Rodney

I'd love to attend one of Robert McKee's seminars. I consider myself fairly well versed in his approach and it'd be good to see what gaps exist between what he teaches and what I think he teaches. I know I'd learn a lot there. One of the reason I'm so drawn to the theory behind all of this is that it allows me to explore the language and how different people approach the same or similar idea. Not to get off track but the word 'semiotics' brings back a flood of memories to me. When I was in high school I use to draw a lot of mini comics (more covers than actual comics but... bear with me here...) and one day I drew a series of covers with cartoon characters and titled it "Semiotics" and subtitled it " Words and Pictures" (the character on the first cover said, "Woids and Pictures!". What was strange about this is that I really had no earthly clue what the word semiotics meant and yet instinctively I did know what it meant. A good friend of mine who was much smarter than me suggested that I probably meant to use the word 'Symbiotics'. I knew better but surely didn't know anything beyond that, especially how to convince him. I knew I wanted to explore the world of symbology and the words and pictures that communicated ideas and the word and despite not knowing anything about the word or where I had previously encountered it I instinctively knew the word 'Semiotics' fit perfectly whereas other words did not. I later explored some simliar titles that attempted to makes sense of iconic (if not strange) imagery. I believe underneath it all I was exploring a very strange world through a filter (I even called it my "PG-13 filter"). So what does that have to do with story? It can be enlightening, informative and even fun to deconstruct stories. Often the storyteller won't comprehend the depth of a story they are telling. They are too busy just telling it. This is where these five points may come into play. Who is your audience? What character is the audience in the story? In what ways can they connect with it? What is your focus? What do you want to say? Are you actually saying it? What is your motivation? Why do these character exist? What is your/their motivation? What characteristics are essential? What language, symbols and signals will best (and quickly) convey the story? Does the audience connect with th story or does it quickly fade away? At the end of the story do they still connect/care? What are your objectives? How does each character play out their specific role in the story and at what pace do they pursue their own objectives? How do these objectives hinder or progress the story and impact the other characters? Note: I assume the author is in control of the story and not the characters. Because characters are likely to assert their own personalities and effect the story in significant ways these core elements are important to get locked down early. If something important changes we'll be more likely to recognize 'our' story has changed.

Source: Heavily adapted and reordered from SIGGRAPH educational notes: The five key elements of a good story: audience, content, motivation, semiotics and timing. Audience: The goal of a story is to share knowledge (and experience) with the audience. If we are sensitive to an audience we can even use stories to move people from one understanding to another understanding (more often than not without their conscious awareness). Telling a story with no one in the audience is not storytelling. Consider the old adage, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it..." If the event doesn't resonate with an audience it will be of little significance. Content: Content is crucial. All stories must be about something. If the content is a scientific concept, the scientist must build the context, segue into the intended topic, develop support (via the best approach and a sequence that explains or explores the topic), bring everything important together, make the concept interesting or exciting, and relate it to a larger context of (scientific) ideas. Motivation: Motivation is achieved when the storyteller allows (or moves) the audience to relate to the story; where they sense, "this story applies to me/us." Identifying with individual components of a story is the greatest motivation for attending to the story. The great advantage of interactive stories (and games) is that, as the actor, you become a part (participant) of the story and begin to help shape the events and to assist in telling the story. Interactive stories engage unmotivated learners. Semiotics: Regardless of content, consider cultural and cognitive differences in determining the semiotics (signs, symbols and signifiers) that encode the story. Immersive worlds have a unique opportunity to offer multi-vocalities, not only in the text of the story but in the symbols of class and culture – which are the signifiers of the audience. Care should be taken to control the use of indescriminate stereotypes as they often prove offensive, untimely or just plain inaccurate. Timing: The right timing is essential to storytelling and attends to progression (moving from/through/to a beginning, a middle, and an ending) and proper pacing is key to holding (or failing to hold) the audiences' attention. Creative people tend to favor one of these progressive areas. Some are adept at beginning things and can easily establish context or set the stage of an idea, others excel at developing the content and enhancing formulated ideas, while others can bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion; summarizing and finishing the telling of the story. Few people are good at all three parts (and none do all three completely and simultaneously) so small groups/teams are usually formed to further the story. The best storytellers (individually or collectively) understand the importance in the timing/delivery of all three. Discussion? Specific areas of interest?

