Rodney

Outstanding. If someone doesn't scrub through and decipher the project for you I'll look into it first chance I get.

I won't be able to look at the project until later today but unless you create the leaves as part of the project they won't be embedded. Images don't embed in projects, they must be associated/collected with the project or in the case of current versions of A:M may be consolidated in a Zip file from the A:M Menu. Back when Jeff Paries wrote his books Consolidation (the storing of all resources in a single compressed file) wasn't an option in A:M. Embedding still works the same way (i.e. images don't embed). Perhaps the leaf images are on the CD?

Thanks, you said something about water rippling over leaves? Do you have some images of leaves?

I understand your interest in doing it all in 3D but I'm going to guess that using a different texture... one with less noise... will produce the best effect? The various shaders that exist are often used to preprocess troublesome elements of a scene that would be otherwise need to be processed in post. I don't know enough about shaders to speculate further. All in all though, I'd say the 'texture sparkling' is a reason compositing is still used as often as it is today. Concerning post processing, if the textured/particle area can be isolated for post processing you might have some success using the Denoise plugin on the texture. Of course using Denoise will likely require you to have garbage mattes of some sort to mask and control any transparent areas... and note... Denoise can take a lot of time to run through all those frames! Even after all these years it's still hard to get some effects/textures perfect in one single 'in camera' rendering. In such cases, it may be easier to manage/edit the elements of the shot independently.

Bubba, Can you provide more information on the steps you've taken? Not everyone has access to the books by Jeff Paries.

For the first time ever I had my 3D glasses within arms reach when I opened this topic. Oz does indeed look good in 3D. My memory recalls Fabrice modeling the buildings and terrain in this sequence. Perhaps Ken or Holmes did the animated flythrough?

That's very odd. I've never heard of anyone having that problem before. Perhaps it's a browser cache thing or... you may have inadvertently set a forum topic filter that hides it? (I once took Hash Inc to task for missing posts only to discover I'd set my filters wrong at the bottom of the page) When reading forum content I highly recommend using the "View New Posts link up on the top right of the page. That'll keep bumping up all the topics you haven't read or aren't up to date on.

Very nice. I like!

I'll guess you don't always log into the forum as you are browsing the latest and greatest topics? The Off Topic forum always appears if you are logged into the forum. Conversely, it does not appear when you are not logged in. Benefits of membership.

That looks great Bobby! Wow. Very nice.

Honestly, I don't understand how one man studios do not plan to reuse animation. This is especially true when the product is serialized (the demands of the schedule suggest reuse is financially viable and should be carefully planned). Even better, with CG animation you can setup and rerender shots of characters from slightly different angles... so... it'd be that much harder for audiences to see the same animation. One useful way to reuse images is to frame them differently. For example, a running character might run across the screen in one scene and run in place (with the background moving) in another. It'll look different enough from the audiences' vantage point. A change here... a camera angle or zoom in there... a subtle tweak... a series of ideal expressions used over and over again to best advantage to fully establish the personality of a character... all are at the disposal of the animator. Of course, these similar scenes can always be tagged so that if your 'budget of time' allows you to go in and up the quality and unique aspects of a shot/sequence/story. There is a danger here of course; the limited animation of Hanna Barbera drove the types of stories they could tell. So, to steer clear of that as the primary motivator here's the underlying question that'd drive re-usage: What in your story requires (or allows for) repetition? Life is too short and you've got lots of stories to tell. Hanna Barbera's animation may be known for their limited quality but they are also known as famous characters loved by millions. That old rule of, 'if you can't win them with quality... hit 'em with quantity. If you've got ample doses of both quality and quantity, even better. Use and reuse that animation! (and don't forget you can also re-purpose those animated images for use with comic books, webpages, posters, etc. Yes, even the sequential images!)

Bravo! Encore! I love the stylistic choices you've made that create a doubt in the mind about whether this is stop motion, CG or something else entirely.

Love the level of expressiveness you've got on this guy Jirard. You haven't lost your touch with creating 3D caricatures. Very nice!

Nicely done John. Reminds me of a scene I drew many years ago that had me investigating the value of 3D/CG in the first place.

