Rodney

Great sense of scale in all of these models @R Reynolds

Nice. Does this mean you figured out how to do the random values confined to patterned areas?

Good news. That does appear to resolve the problem!

I should add... Clicking on the sprockets at the top will refresh the forum and thereby display any new content.

We don't get to compete for placement on an A:M program CD any more so the banner is a good way to pick up where that left off... with even more frequency. The emphasis is to highlight topics of interest from the moment someone opens the forum. Post cool stuff and we'll spotlight it at the top of the forum! If you have interest in special imagery for the banner not related to specific posts or images or animation you'd like to see released on a specific day... let that be known and we'll try our best to accommodate the request. Private message @robcat2075 or @Rodney for any secret squirrel stuff.

Fun stuff John!

Strange that I'm seeing the gif animation in the preview of this post but not in the post itself. As far as the project itself... When we download the project file it will of course be missing any referenced images. As such when I render it I get the melting ice and fire but not the character. Still a fun project even without the frozen guy thawing out in the render. Let's see if this appears in this post... yep. It does.

I can see the preview of your animation John but for some reason it doesn't display in your post. Looking good! More please.

The project I've uploaded should open in v15 and v19. Probablly not v10 but it's easy enough to try. When in doubt use v19 unless there is some specific reason to go back versions... such as to use plugins are features no longer included in later release. Plugins usually need to be recompiled after time passes due to various changes both internally and externally to Animation:Master. I believe the attached in this post is the original project and that should open fine in v10... all the way through v19. A:M will prompt when saving to update so you'll have to make a decision at that time. For those that are curious you can also see various things that I modified. Stanley.zip

I was doing a Google Map search on various places and I thought... hmmm... Tuckertown... I wonder if the sign is viewable. And... it is! It's a little hard to read but the sign is still there. I see varioius mentions of Tuckertown and Tuckerville online but none I've seen thus far are THIS Tuckertown.

We need to get you a copy of SimpleStanley. I know you'd have fun animating and modifying that character. Im attaching a few files related to that. SimpleStanley2024Revisit.zip TLBSimpleStanley2024Revisit.prj Project1.prj

What the heck... I always thought Tony Lower-Basch was awesome but... How in the world did I never see his Simple Stanley model/rig? Move the character anywhere and the rig stays in place. FK/IK, Center of Gravity and all sorts of other neat things. Probably broke the model in messing around with it. This retrieved from a link on Vernon Zehr's A.R.M. site. SimpleStanley.mp4 TLBSimpleStanley2024Revisit.prj Stanley.txt

I thought Yves Poissant's website was largely lost but most of it can be retrieved. Keep in mind that many resources have been brought forward in some way or other. Some resources have made their way to the Extras CD or DVD and others right into Animation:Master itself. Many of these primitive shapes can be found in the A:M's internal Library: BeveledPrimatives.mp4

Finding resources sites like Vernon Zehr's 'The A.R.M.' and JIm Sherwood's 'Sherwoods Forest' are particlarly useful because collected sites, links and resources. Definitely look through those. https://web.archive.org/web/20050706040914/http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060103000908/http://www.hash.com/sherwood/index.asp

Here for instance is an archived site of Emilio Leroux... author of the Sweeper Plugin... Where his older SetBias plugins is described and can still be downloaded. (likely only works on old releases of A:M) (https://web.archive.org/web/20041220104344/http://www.moscafilms.com.br/emilioleroux/amplugins_setbias.html) Aside: Emilio was the first to clue me in to the power of tweaking biases on splines.

Sadly, short of content that has made its way to the Extras CD and Extras DVD the most likely way to get to old copies of those sites is via Archive.org's Wayback Machine. Even there a lot of the connectivity has been lost over time. If you are dilegent however... treasure can be found. Try looking for Animation:Master users of the past whose websites might be archived: https://web.archive.org/web/19970120055548fw_/http://www.hash.com/users.html This will take you to where you can find different vintages of users listed on via www.hash.com: https://web.archive.org/web/20050701082243/http://www.hash.com/

