Rodney

I believe Eugene (at least the Eugene's I've seen... the ones on most A:M CDs) is rigged with the 2001 rig. If someone rerigged him with TSM I don't believe that version has been shared yet.

Thanks for posting the side view. That makes it a lot easier to analyze what you've got going thus far. Here's my take with Shaggy filling in for your character. I started by trying to emphasize the forward and backward movements/chain reactions but got lost having fun thinking about how Shaggy would react to it. Not sure I conveyed what I set out to convey but.. fun exercise! I should note that I used your character to rotoscope the basic movement/trajectory. Then adjusted from there. I'm adding a second view (from the front) in case you are interested (I can upload the project file but the timeline is such a mess I don't think it's worth studying). You can tell in this shot that I only refined with the previous movie's camera in mind. I guess the point I'm trying to sell/exaggerate more than anything is the motion of the torso, neck and head as it makes impact with the ground. While I may not have quite hit the mark in my attempt I do feel there needs to be some more reaction and recovery there. Especially given the force that it'd take to launch your character that far. Keep it up. You are doing great things. Entertaining me too! ShaggyPushedBackv2_000.mov ShaggyPushedBackv2Front_000.mov

You are so violent! Looks great John!

Excellent graphic Robert. I don't suppose you have another one for the reaction on the ground to seal the deal? It's important to see that there are (at least) two 'hits' here. The first is what sends him flying. The second is the ground 'hitting' him. Both require appropriate reactions to that contact. The area of most interest to me (complicated stuff indeed) is where he hasn't yet recovered from the first hit when his body begins to react to the second hit. In vehicle accident terminology that first hit would be the Point of Impact (POI). If we could measure the distance to where the Character comes to rest we might be able to better understand the force used to propel him there. There are formulas for this stuff... that... um... I obviously forget.

Nice Character Phil! There is something a bit odd about the secondary motion of the character (I believe the problem is mostly in the head?) - The character seems to be getting hit directly in the chest. - His torso launches backward dragging his extremities (and head) with it. *Note: Here, I believe the head should move forward farther than you have it as it pivots at the neck. The head is heavy and there should be a noticeable delay and moving forward/tilting of the head. (think whiplash!) - The character's butt then hits the ground - This creates a chain reaction that extends out to the extremities (and his head). *Note: The head doesn't follow the trajectory and instead moves forward and down. I believe it should continue back even after the Torso has stopped and then SNAP BACK forward as the body settles. I think the forward motion of the head that you already have can then pick up there. That's my initial thoughts on his bounce. Looking forward to seeing more of your character animation! Added: There is a good opportunity for some anticipation in this bounce by following the natural chain reaction of the underlying bones/skeleton of the character. The Head moving forward first helps to anticipate and strengthen (exaggerate) the backward movement of the head after he hits the ground. The secondary motion (followthrough) of the head then finishes the arcing forward as his body settles. While perhaps it's beyond the scope of this bounce I'm curious what his face would relay to us after he settles into place on the ground. (Get that internal dialogue on display if you can) -

There is a trick JohnL3D can show you that involves animated textures. You can use that to gain the look of the wireframe with Patch Images. Basically, what you do is animate the transparency of the textures (fading it in) while animating the Patch images (fading them out).

We've all been there at that smack-the-mallet-to-the-head moment. Glad to see you've resolved the problem. More poet-try for the occasion? 20% of the bugs cause most of my frustration. 80% of the bugs do not bother me at all. But... most of my problems aren't even related to bugs! It's the user-error principle, Perhaps they should make that a law? "Thou shalt experience more user error than bugs".

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.