Rodney

That would take a lot of doing. I think you are on track. I believe that 80% of your budgeted time spent on a project should be spent in the planning. Of course during that planning you are looking for ways to keep the other 20% of the production on budget, on schedule and fully focused on executing the plan. (Deviations from the plan are expensive in money and manhours but not as expensive as just wandering around) IMO the more planning the better. Note: Nothing says you cannot execute some parts of the plan prior to going into full (final) production if those particulars are sufficiently locked down. Usually these classify as tests of your plan.

Great commerical Matt! A suggestion: I do think you could make the satellite view progressively get more brown as you get farther away from Michigan... The underlying idea being that there is good reason to invest in Lush Lawn and not everyone has currently got it. All the smart people are doing it... better get Lush Lawn for your yard! As always, thanks for sharing these gems in advertisement.

Matt, Not all forum areas are HTML enabled by default. That has to be turned on. Where in the forum are you trying to embed your video? In this topic?

Due to incompatibilities between Windows and Mac versions (Macs didn't support the Windows interface programming required) the capability as described in the Tech Ref went the way of the dodo with v12. Sorry. Menus still should be dockable... just not with the Windows specific feature set.

Oh yeah! Rock on Spleengene! I tried to do something along this line with A:M's Dopesheet recently but apparently I've forgotten how to use dopesheets. My thought was to automate the motion by driving on/off poses via the dopesheet but maybe I imagined that capability. At any rate it's appears easier to do this without the dopesheet.

When I first read this I thought... "Uhuh... right... jello... I'll believe it when I see it." Nope. John, you really nailed it! Great job.

I'll still buy your book Robert. (There has always been a stress line between free and paid work here in the forum. It's not always easy to maintain that balance)

About 20 or so of those guys all lined up marching with Thom leading the pack would signal to the troops that the next revolution in animation is about to be launched. Nice robo! (We still have the better part of the month until the deadline of the contest)

Registration submitted! I do suggest spelling 'Animation' correctly though. Perhaps 'Animation:Master FAQ'? Rock on!

It seems to me you could get what you want by creating your animated rotation in a Pose. Then when you want to rotate you slide the slider to the desired extent of the pose?

Thanks for reminding me of that shortcut key Holmes. Here lately I've been clicking on the the Loop icon over on the right and using that. Much easier to just use the G key. Domo arigato gozaimashita!

Have you tried it in v16?

Depending on your goals one way to render another region of the same shot is to duplicate the Camera and then Zoom In/Focus on another area of the same shot. If the goal is to align the shots later care must be taken to make sure you don't change the angle of the camera. Once the Cameras are setup you can switch back and forth between them as necessary without adjusting either Camera. I've never tried it before but we should be able to adjust the Camera in a Pose. If that is the case then we are then able to use the Pose Sliders to render variable areas within the main camera region. A:M is extensible enough that many tools we need we can create. Attached is a shot of two images rendered from two Cameras. Both are rendered to Final Rendering and then re-composited as Patch Images in A:M. (then rendered again)

You've illustrated a major obstacle in the production pipeline of digital arts that budget-wise I would classify in the category of 'maintenance fees'. The program itself may perform wonderfully but without the required hardware... without the monitor/screen... without the power to keep the system running, we go quickly from high speed performance to thumbing for a ride on the animation freeway. With hand drawn animation the basic underlying system is inherently more reliable and sustainable... more durable... up to the point of 'filming'; in a traditional case that of converting imagery into a communicate-able analog/digital media. So we must factor maintenance of all the required systems into our basic production calculations for a proper comparison. This maintenance fee is often dealt with on-the-fly as systems die, but appears much easier to recover from in the case of pencil and paper. Storage of physical and virtual products are of course a whole other consideration. The digital maintenance fee appears to be roughly the same regardless of how the production is initiated. Either way a similar film making system must be maintained.

A problem I have with programs currently tailored to 2D is that most of the features that will be required can only be found in the top of the line versions of the product. Many initiates will only discover this fact after investing in the basic product without that feature set. While there are upgrade packages I find this 'hobble-ware' approach frustrating. I have no issue with companies reserving expensive features for clients willing to pay, but a little more truth in advertising would go a long way. One thing that initially attracted me to A:M was that it's creators made no attempt at a hard sale. After seeing all the weird ads, the hyperbole and the promises from other products you knew weren't real, there (rather understatedly) was A:M. If you were so inclined it was available... if not... thanks for your time and have a nice day. I really liked that sensibility. I like it even more today. It's hard for any program to capture the imaginary. It's hard for us to put what we are imagining on paper. Here we've entered the realm of pre-visualization where we work with only partial thoughts and uncompleted ideas. If we can better know how reality relates to our imagination it will be easier to translate those thoughts into physical and virtual manifestations of those ideas. This is even before we have opened a computer program... before we have put pencil to paper... back to the original thoughts that flow through our imagination.