There are several people having a birthday but Paul has been a mainstay of the forum since its arrival on the internet. He's a seriously talented fellow. Here's hoping you have a great day and the coming year will be a much better than this one. Happy Birthday Paul! (If this arrives just a little early... don't worry... that birthday will come eventually)

Congratulations Gerry! That's a really great addition to your resume.

I like your solution to the appearance/disappearance of the Imp Bruce. That adds some nice variety and interest. The only thing I'd do now (if I was WIP'n your project) would be to run the whole thing through a post production filter or two to blend everything together. One example of the sort that I am talking about is Film Grain to give everything a slightly degraded texture so everything looks like it was 'filmed' at the same time on location.

Thanks for that Holmes, the resources you've linked to explain the problem nicely. It's a shame really. I'm a fan of the PNG format and would love to use it (and PNGs animated formats) more often.

No kidding! That works really well too. Design-wise Doc Bokor is one of my favorite characters. It helps that every scene he's in is always good for a laugh. A wonderful character for Flemm and crew to play off of. I'm really liking his voice as well.

Looking very good Mark! Pirates are still enjoying their rise in popularity and more movies are set to sail to maintain that interest. Keep plugging away and here's hoping some of that interest will move in your direction. Pirates of the Carribean 4 and Pirates in Adventure with Scientists (by Peter Lord/Aardman in stop motion in March 2012)

I've found that when in doubt TGAs are still be best of the best image format to work with for images/decals. I don't often use JPG, etc. for production work because they don't support Alpha Channels. I'd be tempted to standardize on .EXR but I'm so use to TGAs and their compatibility with other programs TGA has a solid reputation and time tested foundation but can be degraded to PNG for online viewing as necessary. There are a few things with PNG that still need to be worked out. Whereas TGA is ideal for compositing, PNG's primary usage is for browsers.

Need more information... Are you rendering out this Decal in a Choreography, Action or Model window? The same issue may be behind the problem so I'll offer the following: If you are in a Choreography window consider the lights you have shining on the decal. The Modeling window has a default lighting setup that can alter the image also. On a duplicate version of your Chor (don't do this on your original) delete the default Three Light Setup and render again. If anything the decal should be darker than your targeted color. There are a few ways to alter the color/brightness of a decal. One of the methods I like to use is to add a second stamp on the decal to color the brightness. This way you can match the target color perfectly in any lighting condition without adjusting your lights.

This might be where utilities and plugins such as BitmapPlus come in. They attempt to project images in a similar fashion as materials. In this way regardless of how you modify the object the image occupies the same space. So, perhaps your plugin already exists to some degree. Have you experimented with BitmapPlus yet?

As you already have a good grasp of Alpha Channels and transparency I'd like to encourage you to investigate Patch Images as a means of rendering your splines. While the setup takes a little time once it's in place you've gained consider flexibility over and above the standard 'Render As Lines' factory setting. It is important to remember that A:M allows us to create our own feature sets. Render As Lines is good if you need a quick fix but it has limits. The major ones being: - We cannot control the line width - We cannot layer the effect - As we increase the thickness of the line it rises above the surface of the mesh - We don't always get a smooth line etc. So how to deal with these limitations? My suggestion: Patch Images Benefits: - User controlled line width - Layered Lines and Effects - Variable Thickness and Displacement (above and below the surface of the mesh) - Variable Lines and Brush Effects - Animated Lines etc. etc. etc. Note: There are drawbacks to using this solution of course but it offers considerable flexibility. For instance, when baking materials or decals into a single image (for decaling) I don't think Patch Images are baked. Another is that while you can create all of these patch image lines in A:M you'll likely want/need an external image editor, if for no other reason that for cropping your images. Yet another is that you'll have to consider the results on topologies such as 5 point patches (when using patch images avoid these areas). Here is an example where Thom is demonstrating the basic difference between standard Render As Lines (default line) and Patch Image Based Spline Rendering (with a stitched line). The detailed view shows how this line is altered on the fly to increase stitches. It also shows how the Render As Lines effect rises above the surface in an uncontrollable way as well as some unintended artifacting of that line (on the right). Not shown but also note: By adding a displacement layer to our Patch Based Lines we are able to control that displacement over the length of the spline. Bottom Line: We can similuate the look of a standard Render As Lines operation in A:M with Patch Images but not vice versa.