Rodney

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.

You know... immediately after seeing that sequence I thought you'd pulled a fast one like that but it was so quick and clean that that I didn't even want to go back to look and find out. To me that was a slick movie... like in magic... where you are vastly interested in the process but don't realy want to know because it'll lessen the joy of it. I was trying to figure out how you could get away without showing legs in the 'exposure' but you probably did about the best that can be done. I guess what you said about the bed (and leg room) really sunk in. Nicely done Mark.

Well, don't give up yet. You've still got 15 days to go!

The obvious answer is yes, but the real question is how to get from here to there. My primary thought would be to further reduce variation. There are two areas of concern with regard to a render: - What the renderer performs. - What the user sets. A problem to consider is that all renders are not created equal. An optimized render for one case might not be optimized globally for all cases. The use case model suggests that optimization be made for the most likely case first with consideration for other likely cases. Those cases that are less likely or not likely in any case would be set aside, bypassed or jettisoned. Disclaimer: I am not a programmer either.

Very nice. I had missed this when originally posted so glad you post those updates in your main topic (Thanks!) When I grow up I want to model like this.

Looking good! Love the style.

OOoo.... I like that. Nitpick: I wish the brush looked just a little more brush-like but I can see how difficult that is with the text overlaid. (I assume the pivot in the middle of the image is an artifact from the screencap and isn't suppose to be there) Nicely done!