Rodney

I think you just need a vacation Will. That and seeing a little creative progress will go a long way to getting you back on track. I'm not sure what good I'd be to you in a production environment but I'd be more than willing to sign on. Sleep on it. You can have the best of both worlds and eat more than ramen!

Well, the general idea is that it's not a one time thing. (Perhaps that is why people balk at paying for software... they think only in terms of immediate usage... hmmm.... thanks for that thought!). After converting 5427 SWFs to MOVs in a short amount of time that investment in SWF conversion should (theoretically) pay off. We might just have converted 5427 lousy looking shots. Garbage in. Garbage out. The investment of $99 in a SWF to MOV converter is not a trivial matter and I don't mean to imply that it is. IF YOU REALLY NEED IT, then it is investing in yourself. If you buy something but never use it you are just spending money. It's silly to suggest this but perhaps you know people who seem to always be wasting money? The rule is pretty simple. Don't buy want you don't need or don't want. Consider well how people tend to put off such things (investing in themselves). This is not just about purchased products... it's about freeware as well. What we get out of any product mostly depends on what we've put into that product. The bottom line: We have to be as committed after the buy in as we were when we still only just wanted to buy in or we won't be able to realize and maximize the return on our investment in that product. If we know what is going in, we can project what will come out.

When you get all of these done you should consider merging them all together into the final shot. Fading in and out of each one will let you dial in just the right intensity and let you choose the style that you want. If you can provide three (small) movies with each of these shots I should be able to put something together to show you the process. You can do this yourself in A:M's Compositor using four or five Mix post effects to blend all the shots.

Okay simon... wow... you've got a lot going on there! Let me get some words back from you and that'll help me figure out where to focus. Here is where I might focus if I were doing the work. 1. The most important part is the end... the big payoff. There are some pretty substantial areas for improvement here that are very similar to your earlier short. The off balance fall is not playing right and doesn't flow in the full scheme of things. We've just seen Fred do all kinds of jumping and dancing around and then... no payoff at the end. There is no motivating factor that suggests Fred would lose his balance and fall except if he knows the video is coming to an end so he falls because you animated him doing that. (Not good enough I say) Here is a mild suggestion but it's only my exploration of what might happen... not a suggestion per se: When he gets to his last cue and the music begins he might recognize the odd music... pause a beat.... shrug... and anticipate deeply as he begins to start playing again... as he overexaggerates his motion to the beat he then starts to lose balance in three stages... leg up... leg UP.... leg too FAR UP! Now he is off balance and can start to react as he is falling. 2. Progression/Transitions. While you can do this in post it's important to think about it now. The key to a good transition is to cut mid shot. Because you are starting with a new riff every few seconds this is a little more of a challenge but I believe it mostly means that you need to concentrate your transitional progresses on the fading out. This should be done via audio but I am more concerned with images here. Think a completely black image. Now think of a white dot somewhere in that blackness. That white dot is your focus and it needs to be on Fred. Everything else fades to black. If you are familar with the term Vignette... that's similar to what I am talking about. (This effect can be achieved in A:M but in many other programs as well). As far as Progression goes you also want to think in terms of opposites and increments. Think for instance; cold and hot. What is your hottest part of the sequence (It probably should not be the final payoff... because it's a gag you are building up... building up... building up... and then go in the opposite direction). Out of all of the different pieces of music each has it's intensity and that intensity grows (in some form or fashion) with each shot. Usually you want that change to be unnoticed during the build up so that's why it's incremental. You start this in a way with the intro... everything is dark. But do this with your main section too... and then go intense and let it fade off in the third part. If this doesn't make sense... I can throw more words at it. Edit: I just remembered an important tool of progression you can use for each of the music shots. For your consideration: As each new piece of music begins start zooming in slightly with the camera (you can do this after all of your images are rendered... you don't have to rerender them again!). If more appropriate you can pan, tilt or shake the camera to capture the specific music you are on. Then as each new piece of music begins... BAP! You are back out and progressing back with the camera into the shot. The general rule: When thinking of progression in your scene where appropriate don't forget to progress the camera. Otherwise there will be less life in the sequence over all. 3. I smashed #3 in with two so I'll add this: Minor quibble: I don't think the mop/broom standing up is going to cut it without something keeping it up there. Possible Suggestion: Have Fred hold it as he decends but then push it upward as he goes down (this is an important element of animation... a secret... so don't tell anyone... as you animate one thing going one way, animate another going the opposite way. Shhhh... our secret). Now an important part of this mop going back up is that it doesn't get all the way back up. And when it runs out of energy it starts to fall down to the floor where it accentuates the end with your trademark bounce (seen in your last episode). You've got the essence there now you need to work on the presentation and payoff. What you've got now is looking good. Keep it up!

