Rodney

There you are... interacting with 3D characters on the screen... how many people can say that? You are living the dream. Keep it up! I really like your sense of setup and how you are leveraging your current understanding of computer animation... I'd say optimizing even. A great example of this is how you introduce your co-host and then she interacts with you through voice over the course of the show. No need to actually animate her in those scenes. As your knowledge and proficiency increases she'll be able to interact in ever more complicated scenes. Way to leverage A:M's capabilities and turn constraints into solutions for EG! I assume you script and storyboard each episode? My other question would relate to Gwen... or the voice of Gwen. Is she having fun with this or what? She can pretty much be anything she wants to be. Excellent episode!

That is great fun! Do you know if Shaun ever completed more of those? I know he had planned to create a whole series. He's come a long way since first pushing his mouse into computer animation. One of Shaun's recent jobs was on 'Open Season 3'. He's also an instructor at Animation Mentor.

Longshot here... I don't have any insight into this except to say that this might be due to your screen capturing software. My thought being that the software -could- interfere with how A:M senses your mouse's location. If this occurs when your screen capture software is not activated then it's probably something else.

Stephen's film is a great piece to study and not just from the aspect of animation. You can readily see the care he took in the design of these characters and sets. The sound alone is entirely captivating (close your eyes and just listen to it). Story and conflict. Mystery and intrigue. Elements that engage all our senses. The use of opposing elements to enhance our sense that the environment is changing. Movement from out of the cold toward the heat as Stephen keeps directing and diverting our attention Our growing sense that all is not well... dark shadows, locked door, sharp knives... all heighten our apprehension. Stephen expertly directs us exactly where we need to be as our empathy with Briar Rose increases. ...and then he breaks away from all of that and gets silly. Stephen is not just an artist. He's a genius. It's not the software that makes the movie... but I'm glad Stephen made this one with A:M. I think my personal favorite part of this film is at the very end with the credits. Just when I think I know what is going on Stephen manages to recapture my imagination.

I'm bumping this topic up because Stephen Millingen's 'Briar Rose' is playing at the top of the forum. Even today, it's still a piece of outstandingly tremendous work. Highly entertaining too! ...and in case the info is not easily found... this short was created in A:M v11.

This isn't exactly A:M Films material but it is a great interview with one of the programmers of Animation:Master. In just a few short minutes Ken Baer covers some of the basic philosophy behind A:M and explains why it will be a better fit than other programs available. Those that might be interested in purchasing Animation:Master should check it out. Ken Baer is now an independent programmer but five years ago he was know as Hash Inc's enlightened marketing guy. If you live in the US Northwest and are a fan of the various brews on tap you may have even used his custom application to locate the finest spirits in the Portand area. He still hasn't forgotten his first love in programming; computer animation and rumor has it you may be hearing more from him on that. Time will tell. http://vimeo.com/101185 Original video source: www.themovieblog.com

Oooo! Nicely done John! I love the first two. The third betrays its effect a bit more readily... but still nice. Here's hoping your computer stays online!

Yay! Yves's website (which when last I checked was offline) is currently online: For those of you that really want to look deeply into A:M's lighting his site is well worth your time. http://ypoart.com/index.html Here is a link to his now classic tutorial on lighting: http://ypoart.com/tutorials/lighting/index.php You'll find lots of useful information and resources at site. This may be old news to some but if it serves to help even one person improve their 3D rendering... Just go now and visit his site.

It is. Of course the time will vary depending on the length of your sequence.

