Rodney

Now there is an award I hope I never win. I think moments like that are required so that we can remember how to laugh when we blinded by pain.

Nice thought! Brian Lemay seems to get a lot of flack from the fringe quarters but as a teacher he has a lot of insight into animation. If we were to adapt and put into practice all of his online exercises (in CG) we could reasonably expect to be much better animators. Sadly, I've never purchased any of his books but they are on my 'must get someday' list. He's got enough stuff online (many are examples from the courses teaches) that could keep an animator animating for years. http://www.brianlemay.com/Pages/animations...ook/squash.html What I like about this particular write up is how the idea of squash is related to a character's walkcycle with an emphasis on overlap and weight.

Yes! Says 'Hallmark' right there on the back cover.

Hi Roger, I'm going to guess you are trying to delete the roto in your Modeling Window? Wherever you are trying to delete it... ignore that for now (but that would be good information for us to have here). Locate the Rotoscope in the Project Workspace (PWS) listing and delete it there by either Right Click or Delete Key. The Active window is usually not the best place to delete things because A:M is trying its best to keep you from accidentally deleting things you've worked hard to create. (It's funny... I woke up this morning thinking that we need to replace all Delete keys (in the world) with Remove keys. Deleting would presumbably only happen after a great deal of hassle and even then only with clear evidence of a proper authority to proceed. The essential idea being that we often want to remove things but that does not mean we want to actually delete them.

Yes... very cool indeed! Awesome effect John!

Awesome. I look forward to it! I don't know if you had the time to rummage through the PDF file but hopefully you saw the comment on the scene with Franky and the teddy bear and its similularities to another project.

It's almost Matt (John Bigboote) Campbell's birthday. He has no idea we are throwing this party for him. Shhh... (It's his birthday already here in Japan)

For some reason your last update on the father makes me think of Gravedigger. That may be because of my first impression of him (see attached image) I ran across these thumbnail sketches yesterday. They are from when you first pitched the story here on the forum (at least I think that's when I drew them). It is an attempt to capture the mood from where Latimer chokes on the cherry... transitioning to the gravesite with Latimer's parents say their farewells... to where Gravedigger greets Latimer but before he sends him on his way. I don't think I doodled anything beyond this but will check. Not a lot of detail here to see. The height of the Gravedigger thumbnail on the left is about 1 to 1 1/2 inch and it was altered little in the cut and paste. I'd say the Gravedigger figure on the right is closer to 1 inch. I post these pitiful scratches mostly to encourage the use of pencil and paper as an effective means of getting all those ideas out of the brain and into reality rapidly. The simpler the sketch the better as that will more likely captures the essence of the idea. At any rate, your work on the revised father reminded me of this thumbnail.

I'm not sure which image is which format* (blind tests are good!) but it seems to me that the one on the right with the blue lighting is considerably superior to the other in almost all areas. It may just be that lighting but it seems to occupy space whereas the other, not so much. I'm generally a fan of JPG but because of it's transparency (and a very small hint of promise in the realm of animated sequences) I've been moving toward PNG. I hope you are sketching these ideas out on paper and taking good notes. That way you can always refer back to them. While I haven't done extensive tests I've noted that that PNG images can be problematic in compositing. PNG seems ideal for posting on the internet and since EXR isn't up to that task I say you'll be using both. My gut tells me that if you want softer images you might just convert all of your images to JPG later. With some of the programs now available that should only take a few minutes for even really large sequences. *The transparency in the window appears to give the format of the image on the right away as PNG. Although why the ground should be transparent while the sky opaque is not entirely clear to me. Edit: Tis odd that in the original image the ground is white but in the thumbnail it's converted to black. That is usually reversed from what I've seen here in the forum. Hmmmm....

You've given us a lot to ponder here. I stared at that element of your critique for awhile and admit that I didn't follow it fully. I caught the important point of it in that you correctly identified the disparity in acceleration throughout. I think you've mostly got it right on the deceleration after contact as well but, as you state, we have to consider what the ball is made of in order to know more. I confess that you've got me thinking about the likelyhood of stored energy being able to accelerate an object. It certainly can happen but I think it would be due to the stored energy in the object the ball is making contact with? I like how you talk about the compression of atoms as that helps to keep the idea of the object maintaining the ball's mass throughout. Some of the energy is transferred to the object the ball hits and the remainder is retained by the ball. In the case where the ball is made of fragile material it can lose part of it's mass but then we'd see those chunks of the ball separating from the ball and dispersing. The whole idea of Energy Transfer is ever present even where there is no obvious effect on the compression/extension of the ball.