The answer is 'yes'. (What Fuchur said) The real questions: Do all assets need to be showing in camera at all times (Rhetorical question.. the answer is 'no, they do not' mostly because they will not all be seen in the camera at the same time. That's the beauty of matte images stage sets.) Does the scene require radiosity or realistic rendering? How will you approach the animation of the scene? How detailed is each frame of the scene? If you are just wanting to build a model in A:M so that you can move around in it? (Be the master of your own kingdom with no desire to render anything?) So, the answer is yes, A:M is more than capable. The speed through which you can model and animate a scene will largely depend on your computer and especially it's amount of RAM. How strong is your computer? Added: I recommend building your city first with proxy models (basic shapes, cubes and rectangles). Then as you add detail change the links to the more detailed models. In this way you can easily turn on/off select parts of your city as you don't need them and even change the level of detail.

I'd say you've ran into the filesize limit for uploading. Lose about 1.5MB and you should be good to go. (Hash Inc is awesome aren't they. Most of the other forums I attend don't even allow files to be uploaded... at least not without moderator approval which almost never happens.)

In the olden days people actually got paid to write software programs. In 'time is money' measuring it's not unreasonable to expect that people to spend $200-$500 on average searching for a given solution when they could have just paid the $99 and got the solution they needed. This tends to be the difference between the Pro and hobbyist groups too (although certainly not always). The Pros know that any delay incurred can severely effect their pay while the hobbyist can usually put off til tomorrow what should have been done today.

No, it was you. I was just trying to come up with a good way to share an analysis of animation online and I started with notepad etc. Then I though... 'Google Docs'! So, you were the inspiration for it. (I wish Google Docs spreadsheets could do what Excel can because then we'd be dangerous!) Now, regarding the Chicago thing... THAT I mixed up. I was responding to Mr. Gwinklema's 'Silhouette' topic at the same time that I was responding to you and had typed in the note about moving to Chicago. At the last minute I removed it thinking... nobody cares if you want to move to Chigago stoopid. Then I pasted it into your topic by mistake. Ooops. Sorry 'bout that! But yeah... Gwinkleman... Chicago... Silhouettes... plant creature thingy... here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=41107

Yes indeed, as Robert pointed out we can export sequential Obj files (We use to be able to do the same with PLY and .MDL formats too but now I'm not too sure). I never had a particular use for the feature but I used it back in the v11/v12 timeframe a lot just because I thought it was really cool. I was using it for Onionskinning but with models. (As with most exports avoid 5 pointers wherever possible)

I'm not going to mess any further with success if you are happy with that one. You've told your story and told it well and it sounds as if you are ready to move on. With your ability to make detailed changes like the ones you have in such a short period of time you've obviously got a good workflow going for you. What can I say except that I look forward to seeing the next show. Keep up the great work! P.S. I want to thank you for giving me the idea of using Google Docs as an xsheet. That definitely has potential. P.P.S. If you have any recommendations regarding moving to the Chicago area... I'm considering moving back there. P.P.P.S. Harpy Blues Ear!

Very nice! Your image based lighting (and models) rock! Happy New Year!

Couldn't sleep so... I thought I'd make you a sign. (Don't look at the splines or you'll be disappointed. I decided to model the fonts and everything the hard way.) I was going to put your grandson's name on the sign but... I don't know how to spell G R A N D S O N. HandySign.mdl

Looking very good John! You are going to have to start your on cartoon show one of these days. I'd watch it!

Looking very good! There is no mistaking where he is and what he's doing with the mop an bucket there. Nice background and lighting too! That floor actually looks like it would be hard. Ouch. Having broken my leg slipping on ice... I can feel this guy's pain. If I was to change only one thing it would be where Fred's foot slips. This would probably be easier to draw than to relate in words but... here goes... On or about Frame 597 when Fred lifts his right leg that is an indicator that his weight has been shifted to his other (left) leg. If he is slipping and that right leg is not the one that is slipping then the left one should slip forward (which is more work... but might be fixable in about three frames). I think you can get away with not having the left leg slip forward by changing about three frames and having Fred's right leg go forward before going up to kick the bucket. I think you already know what I mean but if you need me to I'll draw on a few frames I can do that. The only other thing that caught my eye was that the strip of moulding running horizontally and the bucket are at the same height and that creates a nasty tangent. Picky picky I know but... since we are here. You've got a lot of really nice touches in this version. I'm impressed!

From what I can tell... Gif animations under a certain size will be set to play automatically in the post as animation. Those larger than the threshold get a JPG preview image posted to enable clicking on to launch the animation. As near as I can tell the size is hardcoded into IPB but I'll check to see if it's a setting that can be increased. I believe the main reason for this is that some browsers don't handle large gifs well so they slow the loading of the page itself. There is a workaround to this (and to displaying PNGs directly with transparency) and that is to post the image twice (once as an upload and then once as an image linked from that upload). You'll have to hack the end of the URL off of the filename (_thumb) and then change the extension from .jpg to .gif. Clear as mud? Edit: I moved the animated gif link to your post so you can edit your post to see the link there. Congratulations on your job! That is seriously impressive! (Side Note: With STS we can spline a high rez model in the Modeling window and spline over that as well. Just Lock the geometry you want to use as a template.)

