Rodney

I believe he is busy writing his memoirs: http://holmesbryant.blogspot.com/ I hear that is what people do after they animate movies.

Here's someone that shares his big day with Holmes. Ed keeps busy in the world of professional animators but he always likes to remember the good ol' days. Here's what he was up to back in those days: sFDTfuXutdc Happy Birthday Ed, keep on keeping on! Ah the days of early collaboration in the A:M Community... (before I arrived) 1tIyEDyeo84 The classic: Ed was the Director I believe there is a higher quality version on A:M Films and on the Hash Inc FTP. I believe Ed was last seen working on Bioshock and Elder Scrolls Online.

Looking good!

Good grief. Sorry to hear that! I wish there had been something we could do to help you through the rough spots. Glad to hear things are looking up for you again. Perhaps John Hubickey or some other folks have some copies of your work they can get back to you so you don't have to start from scratch all over again. I know that a few of your models were on the Extra DVD... the project you shared after winning that Sci Fi contest for instance! You have no idea how much we've missed YOU Rich! Sorry I don't have any contacts with MAAM. John H and Vern fell off the grid almost at the same time you did. Don should be fairly easy to track down.

Nice render! Does that mean you the next step is to go back in and finesse with Photoshop or something similar?

Yes, indeed. Holmes has been MIA for far too long. He must be out making movies without us. Hope this finds you having a great day. Happy Birthday!

I'd say the #1 reason people struggle for long lengths of time on projects is that their projects take a long length of time to complete. There are several things that increase production time and you've chosen a project that has many of these (here are a few): - Animated humans - Realistic humans - Detailed environments - Realistic environments - Scale Spaceships (w/ interiors and exteriors) - Realistically textured props, vehicles, spaceships - Special Effects - Realistic effects Note that I've added a second lineitem for each when the goal is realism. Realism more than anything is tough going unless/until the specific cheats are in place. For instance, faking a high level of detail with textures can save a lot of time in modeling detail. Ultimately, getting things done requires experience (i.e. trial and error) and that takes time and effort in the creation of each and every scene. Given the task you've set for yourself I don't think a six year ramp up to it is a bad thing. Most projects of that sort take two to four years with hundreds of people. And that is working full time with lots of overtime and often the farming out to other artists/animators/effects houses many scenes. I can only answer for myself here but I realized the stories I had were more ideas than stories and as such were stories that weren't fleshed out enough to be worth telling. After getting involved in the forum I found myself having more fun and as much satisfaction in helping others realize their ideas. It's not a high priority for me but I may revisit a few of my own characters and stories some day. I'd be interested to see where you are in your production schedule. Added: A key to success is to only spend that time which is needed on any particular thing. If you can hint at something with a black blob of blurry bumps use that instead of the real thing. Think in terms of a producer/director who has a limited amount of time to work on such things. Remember that a task will expand to fill the time allotted to it so don't allot too much time to it. Keep your deadlines close and personal, be professional, don't procrastinate, don't be too much of a perfectionist (i.e. we too easily fall in love with one frame of animation)... get ready to move on to the next thing. Act like you are spending someone else's time and money and they are running out of time with no more money in the bank.

Congrats Dan! I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got coming our way.

Bob hasn't been around the forum in a long time but... his presence is felt every time we use A:M. We miss you Bob. Stop with the extra curricular activities (running all over the world and robot fighting) and drop in to get us all caught up with what's been going on with you. Hope you have the happiest of birthdays! Rock on.

There is a good reason for the animation... it let's you know the renderer is still working even if the rest of the bells and whistles (frame render data) appears to be stalled. I can assure you they listen. Of course, that doesn't guarantee a change will occur. As Robert mentioned... there are usually higher priorities. One thing I can guarantee though... v11's rendering animation won't change. That you can count on. Put in a feature request and you just might see the option to turn it off in v18.

That's done it! What's next? Armor? Weapons?

Looking good Will! I believe the classic approach would be to add a second decal (the first driving the hair color) to fake smaller hairs on the surface of the skin. (If you are using a decal to drive hair direction then you'd be adding a third decal) I can't recall if it was one of the Anzovin videos or a Tech Talk but someone did demo the technique via a video tutorial. My memory says it was Raf Anzovin who conducted the tutorial. He used straight hair from a top view to create the skin's decal. I recall the video because he then added a few purple hairs to break up the contrast of the other hairs. Adding that decal would also darken the base of the hair/skin which would help with the shadow transition.

At a guess for this last one, you should just have to toggle/turn decals back on via the 'Show Decals' option (Shortcut key: Control D)

You'll sometimes hear the term 'unibody' used with meshes that are continuous or contiguous. You'll also hear the term 'water tight' used to suggest meshes that have no open gaps in their geometry. (If you were to pour water into it, it wouldn't leak) The primary time you'll want to close everything off and seal it up water tight would be when using a Boolean Cutter to simulate carving areas away from a mesh. If areas are left open the software/hardware has to interpret what that area is suppose to look like onscreen and lacking that information it can guess wrong. Closing the mesh ensures that only one interpretation can be made regarding that mesh. This also helps with identifying which side of a surface is pointing outward/inward/whatever (something aided by a construct called 'Normals' which are the pointers that tell the software (and if turned on, also us) how to interpret the orientation of a particular surface of a mesh). A general rule of thumb would be to connect everything which MUST be connected. All other connections are arbitrary and optional (personal preference). As for when not to connect/attach meshes... modeling without connecting everything can certainly speed up the process! Just put everything in place, texture accordingly and render. If the results meet your expectations then you've saved a lot of time and can use that time elsewhere. Expanding on this concept further you can use this to create very complex models with very little effort. For instance: - Dragging and dropping multiple models into a Choreography and then exporting the results as a new model. - Dropping two instances of the same model (say a face) into a Chor and scaling/flipping the second in the opposite direction to get an idea of how the final model will appear. To save time/effort, try this with a vehicle or any object that has mirrored symmetry before Copy/Flip/Attaching. In most cases we are working with unattached meshes that may or may not be connected in the final model. So... the short answer to the question "When attach meshes"? After you've created everything that doesn't need to be attached, attach those areas that need to be attached.

