Rodney

Thats pretty innovative.

Thanks for all the great tips Rusty! For everyone else looking in please feel free to cast your tips, tricks and suggests into the mix. What you type will always be new to someone and more often than not we forget. Post them if you've got them. Someone out there will always learn from them.

Robert! I need you here. Sports is not one of my strong suits. But I sure can appreciate the arcs. Welcome to the A:M Forum! (We sure have been collecting a lot of Roberts around here!)

When me mateys sails down to the blahs... we heads up to de deck... where there be plenty singin' an' dancin' and merrytimin' for all. Perhaps somewhere down the line you might consider taking on an apprentice or two? I know you like creating the stories yourself but it'd open a few doors of opportunity for other A:M Users which I'm sure they'd appreciate. The apprentice would gain some very useful experience on board your ship. The burden of day to day chores might lift a little from off your shoulders too. This wouldn't be so much about entering a teacher/trainee relationship as much following the way of comics. It'd be more like placing your mark on the moving pages of a Wannabe flipbook with the apprentice filling in those spots, freelancing inbetween the marks. I'm sure it wouldn't all be smooth sailing. More than a few times when its down to the wire you'd still have to complete the job yourself. You'd have that to look forward to.

I want to encourage you to purchase the CD if that is the way you want to go but... you have the whole program already. For the $299 you'll get the permanancy of the CD, the hard copy Manual and Technical Reference as well as the Extra projects, models, materials, tutorials and such so its still a very good deal.I hope you don't think you've got only part of the program now though. There is only one Animation:Master and if you've got v15 you've got it already. I visited your website but my browser crashed so... maybe I'll try that again later. I might have had too many things open on my end. Regarding the greenscreening. As long as your anchorman isn't a real human being it sounds like you won't need to use green screening. If you do find yourself needing to green screen... A:M can assist with that too. Good luck with your projects and keep us posted on your progress!

Here is a topic the goes into detail how to apply a sequential series of images (or video) as a decal on a TV screen. If you do a search for 'television' in the Newbies forum you'll find more discussions of the same: Decaling a TV screen Some older topics: This one doesn't go into specific procedures but echos the thought that green screen is not the most desirable solution in many cases. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20970 There are quite a few related topics of interest in the old CG & Live Action forum. It should be noted that most of these go into different areas than what you need here.

Congratulations Dusan! "National Film Festival award winning short"... that sure does have a nice ring to it. Your effort with Chicory 'n' Coffee is proof positive that just because we don't see everyone in the forum all the time they aren't just slackin' off. Everything I've seen of your short film has demonstrated why it should be headed for even more honors. Best of everything to you on the festival circuit!

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about green screens. In many cases you don't need them. For instance, if you just want to add your video to the screen of a modeled TV in A:M, no green screen is required. If you are wanting to change your original video in some way, such as replace a prop behind an actor in the video, your video will most likely require green screen or equivalent. (If you've already completed your video... its a little too late for green screen) Before looking into green screen effects I'd suggest you read up on Alpha Channels first. They'll help you understand better what can be accomplished with and without greenscreens as you composite your images. The short answer of it though is: If you are not changing the video you don't need greenscreen. Add the video into your scene as a Patch Image, Decal, Rotoscope or Layer. Please feel free to explore your project here.

That is outstanding Paul. I'd call that a very successful test. I like where you are going with this. File the following in its proper place as I'm sure you already know it: That last walk seems to be more of a heavy set manly walk than that of a woman. That aspect may work against the lightness of the particles effect and character based interests in some instances (not necessarily in this test). As its rather hard to tell the gender of the character at this point in testing thats not going to be a problem but it may be more of a factor as you settle into specific characters. Would the acting and personality have to be a bit more stereotypical? Perhaps. The more diverse you want to make these characters the more importnant that aspect. Apologies where I'm just stating the obvious.

I'm afraid the files in your project (the characters etc) didn't get attached. You'll have to either embed the models or collect them into a Zip file to share. The first thing I'd check is to make sure the 'Animate' button up on the upper right of the toolbar menu isn't unchecked. If it is select it. If Animate mode is off no keyframes will be set. If you know how to capture your screen perhaps you can share that? On a PC you can grab the screen by pressing the Print Screen (PRT SCR) key and pasting that into any program that will accept pasted images (Windows Paint for instance).

Don't confuse the Technical Reference with the manual. They are very different books. The exercises are found in the manual, "The Art of Animation:Master". If I recommend any other book before you complete the 20 exercises in the manual (The Art of Animation:Master) strange creatures appear out of the darkness and shrink my head down to nothingness. You can imagine I don't like to do that too often. Not only does it make modeling more awkward I find it much easier to animate when using my normal sized head. At any rate... Definitely work through the exercises in the manual first. There is nothing you'll do with Animation:Master that will be more important. Most of the exercises are quick and very relevant to what you'll be doing in your personal projects. Any difficulties you have will be easily addressed as other A:M Users know the exercises in it very well. It gives everyone a common range of experience. If you aren't into books as much as videos, you can also view the video versions of each exercise along with the manual. You'll find the video exercises ready for downloading here: http://www.hash.com/2007web/vm.htm You can see how much fun others have had with the manual here.

