Rodney

Try rendering with your model invisible. At a quick glance it looks to me like your light is inside your model and the mesh is preventing the light from escaping.

I've exchanged a few short emails with Satyajit. He's keeping busy. He didn't say when he'd be able to devote time to this project again. But like everyone around here, I'd sure love to see it continue.

I think its the topic title. 'New WIP' in a WIP forum isn't going to catch to much attention. Go back into your first post and edit the topic to 'Free Beer!'. You'll get lots of attention. Nice bottles!

It helps to know what you are trying to build. Adding Nulls and attaching them to a model is pretty straightforward though. Right Click Add Null There are several ways to attach Nulls to a Model. The steps will differ depending on whether you are in a Modeling, Action or Choreography window. One of the simpliest ways: Right Click Add Constraint (You'll need to know what type of contraint/attachment you want to create)

This is covered in the manual; TaoA:M Exercises 7 and 12. Exercise 12: Lip Poses, shows you how to set up the phonemes used in Lip Sync for use with A:M's dopesheet. This is the follow up to Exercise 7: Can You Say That?, which shows how to use the dopesheet with the Keekat character.

Models can use more than one action so you may need to provide a little more information. For instance, we may need to know more about the custom model you created. Were both of the action created using the same custom model? Can you provide more information on what the model is or what the actions are suppose to do?

Wow Stian. I've seen that image before but thought it was a photograph. That is completely off the hook. Now that... that is a room full of stuff. And that stuff is pure magic mixed with extreme patience and talent.

When constructing any room its important to consider the purpose. What will it be used for? Is it a living room? A kitchen? A bedroom? Who lives in that room? What would they use it for? In 'Tin Woodman of Oz' the production crew was fortunate enough to have Alain Desrochers and others sketch plans for buildings and rooms the characters from the movie would live in. Here is a plan view of Nimmie Amee's Cabin by Robert Taylor. Nimmie's cabin has the benefit of being many rooms all combined together in one place. This made a very convenient setting for the characters in the movie. While the designs of Nimmie's cabin did change along the way toward a finished movie the initial plan was essential in defining and refining it.

Building a room is much like building anything... it helps to have a plan. A plan can be defined as: plan (plural: plans) noun A drawing showing technical details of a building, machine etc., with unwanted details omitted, and often using symbols rather than detailed drawing A set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal. A 2-dimensional drawing of usually of a building or room as seen from above with obstructions or irrelevant details such as ceiling or roof removed to reveal the internal layout. All of these definitions fit our purposes as they help us plan your room. The 2D view you most likely will want to work in in Animation:Master will be the Top View (another name for a Plan View). In Animation:Master you can important a drawing as a rotoscope or you can draw right on top of the grid. Here is a quickly created floor plan/ground plan of a series of adjoining rooms. You can see in the second image that I've imported it into A:M and stretched it a little to make it wider. Also note that I clicked on the little hand icon in the Project Workspace to make it unpickable. This way we won't accidentally adjust our plan. You can find a lot of room plans online. Or create a few of your own: http://www.smallblueprinter.com/sbp.html So, first we have an idea or a purpose. Next we develop our plan.

Hey, no problem Steve. The more the merrier!

Are you sure you are looking at the same room Rodney is looking at? His room seems to be a whole lot more empty than that at the moment. I don't think the stagehands have moved anything in yet.

That is a very reasonable place to start. Lengendary Disney Animator (and creator of Betty Boop) Grim Natwick was known to say about the art of animation, "Its all in the Timing... and in the Spacing". Building a room demonstrates how we can master spacing even before we begin to animate. Exercise 2 of The Art of Animation:Master appropriately places emphasis on Staging. (It even includes the stage!) Its within the confines of the three dimensional space in front of a Camera or Audience that our Actions will take place. Activities outside this area are of less interest to us than what we see on the stage. Its here that our Actors will live and relate. Let us assume then that in Act 1 of a play all the activities take place in one room. Can you describe the room in any way?

A:M doesn't but there are many programs available that do the job. Its good to have one of these programs because the Print Screen key can only capture single images. Most of these programs capture images continuously to a sequential series of images or every time you press a specific shortcut key (usually user definable). Two of my favorites for the PC are Irfanview and Wink. (but there are many out there) Wink being the more powerful of the two for screencapturing. Its really odd that your keyboard/computer won't do this however. Perhaps the paint program you are using doesn't have a standard paste buffer? You can test this by pasting into a program you know accepts pasted images (like Windows Paint). I don't have it set up that way right now but you can give A:M the screen capture functionality by adding one of these programs to the Customized Tools menu. Then when you select it on the dropdown menu... the images are captured without leaving A:M.

I missed the announcement for Episode 8. But not by much. You continue to surprise and entertain and you've got some especially nice effects and camera work in this one. Thanks for another great episode.

There are ways to reduce the amount of lag even with huge meshes as well. Often its not the splines but whats added to them that slows you down. For instance, the size of decals. Toggle your real time resolution lower if you can. (Page Up/Page Down) There is also the use of proxy models to consider when animating. These temporarily substitutions replace large files with small files until final rendering or when the larger file is needed. This practice is pretty standard in the industry. If you can use proxy images or prerendered backgrounds that can help as well. Similar to proxy images is adding model instances/shortcuts in a Chor or Action (Holmes has mentioned that) Say you have elements of your model that repeat over and over again. Add the same model multiple times in a Choreography and translate or scale each one into place. Changing the original model then changes all the instances automatically. If you need to change them separately you can do that in via Chor Action. There is always a temptation to turn all options on just because we can. Particles, reflections and shadows are examples of this in rendering. Extra Plugins take up resources as well. Its better to turn the extras off when you can. In modeling it pays to keep your splines continuous and the model as simple as you can. A question to ask is... 'Do you really need all those splines to define the geometry'? If not save the old model... delete the extra splines... and press on.