Well, it may not be much of a consolation but at least the judges let the fans decide who won this time. It appears they were split evenly at the 37 percentile range (37%+37% equally the judges 75% voting weight). Less than one percentage point is worth bragging about. I see that (according to the judges) you exactly matched the competition on Visual Design but got squeezed out in Direction and Originality. It might be worth looking at the other video to see what ight have classify as 'slightly better' in those categories. If not this vote perhaps the results from a previous competition with wider gaps in those areas. The fan mass seems to have won the day this time around and I'll guess the competition had a motivated fan base. The stretch from 5 to 20 percent is quite a few more fans clicking on that voting link. All in all a good showing to result in the 42 to 57 finale. The fan mass seems to have won the day this time around and it looks like the competition had a motivated fan base. The stretch from 5 to 20 percent represents quite a few fans clicking on that voting link. If the judges are split that 15 percentage point spread is gonna be tough to beat. I know you are busy but perhaps you/we can help to get the word out on your next contest and keep putting information out there that reminds folks to vote frequently. Some behind the scenes info to catch people's attention? A (volunteer) publicist or two to get the word out there? Something as simple as still frames taken from the video posted every day and increasing in frequency as final voting looms large might carry the day. If you are going to be in a contest you might as well be in it to win it! Don't be shy about plugging your work here! Regardless, you are doing great things Gene. Keep it up. Congrats on taking this one all the way to the semi-finals! P.S. I do blame your publicists for losing this one. This gem of a video didn't have enough visability. I don't think you should fire anybody but you should have a very serious talk with them.

Hash Inc is going to think you are going into serious business when they see you purchasing all those subs! If you launched your email to Jason@hash.com you should be able to get it resolved quickly.

You can EXPORT to .STL format already in v17. So there should be less reason to use OBJ as an middle man in that process unless you want to edit it in another program. Fuchur seems to be suggesting that we'll soon be able to IMPORT .STL files as well very soon.

Not true! Multiplane is always and ever present in A:M (at a guess I'd say it was incorporated from being a separate module in very early version v3 or before). Folks have suggested that there are aspects of the old Multiplane module that didn't make the transition but I've yet to see anyone describe what those are/were. From what I can tell we can do all the things that could be done in that old module... and a whole lot more. Perhaps you are using a different term so it's important to know what you are targeting. To use classic Disney style Multiplane effects in depth you want to use a standard Choreography with a Camera and then Layers and/or Rotoscopes. Of course you can mix in 3D props and models with those Layers and Rotos too. The most basic demo of Multiplane is this: - Drag and Drop a few images/image sequences into a Chor and select 'Layers' from the Dialogue box that opens. You can also select 'Rotoscope' but note that Rotos are constrained to a 2D plane and therefore cannot be rotated and moved in space. Rotoscopes always face the camera. As such, they are very useful for backgrounds and for overlays/overprints that you want to cover everything else, such as an overlayed interface, buttons, menus etc.) - Move/Rotate/Scale the Layer as necessary. Note: To obtain optimal compositing/multiplane effects every image will need to have some degree of transparency. That is achieved through the use of Alpha Channels that mask areas of an image so that they can be seen through. Not all image formats support the use of Alpha Channels.

This sounds like it could be related to local memory. Make sure you save your Project prior to rendering to lock in any changes you've made. I assume this saving process frees up memory and (probably?) points A:M to the saved information on the drive rather than information stored in memory. General Rule: Saving often reduces variables.

Awesome video Robert! I hope everyone will view that because it's sure to encourage more folks to use A:M Composite! (You should be able to use percentages there but I do have a dim memory of preferring to tweak splines in the channel view rather than typing in the percentage numbers. So rather than view in dopesheet/keyframe view you might try spline/channel view)

You are talking about (at least) two processes here so it'll be best to focus on one until you lock that down. I'd set Composite aside for the moment and concentrate on rendering with your camera and the Tint Post Effect. If you are getting that .MOV sequence from the sequence you captured a frame from then something is off. The color (blue in your case) can't suddenly come back into an image sequence as is showing in your .MOV where that color was not rendered in the first place. Perhaps I'm just reading your post wrong. I do note that in your second screen capture it appears that the image sequence was rendered in negative (with a white background and dark character). Perhaps you didn't open that particular sequence but and instead opened another? (Going against my own advice to refrain from exploring Composite I'll suggest that there is a Tech Talk on using A:M Composite. I haven't viewed it in a very long time and should so that I can compare my experience with what Hash Inc has suggested when starting out. If not rendering to .EXR format I would not use A:M Composite, as I think it defeats the purpose of A:M Composite which is to mine all of the .EXR format's buffered data. We can use other formats but the experience will not be optimal. (Edit: Robert's video demonstrates that A:M Composite is still very useful with other formats) Perhaps we can start a new dedicated topic where we delve the depths of A:M Composite. General References: Compositing Forum Noel Pickering's A:M Composite Tech Talk