Hi Rusty, Always good to see you! There is the Treez plugin that is lauched from an Action. Perhaps you are thinking of that Plugin? It's not easily discoverable... had to remind myself how to use it but my memory came through for me. The key steps: Spline/Lathe a base shape - For example, Lathe a 2 control point spline into cylinder with 5 cross sections and then lop off/remove the top half leaving a circle. Select and name this group "base". Create a spline, plane, grid or set of splines and grids and place these above the circle/base as a target for the canopy to be created. If designed well you might be able to use these patches for leaves later. I call this group of splines and patches "target" although when generating using the Treez plugin It may be whatever is selected that becomes the target. Now the crucial launching step... Create an Action that uses this model, Right Click > Plugins > Treez This should launch and run to project the base toward the target. Edit: Just now see Robert's response and that will likely have more detail. Note that the target's control points are what determines where the branches will be generated and target.

Regarding rendering images to file, Steffen was kind enough to add a Render option to the File menu. This is something even old time users of Animation:Master never had. That (in theory) makes rendering images more easily discoverable than using the classic Render icon. If we haven't saved our project, by default A:M will prompt us to save the project first and then take us to the Render options panel. Aside: In working with 2D folks I've noted that many simply don't have the term 'render' in their production vocabulary. For me. prior to engaging with 3D. I guess it meant 'to tear apart' but more closely means 'to separate or refine into detailed parts' as in 'the man drew a finely rendered drawing of the barn'. After introduction to 3D it just became the way we create images from our projects.

Something you can do as well is select the Camera and then Right Click > Duplicate to create a copy of the camera that stores the settings of the current camera. Then it's easy to return to that later as needed. I like to do that when I have the camera almost in a perfect position or with ideal settings but feel the need to experiment. Better to just create a new Camera with current settings and press on with that new Camera. Then if those changes don't work out... just delete the camera. A bit off topic... We can also save the Camera as a .cam (Camera) file but that doesn't particular help with animated cameras. There are some other options that can help in those cases such as creating an empty Model to house an Action and then add a Camera to that Action. Then that Camera is an Action Object inside of that Action which can be drag/dropped into Choreographies and even onto other Models. Edit: Steffen also added the View Undo/Redo feature several years back that can be quite useful.

Here's a fun experiment. A Clone Trooper helmet created via AI generation... text prompt to 3D model... output to OBJ format. Brought into A:M as a prop object. Here's a link to the original result prior to refinement (on LumaAI): https://lumalabs.ai/genie?one=3a206fdc-7ec1-41ba-8a75-99aaba7a709d&two=d348c729-2e62-4efa-8561-49382fdcd49a&three=1f7d8eb8-f392-4579-9f3a-a4b57478dce1&four=e368e03d-ac93-4fa6-bb7d-cb4b29a28962&view=one&metalness=0&roughness=0.95&color=255%2C255%2C255

I must not have as I would have posted it here. The good news is that the helmet doesn't look overly complicated so I'm confident you can model it. Apparently back in 2016 I modeled the following head/helmet which isn't too far away from the Storm Trooper style. I have no idea where that model would be however. (Bit o trivia: Motion Monster was a temporary fork of the 2D Opentoonz program that was used for testing experimental code... created by a guy named Jeremy Bullock which interestingly enough is NOT the actor that played BobaFett in Starwars but does share his name)

Wow. Yes, very nice!

I think the toonnation site is only avialable via the wayback machine. link: https://web.archive.org/web/20050205133114/http://members.lycos.co.uk/toonnation/ I believe most if not all of the toonnation resources are now included with Animation:Master.

For those interested in such things, I've updated the direct link to the SDK. The forum had that hard coded to point at the v19.0 zipfile. Now points to the v19.5 file. The link at the top of this topic pointed to the correct location so nothing has changed there.

That's very cool @Madfox There are a number of different approaches you might take... one of which I think might be to use Animation:Master's lipsyncing tools... but... woowee... its been awhile since I played with those. A problem here might be the limited number of phonemes available to the lipsyncing tools. Hmmm... Have to think abou this one but if you have all of the animations for each letter contained in one output file (AVI) then you could also find a way to dial in specific frames of that animation. How to do that in time and space across wordings... a bit more difficult. If I were to do this in another program such as Opentoonz I might assign each letter as it's own 'level' (separate sequence or file) and then expose those directly via typing in as exposures. Your AVI as a GIF animation for those interested: