Rodney

Impressive!

Happy Birthday John! I sure do miss your superheroes.

Too much fun John. I couldn't resist playing with your project file and have come to the conclusion the effect is very doable in A:M for anyone with the time and inclination. I've attached my adaption of your project file for those who care to see what I changed from yours. One of the first things I would suggest doing after simulation (and saving the full simulation!) is reducing/deleting the extra/unneeded keyframes. The remaining keyframes can then be used as extremes to inbetween and retime as necessary. The secret of the effect seems to be compositing more than anything. I was tempted to composite the unshattered window over the top of this animation to come a little closer to the effect but I think I've satisfied my curiosity for the time being. At any rate... here's Thom getting into the game... ShatterWall.mov animatbreak_altered.prj

Favoring the right has been a standard practice since ancient times where the favored position with respect to the noble of a house was reserved for guests of honor. Where this gets confusing is where the audience's perspective appears to place the favored position to the left and many an embarrassing moment (and opportunity) has been created when someone carelessly set the scene wrong. This practice can be seen throughout the world in protocol matters; placement of flags, order people enter and exit cars (due to seating arrangement), etc. and is so absorbed into our language that most never stop to consider it. We may be 'right or wrong' or have certain legal rights, undergo rites of passage, or get left behind. Placement of people and objects may be one of the original standards all others deviate from. In modern photography a primary rule of thumb is simply to find the best lighting for the given subject. An actress might have had her hair done in such a way that right-side lighting would be wrong or they might have a favorite pose or be self conscious of a percieved blemish or deformity, "This is my good side." In these cases, negotiation begins and taste and subjectivity can easily trump protocol (i.e. the customer is always right even when they are wrong). Jason, I haven't had a chance to look at your videos yet but am looking forward to it. Lighting is such an important element in any scene I'm glad to see you tackling it here on our behalf.

Another late arrival with the warmest of well wishes... Happy Birthday Myron. May you enjoy many more of them!

I can't view it now but look forward to seeing it when I can. Congratulations to you on the occasion of releasing another Splenegene production! Edit: Got to see animation (without sound for right now). Looking good!

Love the movie with the archer Paul. Fun stuff!

That's an interesting one. My first thought was that it was an effect of the Subsurface scattering but I've seen some similar effects with AO with negative settings. What would be odd about that would be that it should effect the rest of the model as well. At one time AO and SSS did not play well with each other. Perhaps that is what you are seeing here. Does the third image (generic shot) use any AO? If not then I'd investigate the Ambiance of the skin color and/or the settings of the Choreography's environmental Glow.

I recall reading an article that claimed studios such as Dreamworks employ many more Lighting technicians than they do animators and that makes sense to me. Personally, I think the article was implying Technical Directors as a whole but the point was made... Lighting is a very important, if not tedious, aspect of a movie and takes many hands and/or hours to perfect. While I am certainly no expert my own approach at present would be to add an Action to the Set in Question specifically for the Lighting. Then the Action can be adjust/replaced/saved/duplicated as necessary to control a variety of lighting effects. Personally, I just like how smoothly Lights seem to be manipulated in an Action. The only downside that comes to mind is that while looking at a Chor and adjusting the light in an Action, the Chor will not always update to reflect changes in the Action. As much of your Set's lighting will not change you should do well with having an Action light your scene. In my estimation you'll want to explore having the lightbulbs brightness be controlled not by lights but through the surfaces ambiance intensity. A mild but wide glow might then spread that lighting throughout the scene. Without ambient surfaces you may easily hit the practical limit where additional lighting will be useful in your scene. In my estimation, the most important aspect of lighting concerns the Focus; where you want the viewer's attention to be. All other aspects of composition (of which lighting is an essential part) should support and accentuate that focus. This is one of the reasons why initial Lighting is often accomplished using untextured grayscale objects in a scene. The lighting is then further refined (and finalized) after texturing to ensure Clarity. If really leaning forward you may want to control your Lighting *after* the rendering. For this, consider how the use of .EXR format and Light Buffers may allow you the opportunity to adjust the lighting in your scene even after you have rendered it. A little planning and experimentation with .EXR from the very beginning may save you a lot of hours, headaches and adjustments later.

Nicely done.

Hehe. You are amazing John. Nothing is impossible with the Technical Director's TD. Save that one for Christmas!

