Rodney

But of course. An acoustic guitar should be part of everyone's library of resources. On behalf of the A:M Community let me say, 'Thanks' for the contributions! There is a lot to iron out. Those that helped build the Extra CD/DVD and have worked on similar projects know just how tough a job this is. Perhaps we can use your models as a test case for how best to collect, organize, optimize and distribute the next generation of A:M resources.

...and with that we are off and running. Extra content project initiated as of 3 Jun 09 with a tentative completion date: 1 Oct 2010. (Could be delivered sooner but... we'll see) Who else is in-terested?

For those that haven't been with us since 2005 here is an online sample of the A:M Extra CD. (Splash Screen featuring the work of Jim Talbot here) Note: Links to the tutorials do not work as there is no content at the other end of the link.

The forum may not be the best place for collections of models. Its not really designed for such a thing. Having said that... I've briefly tested an area of the forum for just that purpose. I also recently purchased webspace to test out the idea using more public space. With all of the innovators and contributors that would support the idea I think we could have a viable solution online by 2010 but there is a lot to consider. From a purely A:M user perspective, I hesitate to pursue the idea of putting user driven content on Hash Inc server space as there are a lot of interesting things you run into with 'free models'; Bandwidth, copyright, etc. In short, free isn't free. It should be noted that Hash Inc has always supported the community's effort to distribute content. While I've owned A:M this has been in the way of funding the collection and distribution of A:M CD content which evolved into an Extra CD which evolved into an Extra DVD. Absolutely stunning content contributed to the community. If the A:M Community is up to the challenge we could easily field another round of Extras in 2010. As this topic is especially of interest to Newbies I welcome the discussion from everyone here.

Sure can. You important a movie file (MOV or AVI) the same way you do sequential images. Once you have the video/images in A:M simply drag and drop it on your Camera in the Choreography. You can also Right Click on your Camera in the Project Workspace listing, select New/Rotoscope and select your video sequence from the list -if- you've already imported the imagery. Note: You may have more success converting your video to sequential images as that will strip the audio and any strange codecs out of the images.

I like your solution Mark. It complements the action, directs the eye to the character and allows the viewer to interpret the up and the down of it all with their own imagination. Works for me! Go get 'em!

Lookin' good! It may be too late to get this in but you've really got to do something with that default ground plane. My attention got lost in the ground plane when it should have been on the character's face(!!!) My first thought is to shorten the depth of it to create more 'sky' at the front. That might even give the appearance of the ladder being on a thin (precariously balanced) platform. It might add a sense of tension/danger to the scene. Edit: Bringing the left side of the ground plane down vertically to make the ground angle upward toward the right would give the impression that the ladder and sign were there at the edge of a cliff. The eye would then be drawn up and around and back to the character. None of this is animation related but... the composition is important. Good luck with the competition!

Thanks Mark. Great information. Much of what you say is exactly why I'm a fan of self-published works. Thats where most of the innovation and fun is... or was. I tried to keep up with all that was going on in the comic book industry back in the 90's but mercifully distance and other commitments saved me from crashing and burning. The one factor that more than anything kept me out of self publishing was that I had a really hard time trusting a lot of these fellows. I didn't have to learn this personally as I saw first hand that where business is business and there are those willing to do anything to be in business someone is going to get screwed. The issue of Fantastic Four by John Byrne that is printed 'sideways' is a favorite of mine. At the time I thought it was perfect. Oh Yeah!

You are certainly full of surprises. Makes me miss the days of Claremont and Cochrum's 'Starjammers' and Mantlo and Guice's 'Swords of the Swashbucklers'. Ah, those space-faring pirate adventures. (I like Disney's Treasure Planet a lot for this reason) You self published your own graphic novel... my admiration for your work grows exponentially. Up until about 1994 I collected self published work more than mainstream comics but my collecting of american comics slowed considerably when I first moved to Japan. As many comics as I was buying I must admit that was probably a good thing. I'd love to know more about your early comic work. A lot of the self published comics I bought had rather limited distribution. I was fascinated by them. Thanks for sharing this bit of McCrary and Largento history! Did the Starbucklers break out of local distribution?

Chris, Just wanted to say I like what you've got going thus far. Your scenes have a wonderful way of capturing the imagination.

Sure is! Just make sure your adjust the settings in an Action or Choreography.

Every Decal Image has a transparency property. Keep looking. Its there. Look for the Percentage property.

It should be noted that there are other ways to get this 'rendering in layers' done as well. The two methods I mentioned are only examples. Have you ever found yourself working with a feature and thought... "this is cool... if only it would..." This is the nature of the beast. Features are great and the more of them the better but one thing to keep in mind is that features are generally written to be used a particular way. When you create your own methods you may find yourself with a more flexible and useful means. One of the greatest assets of A:M is that we can create our own features. The processes that work well with the project you are working on right now are the most important thing. One of the problems with Rendering Objects in Layers is that stopping at the Object level is not going to be enough. Consider a simple situation: You want to be able to composite different heads with a standard body in a scene (perhaps the body is exactly what you want but you know the head will need to be refined/changed). Its easy enough to render out the heads and body separately but when you go to composite it becomes a more complicated thing. If you didn't set up the renders correctly you might have unneeded elements composited over the top or showing through where not needed. Each situation will be different but in the one I'm thinking of the solution would be to hide the back of the shirt for a rendered pass. We'd then place this new layer without the back of the shirt over the top of the 'back of the shirt' layer with the head/neck composited in between. We've then arrived at a solution for this particular scene and the head can be changed as needed. Another method would be to use sequential decals to organize and layer the scene. Setting up a scene in this way would allow for more flexibilty than just rendering out separate elements in a scene. With this you could render all characters red, all props gray and all background elements light or dark green. Special effects and ghosted layers without the backs of models showing through them can be added to a scene. (Steps to reproduce this method we'll save for another day) I guess what I'm trying to say is that much of this doesn't need to be programmed or confined to wishful thinking. We've already got these features.

