Rodney

Nothing is as it seems. The action really steps up a notch in Episode 6! When I get the time I simply must watch all the episodes thus far in order again. Even better when viewed over and over again. I pick up details I missed each time. Great episode Ernest.

Caroline, When you get bored and have a lot of time to kill (yeah right!) my suggestion would be to embrace your fears. By this I mean... set out to tweak a model's Bias drastically... intentionally. Hit the P key to Peak and adjust each side of the Bias handle. Whack it back to curved via the O key. Turn the model around and view it from all sides. Just jump in there and tweak, tweak, tweak. You'll either never want to never tweak Biases again... or you'll have established a better workflow with Biases. Where I've found Bias adjustment most useful is before Lathing or Extruding. A:M then does the calcuations for you and generates smooth or beveled curves (depending on the Bias level) that apparently we can't do too well as humans. Make A:M work for you. David, I've never heard it put that way but that makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for that. I feel the need to investigate.

Caroline, I'll let others with more experience address the aspects of more detailed models but here is a little background to fill out the subject. My models thus far haven't been very detailed so the issues you mention don't effect me as much. While its long been available, adjusting Bias on splines is a fairly recent practice. The reason for this is that prior to v11 adjusting Bias would often lead to unnecessary popping when the adjusted splines were animated. Hash Inc worked out these issues and the popping is a thing of the past. Many old time users will still shy away from Bias manipulation for the reason I just mentioned. Many may not know or be able to fully accept that they can and in many cases should tweak Biases. I might be reading your words wrong here but do you mean to say that anytime you tweak Bias handles you get creases? Can you post example meshes? You shouldn't be seeing many creases unless you create them. (Peaking Bias control handles etc) Edit: It occurs that you may be talking about decals. If that is the case then adjusting Bias after the decal has been applied can definitely cause artifacting/creasing.

I thought Martin was just exaggerating. He wasn't. That is great. Some of those poses immediately made me think of Hanna Barbera. Not sure why but no doubt the design element that you maintain throughout the changes. (Thats a good thing BTW) Very nice.

A:M plugins are context sensitive. This keeps them from appearing in places where they wouldn't work. In order to run the Treez wizard you'll have to be in the right place with the minimum options necessary created for the wizard to appear as an option. Keep in mind also that most wizards are only available via Right Click in their appropriate window. If you are trying to get to them via the File menu they may not appear. The Font wizard for instance is only available via Right clicking in a modeling window. For the Treez wizard here is the basic tutorial: http://www.hash.com/TreeeZ/ If that doesn't get you going let us know and we'll troubleshoot with you from there. Similarly there are plugins that only show up in a Modeling window, Action window, Choreography etc. Right click often and check to see what options are there.

With regard to the lighting... my suggestion... investigate Image Based Lighting (IBL). You can adjust your scene much more easily, adjust from basic day to night and have considerable control over the detail the viewer can see. IBL itself might not satisfy all your needs but it can provide a great starting place. Once the IBL is set, which takes less than two minutes(!), add as many lights/explore different lighting as you feel the need to refine and finish your scene. Nice image!

We are biased of course so you'll not get too many suggesting that you purchase other programs here. To create and animate realistic people is a considerable undertaking that many devote their entire lives to these days. It will take considerable time in any program to develop the skills necessary to animate realism. This is complicated by the whole idea of what 'realism' is. Having said that there are a number of realistic characters that have been donated to the A:M community that you can use to test the possibilities. These characters can be easily modified and adapted to your purposes. With other programs you'll be collecting/buying kits to satisfy your needs. No program generates realistically animated people out of the box. Time and effort must be applied to get there. The more time, the more effort the closer to realism you can get. If you've only looked at still imagery from the A:M Gallery you might come away thinking that cartoons are A:M's specialty but that is a reflection on a simple fact; cartoons are easier to animate. At least with A:M you get to choose. The programs you mention don't excell at the variety of different styles you'll find here. Realism is subjective. I have yet to see a Poser/Daz movie that I thought looked realistic. There may be some out there but I haven't seen one yet. Check out A:M Films for a look at similar interpretations of realism in 3D. How real is realism? I don't know the answer to that question. Concerning difficulty... tough call there. Some take to it very quickly. Others never achieve satisfactory results. Yet another reason realism is scarce. In my opinion if you want realism forego 3D animation programs entirely and invest in video/film. If you factor the time/money it'll cost to animate realitically in another program A:M excells here as well. In some cases you may want to seek out someone to build your character for you if your time is more valuable. Ultimately, at $49 it is going to be worth the effort to investigate A:M but don't expect an easy transition from other programs to A:M. Polygons don't transfer well. Should I try to talk you out of purchasing A:M? Personally, I don't think realism and animation make a very good mix with the notable exception of Special Effects. The reason to explore 3D animation is to escape the confines of realism. [Note: We are on the edge of violating forum rules here by posting about competing products. Lets steer clear of that.]

Well... that certainly didn't have the effect I thought it would. I'm glad that worked out for you. When someone passed that on to me I was just as shocked as you. I would so love to be a fly on the wall at your studio. Your productions seem perfecty suited to take advantage of reusable motion, limited animation (if I can use that term without being misunderstood), stock footage and reoccuring characters. With Subject 99 you've been tackling a tough storyline/production too. Lots of dialogue with limited movement required. Slow suspenseful camera moves. Introduction and refinement of characters. Those are some of the hardest things to animate yet there you are doing it consisently every episode. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to Episode 6!

Just to be sure you rule this out as well... Double check your Project's FPS in the Dropdown menu under the Project filename. (See attached image). This may have defaulted to 30 before you created your current Project?

I like! That last one is ripe for the picking as a (stylistic) camera filter.