Sorry Mark. I was pretty sure you knew my answer already. I've also been consciously trying not to post 'me too' responses in the forum. I like her! She seems quite differentiated from the others in the face at first look. She looks different enough to meet your goal of providing some variety in facial expressions. If you really want to attack the differences I'd suggest working on their silhouettes. I haven't seen enough to compare/contrast to make any suggestions there. You should be able to tell which is which without seeing *any* features just from their darkened in silhouettes. Succeed there and that'll be well worth the effort. Hope that makes sense. Rodney

Not enough you say? You are really into dopesheets? Lets see, now what else has A:M got? How about... MultipleSoundsandMultipleDopesheetsallinthesameAction!!! If'n you want.

The average A:M User has yet to discover the power of the dopesheet. In 2009 they will discover that and more. Most think dopesheets can only be used for lipsync. Yes, dopesheets... all that and more. Each Action can have its own Dopesheet so you can use multiple dopesheets. How many do you want? For optimized workflow add each sound file to the Action that contains the relevant dopesheet. Its doesn't have to be there but that should help keep things all nice, neat and orderly.

Boy are you in luck. Not only is there a manual for use with the websubscription... make sure you download the Technical Reference too! You can download the PDF files via the Hash Inc support page here: http://www.hash.com/2007web/reference.htm

The loss of anything familiar can be rough. Heck... when Sherwood's forest went away I was in shock and it was being replaced by the A.R.M. But to everything there is a season? A time to every purpose under heaven? Yeah, that 'old old scripture and song routine. In time the A.R.M. will return in one form or another. Some say its already here in the A:M Forum. Time will tell just how true that is. The next iteration of the A.R.M. can never be the same if Vern isn't manipulating all those dials and levers behind the scenes. That's one of the things that made it truly unique. Its hard to separate the artist from their art. Not impossible... but hard. In 2009 we may not have access to the A.R.M. but by gosh and by golly... we've got Bob!

Hey Bob welcome back! I don't think it will. Social networking is all the rage these days and it looks like we're stuck right smack dab in the middle of it. If you post a question here in the forum you'll get links, discussions and more than you care to know about any topic of interest. That's not the A.R.M. but it works pretty well. I'll spare you the hard sell on upgrading (but you need to do just that!). While a work of art, v10 does not even begin to compare to what is available in the current release. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to A:M 2009 for $79. You'll be so very glad you did. It'll do a lot more than just fix your Community connection! When working with others who have had community window login problems in A:M in the past I've had the most success telling people to create a new Community login. Abandon the old login and register a new login. If you can't get far enough to register a login its most likely software/hardware interferring with your connection (antivirus, virtual drives, emulation software etc). Some of this can be a little hard to track down if you don't know what you've got installed. Welcome back Bob!

Isn't it customary for these types who have birthdays to walk the plank or get a friendly toss overboard? I've heard it said if they can swim fast enough to catch up they can freely climb back on board.

Jaw-done-dropped-plum-all-the-way-through-the-floor amazing Alan. That was wonderfully entertaining.

It was Steve Anzovin, Raf's father, that died on Christmas day a few years ago. The world is a sadder place without him that is for sure.

That it is. That it is. I'd grown use to the old way enough that it took me quite a while to make the transition (still occasionally forget). I do like it better as its handled in v15.

The forum has its very own area for exploring The Setup Machine. There is a lot of good information to be found there. Check it out! The Setup Machine (TSM2) Forum

Shhh... thats super secret information. Don't tell anybody!!! We can make some crazy-cool comic books with Animation:Master.

Doh! I remember now. The reason the fonts were so small is that I didn't have time for the full screen images to load. I thought it locked up on me so I viewed the comic in the smaller screen size. Sorry Mark. User error!!! The fonts of the full screen size are perfect (even for my tired old eyes).

I was rushing off to work this morning when I saw your post. I had to take the time to view your online comic and I tried to read through it all in one quick sitting. Of course that left me with no time to post to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I'm back to say... job well done! Words cannot adequately express how wonderful it is for me to see project like yours get a fair share of time in the spotlight. Today you've made yet another impressive step forward for The Wannabe Pirates. Getting your characters out in front of kids like this is no small thing. May your readership grow at exactly the pace you and McCrary can keep up with. Go get 'em Mark. Long live kid friendly comics... and The Wannabe Pirates. Edit: If there was one thing I'd pick on out of the whole Kitjutsu experience it might be the size of the dialogue/fonts. It was a little hard to read at times. Now that I have more time I'll go back and look again. (perhaps its just my old eyes)