Dan, You can use A:M (the 32bit version) to perform your conversion. The steps are: - Open A:M - Make sure your Project Workspace is open - Bring in your image sequence via Right Clicking on the image container (Don't forget to select the check box that says "Import Image as Sequence". - Once the sequence is imported Right Click on the image set and Select "Save Animation As". - You can change this to any available movie format or image sequence. Done. Prior to v13 you had to use the alternate method (still also available in A:M) of bringing in your sequence as a Camera Rotoscope and then re-rendering that out to the .MOV or .AVI format. A little background to help you better understand: I was under the impression that Netrender could render to .MOV but I was resently corrected on that. Netrenders focus is distributed images and it needs separately rendered images to do that. The fact is that *usually* you *always* want to render to sequential images. (There are a lot of good reasons for that) All versions of A:M up until the 64bit version can render out to and save to .MOV format but due to issues with Apple Quicktime 64bit there is no option for that. The good news is that you can use v16 32 bit to convert your sequence. There are other options to convert images sequences outsideof A:M of course. More about those as needed. Hope this helps.

Hey Bobby, Did you find the solution to this problem (or manage to find a successful way to get your Sprite System to freeze)?

Is anyone familiar with the Lightworks video editor? It went open source a year or so ago and phase 2 of their release is to provide source code to potential developers. http://www.lightworksbeta.com/ Windows only at this time. Sorry.

That is looking awesome Marcos. Dare I say much more than I anticipated!

Here is something of an extension to Robert's Project file. The attached Project file consists of 5 (very) rough poses. These poses are not fully refined but form a starting place from which to work. There are several things which you may find worthy of noting here: - The Poses are set on Frames 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 - The Chor length (in this instance) is set to 3 Seconds. - Stretching these 5 poses out from 5 frames to the full 3 Seconds (90 frames) would have Shaggy moving but not 'animated'. This is the point where the ideas of animation really start to form and transform mere movement into motivated performance; character animation. - Perfecting these (storytelling) Poses helps determine how the final animation will read. Proceeding on before these Poses are finalized will likely produce frustration, especially if anyone else has to work with the scene. For instance, if the hands aren't properly placed on the door handle... if the feet don't stay planted firmly in place. Smooth and effectively communicated animation begins here in the Blocking/Posing stage. TaoA:M's earlier exercises deal with creating strong Poses that 'read' and yet those who work through TaoA:M often treat each exercise as completely separate, as if they have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they've set in place the building blocks with which to proceed. At this stage it will be well worth the time to consider what will be moving and what should be steadfastly stuck into place. To my way of thinking these Contact Frames are critical to the scenes timing and therefore need your undivided attention and emphasis. Consider also where each item is coming from and where it will be going to in the scene. Rather importantly, these contacts form the timing of your animation. If you need to snyc your animation in any way (sound track, music, lipsyc, dancing to a beat, etc.) you'll be needing this. If Poses and placement are the keys to effectively timing your animation (and they are... literally) how something moves from one place to another is the where the actual animation will be. It's the interpretation, interpolation and inbetweening (the spacing) of the scene. A thought for your consideration: In traditional animation we could probably get away with having three keys but with CG it helps to have five in order to assist with our analysis during playback of the scene. Note: At the last minute I adjusted the first frame of this project file (frame 0) to have both of Shaggy's feet on the door. Originally I had him posed with one foot planted on the ground and one on the door as if he was in the last stage of stepping up onto the door. My rationale for the last minute change is that it'd take Shaggy a lot more than three seconds to transition and then finish out the scene. The_Door__s_Stuck_ShaggyAtDoor__5_Poses_.prj

Only if you compress them in a .zip file. .MOV format is acceptable and preferred for uploading movies to the forum. There are several reasons for this but I confess I don't know them now. One might be that AVI isn't a online streaming format... so it to be served up by the server in a different way... retrieved from the server but not for viewing... only for downloading. A small quibble: It's free to download.

I sympathize with you. Long long ago... after my boss promoted me out of job I looked forward to doing every day to one dealing daily in the deepest and ugliest elements of human nature, my boss asked me, "So, How do you like the job." My reply was along the lines of, "It's a love/hate relationship; sometime its the best thing that ever happened to me and sometimes it's the absolute worst." (Actually, I probably said, "Chief, it's a love/hate relationship." and he supplied the rest of the conversation. He knew exactly what I was talking about. I'm glad your wife is supportive (if not sympathetic) of your need to pursue something you enjoy doing so much. It's sure to be a sacrifice for her, so remember to thank her in little and big ways, often. ...and smile a lot.