Pretty danged cool, Rob. Did you try 'upping' your project FPS to some ridiculous amount, like 400 ? For some reason that made them go faster Well, maybe I'm missing something here but 400FPS is considerably faster than 24FPS. To slow it down to a relative speed in the other direction you'd want to drop to 4FPS (less feet of film/frames traveling past the viewer every second). Edit: Just saw Fuchur's post. Fuchur's recipe will (at least in theory) slow a 50FPS sequence down by 1/2. What makes it somewhat theoretical is the variables that can effect the viewer's 'real' playback speed. In order to know for sure and hit a precise target we'd need to know more about those variables. EDIT: THAT is a very cool effect. Me likey.

Also... (with a slight tangent related to post effects) Don't forget that with Post Effects we don't have to re-render but can use A:M Composite to apply the effect to already rendered images. This will probably work best with image sequence rendered to .EXR format. I have not run any test to determine what differences there may be between post effects applied to a camera and those used in a composite. It seems to me that the ones applied to the camera could be more effective/versatile if they cross over the threshold into the rendering calcuations (i.e. are they/how are they effected by multipass operations?). Note that this would be very similar to applying a previously rendered image sequence to a camera as a Rotoscope that has the Post Effect applied. I have it in my mind that this 're-rendering' (for lack of a better term) would take longer via the Camera than via A:M Composite's 'Save As Animation' processing. I have not tested this out however so it is -mostly- speculation. As I am making good progress on my housing situation perhaps this is something I can test/demonstrate/document later this week. If nothing else to satisfy my own curiosity. Let us know what the results are from your testing Simon!

Thanks for that update on Audacity Jim and Robert. I thought Audacity had this cancelling capability but didn't explore the recent releases far enough to know. I did note the karaoke option as it seemed it could be shoehorned for use with animation or in authoring tutorials (my first thought was to use it as a teleprompter). We should also note that there are programs out there that specifically designed for extracting vocal elements. They range in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars for a give suite of tools. An example is Sony's recent release of SpectraLayes Pro that sells for (just short of) $400: Here's a short write up on their extraction methodology: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/spectr...audioextraction

Thanks for the confirmation. I'm not sure about the 64bit Mac thing. Due to contraints imposed on programmers there are bound to be things with A:M that are not 64bit optimal. Perhaps that may be why 64bit displays as 'no' on the Mac. I thought everything was now 64bit on the Mac. There are so many variables that may be entirely Mac specific that as a PC user I'll not speculate further than that.

I see what you are saying here and can see two basic approaches. It seems that the software's (perfected) approach would eliminate the middle steps to where no inversion and cancellation is needed. I suppose the holy grail that folks would pay money for would yield the ideal process: Isolate Voice from Music. Use Voice or Music. Most music production these days has all the various elements separated from the very beginning. These elements are then combined or redistro'd (as necessary) at the end of the process. Here I'm mostly thinking of right/left stereo channels and such but I sense this also provides a foundational support for the argument that layering and compositing be built into any system/production from the very start of a process and that data be maintained/secured throughout the product life cycle. Of course there can be considerably less incentive for a producer to share all of this with a consumer who might go on to alter the product. I'm straying from John's topic so I'll stop that line of thinking but am just noting for myself that it is best to start from a pure source and it won't help us much if we don't have access to that source. We can get close via recreating/reverse engineering but that will always have a margin of error built in with associated costs. I'm not sure of any freeware program that will effectively isolate voice from music automatically. The closest I've come is with Audacity, manually editing elements out. The approach I took was to go in and isolate the elements I wanted and (quickly!) deleting those I did not. It was a very tedious process. I recall once a very long time ago going through a video tutorial and editing out all of the authors 'ums' on the audio track. I also edited the voice track to have him say things that he actually did not say (he'd left out what I thought were a few key words at some stages so I found where he said those words elsewhere in the audio and inserted them where I felt they belonged... I confess that I felt a bit sinister in that process). Looking at the waveforms and starting to see similar patterns helped a lot with that. It would have certainly helped to have modern day software. I never finished that project and even thinking about doing something similar wears me out!