Okay.... this is cool: [vimeo]54967505[/vimeo] More on how the sculpts are put together: [vimeo]55336193[/vimeo]

Happy Birthday Mike! Post more of that classic police character you created! I miss seeing him.

You've certainly hit on a key element there. Experience is exactly what is needed and yet it takes time in the trial and error stage to accumulate that experience. That's why sayings like PIXAR's 'Make mistakes faster' seem to resonate so deeply. It's important to try and try often and to take risks when they are appropriate to take. That is one thing we want to encourage here in this forum. Folks have purchased A:M... they want to create their characters, stories, effects with it... the should do exactly that! The best way to do that is to jump in and make lots of mistakes. Those mistakes will translate to the learning that comes from experience. It's only detrimental if we keep making the same mistakes over and over again while expecting some other outcome than what we've repeatedly experienced.

I like! Does he dance?

The goal in animation certainly would/should be to get it right the first time. CG does allow directors/producers/what have you to tweak in ways that with hand drawn and stop motion animation would not be even remotely economical. Therein may lie the primary popularity of CG among producers. They can tinker at almost any stage with the plan. More than anything though, the difference (in time) seems to be made up for in the planning stage. If you only have one go at it to get it right, the tendency is to spend a lot more time in the planning stage, then execute that plan with minimal deviation from that plan. This is no doubt why few people tend to spend adequate time planning when animating with CG. They think they can adjust it/tweak it/fix it on the go and so skim over those important elements of planning. In most cases this leads to considerably more work and rework. (RE: The old adage, 'those who fail to plan, plan to fail'.) What is rather telling is the fact that those most successful in any effort are those who plan their projects carefully and then execute that plan. This is what is so successful about people that graduate from Cal Arts and other places known for producing Directors; they teach people how to establish and then follow production plans (i.e. they know the process of directing the execution of a plan). Then if something goes wrong in execution/production, they can look back and learn from the flaws in that plan. More ideally, before production even begins they can spot the errors, omissions and out-of-budget expenses in that plan and (attempt to) correct them.

It's great to have you back with us Scott.

Here's a closer view of Dan's image from his previous post. The transparency gets converted to black in the creation of the thumbnail image. I haven't changed anything... just linked to his original posted image.

I'm always good for feedback. What do you want feedback on? (Where did we leave off?)

I believe the classic solution to the problem would be to have the camera move slightly to enhance the perceived perspective. For instance, if the camera started slightly higher and then tracked downward while advancing (zooming) in slightly... following the character... that might give us enough change in perspective for us to 'see' those objects that are otherwise hidden. For one thing it would easily allow us to see the effect of the shadow on the hedge row. This is an interesting/related view of the age old illusion/issue that plagues filmmaking best demonstrated via a spinning wheel with evenly spaced support columns or a fenceline where each of the slats of the fence look exactly the same. Where there is no perceived change there is no perceived depth or motion. Another solution would be to exchange the hedge for a series of rectangular shaped bushes.

If that is indeed a wall then you might want to change the color of it or distinguish it in some other way from the grass/ground. As it is it creates the illusion of his shadow being projected into the distance (I'd say several hundred meters) to the base of the trees. Something that adds to this is the parallel lines/tangent of the top of the wall and the base of the trees. The only real depth cue is the guy's shadow and it reads as if the entire background is on a horizontal plane approximately one foot away. Of course that is where the wall is but... there is nothing to keep us from percieving the depth above that receded back to the mountains. I know there are mountains and trees represented but due to lack of depth cues it could be paintings of mountains and trees. If you decide to keep all the parallels you could gain a lot simply by darkening everything above the wall and lightening everything on this side of the shadowed character. As it is by itself it does not appear that there is any wall next to the character... just grass receding into the distance with an odd shadow falling into the distance as well. I haven't had time to analyze your new standing up animation but at a glance it looks much more smooth of a transition. My thought is that once she commits to turning her head should continue (and look toward where she is going... or the area of interest) while her body continues standing and turning. This is an age old animation principle of the head leading the turn. If we could see her eyes (i.e. if it was a close-up) we would see her eyes lead the turn before her head. This provides an element of anticipation as well.

I won't attempt to troubleshoot your DOF issue... I'm not familiar enough with DOF usage to hazard a guess. I will suggest a quick workaround... compositing. Render the shot twice, once with current DOF and once without. Composite both images together with a gradient transparency controlling the non-DOF layer. This will give you maximum control over the effect. For even greater control you could layer several levels of the same images with varying transparencies for each. The same treatment should work for fog too. On to others more suitably DOF'd to assist you. Edit: At a guess, I'd say you need to render with the Alpha Channel set to on.