Rodney

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.

I note that there is an interesting phenomenon going on that some have actually struggled against but that can be used to nice effect for glow/transparency. Note that in the second image above how the glow is greater in the area where no ground plane is. This suggests that if we want to increase the glow in certain parts of our model while decreasing it in other areas we simply need to place (or remove) some geometry directly behind the model. As this could be useful later on... note to self... note to self... note to self.

Failed attempt with an ultra simple model... Things that I thought worked: - Using a checker material to try to get the color variation. - Modeling only one half of the brain and then duplicating the other half in the Chor (scale the second instance of the half brain -100% to get the other side of the brain) - Flipping the material in the second model to achieve the reverse effect of color Things that don't work so well: - Doesn't capture electric feel - Surface Roughness doesn't achieve brain folds effectively. - Need more transparency throughout* - No glow* *Note that in these last two cases they can be achieved by adjusting the surface properties. Added a render with glow and transparency tweaked. Note that for the material I just started adding random nodes/colors. I didn't make any attempt to be accurate. As such some nodes could be deleted with minimal effect over all. ColorfulBrain_Failed_Attempt.prj

Looking good Paul! The primary area that seems to stand out as 'off model' is the origin of the shoulders/arms which in your model is really low and in most of the imagery/references appears to begin just below the head. Some minor simplification of splines might help in making him more squashable and stretchable which is something I'm confident you'll be wanting. The other option might be to lower the head down to the shoulders. In drawing the rotoscope I had to make a compromise in the angle of the arms going out to the side in that they curved downward more than they remained horizontal (as in your model). I'm tempted to suggest that wherever you have a shape you might strive a bit more for a curved line. By this I mean to say that your model appears to have real bones and anatomy whereas Humphrey's construction only hints at that underlying structure in a minimal style. The example of this might be seen in your model's knees which in most reference aren't nobby knees but two parts connected together in a classic Disney/Warner Bros line. Can you post a render or two from the front and side views? That will help with the analysis. He's definitely a bear right now... and a good looking one... now he just needs to be pushed a little bit more toward the likeness of Humphrey. I'd say the eyes (mischievious), shoulders (hunched) and knees (streamlined) are the primary character identification areas to focus on. Added: I've attached a crude drawing that attempts to raise the shoulders and simplify the mid section. By raising the shoulders/arms you could then remove some of the midsection to achieve easier squash/stretch in animation. I would also make the toes more pointed. In some instances it's almost like he couldn't bare his own weight whereas with your model's wider toes he'd have no problem there. You might be able to achieve that tapering effect simply by scaling the toes down smaller toward the ends. There should be some of that tapering/sharpness in the fingers as well. There aren't too many places on Humphrey that are sharp so you'll want to place some emphasis there. It's a bit hard to see detail in the face of your model and that is a clue in and of itself that suggests you might want to further exaggerate the whites of the eyes and add those largishly dark and expressive eyebrows.

These renderings just keep getting better and better.

Thanks for posting that Robert. I've been itching to purchase a new computer (a desktop) for quite awhile now. If I could find the right setup I might spend some money.

Sure is. He's a busy man these days so go easy on him. He goes by Yoda64 (presumably to distinquish himself from the other 63 yodas that are considerably less active than he is). http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showuser=218 Added: What you've got going sounds like a very cool project.

Keep in mind that the current trend is to move away from UV mapping entirely (at least in the standard sense of that term). It is interesting to note that while the world in general is moving away from classic UV mapping, some A:M Users are trying to move toward them. It's a fairly awkward situation and my gut feel is that a more perfect solution/workflow should be explored that is more spline/patch-centric. For where Disney/Pixar is trying to push the industry reference: http://ptex.us/overview.html

Tore, It's great to see you here again. I expect you want to talk about the items on your list (and that is a good idea because some things might already exist or have effective work arounds/approaches already but ultimately keep in mind that in order to make any wish list a reality you'll want to add those line items into A:M Reports as feature requests. You never know when one of your requests may sync perfectly with something Steffen already has planned to bring to reality. Keep in mind that when posting 'wish lists' to the forum you are not requesting new features so much as saying, " I really want to talk about/explore my thoughts on this". The reason there are not 'wish list' topics is that wish lists are to be filed in A:M Reports so that they can be better understood, considered and prioritized. Those reports help define the future of A:M.

That was fun. It's good to see an animation contest running in the forum again.

Stefan, If you can get in contact with Steffen Gross, he's got the current (or most current) Software Development Kit (SDK). There should be some good info on how to interface with Actions files there.

So very goooood! Love it. Good grief man. If you can do that on your first attempt there is only one thing to do. Model more!

I'm arriving late to the party as well. Hope it was a happy one Lloyd and Jason!