I just tweaked a few settings that might have previously prevented you from uploading to the Open Forum. Forum members that are logged in using their registered login should have no problem uploading attachments to this forum. If members can't upload attachments in any location in the forum some setting or privilege is likely wrong. The primary exception to the rule is in the forum archives that due to the nature of archiving may not allow any posting. I know of no exception where Guests can upload files to the forum. In order to upload files guests will need to use a registered login. Members that don't use their registered login and instead use the captcha guest login for posting to the Open Forum won't be able to upload. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I will appreciate if you can try again and confirm that all is working as it should.

John, Not sure what you mean by 'cannot fine the reverse'.

My first thought was internal patches... they often don't show up as artifacts until the effected surfaces are rendered. Not for the moire pattern but for the displaced effect. I've seen similar moire patterns before but can't recall what the specific issues was... at this point it's probably best for me not to even guess on that one.

For images that I know are going to be uploaded to the web (for forum, blog posting and the like) I usually render to PNG format from A:M. PNG has the benefit of having an alpha channel so it can have a transparency whereas JPG cannot. Nancy has expertly outlined some of the other benefits. If grabbing a screenshot many programs/operating systems automatically default to JPG but the also have an option to save to .PNG. I still prefer TGA for any serious rendering but have been leaning toward Open EXR for some time now. Old habits die hard and I find I have to consciously think about rendering to EXR however. EXR is an incredible format that allows for post processing manipulation (to include relighting an image without rerendering... if the image is rendered out with Light Buffers on). A:M can create image buffers of various types for the TGA format as well but that format cannot store all of the information inside the same image the way that EXR can. EXR has a few downsides, the most important of which is that few (low end/freeware) image viewing/editing programs support it and even fewer can take full advantage of the buffers stored the image. Of course neither TGA or EXR can be viewed in standard browsers so neither format is useful for sharing images online. Once rendered to EXR however, it is very easy to take the images and save/convert them to another format. EXR files are very useful for deep and robust image manipulation and (something few take advantage of) A:M's Compositor was specially designed to leverage EXR images. My movie format of choice is still .MOV but that format is becoming more and more frustrating with each passing day due to Apple lack of continuing support of the format for 64bit applications. It is a very good habit to get into to render to still imagery (such as Open EXR) and then convert the resulting sequence of images to .MOV format for uploading to the forum or general sharing. (Note that the .MOV is currently the only film format the forum will accept). Just keep in mind that you'll have to use the 32 bit version of A:M to convert the files to .MOV because that format will not even appear as an option in 64bit A:M. With things going as they are I can't help but think the .MOV format is going the way of extinction and I don't have a format I personally prefer to it at the moment. There are certainly better formats that yield better quality, compression etc. than .MOV but none are directly supported by A:M. Lately I have been using the AVI format a lot more but only as a bridge between otherwise incompatible programs or those that don't natively speak .MOV. So to summarize, all formats have their benefits but for posting to the forum .PNG and .MOV are ideal formats to work with. PNG is not as fullproof or robust as .TGA and .EXR and therefore it is best to use PNG mostly for images that will be uploaded to the forum and TGA/EXR for images that will be further manipulated and scrutinized in a production. The use of TGA is currenting waning while the use of EXR is increasing. The impressive things you can do with .EXR format makes it very hard to beat. There are far more programs that can convert a TGA image sequence to a movie format than there are for .EXR but if you are converting with A:M you can easily use both, either or neither. Once any sequence of images is created it can easily be converted to .MOV in 32 bit A:M. Utilize external converters (such as Quicktime Pro) to target and convert images sequences to specific formats needed. Added: Due to variables in the amount of data and the compression the .EXR format is generally not the best format for realtime playback. .EXR format is therefore not best for final viewing but rather to gain maximum editing and manipulation capability during production. Upon completion of editing optimized images formats for playback as sequential images and movies should be generated.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two results. I'm pretty sure I labeled them correctly. Yes, there is an obvious difference there! (hopefully these are not extracted from the multipass rendering but are final renderings) FWIW these two images were smashed together and labeled using the freeware program Irfanview (PC only).