You could accomplish that by selecting the forearm bone and moving that forward. That will make Shaggy's arm muscles appear to stretch against the pull of the door. This is an effect you cannot get by merely aligning Shaggy's arms and placing his hands on the door. The other classic method is to animate the Door knob being pulled outward. Either way the primary gain to be had is a sense of weight, solidity and force. In traditional animation this is often accomplished by drawing straights verus curves. In this case the straights being observable in the upper arm, forearm, hand and doorknob being pulled. While the curve is demonstrated in the curvature of Shaggy's hips, spine, neck and head as he exaggerately pulls back and yet somehow... ridiculously... still fails to open that C@#$&! door! Added: Nice demo Robert!

It is likely you have run afoul of two Pose Sliders that control the balance of the character. They are named Balance and Balance Rigid. You'll find them under User Properties in most of the characters used with TaoA:M. To locate these: - Select the Character in the Project Workspace - Open User Properties - Open Rig - Adjust the Pose Sliders to 0 Percent on Balance and Balance Rigid. This should free the character up to (properly) defy gravity. In the attached screen captures I've used Thom but Shaggy's setup should be similar.

Back in the olden days before the PNG image format there was only one format that could effectively be used on websites that allowed images transparency. Nowadays most digital artists take this format for granted but many still don't realize the extent of it's utility nor how to take advantage of it. Each image format has it's strengths and weaknesses but when dealing with web graphics PNGs are quite powerful. For instance, some people render or save to the PNG format but don't take the time to bother with it's ability to set areas of the image as transparent. And of course this is accomplished in A:M by rendering with Alpha Channels (i.e transparency) on. I don't mean to distract you from more important work but... way back in 2008 I put cobbled together some random musing on this and related topics. PNG images were rendered out to formatted HTML which automatically organized and layered the output. I experimented with some of the basic options before getting distracted by something else that was new and shiny. For a variety of reasons I termed the process Lendering. Be careful, even three years later this stuff is still state o' the art. These days formats such as flash/swf have produced pretty awesome stuff but... with the advent of HTML5 and other technologies who knows what could become of PNG art. I'm not sure I answered your question... despite it's wondefull attributes PNG is probably not the best format for digital art. But it can do some things other formats cannot.

Someone will be along shortly to ask for view of your model's mesh/wireframe. So... heads up!

Very Nice! I've got to say... that is the first model of Sonic that has made me appreciate the guy. And because you are posting PNGs you especially rock! I really enjoyed your latest videos on Epic Gamin'.

Kat, My apologies. You were volunteered for a test. Just say the word and we'll change it right back. If you'd like to change the artwork up top as long as we some 'Just a Wooden Sword' imagery to modify that can also easily be done. Perhaps a scroll instead of a wooden frame and a few occasionally changing characters overlaid at the far upper right?

Looking very good thus far. ...and I see you are taking advantage of the PNG format: Nice! I'm going to suggest something but just file it to wherever appropriate... there is a lot I don't know about your project. You might benefit from working only in shades of grey (that is grayscale from black to white) at the initial stage as that will help tremendously when you later focus on texturing and lighting. One of the major benefits (there are many) is that it will help to allow focusing the attention of the audience. One of the reasons texturing can be reserved until the last stages is that it can be approached very straightforwardly and logically; leather has a specific look as does steel and flesh but all will react differently in the context of your lighting. You can augment your composition and focus a lot before you even apply any texture or lighting. You are doing great stuff and this is just what I thought as I looked at images from your project... use only where it might apply. The girl in this last one I really like! I look forward to your next update.

Is the interior set also a part of the exterior model? I only ask because if it is... you can cut down on a whole lot of splines by having them as separate models or projects.

These 'little' projects really show where the Anzovin's took a simple straightforward idea and used it to perfect their production workflow and raised the level of storytelling quality to new heights. The results speak for themselves and we are entertained in the process. ...and you can tell they were really having fun!