Rodney

You know... I don't think I've ever used a Pivot Like Constraint. I'll have to try that out!

A classic approach to that would be to constrain all the objects you want to rotate to a Null and then rotate the Null in front of the stationary camera. The camera then doesn't have to move/rotate around. If going for the camera moving around the scene/object/person you might lathe a cylinder and then use the top or bottom ring created from that as the camera's path. Then constrain the Camera to Aim At the guy or the Null you want in camera.

Two possibilbities come to mind: 1) Flip the normal so that the outer side of the patch's surface is pointing toward the inside (of the room) and not outside the ship. 2) Single thickness patches can let light shine through. (I use to have a good rationale for why they do but even with the note I wrote to myself in my Tech Ref I couldn't recall why anymore) I'm going to guess that 2 is the more likely... 1 is the easy to check though. P.S. I love the stippling effect you have in that image. Very cool.

No crit from me. Don't jump dude. She ain't worth it! Regarding your previous sequence (clouds blowing... snow falling seq) If it is rain that is suppose to be falling that probably should be more like streaks. If it is snow... then you've got a nice effect. I felt the cool breeze from it. I like the stylistic choices you are making. Very unique.

That's good to know. FWIW, I'm still skeptical. I can think of lots of things I wish that banner could be; a little smaller and less obtrusive... easier on the bandwidth. It also needs to hold up well in the A:M Community window (currently it falls flat on its face there). I'd enlist Fuchur's support but he might think I'm a hopeless cause already. The primary reason for the banner's existence isn't to create a menu (although I do find that an interesting feature) but rather to highlight all the cool images made with Animation:Master; still the premiere software for creating sequential and non-sequential computer images. I was getting a little tired of seeing text everywhere in the forum with only the occasional hint of imagery. Despite the amount of creativity in the forum, Folks dropping by had to dig through all the text in order to see that imagery. Back in the days of low bandwidth a higher text to image ratio might have been ideal but nowadays... It's nice to know that it works well for some. I'd like to see it work even better. But I'm also not trying to create a monster that needs to be fed constantly. Rather interestingly, when I look at the banner as it is right now, it does take me back to when I first discovered A:M. I was captivated by that imagery. Still am.

You must forgive me here as I knew someone would want to see Stian's animation larger. But I was also curious to see if anyone ever clicked on those banner images. Apparently it does happen. I should have searched out Stian's topic and bumped it up for everyone to see bigger, badder and better. Aside: When hovering over the image it should tell you where you will go if you click on the image. The general rule of thumb for the banner is that each images will take you to something directly related to that image. The current exceptions to this rule are mostly found at the top forum level (main forum). Not that it currently exists this way but... a Tranformer animation in the main forum might take you to the Rigging and Constraints forum and a Tranformers animation in the Rigging and Constraints forum might take you to the topic where that Tranformer is rigged step by step by step. The banner in each forum is therefore (and more increasingly) 'forum-centric'. For instance, 80 percent of any banner's images in the Materials forum will be related to Materials while the remaining 20 percent should take you to other (hopefully related) areas of interest. Texturing tutorials for instance... As time goes on the banners should get more and more accurately represented and they should also appear more accurately in all browsers as well. I'm aware that we still have along ways to go before we get to the end goal here. The Goal: Animation:Master is first and foremost for computer animation. Anytime a banner's images are updated they will point to areas of relevance at that specific forum level. The other day I noted another CG forum had gained a similar filmstrip banner but it didn't have the awesome animation.

It sure does sound to me like you are wanting to use Alpha Channel transparency. If the original image is being rendered out of A:M then that transparency will be easy to make. If the image exists already (as in a photo or preexisting texture) you will have to use a key color or mask to make that color/area transparent. As Robert suggests, seeing a little of what you are aiming to remove will tell the tale. If you can share a few screen captures or project files we can build you a custom tutorial to fit your need.

Here's a very similar one to that: p5q64mCNMk0

Stian has a whole channel of cool stuff on youtube! http://www.youtube.com/user/agepbiz/feed Here's his transformer in action: 6rMVJ_sS3lI

Happy Birthday Robert! (I owe you a birthday drawing!) Another year another couple thousand innovations. You are an inspiration to us all.

Love your site Bobby (Tawan)! Very cool tutorials.

Nice Pirate Sabino!

I'll emphasize that Mark has added tutorials to the incentives... that might get missed in the reading... and those will be useful across the board. The models are awesome and if I wasn't already a supporter I would be now. Those 'Making of' tutorials though... those should have a broad appeal even outside the A:M Community. Good luck Mark... I want me some tutorials! Great looking models.

Welcome back. I'm glad to see you are back on this project again. I just had the last bit of my things in storage shipped to me and all the comic books that I've had for out of reach for over six years arrived two days ago. In opening boxes one of the comic books that stood out was... you guessed it... ROM Spaceknight. I had fun reading through the issue and remembering the character's adventures all over again. I recall the ROM comic book having one important effect on me (outside of the story itself) and that was a new appreciation for the artist Sal Buscema. Over the years I had developed something of a dislike for his style (in comparison to my favorite artists) and it was his artwork on ROM... and The Incredible Hulk... that converted me into a fan of his work. He had a simple and direct approach to his lines that communicated clearly and it wasn't long before I began to prefer his artwork on those two titles more than other artists when they attempted to draw the characters. Things like this are what drew me to Animation:Master in the first place. When it came to drawing, the idea of redrawing entire city scapes... not to mention cars, trees and props of all kinds... I realized computer graphics was the future for illustrating these. Of course, the downside of CG vs hand drawn is that with hand drawn you can often get away with having only the barest of lines represent a thing whereas with a 3D model you have to often meticulously detail the thing. In both cases the solution is more often than not a matter of knowing what detail can be ommitted or 'faked' because it won't be seen are easily scrutinized by the viewer/reader. In the case of displaying a world it might be sufficient to have a backdrop but to add in some elements that pull some detail out to make it appear 'real'. Of course how 'real' the audience perceives something is going to largely depend on the level of abstraction you set up for them in the first place. If everything in your scenes looks hyper-real then elements that aren't the same will stand out and break the thru the audiences' suspension of disbelief. Of course, in portraying a world, we are usually trying to establish a setting that tells the audience in what context to view a particular scene and what mood we should be feeling. If we can achieve this with minimal detail then we are just that much closer to achieving what Sal Buscema did himself all those years ago in establishing a world that wasn't 'real' but still was entirely believable. Recreating an entire city is no small task. The best results I've seen usually combine a lot of methodologies to trick the eye into seeing what needs to be seen.

Well, it is a little harder to support artists you've never heard of before. I suppose that is why groups/guilds/societies are chartered... to promote each other and get their names into further out into circulation. There is an age old 'problem' in that many artists just want to go off into isolation and create their art. There is an almost required tendency toward 'leave me alone... I'm creating art." I suppose this may be why many talented folks aren't discovered until after the death of the artist.

This may be a little off topic... my apologies for that but I know you are a comic book guy. We'd all like to think opportunity is there and things can only get better but... you see things like this all of the time: On his blog Jerry Ordway discusses his difficulty in getting work after 30 years in the comic book industry: http://ordstersrandomthoughts.blogspot.com...over-fifty.html It is interesting to note that Jerry backs off a bit in his subsequent post. This is not surprising as #1 he's a positive guy and #2 he'd like to work for DC again. What he gets around to saying in his follow up is certainly reasonable, basically; "Support the artists you like." http://ordstersrandomthoughts.blogspot.com...rikes-back.html Added: I see our own Will Sutton was over there commenting.

More messing with color... this being a quick doodle based on Latimer's response to meeting Death: "I always pictured you as being different." I know that Death and Latimer aren't in proper scale but... hey... that is what came out of my finger. Perhaps we need a little more LatimerBlues and DeathBlacks in there. Edit: Made a slight adjustment of colors and then generated a sphere based on the base colors in the scene.

Here's an example of that last colorscript driving the underlying mood/lighting in a scene (actually... the whole movie condensed into a few seconds):

I believe that is one of those places where you hold the SHIFT key down to get to the dialogue box. Try that while initiating the bake.

Here's a quick update to effect some changes. Particularly: Enhanced EdgarBrown near the beginning. Adjusted CleoRed in several places. Added LatimerBlue at the end.

I was developing an idea for quickly manipulating color scripts and am posting this mainly to remind myself of that... I kind of messed up the colorscript by adding a bunch of colors to see how they fit as I was finishing up. The idea is pretty basic: - Assign a color to each character. - Create color strip with gradient for each character. - Place on timeline where character is active. - Duplicate each strip as appropriate to place at other significant events. - Move as necessary to optimum location in time/space. - Save the colorscript. The attached image is not to scale in time (i.e. not in sync with the script) but the general colors are there. On the left the story begins and at the right it ends. There is definitely some LatimerBlue missing just after the climax toward the right end.

Looks like you are having fun with this. She's needs some change in her face and that one would be a keeper!

I like that John. I imagine that would make a nice starter for a Flash speed running effect.

There is a definite plus to having several creations to show. I can easily imagine you at a convention with three DVDs for sale which would broaden the appeal and give people something to support. As a for instance, I'm not big on pirates (I generally prefer cowboys and indians) and I'm more into Star Wars (say it isn't so!) and zombies are about as far from my interest as witches and vampires (which is to say... almost zero) but if I had all three in front of me and had the cash to spend at least I have a choice. It's an interesting paradox... when I was starting out I lacked the tools... information... opportunity. But the door was wide open. All I really had to do was step through it. Now everyone has the access to the tools... information... opportunity. But now the doors are mostly closed (or perhaps its that everyone has been let through) It's phase two of the conspiracy against aspiring artists I tell ya!

Well, things are somewhat consistent but keep in mind that the EXR format itself is changing. That alone will create some inconsistencies moving forward. EXR is a forward leaning format and highly customizable (by programmers). For more consistency across the board you might want to use TGA. I hesitate to suggest PNG because it has issues... but in a pinch (mostly for web graphics) I'd consider that too. The general rule: If you are having trouble with image formats... use Targa/TGA as your core image format. Then convert to other formats from there. What Robert said. What throws people here is that in looking at a preview we see Black on a plane of transparency (unfortunately also represented by black). So, the whole image is likely going to look black to you. You have to trust that it is there (relabel it if necessary) and then press on with it's use. If you open the image in A:M or Photoshop you'll see the shadow there and the transparency will allow everything else to be seen through. The Alpha buffer is a grayscale representation that tells a program what is opaque, what is transparent and what is partially see-through.