Rodney

The advertisements for these classes is appearing all over youtube and other places. That may be mostly just for me because of targeted advertising but... I can imagine more than a few people will be taking these courses.

Please do. I'm leaning heavily toward a purchase but if I do purchase that will be a big distraction* in the coming year. My biggest concern would be the assignments (which I assume may be some form of the same educational/safety courses where the primary goal is to track whether the student has exposed themselves to the material... not necessarily understood or put it into practice. It's important to put these things into practice or else... why take the course? . RE: Scoring I tend to be the opposite of musically inclined but Scoring... I see that as so important to what we do in animation. I've been circling the thing for years but never dived into it nor put it practice. *a good distraction as distractions go but also one that to gain any benefit requires a level of commitment beyond just taking the masterclasses. The masterclasses (to me) represent a starting point. Added: I've been thinking of taking some classes at the local college but my experience there the last time left me a bit out in the cold. It wasn't worthless but the primary thing I was learning is that we can (to a large degree) teach ourselves a lot of the same material. The college is the gatekeeper that puts an official stamp on the students exposure. Interacting with other students was certainly a plus but often can be discouraging when the majority just wants the grade so they can get the diploma. I'm there (spending money) because I want to understand the material presented in the course!

The issue there may be intersections/pass throughs if you have the particles dieing on impact. If that is the case you *could* set all your objects to transparent (perhaps not an easy task) and then render the particles pass that way. If you aren't concerned with passthroughs you could save two copies of your Project file. One with everything but the particles turned off. The other with only the particles turned off. There are a lot of different ways you can do this... but since time is of the essence I won't suggest things that have a higher learning curve. Okay, I lie. You could render the scene (to image sequence!) and generate the snow in a program like Blackmagic Fusion. Import the sequence into Fusion and your scene will appear to be in front or behind the snow depending on where you place your images. Render different parts of the scene and place those images where you want them. Or... do the same thing in A:M! Render out as many elements as separate passes (will significantly lower the hit on memory)... then bring all the images back into A:M as Layers. You could run a pass of the particles separately and bring that in too or render the particles live along with the Layers. Too much info right? Or... Email me the project file as I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment and I'll render and composite it together for you.

They had some fun with that while giving the fans who hate the cute stuff a few moments to call their own didn't they? I'm specifically talking about the scene with Chewy.

Yes, the new computer will require a new activation code so an email to Jason is the proper route.

I've been hesitant to post a link to this site but the reasons for doing so get more compelling every day. There are a lot of these masterclasses now online and as with most things certain themes and areas pique my interest. The most compelling masterclass at this exact moment for me personally is Ron Howard's Directing masterclass. Of the many others Steve Martin's masterclass intrigues me as I'm very interested in comedic timing and the setup, pacing and payoff of jokes. Hans Zimmer's masterclass on film scoring surely must touch on some areas I feel a need to explore. And on and on and on. It seems to me the primary business model behind masterclass.com is one of volume. By keeping the courses reasonably priced more people are apt to sign on to a class. One could argue that most if not all the material in these course could be discovered for free online and through research. A benefit to these courses would be that the information is collected for you. And of course the 'master' that is teaching the class is the primary draw. Taking the courses individually is reasonably priced ($90 or so). What is more interesting is the annual pass ($180) that grants access to ALL of the courses. In a world where most masterclasses might cost $1000 I find this model very compelling. Not having taken one of the courses I don't know the extent of how deep each master class goes. I'd love to gift an annual pass to someone but I'm currently job hunting so... maybe in 2018. I'm tempted to gift this to myself and make studying these courses my primary job going forward. Focus is important so I can see where targeting one course exclusively might be best but this isn't as financially if one plans to take several of the other course to feed that fund of mental knowledge required by kitchen table animators. If anyone takes one of these courses (or signs up for the annual pass) please let us know more. From the site: If gift giving, incremental amounts (gift card-like) can be given as well. https://www.masterclass.com/gift

I just returned from the theater and enjoyed the film a lot. Well worth the price of admission. (no surprise there) This felt like (at least) three movies in one as the various stories of the characters played out on the screen. I'm glad Disney doesn't break them down into three movies but they certainly could be and... it may be that they are playing to the idea of serials even more with logical drop off points where one story ends and others continue on. The storytelling is very well done with lots of little surprises along the way. This is (to me) especially interesting given that there seemed to be a limited way forward and yet the writers managed to build upon what has gone before even as they chart the way forward. The writers earned their paychecks here. Importantly, as the story was playing out it was very difficult to predict what was ahead and this is even with those potential milestones teased in the trailers... which this time unlike the trailer for the last film... continuously hit their mark. There were a few moments where distraction was used to highlight those moments even more which makes me think someone very smart was working on/with those trailers. Lots and lots of great moments for subsequent viewings.

