Rodney

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)

You may not get immediate response from support on weekends, holidays and when the Hash Inc team is out in full force at tradeshows. They don't have a large team of people manning the phone lines. If you sent your request on Friday or Sunday you'll definitely want to wait a few days for the response. On weekdays you can expect same day response. If they've had a particularly busy weekend they may just not have gotten to your email yet in order to respond. If you haven't heard back in a day or two. Submit another response. The websubscription does require internet connectivity for the initial activation. After that you don't have to be connected (but you'll want to be for any update installs). If you have a pressing need to never be connected you may want to consider the CD install. If you can connect... I suggest the internet install.

Perhaps you have a point there. I was just thinking that it was cool that they looked like they perfectly fit into the same world of fairies. The thing of even more interest to me is that I favored the toon style more... until I looked closely at the standard render. Then I liked that one more. Looking back at the toon render... swayed my opinion back that way again. I guess I like them both. Which do I like better... gah! I don't know. I've now convincing myself I like the toon render just a wee-little bit more. The point here I suppose is that they work really well in both stylistic worlds.

I wouldn't rule out that there could be Siggraph CD or DVDs in the future but there is no 2007, 2008 or 2009 Siggraph training material. Its more likely you'll see video training material come from other events such as the San Diego Comicon and similar venues. If you are interested in volunteering to demonstrate at any of those events definitely make your interest known. It was reported here in the forum that everyone at San Diego Comicon had a great time last year. I haven't heard if any of the demonstrations were recorded.

Very nice indeed.

It use to be that a Named Group would maintain the settings of a Pivot point. I'm not sure thats true any more. But its worth the effort to test. Make sure the Rotation is part of a Named Group. And then Save your model. Close it. Open. See if the settings stick. I know the classic method of maintaining the axis of rotation was to jot the numbers down on paper. Then plug them back in where appropriate.

Good points all Robert. We'll have to look into providing an approach to the Project Workspace where people use the Project Workspace often before they even know it. Or... perhaps better yet now that I think of it... as they work through TaoA:M they'll learn about it rather quickly. Perhaps we can set up a few simple lessons that take advantage of the basic but important aspects of A:M's interface that don't distract but set up those who'll work through TaoA:M for even greater success. I had completely forgot that the Import list contains the unsaved models. Thanks for the reminder on that! Every day I discover/rediscover something new and useful. I've grown so use to dragging in dropping in the PWS I need to be reminded of other options out there. Thanks for keeping it simple. I need that. We are a little biased around here but A:M definitely is the most bang for the buck and more intuitive as well. All 3D programs have similar features but A:M's interface makes it the leader in its field. Its easily the most accessible 3D character animation program there is. Few are the twelve to seventy year olds that I've seen master other programs as quickly. For its ease of use and accessibility A:M is better suited for the aspiring animator than even the freeware programs available out there. Don't believe me... try them. We'll look forward to your return here. For those that want the reverse of complexity, simplicity with all the features... A:M is the best there is.