Hey John, Back in those days I think the serial number was stamped (in red ink) inside your user manual. I'm not sure where you purchased so not sure if Hash Inc will be able to assist you on this one. Nowdays, Hash Inc maintains a copy of all the web activation codes. v12 was well before the days of webactivation. Did you actually register your copy of A:M with Hash Inc?

Outstanding! That's a really great project you've got there. Excellent use of panorama technology Your setup reminds me of the old classic animation pan shots.

Excellent analysis Robert. Very nice.

With regard to using Latimer as a basis for his parents I think that should work well. Keep in mind that a lot of kids seem to pick up a few traits from each of their parents. So Latimer might have his Dads nose but his Mom's eyes or similar hair color or jaw line. While there is a lot of variation carried through in the genes, in my experience Boys tend to favor their Mother while Girls tend to pick up traits from the Father (call it natures way of keeping things in balance). Hardly universal but I'd say enough to be noticed. There is also the matter of dark eyes and hair being predominant. The Dad might have brown hair while the Mom's hair might be black. This would increase Latimer's chances of having hair black in color. I'm really liking the Mom and Dad. I think you are onto something!

Definitely moving in the right direction Dan. Very good for a first attempt. I would do something different with her eyebrows however. The thickness of the individual hairs overall is working against you, especially in the eyebrows. As you find time, investigate getting the hair to taper off and adding an image to it to further blend it in. I admit that as a community we haven't done particularly well (pun intended) in the area of collecting and sharing particle hair settings. This is not to suggest that a lot of folks haven't shared their settings and the information isn't out there, but rather that we haven't been very effective in collecting the various hair settings as materials and putting them all in one place so that everyone can get up to speed quickly with just a drag and drop of a material. Ah, another thing to add to my To Do list.

He's looking good. It looks to me like you've got a very economical spline layout. Expressive eyes too! It's not clear at this point if you already have it... I think you do... but make allowance for the mouth and jaw to really open wide and move from side to side. You may never need to go to the full extent of those extremes but then you'll have it if you ever need to push the pose to it.

One thing to consider is that of placing a decal on the skin underneath the hair. The classic example of this was demonstrated by the folks at Anzovin who rendered out a top few of a patch with short particle hair and then used the resulting image as a decal to make sure hair showed through fully from every rendering angle. Without a decal (even one that is the same color throughout) the underlying surface of the head can show through the particle hair. Another thing this lets you do is reduce the number of particle hairs you generate. And... at a far distance from the camera... you may even be able to get away when rendering with no particle hair.

Way to transform an obstacle into a strength!

Keep layering in those great ideas Mark. This keeps getting better and better!

I think you may be getting your birthday girls mixed up? Either that or I am. Unfortunately, Caroline doesn't drop in like she use to. She did respond to a birthday message I send to her awhile back and is well and keeping busy. If she shows up... put her to work! I think Kat (our birthday girl!) is too busy telling epic tales of fantasy and adventure to be writing plugins.

Happy Birthday Kat!

Thanks Nancy, I'm pretty sure it's the same file but want to rule out that variable. My test indicates that this file (the one Nancy uploaded for me) is not working in v17 (either 32 or 64bit).

Yes, generally you want to change the setting in the Object for those settings you want to stay the same always and adjust those settings in the Chor to get variations on the original or to animate the property over time. I looked at your Project and did not see anything readily amiss. I did note that you had 'Recieve Shadows' on is the properties of the Ground Grid and I suggest turning that off. One reason is that you might change the setting to Off in the Chor but not realize that you've done it somewhere down the timeline and not on frame zero. I'm not suggesting you've done that... but it's something you might want to avoid.

David! Hope you have the happiest of birthdays!

Double check to make sure your Ground has Shadows and Reflections set properly in the Properties. I believe you'll want to turn 'Recieve Shadows' to Off.