I'll remember you said that when you are some high speed hotshot animator! The good news.... to learn everything I know should take only a day or two. I forget things very quickly. Guys and gals like you make it worth every effort to explore whats here to be explored. Trust me... I learn a lot more from you than vice versa.

That won't do. What we want is for the animation to start and end slowly and speed up in the middle. For this we'll use whats known as Slow In and Slow Out. Less change from frame to frame equates to slower action. The Onion Skin shows us it'll work in our rendered animation just as expected.

For our next test we'll adjust our animation. First we'll set our onion skin preview back to 30 frames (Step=1 as we want to see every frame). As our object is constrained to a path we'll edit that Constraint. In particular we want to change the Ease. Here we set up what is known as a Slow Out. You can see this in the Timeline represented by the slow curve moving up to the right. We could expect to see from the curve our object speed up over time. The more space between locations from frame to frame... the faster our object will appear to move. In our Onion Skin view we see that demonstrated. Most of the early frames appear on the left.

Now lets adjust the settings a little. Here we've told A:M to display every 5th frame. As animators we are still informed about the previous path of the objects transformation but less information is available. This may help us a lot as too much information can be really confusing!

Onion skinning is a method that derives its name as well as function from the method of using a thin paper (referred to as onion skin) to trace or outline drawings in traditionally hand drawn animation. Definition from wikipedia: With onion skinning the animator can see the path an object makes to help determine if the action or movement of the object is smooth. With advancement in computers the use of onion skinning has diminished somewhat as the computer interprets the path and creates 'inbetweens' for you. For simple animation onion skinning may not be needed. Where you'll see the feature become more useful is where you instruct the computer to place objects at locations the computer wouldn't otherwise place them. These motion does not follow the animators needs. Perhaps we we need some examples to demonstrate this better? Here we see one object at the end of a 30 frame (1 second) transformation. It looks for all intents and purposes as if there are 30 different objects. With the onion skin set to display the previous 30 frames all the preceding states of the object are captured and put on display for the animator.

That's why you are the Tinkering Gnome. Is it tinkering? magic? I'm not sure we'll ever know. Sorry to wander into your topic Mr. Master Chief! Hopefully John's example will work for you as well as it inspired me.

No. Thats the great thing about John's project files. Pretty much everything you need is there. (Using a Boolean cutter though... great idea! That could yield some very interesting shapes.) The box (ice) is just getting shorter. In the Choreography I went into Muscle mode, grabbed each of the box's top 4 corner Control Points and animated them moving down at varying rates. If you look closely you'll see that each side maintains its linear nature. I may return to this as I'd love to experiment and take this to its comical conclusion. As Rabbit thaws out he would start to move around but still be frozen at his feet. I don't have time for that kind of experimentation but I'm not sure I can resist it either. ..and if the ice cube rotated slightly as it slides ever so slowly toward the edge of a cliff...

No fluid effects or unthawing of the rabbit but... I couldn't resist melting the ice a bit. UnFreezeRabbit.mov

Nice one John! I couldn't resist playing with your project file. In my pic you can see I didn't fix the corners of the ice. I did add a couple decals to Rabbit and the ice which I dialed down the transparency on all of them considerably. Makes me want to experiment with Newton (blow up the ice?) or make it melt... but not today. Maybe someone else will run with that. Very cool! (literally and figuratively)

It sounds like you've got 'Onion Skin' turned on. Go into Tools/Options and turn off onion skin. In v15 it has its own dialog/panel (see attached). This may not be your issue but by the description I'd say 10 out of 10 times it is. You can also use the Shortcut keys [sHIFT + 5] to toggle on/off Onion skin. Its possible you hit those keys by mistake?

Tony, My memory may be faulty here but... I believe if you are installing A:M on the same system you just install and use the activation code you already have. According to websubscription FAQ here the websubscription is tied to the specific machine. If you have any problems contact Hash Inc, have them deactivate the old code and issue you a new one.

I hadn't realized just how long it'd been since I read your comic strip. I'm all caught up again. Some serious background filled in. Even got to see the Captain as a kid. There is definitely adventure afoot! (or is that afeet?) Arrh! Arrh!

The simple answer is no. The license is for one computer only. So your solution will be to fund another license. Technically, even starting a second instance of A:M is going beyond the license but Hash Inc doesn't track us down and throw us in jail for that yet. I was shocked at first to see A:M drop to $49 a year. I remain impressed with Hash Inc's commitment to keeping A:M affordable for everyone whether a student, professional, adult, child, mom, granddad or whatever. As much as I love the price I fear they won't make much from our $49. When all the pennies are counted do they at least break even? I hope so. You have the right idea about promoting a win/win situation by investing in A:M. The more people that subscribe to A:M the better in my opinion. Hash Inc can use our investment no matter how small to make A:M even better. Likewise, teaching kids the basics of computer animation is a worthy investment. Its definitely a winner in my opinion. Its sure to be a challenge too! If you charge a small lab fee for the class that might easily pay for a license or two. Then time it so that as the subscription runs out... new lab fees come due. (Just thinking out loud here about the school thing)

Thats the whole UV part. The CPs I'm talking about aren't part of the mesh. They are representatives of the mesh in Animation:Master's UV Editor. It's easy to see what I'm talking about if you right click on a decal/decal stamp and select Edit. The Points you move only adjust the layout of the mesh on the decal. The original mesh remains the same. If you just want some basic velvet type fur you may want to investigate the fur material on Keekat. Probably not what you want but perhaps a starting place. Note: Fuchur's tutorial has information on basic decaling but doesn't go into using the UV Editor.

Paul, You are the man. I've tweaked Thom's splines before but never THAT far! Yet another added benefit of modifying existing models is that once you find a nice economy of splines for one you don't have to mess with more excessive meshes in other models. Keep it simple. Thom is about as simple a mesh as you'll find in biped characters.