Agreed. I hope they bring it back. Looks like Bob Iger has managed to extend his presence as well: As I recall he was expected to leave in 2019. Some reports suggest the purchase price to be higher than other reports. A Variety article states: 13.7 billion in debt. Hmmmm..... Perhaps that is the motivation that kicked Rupurt Murdock into high gear to greenlight the sale.

In a crazy alternate universe my doppleganger is smiling because as a teenager he struggled with whether to pursue a job with Disney or Marvel. Decisions. Decisions. I'm glad to see it worked out so well for him.

Most excellent! Don't look now but your comedic timing is showing. (and that is a very good thing)

It appears to be official. https://www.awn.com/news/disney-buys-fox-52-billion-deal For Fox's part this seems like a new way of splitting shares while maximizing profits as just prior to the merger Fox will split the parts of Fox that cannot be merged into a newly branded company. On the comics and cartoon front it would appear that X-Men are now back in the fold with Marvel/Disney... so look for cross overs in the future... once the legal dust has settled. And now Mickey can hang out with Homer Simpson.

For those that have the annual subscription to Aaron's Courses *I believe* this course is included in that.

Aaron Blaise is branching out to offer some additional courses via his site. I'm posting this here... now... because the introductory pricing of $29 ends 14 hours from the time of this post. For those pinching pennies... that makes a big difference. I've purchased and have started watching the videos. I anticipate that much of what will be presented won't be new but will help to solidify what is already known. The underlying theme is.. Writers write. Directors direct. "Go out and do it!" That's the best way to learn. Here's the link:https://creatureartteacher.com/product/story-course-film-and-animation/ Here's the write up of the course. Here's a overview from Aaron Blaise and Chuck Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spaQ9rYR57c

If this isn't a simple setting such as SSE2/SSE4 it would be a good issue to report to A:M Reports as Steffen can give it a good look... especially given that you are able to demonstrate the difference between v18 and v19. That should help narrow things down considerably.

A downside of the Decal Edtitor is that it won't re-decal patches that aren't already decaled. So this might not meet your immediate need.

They do indeed. I'm sure it's a lot of work being out there on the cutting edge. I'm a bit surprised it even works. Most people who work with 'nightlies' are into bug testing and working out all the rough spots. The bugs definitely come out at night. Gotta love tech watches... lots of waiting and watching. And by the time the thing arrives... most folks have already moved on.

More progress being made toward the pending release of the AV1 video format (targeted for 2018). Although the standard itself is still not fully set, Firefox is the first to release a browser that can play AV1. For the latest from Mozilla and Bitmovin: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/dash-playback-of-av1-video/ From the article: For those that have the latest Firefox nightly installed a demo page can be found here: https://demo.bitmovin.com/public/firefox/av1/ The demo film is 'Tears of Steel' which is a tip of the hat to open source, patent free and similar movements in the tech world.

Fun stuff. This falls into that category of... now why didn't I think of that! You've been making good progress on this and it looks like you are right on schedule. If you need to get some extra footage out of this you could have a second... third... fourth...runthrough where the camera zooms in closer to specific areas. Assuming that would fit into the over all experience the onlookers could then experience the show over and over again but with subtle differences and emphasis. I have a tiny projector that I've barely used since I bought it and it might work well for something like this. What type of screen are you projecting onto? An actual back projection screen or some form of stand in? .

I'm not sure if I posted anything related to this or not... it seems familiar. I ran across a few random project files and it reminded me of the foray into madness that I call... Poor Man's Pixel Painter The basic idea Create a grid or series of grids that acts as a canvas and 'draw' Groups into them, giving each group/shape a color I'm using grids of 100x100 with a 1cm interval in the attached imagery. Using larger grid will increase the 'resolution' of the drawn imagery but will likely result in considerable lag especially on systems with little RAM. The drawing (with a pen/stylus) is made easier by using the Lasso tool (Shift G) to get a feel more like that of drawing. Use the Shift key to add to the groups as the color only needs to be added at the beginning and then 'pixels' are added to the shapes via holding the shift key down. Other Tools such as basic selection, Lasso Line and Patch Group can also be used. It can help to work from back to front but if something is drawn out of order (and therefore hiding behind another group) simply drag and drop the group to the desired location. For instance, in the attached the red border around the orange lightning bolt was drawn after the orange lightning bolt... obscuring it behind the red. Moving the red group up in the heirarchy of the PWS sends it backward on the canvas. Care must be taken not to move any of the grid squares (unless an embossed effect is desired). Groups can also be copy/pasted and the resulting grid square geometry placed anywhere in 3D space. Just make sure the shapes are in front of other objects and the canvas. I must have been bored when I was doing this as it's a whole lot easier just to draw something in a dedicated paint program but someone must have posted something that inspired the exploration and thought that we could 'paint' directly in A:M.