I should know the process more exactly but yes it is accumulative. Each render within the multipass process being averaged back in to get anti-aliasing and smoother rendering. While there may be something to what you are saying about one pass being darker than the other I hesitate to say that isn't as it should be. For my part I wouldn't spend a lot of time examining individual passes but rather the end product of those passes. It is that end product that is important and the passes should be expected to vary. How much variation I cannot say. Much of that will depend on your settings and I suppose you could isolate some of those settings but you'd probably want to render out to one pass (or very few passes) in such cases. Otherwise you'll get that cumulative effect. Since the other lights are pointed up and spread out that is likely why they have no shadowing effect on the chair. It is that sun lamp that should be causing shadows to appear from the chair. Since you have that turned off... no shadows. Edit: I don't know what is going on with the TGAs in your posts but you may want to either render out to JPG or PNG or convert the TGAs to those formats for posting. Webbrowsers don't generally display TGA images without plugins. This is true also with BMPs. There are a lot of image conversion utilities out there and you can also convert quickly in A:M via the Save As Animation option in the Project Workspace. Most people (rightfully so) will not take the time to download and convert/view your TGAs. I recommend rendering to PNG for the purpose of online posting.

Hi Simon, I can't really comment on the darkness or the artifacts as it's not clear to me what is going on there. I assume you refer to multipass rendering here. If so then how many passes do you have the renderer set to? Those artifacts are interesting. I didn't see them until I read your text but now I surely do see them. They appear to be a byproduct of the lighting. Regarding the walk I don't think the issue is with the timing there but rather in the spacing. What you've got in the poses appears to approach a tip toeing (almost a sneak) rather than a standard walk with (I think) more of a need for movement/action in the knees. It is as if his concentration is on lifting his feet in order not to make noise on the floor/carpet rather than lifting and walking via his hips and his knees. To my way of thinking no matter how you re-time that you will always see those poses in the final rendering (just sped up or slowed down). What you could do is set up another camera that views him walking from the side and use that view to get the walk you want. Then retime that walk to taste from the main camera view. If you have the time to do it seeing a side view of him walking (from that second camera) should be very revealing. Something else I note is that there doesn't appear to be any shadows as evidenced by the floor underneath the chair. I don't think that has anything to do with the artifacts but with the strong light being emitted it seems those shadows should be there. Perhaps shadows isn't turned on in the renderer?

For some reason Yves Poissant's review of Chris Webster's earlier book on the mechanics of animation comes to mind wherein Yves ends his review with the following words, "I should not have bought this book'. That review is somewhere here in the forum and if anyone is interested I'll track it down for them. I didn't have the same issues with that previous book as Yves did but considering that Yves is a genius his reviews hold serious weight with me. (Fortunately or unfortunately, I had purchased the book prior to reading Yves review of it) I suspect that many of the drawing from this book are in his previous also. Repackaging of previously published information seems to be what many animators writing books are doing these days. Repackage, retitle and extend... repackage, retitle and extend... For what it's worth, if I saw this new book in a bookstore I'd probably buy it. There is an incredible lack of books about (the process of) animation in bookstores today.

I suspect that one of Elm's issue might be with the AO Plugin which is reported to have issues in v16/v17. It's a compiling issue that despite the issues is workable if the right plugin is matched with the correct version of A:M. If so perhaps he didn't get a chance to read that info. This assuming he uses that plugin at all and not his own custom methods which we've seen him sharing with us elsewhere. It doesn't do much good to speculate so we'll have to wait until Elm has the time to clue us in.

Without knowing more about these characters I'd say that does indeed look like it could be an ice man. I like where you are going with the animation. Tell your buddy if he doesn't give you a copy of the script you'll quit. The important thing is to lock things down to the greatest extent possible. It is hard enough to complete a project already even when you can see the plan. For every change to the plan/script I'll suggest that the powers that be add one additional production day to the schedule. 'Failing to plan is planning to fail' or so they say. Every change is critical and that will be especially true with the deadline looming large in November... only a few short weeks away. I have the ultimate confidence in you (but I confess that I really don't know your friend). Let us know how we can help. Perhaps most important of all, have fun with it!

How can anyone go wrong with Ninjas? Congrats on taking the leap into animated film production. I am excited for you and look forward to seeing your progress on the film. I know it is far to early to crit but based on your first image I'll postulate a question/consideration. Please note that there is no right/wrong answer here. Shouldn't the ninja be more of the iconic black or at least darker color that is normally associated with ninjas at least at the beginning of the film? With all that snow it might help with the instant recognition, silhouetting and constrast against the (lighter) background. This seems to be the case because I didn't not immediately know that the character in the image posted was a ninja. It was only upon reading your text that it became clear. Disclaimer: I have never actually met a ninja so I do not know what colors they prefer to wear.