Thanks! I've found that when planning things out nothing quite beats good 'ol pencil and paper. When on the road it's easy to whip out a sketchpad and draw or sketch whatever captures the attention. No worries of whether the power will go out or the batteries will fail. There is of course a significant barrier to hand drawn animation besides the actual time required to be put in drawing; an investment anyone serious about hand drawn animation will have to make. To do it right (by current standards) one must invest considerably before the pencil even touches the page. (Of course you should keep drawing every day!) There are supplies to purchase, the tools of the trade; pencils, paper, sharpener, eraser (and with all the variations of each of these... you will find some work better in than others in different situations). The big ticket items are what will likely stop most aspiring animators in their tracks; peg bars, light tables, animation discs and field guides and if you are really serious about this, a nice big animation desk. That isn't the end of the production however, at this point you may have invested several thousand dollars but you've barely began to animate. Don't forget you'll need to scan those drawings (or video/film them), time/re-time them if necessary... and color them. Gone are the days of painting cels on the backs of acetate but the underlying process remains there much the same. Digital tools fit into the workflow easily here. It is in the area of traditional animation's obstacles where programs like Animation:Master really excel. We don't have to convert something to digital if it's already there. Coloring every frame in series of thousand in an animated sequence is as easy as picking one color and applying it there. Don't like the color? Change it and see the change applied everywhere. So for $79 a program like Animation:Master fills the gap of several thousand dollar investment in traditional animation equipment. A:M is the multiplane camera, the light table, the video tester, the coloring system, the pegbar, field guides and animation discs ...and A:M is a whole lot easier to maintain! So why not use pencil and paper with A:M? Rhetorical question. Of course we can. In the initial planning stage... it's hard to beat good 'ol pencil and paper to work things out in sketches, doodles, thumbnails or diagrams. The human brain excels at solving difficult problems and is easily scalable. Whatever is needed for the task at hand. Once the plan is solidified and the drawings have served their purpose most can be filed away without even being scanned. ...meanwhile back in A:M. Here is an image created via A:M's compositor using one EXR rendering of the 3D model. From there the image was applied to a one patch rectangle multiple times with normal map, diffuse, color etc. set on each image. Then in an action two lights are added (one blue and one red) and adjusted to taste. The resulting image could be further relit, blurred, applied back to the model as a decal or used elsewhere in the production. At this point it mostly serves as a lighting test. It is also a means to discover where changes should be made in the model's mesh. Edit: Here's me imagining art direction from Nick Fechter, the creator of 'Eze':

Looking very good!

Much of my focus these days is with hand drawn animation but it all tends to blend and further complement the study of animation. For instance, some folks spend a great deal of time sculpting physical models (maquettes) as an aide to visualizing their characters and objects in order to make drawing them (from any angle) easier. Even animators who draw their characters should have a 3D computer animation program. Of course I recommend Animation:Master because... with splines... modeling is an extension of drawing. This was primarily an exercise in trying to model this character quickly. It would have been wise for me to sketch out a few drawings to rotoscope with. If continuing with this character I may begin again with only the basic shapes that will be used when drawing the character. That would be a fun rigging exercise and would still be quite useful when drawing the character.

Past Mascot Contests didn't limit entries so I assume this one will be the same.

It's been awhile since I used the Dopesheet but... I thought the phoneme breakdown was saved. Is this not the case? Of course if something has removed or replaced that you'll either have to copy from a saved version or relaunch the Auto Phoneme. Have you tried Right Clicking to see what options are there?

Note, I'm not suggesting adding any forces to the scene unless the story calls for it. My suggestion was to create other effects in the environment that allows for the apparent wind forces already there. Right now there is life in your character but not in the environment she is in. Of course you may need a good knowledge about how forces effect cloth later for others scenes so... press on... press on!

It looks like everything is starting to come together for you Walter. Keep it up! My thought with the cloth as it is right now is that there seems to be some wind effecting it (not just the characters movement). To complete the effect it'd be nice to have some overlaid leaves framing the scene that move slightly and suggest a breeze. This would also lend a further sense of depth to your scene (ala Multiplane effect) as if the camera was placed just out of the clearing partially in the trees. Looking good!

Adding this for discussion's sake... Hash Inc has a pretty good collection of Menu Navigation Gifs from the old HTML help files. Here is a collection of them from '98: Later versions have a considerably more extensive set. Note: The original images are already separate.

Got that part. Definitely wouldn't put them in the main dropdown. I was looking to see if there was any extensibility to allow a tertiary set or restrict emoticons to specific forum areas. I'm not sure what the limit to an emoticon set is. (25? 50?) Also: If I understand this correctly the text will insert the equivalent text in place of the icon where it cannot appear. Example: :smiley: instead of the emoticon in the text. So forum text with extensive emoticons will be laced with :amicons: of various types. To add a link click on . To Make your text bold select your text and click . Hmmm... maybe that extensibility could be added via the html/css?

Thanks Jason. I know you are a busy guy so put us to work on them. If we collect them all individually in a .zip file would that work best for you?