Rodney

Looking good Sean! Hair and Cloth aren't difficult but it does take some experimenting to get a good feel for what works best. Don't you love those ureka moments when the plan comes together.

Outstanding work Gerry! My daughter who happened to hear the music and became curious is also very impressed!

It's likely too late this year but perhaps the next go around a collage of characters/objects could be used? (Think a team of 6 to 12 differently styled characters from various dimensions all getting their photo taken at a local convention) Don't forget that even if you do use a car you can throw a character in as well for good measure.

If you prefer not to invest in a program like AE I can think of one program that you already have that can do wonders with post production effects; Animation:Master. To make the most use of post effects I recommend rendering out to EXR format with all of the various (Normals, Lights, etc.) buffers set to on. Then you can relight and alter images by creating a new composite project and animating the Post Effects in A:M. Note that some Buffers don't automatically get placed into the Composite when it is built so those must be dragged and dropped into the Post Effect. Of course there is now the FakeAO Post Effect which appears to be all the rage. Learning more about A:M's hidden features might be something worth pursuing between projects when the pressure to get a short finished isn't as intense. The Composite feature doesn't work as well with other types of imagery. It appears to be optimized for A:M's EXR format. Edit: What Robert said!

I read that as "TAA. DA!!!" which I misinterpreted as "Okay, that's it. I've had it. I refuse to tweak another spline. I quit! I'm always getting those terminal signals mixed up. There is a reason these are called "Special Topics" my friend. When you finish a short film, it's time to celebrate! So... um... what's next.

Very nice. Computers sure have changed since I was in high school.

Small collaborative teams seem to be the way to go these days. Continually rendering systems seems inevitable. (and productive!) As people see your presentations its sure to put your name out there as a producer of quality and reliability. I've seen your R&D pay off with each project you keep getting better and better. If nothing else it sounds like you've made of fan out of Franco Paletta!

I'm trying to imagine this video being played in the actual bar. What an event! I don't know the setup of screens or how this'd play but can easily see it playing in front of a crowd as a warmup. I assume having the empty stage at the end might be designed for other musicians to take center stage? Inquiring minds want to know more about this Myron and Gene! Confess your behind the scenes and workflow secrets!

Woah! I missed the release announcement on this one. These releases should have some serious fanfare! Wonderful work. Impressive detail. I'd imagine the locals who know the musician, lay of the land and the lore will be even more impressed. There is a final 10% post prodution polish that I feel would make this one the stuff of legend. Note: These could be considered degraders that actually reduce the current work just a little bit but improve the consisency overall throughout the film (subtle film and foley effects to blend everything from start to finish). Post Production artists would know a lot more about this than me. I think that is pretty good considering the release with little/no fanfare. Keep it up Mr. Spleengene! Added: Something to consider... when text is on screen it takes a little while for the viewer to adjust and then read the text. As important as the signage is to highlight the title character (Hey... people like to see their names nice big and clearly readable!) those moments may need a little more time to connect. I saw a breakdown of how long text should be onscreen in order to be assimilated and I'll try to track that down.

Okay David... you've got me intrigued. In 25 words or less (kidding!!!) can you describe how this installation method differs from the previous one? I ask because rigging hands is in my list of things to do in 2011.

Yes. Under the Simcloth material you create you have an initial setting that toggles to one of two choices; 1. Cloth (the default setting) or 2. Deflector Create at least two cloth materials; one to apply to cloth objects and one for objects that will be deflectors. (You can create additional materials other settings) Apply the Cloth material to the Banner and the Deflector material to the Pole. If you have a sufficiently dense mesh (with enough patches for the simulator to calculate something) the Banner will interact properly with the Pole. Edit: My apologies. In rereading your post it seems I've misread where you were having problems. For simplicity's sake (because you seem to understand Simcloth and its working well for you) I recommend that you use textured Simcloth strips for the hair and let the Simcloth animate those.

Very nice Paul! Thanks to Nancy and you I see SSS is making a triumphant return.

Holmes description is one of the best and most concise I've seen to date. Here are some additional tips/general rules/suggestions regarding dialogue phrasing passed on from other animators (Art Babbit/Milt Kahl/etc.) via Richard Williams: Open the mouth on accented vowels. Close the mouth on primary consonants. Don't reopen the mouth (during a continuous phrase) without good reason. (i.e. keep it open throughthe next vowel sound and close it on the next major/hard consonant) On emphasized words vowels can pop open (i.e. don't inbetween them) and they occassional can pop closed. When animating the tongue, don't inbetween it's movement (it moves too fast for that subtlety of movement). Animate the body first. Ideally the audience should believe the dialogue was given by the character even if their mouth doesn't move. (The example is of Disney animators that added the mouth animation after all other (body) animation was complete.) Richard Williams suggests the secret of animating dialogue is to progress the action of your character during/throughout the dialogue(whatever their action is in the scene). The character must be going somewhere... doing something... considering something. (What are they thinking? How does their action fit with or differ from what they are saying?) Rather than syncing an action to individual words we tend to blend words together when we speak... so a direct transliteration of the wording is usually not desired. Locate the emphasized vowels (usually 'O') in a phrase and focus on those in your character animation. If we progress the action along with the emphasized moments in a phrase we can use open/close muppet-style posing and the dialogue will be convincing... as if the animated character had spoken the words. (Note: I'm paraphrasing, am missing some points and have added some of my own interpretations here)

Very Nice! Shows what a little imagination and ingenuity can produce. Encore!