There are a few questions I have relative to this technology. Perhaps this might be expressed by the game of 20 Questions where a series of questions is used to narrow the scope of possibilities to (inevitably) arrive at a (truthful) conclusion. Those two variables (inevitable) and (truthful) are moving targets that deal with time and proximity. In other words, given enough time an increasingly accurate proximity to a specified set of criteria can be deduced. The first question might not count so we'll call that question zero. Are you off or are you on? As a signal is received by the sensor (that reflected or absorbed a given signal) it's state can be deduced. Ah. I see you are on. Let us proceed. Question 1: Are you animal, vegetable or mineral? Etc. Etc. What is described in the video shouldn't take 3D printing so there are some missing pieces of information here. The 3D printing is simply a means of automating manufacturing, mass production/replication and of quality control. This should be possible with paper. It would seem to me the piece(s) of metal added to the object must store the capability to absorb or reflect the signal in much the same way as a tag on clothes that will sound the alarm if shoplifters try to depart a store without it being removed or deactivated.

Cute. I like him! By that design... forward leaning stance... it looks like he's an adventurer. By the indication of eyes... a wary adventurer.

Can 3D printed objects (plastic or otherwise) without batteries and electronics be connected to the internet? Apparently so although that may depend on what you define as electronics. The approach uses ambient wifi to absorb or reflect signals and communicate in a binary (on/off) manner. With this method buttons, knobs and sliders can 'talk' to each other and other devices via wireless connection. So basically, anything that can move or rotate can relay it's current state. Obviously power is present somewhere in loop of the greater system (via smartphone, router etc.) but no power is required in the sensor itself thus suggesting almost any object can become a sensor using the ambient signals already present in the air. Those signals can then be absorbed or reflected to communicate their current state. Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU6-o9SIkMQ

Yes indeed. Although... I recall a recent post by Robert that suggested displacement didn't work as well as desired. I just did a quick test of an image sequence to make sure I wasn't imagining being able to directly link the Frames to a Pose Slider. Yep. It works! It might be time to request a few updates to the Pose Sliders so that we can get at some 'defined' settings. In other words we can do quite a bit now with Pose Sliders (set them to negative etc.) but it'd be nice to have some descriptive tags or such that would assist in finding specific settings. I suppose that's where we divide and conquer by making additional Pose Sliders to handle each of those areas. Then we just drill down deeper until we get to the Pose Slider that stores our desired setting.

Tore, While Xtas's method certainly will work there are other approaches that will work too and if it meets your needs... The easiest way I know to use different images to change facial expressions or textures is to: 1. Number the images sequentially 2. Crack open the Decal's properties and adjust the Frame setting Some care might have to be taken to make sure that still frames don't get interpreted as animated frames. For instance, you might have a face go from frame 1 to 5 to 3 to 8 of a period of several seconds and you wouldn't (necessarily) want that to play out sequentially (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) or whatever over that same period of time. Therefore you might want to set the Frame's key interpolation to "Hold" to get that snappy movement from one change to the next (1...5....3.... 8). The reason the images need to be named sequentially is so that A:M will recognize and import them together. As such it's the naming and numbering that is the most important thing. You can change what appears in those images (i.e. alter the sequence) via another program. Or animate that sequence in another program and then have it play directly in A:M as a Decal, Patch Image, Layer, etc. For ease of re-use set up a Pose Slider that adjust that Frame setting to the ideal frames. There can be a few other gotchas but those apply to any image sequence. An example would be that sequences should be the same size/resolution or it will likely break the sequence. As for Xtas's tutorial... 'tis gone. But Robert Holmen created another one almost just like it.

That is definitely odd. Others may be able to assist that know more about your specific hardware. The only thing that comes to mind is that it sounds like a graphics card issue (toolbars disappearing, etc.) There are a few settings in Tools options that you can test to at least eliminate those variables.. As always, double check the driver for your graphics card to see if it is the best (not necessarily the latest) available. If you aren't running the latest release v19c (topic title says, "v19bc") then make sure you are running that (the 64bit release... although you could also download and run the 32bit release for general performance comparison. The links to the installers can be found here: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=48392 Another thing you could try is to go back a few versions and test that/those releases. All you need to do to run those is copy your license file over into the installation directory. Most of the links to various installers can be found in the Latest Info forum.