Thanks for the refresher Mark. There is no doubt that I knew that a very long time ago. Probably back when I first read Tarzan of the Apes... um... more than 30 years ago. Ahem. I really loved Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was captivated and transported into his worlds. I hope you are keeping a nice Journal outside this forum. It may seem like a bit of exaggeration coming from me here (after all what do I know?) but others will want to see into your creative ways some day. Save all those doodles and scraps of paper... all those failed attempts and animation tests. Consider sharing those things you'd prefer to throw away. These are hidden treasures. Disney threw away many of his production gems. In the realm of computer animation we often do the same.

Mohawk eh? I got a pretty clear image in my head as I read that. Pardon the earlier mistake. Instead of ape I should have said gorilla. I should know the difference but I don't. Apes are more docile so... look out Flemm! As always the story will dictate but Mark's got me guessing what's coming up next as it is. Of course the plot will determine how much screen time they get. I'm not sure how much time that is. Assuming they may have repeat value somewhere else down the line in another story the differentiation could be more imporant than is readily apparent. I can already think of at least one way they could meet again after this adventure. Assuming they live through the experience with Captain Errol Flemm that is. Edit: It does occur to me that I'm stating the obvious again. There is something to be gained by having the gorillas remain the same as well. They'd definitely seem more sinister and threatening.

Oh Wow! Hehe. They're great! (I assume multiple apes is the goal here) Just when I think I know where you are going with this you surprise me again. I don't know how they play in the story but do you plan to differentiate the apes? Via color perhaps? Shades of brown and grey? Big tooth... little tooth? Personality? I know the answers will all be revealed in time. Thats half the fun of waiting.

This tells me you are well on your way to success. Keep us posted on your progress!

Glad to see you found the Plugin. The monthly contest is on hiatus for now due to general lack of interest. Hopefully it'll return bigger and better. There are several themes that you can always prepare for in advance. One contest you can expect to see every year is the Mascot contest. Another is 'Mechanical' Another: 'Sci Fi' 'Anything Goes' generally will catch the rest. There is a Work in Progress for current subscriber of A:M to chart their progress in. Thats a nice place to post notices and work through issues with projects.

Ok now what, (what... your Mom didn't like the name John... or Steve... or Ethel?!?) Welcome back! For a first post you sure pick a doozy. It'd help a lot to know more about what you want to use the objects for here. Rather than guess I'll pass on your underlying need and just answer your question. I will suggest you'll have much more success building your models in A:M if you plan to animate them. I think you must have missed the Import Plugin's location on the menu (it can be found in several places in A:M) or else don't have the plugins installed. Not sure without being able to look over your shoulder. Here's where I find it:

Rob, I'm just now getting caught up on my forum reading and see you are having trouble in this area. Don't sweat this one. The area you are running into is for those that want to create new tutorials. Your interest is in creating tutorials is it? If it is I'll be glad to work with you there. I see that you are on a PC so I can confirm that you shouldn't be seeing the problems you are experiencing there. Contrary to popular belief the .tut files are considerably powerful, very versatile and you should not be having any stability problems you are having there. Its important to separate the browser... from the program. Its quite likely you've got something interfering with the internal browser on your computer. Find that and the problem is history. As most users don't view tutorials in A:M... there is little interest in going there. If you aren't interested in creating tutorials I doubt you have plans to stay there either. Note that the .tut file you are having problems with is almost 10 years old. After implemented few had interest in supporting what was there. For my part, I'd love to champion more use of the HTML tab. As far as I know I'm the only one interested in going there. (I was thrilled to see you'd been there!) I use the HTML tab often and even enhanced my workflow with A:M's renderer through it. There are some amazing things that can be done in that little HTML window. Some day I may get enough together to show what I've been doing there.

A very nice addition to the supporting cast. You've really hit on a winning combination in these supporting characters. Just in the creation of them alone opens up so many possibilities. Your implemation of them... is so good it sends chills up my spine. Ken... you've perfectly captured Mark's style! I'm dying to see how you approach the differences between the parrot (Archibald) and Lenny.

I had completely forgot about that anti-aliasing thingy. Robert Holmen had to remind me that anti-aliasing is now a Post Effect. For the purposes of the Exercises you won't need to use that option.

Sorry for the delay. I saw your query but haven't had time to respond. Commercial use of the assets included in the program. General Information All assets may be used freely for commerical and non commercial use without restriction except as defined as documented with the resource. Look in the File Info properties of the resource and in the folder where the asset is found for more information. Financial and Creative support Resources made available took considerable time to develop and were donated to the A:M Community. While not required, crediting the author or creator of the resource used will always be appreciated. Should you find commercial success remember those whose work assisted you in the effort. Extend a word of thanks or consider supporting their efforts as well. Exceptions There will be obvious exceptions to fair use with some content and it is recommended that all resources be modified. This will let others know your effort is derivative and not meerly a copy of their work. The more modification the less it will rely on the orginal work. Proper credit for most modified resources is "Thanks for the Inspiration".