpolation cannot currently be set. I'm not sure why that would be but one might be that folks might leave the interpolation set to something other than spline and then think A:M was broke or something. Another might be that spline interpolation is considered more prevalent? Superior? Yes, I'm guessing. I believe the feature request might be best written as making the interpolation method 'sticky'. In other words, what ever the interpolation was set at would remain until specifically set to something else. In this way when you close down A:M it would store the current interpolation as the default interpolation. This of course would have the same chance of confusing those of us that would surely forget what interpolation we had set. In either case the fault (or credit) would be entirely ours because we'd be the ones that set it. If made sticky then it would logically follow that wherever that sticky setting was stored it could be altered/set as a global variable.

An article recently posted by Mark Kennedy on his blog addresses this issue. He writes it as, "Create the thing you want to exist in the world." http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2013/05/cr...t-in-world.html You can spend a lot of time trying to fulfill someone else's needs but that focus is generally misplaced. As Robert said, "No one knows anything." But even given this deficit YOU know what satisfies your need to be creative. Your creativity should prove sufficient. *I love the word 'prove' in the old world sense of the term. It means 'made reliable, trusted, tried and true, to fully test'. It's mostly a matter of routine maintenance and that of daily testing and retesting. When David went to face Goliath he set aside the King's armor because it hadn't yet been proven; that is to say it could not be trusted because it hadn't yet been tested. Creativity is like this. Folks will always doubt your approach, ability and resolve and most of the feedback you'll get will suggest the endeavor is not worth the effort. What they fail to understand is that in the realm of creativity, you are the one who defines success.

RE: Robert's post on setting the default interpolation of the Timeline This is one of the reasons that discussions like this need to be had. Quite often a feature exists but how to access the feature is not well enough known. When questions are asked and answered, wishes can come true *poof!* just like that. A:M has so many features that it is easy to lose track of them. As such, I had forgotten where to make that default interpolation adjustment myself. And like Tore preferring to have keys automatically set to Hold... I also prefer that.

Thanks. Working on this roto has reminded me how much I miss drawing. I've got the time to do that now but now that I do I don't ever seem to draw. Isn't life funny like that.