Rodney

Video tutorials of the Exercises from the manual (TaoA:M) can be accessed here: http://www.hash.com/2007web/vm.htm

It should be noted that older variants on the manual are available in some other languages as well: AMFrenchManual.pdf 1MB AMJapaneseManual.pdf 6MB AMSpanishManual.pdf 21MB

Hi right back atchya! Welcome to the A:M forum. When it comes to the manual you are in luck. Download TaoA:M (the Manual with 20 exercises designed to set you up for success) and the Technical Reference in pdf format here: ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/docs/ 12/06/2007 12:00AM 22,592,160 TAOAM.pdf 12/06/2007 12:00AM 15,301,936 TECHREF.pdf (Note: When using these two links its best to Right Click and 'Save As' to your computer) For any and all questions related to A:M please feel free to ask them here in the forum. This forum is 'the manual' that simply cannot be beat. Working through the manual online here in the TaoA:M forum will get you up to speed quickly:

Looking great! No real crits from me except to say the camera angle seems to make the image pretty linear overall whereas I think you have some nice opportunity to play the manmade features against the natural elements of the scene a little more. A the mountains seem a little too symmetrical and make me think the camera being a little farther over to the right looking over at the left mountain range might make for nice contrast. Nice work!

I wouldn't be as optimistic if this was just anybody. But it isn't just anybody... it's you. Go for it Mark!

Welcome back. I hope the opportunities are there for you to dig deeper into A:M and pursue your goals. What would you like to change it to?

Gene, I'm with John here. My bet is on particles turned off. If no particles... no flock.

It may be a pretty obsure reference but it made me smile. Little touches like that may not mean much in the short term but over time they tend to develop lives of their own. I'd guess the artist who first put those numbers on the Beagle Boys shirts had no idea how deep that referencing would go. I should probably add this to your Blog comments but... Regarding the Clone Wars film: I liked what I saw but it didn't hold my attention long enough to sit through it all in one watch. My mind kept wandering. It seemed a bit too dialogue driven and long. I'll have to watch it again with my adventure-ready-movie-watching glasses on. I didn't see the series as it was released but suspect the shorter/episodic nature of it helped a lot. The pace of Star Wars has always been... chop.chop.introduce new stuff.chop. Regardless, I really liked your flemming of the clone wars and the interview on your blog.

Nice one. I've got to ask... 176-167... Hmmm. Is the number on Flemm's chest plate a reference to the Beagle Boys?

Very nice interface David. I love the simplicity of it.

Check my earlier post for a few email addresses.

Fedex is right down the block in most cities. As timing is important perhaps you can phone Fedex and intercept the delivery? The webstore only ships packages to where you specify delivery. A phone will be faster but... If you aren't emailing 'support@hash.com' that is probably the best address short of a personal address to someone at Hash Inc. You could try: jason (at) hash (dot) com Jason is pretty quick at responding to email.

Nice Nancy! (I'd like to see the camera pulled back just a little more) Those Hippogyrafs are truly fascinating creatures. Legend has it they are the eyes and ears of Ozma of Oz. Spellbinding.

Very nice Marcos!

Here's a quick project that demonstrates the idea. I set it to 400 rotations in 1 second and I think it just laughed at me. Looks more like 10 rotations. It would be helpful to know more about your goal here. I think MUFOOF is the only thing that will keep us from attending the funeral. I'll miss everyone. Is there a particular reason this 9 minute shot needs to be contained in one choreography? spinspinspin1.zip spinspinspin1.mov spinspinspin.mov

You might want to do the rotation in an Action. Actions excel at cyclic motion. Then you could specify how many rotations by number (1, 2, 3 ...559) in the Action's properties once assigned to the Model in the Choreography. So the idea would be to divide and conquer. In this way you could develop different rotations and swap them out in as needed. Do you know how many rotations you need?

Oooo.... Good Idea! There have been so many Star Wars/Sci Fi models donated to the community over the years we may have to do something about getting them out into the public again. I'm not sure if we are up to another Extra CD/DVD but something along that line of thought might be workable.

Thought I had better post something! All my ideas thus far have been of the Star Wars... guy ball defeats the evil villian ball and rescues the girl ball epic proportion size. So I decided to counter that craziness by doing something simpler. The most important thing being to move that ball!!! So here's a red ball in fog to get me started. RedRollingBall.mov

If you want to create the ball yourself, Mark's comic pages will walk you through it. First you make a Circle: Then use the Circle to create a Sphere: Hope the images aren't too large. For more on the basics of modeling with splines check out Mark's other comic pages. Thanks Mark!

Booleans won't deform the mesh. They are implemented at render time only. I'd think translating these objects to real world creations you'd either get the collected shapes combined or a really real mess.

I'm with Rusty on this. Whether in cartoon or realistically it may be better to lathe a disk or decal a patch and represent the spinning of the props that way versus actually rotating the blades. One of the reasons this tends to be a better solution is that rotating objects tend to create a false sense of turning due to their symmetry. This is best demonstrated with the example of a character walking past a fence where all the fence planks are exactly the same. The lack of difference in the planks (or helicopter blades) can give the illusion that nothing has moved as the sequence plays. Having said that there are approaches to this that can work with actual spinning. Those renderings can even be used to get the nice images you'd need to 'cheat' the effect. I did notice that almost one year ago to this date the answer to your question was answered. I'm not sure you got a chance to read the responses then as you were more interested in the orientation of the blades. Looks like everyone anticipated your question by approximately one year. Check it out and see if this doesn't lead you to the solutions you are looking for. I see about four different approaches here and there, Euler Rotation, Expressions, MUFOOF and imagery. Regarding the strobing phenomenon: One of the issues we face when rendering a spin in 3D is that the images will be rendered onto a 2D plane; the screen. Something that looks like its rotating in 3D space may not convey the same movement within that plane. In some cases the rotation may appear to reverse or (something to avoid) not rotate at all. This is fairly easy to address with objects that we can change to create differences and avoid symmetry. In the fence example we might remove a fence plank or tilt one or two in a different direction. This is harder to do with objects such as rotor blades which have an expectation of being the same. Regarding Euler Rotations. This was my approach when I created my first rotor animation. Simple math will get it done and its almost as straightfoward as entering the number of rotations; 1, 2, 3 and so on. Just enter the numbers in increments of 360; a full rotation. 360=1 rotation 720=2 rotations 1080=3 rotations etc. If you need to rotate in increments of a full rotation (to make sure the spin looks right to the viewer) you can work in thirds/halves etc.: 480= 1 1/3 rotation 540=1 1/2 rotation etc. Here's your previous 'Rotor Fix' topic which may already have the solution you need.