You certainly can but when editing a lot of videos you'll want to look into programs dedicated to that usage. A:M has to render all of these images out again from scratch whereas some programs just move (copy/paste) the images to new locations based on what you've instructed the editor to do. The way to do this all the way back to early versions of A:M is to use Camera Rotoscopes. If the current features of A:M aren't available to you then in a pinch that will do. It's been a very long time since I've played with v13 and don't have it installed to check, so I will yield the floor to others who do. It's very easy in v16 and I'm putting a video tutorial together on it now. I thank you for asking because in the process of formulating an answer I've learned something new. Tips and Troubleshooting: When using Rotoscopes to edit sequences it's best to be in the Front view. If the Roto is applied to a Camera you can view the Roto in any Camera view. When rendering with Alpha Channels make sure your Roto's settings specify to add the Roto in the Alpha Channel otherwise it'll be invisible in rendered views. Bottom line: It is possible to edit videos in v13. As I recall Martin Hash himself used v13 to edit quite a few scenes from TWO. (Robert, am I thinking later versions?)

Thanks for the update John! Here's what I will plan to do should I find the time to experiment: - Increase the thickness even more (about three times the current thickness) - Change the background to Black (I'm still not quite sure about this but it matches the scene I am imagining) - Make the Ground plane invisible - Crank the Ambiance color up (to emphasize the freshly fallen snow aspect) To deal with the bouncing without messing with the dynamics I will: - Freeze the final frame so that the snow doesn't bounce I would most likely accomplish this by re-timing the rendered animation. This will cause a problem in that the snow that is flying upward will freeze in the air which will be problematic. To correct this I will likely have to render in two passes (one with the snow mass fully transparent and one with the upward drifting snow transparent) Then I will combine these two passes. It's a bit too time consuming at present so... my mind is the place where I've rendered it all out.

Wow. That looks great! I hadn't seen that you'd posted those rotos etc. and I'll take a look at them later today. A glance at the rotos tells me those streaks are an effect of overlaying the front and side views of the cheeks. If you can blend those slightly the streaks will fade away. A quick look at that last images though tells me he and the background are looking great. Added: I want to challenge you to look at the small thumbnail sized images of these renderings while adjusting the larger images. The thumbnails look vastly superior (even photorealistic) compared with the images that allow us to see more details. There is a good opportunity to economically refine those details there.

We should pass the hat and get you a new (or at least newer) PC!

Thanks John, I downloaded the zip... you have me wanting play with this one.

Very impressive Jeff. I like the background story! I'd love to see all of the suits but that'd be tough in a still image. Perhaps your image could be of him running (or otherwise gesticulating) and he changes suits in each position as he moves? And of course... this guy deserves to be animated too.

Very nice John. That could be made into some kind of A:M exclusive terrain generator. That or a nice representation of when you win playing a game and you move on to the next level. Fun stuff. Can you do it in all white like snow falling? You know... for the Winter level of the game.

Interestingly... from time to time I think about Tony Tony Lower-Basch's Nosferatu series and think it was just a few years ahead of its time. It might have played well to the kids that are so into vampires and such these days. I decided to look it up while searching for a few old resources and low and behold I ran into the Dojo Project pages. On one of the tutorials it discusses (briefly) what I was experiencing in the Squetch Rig. Of course it suggests that 'fixing' this movement of the shoulder is not something we want... so... so much for the way I think things should be. These are very old tutorials but really fun. For those that have never seen them... even educational. It even has gif animations demonstrating bone movement. The page I'm referring to with the shoulder example is here: http://www.museoffire.com/Lyceum/Dojo/Tuto...natomy/T0D3.htm It's not quite the same issue as what I'm seeing in the Squetch Rig but it's close. Tony is obviously for leaving it alone. For those that haven't seen it here is the compiled Nosferatu series... it's toon style... kind of anime... funny and fun: http://www.museoffire.com/Nosferatu/index.html Unfortunately, the series was never finished. If you wander around Tony's website you'll find downloadable models, tutorials and such.

I sneaked a peek. Impressive. I don't recall ever seeing a better advertisement for a comic book. Hopefully you'll start a trend as that'd be sure to put a whole industry to work again. The music should really round it out well. I will say this... there were a lot of great scenes in this but there was one standout. The monkey's with the animated background. I'm not sure why that is but I'll guess... fast paced action! In other news, I just got confirmation that my comics (3 copies of Wannabe Pirates #1!) were shipped yesterday. That's quite an unfortunate delay from when I ordered. I look forward to their arrival!