Hi Simon! I got a little distracted in viewing your animation (but hopefully that's a good thing!) A few important things from my perspective: 1. You are animating to beats and that is going to make you a better animator 2. The attempt to analyze your animation has made me a better animator 3. Your concept is a great one and well worth exploring and perfecting. A few things I recall off of the top of my head: - There needs to be some music (the beating) before and after the guy begins to play his harmonica - Because the end occurs after the guy has stopped playing the harmonica it might be ideal to play three beats that fade out (as if the band might be wondering if they should keep playing) - There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for the guy to lift his foot higher and then step down on the bucket so I assume there may be something else going on here. Perhaps he slips and then knocks over the bucket but his action going into that does not convey that he has slipped in that way. (Here I will simply stress the importance of the contact frame especially given that this is the contact that triggers the major action in the scene) - Adding a hint of a background will help to convey that the mop is not defying gravity (I assume it is leaning against the wall, lockers or some other thing but it's not good to have the audience assume anything unless you have first directed them to it. Unless of course, "What just happened?" is what you are really going for in the scene. - The bucket and mop could use a little more shaping/detail to convey their identity at an immediate glance. At first I wasn't entirely sure it was a bucket and mop the guy was interacting with. All I percieved was that these two shapes were the objects that the guy was tripping on. As the symbols for 'mop' and 'bucket' are pretty universal, refining those just a little will quickly convey their primary function within the scene. Summary: I don't know what all you did to plan this sequence but whatever it was is working! You have got some great action and activity going and with a little focused refinement it'll be a performance to remember. Additional Analysis Tools: xsheet (basic)

Nice study! It evokes a sense of mystery and heightens our anticipation. Very nice.

Thanks everyone! You folks make having birthdays worth having.

Very nice John. You're grandson should really get a kick out of these.

Jim Talbot's Four Part 'Decaling a Face' video tutorial is about as classic as you can get. http://amfilms.hash.com/video/145/Decaling...ace-part-1-of-4 There are others but that is always a great starting place. If I recall correctly there are some things that Jim doesn't demo because they were fairly unknown at the time he made his tutiorials. Note: Jim launches the first video with Flattening in a Pose.

I haven't had a chance to read Fuchur's reply but I wanted to post my initial thought after looking at the textures applied to a basic cylinder. At first I couldn't really see the problem... then I rotated the images... and saw what you are seeing. I was mostly experimenting with patch images and not decals because it seemed that the wood color and the wood normal images are not properly tiled. I'm not sure how you created those images so perhaps you can shed a little more light on that aspect. They seem to be better tiled in one direction than the other. One way to check for good tiling in A:M is to increase the Repeat values in a patch image or decal. I like to apply the image to a single patch and then make the patch image or decal 2x2. There are a lot of utilities that can create a good tile image but in a pinch you can create a fourpatch model and rotate the patches/flip the normals until they become tiled. Once I tiled the images I did see some slight patters throughout but I no longer saw the error you've specified.

I have seen this problem before but I can't recall where. At first look there seems to be (at least) two things going on - both guesses here: - One of these Patches may need to be rotated two times. (or perhaps it needs to be unrotated two times) - The Normal may be inverted (the two images would be mirror images of each other but one's coloring is the negative of the other) Not really sure without seeing more of the settings for the image and the orientation of the patch. I take this to mean that you may have applied more than one image to the decal (for instance, perhaps you have one Color, one Normal and one Bump Map or a Diffuse Map or two Normalmaps... or...) If so, then we might need to know more about that.

If you look down at the bottom of the main page of the forum you'll see there are a whole lot of really old people celebrating their birthday today! (I don't think I can change people's birthdays in the forum. They have to go into their forum control panel and change the date.)

So, there I was in the bookstore yesterday and I saw this huge Sonic the Hedgehog telphone book sized comic book/coloring book thingy and I was mesmerized. I tried to leave the store without it but at the last minute I grabbed it up and bought it. It's something like 514 pages and collects the comic books series from #1 to #16 in black and white. (Hey, it's hard to get comic book images in black and white without manually bleaching out all of the color) While the cost for this book is ridiculously high I really do love the format of these things. Cheap as I'll get out... cardboard-like covers... lousy newsprint inside. Ah, if only more comic books were like this! I'm not exactly sure how this happened. I am not a Sonic fan. Just so's you know... I blame Epic Gamin'.

I think Dusan must be starting up his on theme park. With Perk as the main mascot... look out!