Rodney

You are really hitting your stride with these. The lighting and general styling is particulary interesting to me. I've mentioned this before and you've hit that peak again. Its that look... you know the one where the mind relaxes and stops caring if its 2D or 3D? I'm really enjoying the story.

Color me jealous Mark. That looks great!

Wow. Another year has passed by already? Tis time to raise yer mugs and join wit me toast. Death to those scurvy knaves... er... ahem.... Long live the Wannabe Pirates!

The voice makes me think this is one of Josh's videos. (He creates wonderful tutorials!) As far as earlier tutorials on Lightning (with an n) I think they are under the Lighting Tutorials category (with no n) in the Tutorials forum. Its a bit confusing I know but Lightning is something of a subcategory. Edit: Robert linked the Lightning/Jacob's ladder tutorial above.

Wow Steve. Excellent modeling and nice SSS effect! I haven't checked in on your WIP in a long time evidently. You are making great progress.

They look great Gene! A minor suggestion... Having Frank's skin a lighter green (more toward puke-green?) might make his face and hands stand out. As he is at the moment with the dark hair and dark suit there isn't a lot of contrast to help bring the expressiveness of his face/hands out.

You are off to a good start. The horizontal nature of the scene (reflected in the horizon and the fence on the left) might work well for you as you add more and more detail to the tree and the pumkin(s) underneath.

Jason, I'm afraid I'm only going to complicate this because the model renders on my end. Perhaps its something Mac related? Note that my rendering is without the images referenced by the model as they were not supplied with it. To remove the variable of the images having anything to do with it you might remove them and try another render. The only thing off that I noted was that the SSS settings didn't produce very good results so I changed them to another random set of numbers and rerendered. You can see how your original settings rendered in the smaller image within the image. (see attached)

Pretty good return on investment I'd say. You didn't seem to know where you were heading yourself so their suggestions seem genuine. While it may be implied, you didn't solicited feedback anywhere in this topic. Asking questions may get you closer to the responses you want. No doubt these are trying to understand more about your project and the type of feedback you want. Those of us that would take the time to respond feed off of your feedback to tailor our response. You have to motivate yourself first Mark. Who can retain more interest than the person who initiated the project? The subject matter is one of interest; barbarian swordsman vs dragon. In line with your thoughts about not having the scene captured during the primary action my suggestion would be to push the poses to capture the anticipatory poses leading up to the next (unseen) action. To understand that you have to get into who these characters are. What are they fighting for? What have they lost? Find the emotions behind the poses and your scene will come alive. For now these figures appear more as stationary props.

Keeping motivated is tough isn't it? I wouldn't blame the forum for your own lack of interest though Mark. Reading this topic shows there is plenty of interest. Perhaps you should read through the responses again. If you want to move on to projects that interest you more we'll move right along with you. The scene you've got going fits in well with your earlier Kong image. Its got that same 'stop motion still image' feel to it.

Looks really nice Mike! Its great to see you again.

There are several thing it could be. Its quite possible you're object (the sphere) is in front of your camera hiding the rest of he scene but from your discription that doesn't seem to be the case. If you think it is you could Right Click and view the scene from the Right or Left and that'd tell you if that is the case. 'd guess it is more likely you are rendering out a file with the Alpha Channel setting set to 'On'. In the render panel at the very bottom make sure have Alpha Channels turned off. This will allow the backgroud color you've set in your camera to show.

Very nice indeed!

Nice one Javier! It's great to see you again.

Outstanding tutorial. Very clear and consise.

Very (Extreme-ly) Impressive.

Just to clarify... You are misunderstanding Matt (John) here. A patch image and a decal are different. To apply an image to a patch you simply select the patch, Right Click and select Add Image. Then you either select an image that is currently available in A:M or browse to the new image you wish to apply. There is no need to position or apply decals. The image is simply applied to the patch. Note: The image is applied based on the orientation of the patches' normal. If the image appears oriented in a way that is not appropriate Right Click on the patch and choose Rotate Image or Flip Normal as required.

I wouldn't do that. While I'm not sure what exactly is going on with this method you are adding in A:M's rerendering of the entire sequence via the camera view. This rerendering is unnecessary unless you are wanting to add new 3D elements to it. If you wanted to do such a thing in A:M it'd work better to use the converter under the Images container in the Project Workspace. Steps to convert movies/image sequences without using Rotoscopes in A:M: Import the movie. Right Click on its shortcut in the PWS and chose Save as Animation. Select the type and compression you want to convert to. There you get the conversion with no rerendering via the camera. You can do this conversion in A:M but as others have indicated there are dedicated programs for doing the conversion that may be better optimized for you.

You are right. Too simple. Probably why I would never have thought of it.

That would be my plan. I haven't forgotten I still owe you a few tutorials on using Coreldraw/Corel Photopaint with A:M. The hardest part of it is determining a target to aim at. If you guys don't have a preference I may go for 'slightly deranged' for the first chicken. I'm in transit at the moment but will set to work as soon as I can. It's a good thing I'm a bit lax in the memory department because if I remembered that very useful saying I might never volunteer for anything ever again. As far as the Alpha Channels/masks on some images but not on others I don't think it should make much of a difference. I noticed the same thing too but didn't see where the Alpha Channel effected much of anything. The decals seemed aligned properly with the geometry.

Thats pretty crazy. I hope you are going to let us in on the secret of how you reduced all of those constraints.

Thanks Jim! I'm thinking Jing might be a satisfactory way to cover 'all others' who don't have screen capturing capabilities. As you state it should work well in a pinch. It might work well in a HelpDesk environment as well where troubleshooting footage shouldn't exceed 5 minutes. I appreciate your time checking this out.

Here is a much older discussion on the subject. A lot of the information there seems applicable too. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=24096

We've had several discussion of video sharing lately so I want to make sure everyone is aware of this resource as well. Jing works with PCs and Macs and provides some storage space for you to share. If anyone is able and willing to test out the possibilities of Jing I'm interested. For those that need more service options/smaller file sizes than the basic Jing service provides Jing Pro is just under $15 a year. http://www.jingproject.com/features/default.asp Techsmith also has a 30 day trial of their Camtasia software. If you need to capture video plan ahead and use every bit of that trial period. Its a bit expensive for the hobbyist but I used the trial for a month, found it indespensible and purchased it.

Jeff, The short answer is: Don't sweat it. Just make the tutorial and pass it on to someone else that can reduce it. The long answer will depend on what software and compression codecs you have available. If you have any video editor most com with basic .MOV conversion/compression capability. Quicktime is the one most common in the forum I'd guess. I see that Fuchur has already posted before I've submitted this reply. The H264 settings usually get very good quality to compression ratios. One thing to consider also it cuttng out any extraneous areas of the video. It may be worth your while to capture your tutorial a second time (playing your captured video) while just talking through it. I've found with most of my attempts thus far much of the time is spent thinking of what to do next or talking through something that is easily demonstrated already in the video visually. These areas can be edited out with no loss of comprehension by the viewer. Audio is often the biggest space waster. If you can check your video's audio setting you may find you can gain some size saving by adjusting the settings. In some cases, especially when the video is really basic you can drop the audio track entirely. When displaying SWF tutorials it may be useful to capture still frames instead of moving images. When the compressor smashes pixels together the video then has less to compress. I'm interested in all the comments we'll get here from those with video expertise.