I think I understand why 'autobalance' is added into many rigs but haven't had a chance to look deeply into it. Perhaps autobalance is still a good idea but the execution/adaption of it is lacking in critical places? While reading through TaoA:M I ran across a paragraph on (and I paraphrase) 'the most important principle of animation'. That element is said to be Weight in the text and it is also suggested in other traditional texts. For instance, Thomas and Johnston in 'The Illusion of Life' suggest Squash and Stretch as the most important principle of animation discovered by the Disney animators because of it's ability to convey the sense of weight to characters. So in this sense Squash and Stretch is seen as a subset and an approach to conveying believable Weight. Likewise, Balance (the TaoA:M text suggests) is an important indicator (perhaps the most significant indicator) of Weight. This to me explains why autobalancers in rigging were initially created. It is an attempt to automate that sense of weight. That's my very layman's view on autobalancing. I need to go back and read the text again as that will allow me to better understand what I'm missing in my understanding of it. I'm not of the extreme school that suggests there can be no autobalancing. At least not yet. I should say... I find this subject matter entirely appropriate given that we are dealing with the Squash and Stretch (Squetch) Rig.

I just accidentally dumped my response so here is a second attempt... It wasn't so much of a question as an observation. The confusion is likely due to the fact I don't yet know enough to be able to formulate a question. You seem to know that this is already missing so yes, I think it should be added to the Squetch Rig. I'm not sure of the specifics here but the lack of automatic shoulder movement when the arm/elbow moves is what I was referring to. Perhaps turning these Poses off will allow the shoulder to react as I thought. If that what you are suggesting I'll look into that. If turning on/off FK or IK will allow this natural movement of the shoulder perhaps it could be set to default that way. But I don't think that's what you mean here. Yes, when I move my (real) elbow out/in or forward/back my shoulder moves with it (mostly in an up/down direction). In playing more with Sam I get the sense that the Chest should be animated/moved first followed by the appendages. This makes sense to me. However, I don't think this understanding addresses the issue of the Shoulder moving naturally with any change to the Arm/Elbow. I can but this is pretty basic. If you open Sam in an Action and move his Arm or Elbow his Shoulder will stay in place. A newbie to the Squetch Rig like myself then goes to adjust the Shoulder which in turn moves the Arms/Elbow to a new place. The Arms/Elbow must then be adjusted back to the desire place. The desired effect (as near as I can tell) is that when the Arm moves the Shoulder adjusts as well with no need for further adusting. I've been meaning to capture video as I'm playing around in A:M and will try to do that. One never knows when sharing that will be useful as it would have been in this case.

In order to analyze better there are several things that we could do... If possible could you post a copy of your face decal and screen capture of your mesh/wireframe here? It might also help to post an image of the face without the decal showing. What this does for me (or anyone else who is investigating) is allow us to perform something of a gap analysis to see what the effect of each element is contributing to the final image. In my estimation that'd be the next best thing to actually playing around with the actual decal and mesh. Added: There is an element of symmetry to the current decal that might be good to alter as we rarely see such symmetry on both sides of a face (makeup is often used to achieve more symmetry in a 'pretty' face). This is a piddly critique but I assume you want this kind of feedback.

It's been awhile since I've looked at Squetchy Sam and I am reminded of just how much you've put into him. Amazing. It's going to take me awhile to dig back in but I'm already enjoying messing around with his rig. One thing does have me curiously scratching my head so I'm giving you these thoughts from a newbie perspective. When diving in and re-positioning Sam's arms all parts of the arms and hand move as expected but the shoulder stays in place. I'm probably suppose to know something or toggle a switch but it... bear with me here... it seems odd that his shoulder would remain in place. My thought being that without making any changes an animator should be able to jump in and start animating basic movements without adjusting anything . Having the shoulder not react to the movement of the arm seems counter-intuitive given this newbie mindset. I'm sure I'm missing something simple and I should go back and read up on the Squetch Rig. I just had some time and wanted to play with the rig. This is a very complex rig. You've really done great things with it. I'm now lost somewhere in the face rig...

Looking good Chris! My thought is that those dark lines/streaks under his eyes and to a lesser extent on his nose and at the corners of his mouth may be part of his character but I find them a bit distracting. They draw my focus immediately to them when I'd rather be looking at his eyes. I'm not trying to steer you away from your goal here but... perhaps you could fade those out a little? If they are some kind of battle scar... please disregard. Added: From the early closeup of his face I'm going to guess those streaks are the effect of lighting dropping off rapidly due to the shape of the mesh. Regardless, He's looking great!