That isn't a normal result of that process and dragging and dropping models onto each other can be accomplished easily. Something isn't optimized on your end. If you are trying to do this while viewing the scene in quickrender, A:M may be having trouble recalculating and rendering the imagery on the fly. This may indicate a limitation of access to the RAM on your system. Another suggestion for older computers and any version of A:M is to save your project before the activity you are having difficulty completing. This will free up maximum resources for the task at hand. If you don't save, some RAM will be unavailable because it's still holding onto your last set of unsaved instructions or changes. Save often but also consider what other functions and processes are running in memory. So to answer the question in your topic title: No, it doesn't have to be saved first but you don't have to experience crashes either.

Impressive work Nancy!

The trailer looks great. Congratulations on the roll out of your video. Here is wishing much success to you. Looking Good!

One way would be to replicate the standard film technique for twinking stars. Twinkling lights are often created by placing a mask on top of the field of lights and moving that mask across the field. This will result in sequence of stationary lights that appear to twinkle. Once the field of twinkling lights is created you could enhance the effect even more by adjusting the ambiance intensity and/or color of the Layer (under the Surface properties) .

I seem to recall trying to get .TGA images to load before but couldn't get the right MIME type assigned to allow it. Here is a general list of MIME types that are processed by IPBoards: http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/Bo...b/mimetype.html A quick Google search turned up a more current listing: http://www.w3schools.com/media/media_mimeref.asp I didn't see Targa on this list either. I think EXR falls into the same category of files generally not accessed by web browsers. Perhaps the MIME type might be acceptable as something like: application/tga Edit: TGA works! Thanks Jason. It's hard to argue with good logic. AM.tga

Thanks Jason! Here is a list of the extension/files we can currently post: Note: Files that will open in A:M directly/indirectly are indicated in bold. Additional File Extensions for consideration: I am tempted to suggest adding the .PXD image format used with the online paint program PIXLR Image Editor. I mention it here only for those interested in checking it out. It can export to JPG and BMP as well as PNG (with transparency). A program such as this might be useful as a standard image editing program capable for newbies capable of creating shareable layered images for use in A:M as decals etc. That it is cross platform and accessible online is a plus. I'm sure there are other programs just as worthy but this may be the best/most accessible I've seen to date. No A:M Users are using this format (yet) so right now it's probably too early to add this extension. Here's a little bit more information about the PXD image format. There are some A:M file formats that aren't currently postable (some are text files): .cam A:M Camera file .cmp A:M Composite file .lib A:M Library file .lit A:M Light file .pre A:M Rendersetting Preset Files (enhanced file format as of v16 that saves render settings) .prjb (useful only if a reliable HA:MR viewer is still available) .pst A:M Post Effect etc. I haven't listed image files that can't be displayed in a browser but others have identified most of them. I haven't listed importable/exportable model formats as most of these should likely be compressed into a zip file prior to uploading.

Okay... I know this is a very old topic of John's but I waited a few weeks to see if anyone would make note of the resembleness of the Minion's from the recently released movie "Despicable Me". Well... there IS a resemblance. But what are the chances people would recognize the Kapsules as being first on the scene? Fun movie. (John you should cash in on this) Apologies for the quick photoshoppin'... and I didn't grab a minion with much of a likeness... but those that have seen the movie know what I'm talking about. Forgive.

Robert, That's an important observation as it should help prevent that 'falling into place at the beginning of the animation' look. If I understand what you are saying correctly... If we delete all other keys around a specific generated set of keyframes we can use that as a starting place? If true then we should be able to scrub through a simulation, find the ideal keyframe sets, delete the rest and use that/those as a starting place. I recall Bob explaining something about this (perhaps in his Simcloth TechTalk) but it didn't sink in then.

That's a pretty neat character/commercial. That clip does look like it's had a lot of post processing work applied to it. If trying to duplicate the referenced image with post effects it looks to me a combination of three post effects: Blur, Bloom and Denoise. Blur obviously would blur the creature/background, Bloom would push the highlights (and create a moody film look) and Denoise would blend pixels together... like blur but a more organic effect). Ultimately, I would probably composite two passes of the image together in photoshop (if a still image)... or if animated with A:M! (one with the post effects applied and one without) to get the detail in the creature's face combined with smoother background and body. Planet glow might give you a small part of the effect but it's mostly for generating a glow at the extremes edges of an object. That isn't likely to produce the effect we are seeing IMO. Anistropics and Sub Surface Scattering would also produce nice (but different) effects. (This submitted to suggest there is more than one way to skin a cat/wormcreature) Note: The smoke effect would be the toughest aspect to recreate.

You are correct. This is why Jason lists a requirement for the flyer as: I had to think about that myself for a few minutes... I now read that requirement as:

Sweet! That is one of the best cloth sims I've seen (period). Put a nice belt with that and I'd call that one near-perfection.