Its been quite awhile since I saw that message but as I recall I use to get that occassionally when I attempted a wireframe or shaded wireframe render. What was odd about this is that if I changed my video driver in A:M's Options Panel (from Direct3D to OpenGL or vice versa) the problem would go away. I've been told that A:M's renderer doesn't use the graphics card but I cannot escape what my experience tells me. Perhaps when rendering wireframe/shaded wireframe A:M borrows from the realtime render driver? I dunno. At any rate... try changing your driver in TOOLS/OPTIONS on the Global tab.

The programming of such a feature might be fairly straightforward but implementing it in such a way as to satisfy everyone would be considerably harder. Rendering in Layers is but one of many features that fit into the general compositing workflow. A relatively direct way of implementing this 'Rendering in Layers' yourself would be to organize your objects in folders on your harddrive in such a way that they can be replaced with 'empty' models. The folder structures would be otherwise exactly the same. Example: You desire to render only the Actors in your scene. All models in your Actors folder are copies of your original Actors. All Backgrounds and Props are empty models. If you desire to render out Backgrounds without Actors you'd copy the original Backgrounds but empty Actors to the folders instead. This is the example of how it can be done working with the resources behind the scenes. Its not the optimum but demonstrates how to get from point A to point B. If you know how to code a program you could create the thing. You could probably do this even quicker just by creating a duplicate of your Choreography for each Layer you want to render. Example: You want to render only Actors in your scene. Then you want to render only the Background. Save your Choreography as 'MasterChor.cho' Inactivate or Delete everything but the Actors in the Scene. Save the Choreography as 'Character Pass'. Open MasterChor.cho again. Inactivate or Delete everything but the Background objects in the Scene. Save the Chor as 'Background Pass' Do the same for other layers as needed. "Overlay Pass", "Special Effects Pass" etc. Finally, create another Choreography to combine/composite the whole thing. Ultimately this last method will not be much more difficult than if you had to organize the Layers in a new feature. The important thing (and much more difficult if not impossible to program) is knowing what you need.

That is fact concerning JPG format. (I thought BMP was an option though in 2004) You have a couple options (one is upgrading). There is a wide variety of programs available for converting image formats. I use Irfanview (www.irfanview.com) as it only takes a few seconds per image to convert. Back in 2004 timeframe I use to render to TGA or other format and then zap them into other formats as needed. JPG or PNG being popular because they will display in a webpage.

There are several uses. Several that spring to mind include: If you have an action that launches out on an Arc it can be helpful to have those start their trajectories before the first frame (frame 0 in most cases). This can be useful when you have motions easing in or easing out of their positions on the very first frame. In simulation it is useful to start the simulation before the first frame or else you would end up with only the beginning of the simulations. Luckily for most simulations (like Particles) the Preroll setting will adequately handle this too. In some cases without the negative frames we might have to start our animation at a later frame and then discard or at least not render the frames before it.

Adding the attached screenshot for any Newbies who don't know where the Render Button is:

Thanks! I've taken a brief look so far and I like what you've done with him. Too much fun.

Nice! For a first animation... simply awesome! You've got some really smooth motion in there. Is any of that motion capture? Yes, I'd love to get a closer look at your model. From what I can see it's very cool. More than getting access to the model though I'd love to see more animated action with these guys from you! You said 'Lemme know what you think so here goes. I'm sure you already know this... A little more time on the texturing and lighting would really do wonders for this scenario. It wouldn't have to be too crazy an adjustment to take it where it needs to go. My suggestion would be to avoid colors that are 100% pure. The blue background is a good example of where a little variation in the color would work well for you. Whether that was my first or that was my 50th I'd be really happy with that if I were you. More please!

Have yourself a wonderful day!

When your final render turns out black this is usually an indication that you've got your Alpha Channel setting on. (Its not black... its transparent... but to the eye they look the same) There are two ways to attack this: 1) Turn the Alpha Channel setting to Off You do this on the Render Panel. Look for it at the bottom. This is the best way to do it if you don't need the Alpha Channel/transparency in your images at all. 2) Go into your Rotoscope Properties and set the Image to display in the Alpha Channel. Then you can render with the Alpha Channel on and the image will appear in the final render. If the setting isn't on A:M things you just wanted to use the Roto as reference and not have it render at all. Note: There is another setting there in the Rotoscope Properties; 'On Top'. Don't set the Roto image to be 'On Top' unless you want it render over the top of everything. Where you would want to use the Alpha Channel would be if you wanted to render the CG object separately and then composite it over the Live Action. This can be a useful way of organizing a project if you've got a lot of individual images/layers. The quickest way is to turn the Alpha Channel setting off.

Impressive tests. I was going to point out my favorite but that seems to change depending on which image I'm looking at.

I haven't seen anyone banned for such a post so I think you may be exaggerating just a little? (very few people have ever been banned from the forum) The title of the topic 'alright.... dood' should clue everyone in that they aren't dealing with someone very mature. So... note to self, titles are a clue. Looking beyond all of this there is an opportunity here for everyone to learn. Lesson 1: Don't blame the program for user error As this is the Newbies forum its okay to cut the kids a little slack. This may be the only way they can get past themselves and learn. If someone comes off as overbearing and pretensious or down right rude... they won't get much help anywhere until they learn to be a little more mature. There is a very good chance a short leash will be taken advantage of but then... the delete key is always handy too. Edit: Forum members added some useful information for those who want to use Wav files in A:M so thats a good reason to keep the topic too.

I think I have an idea of what you are after but can you point us to an image of what it might look like?