Rodney

I reordered about a week ago. Instant response as always although I generally don't use any emails. Generally when ordering you can use the email (that for me also arrives immediately) but there is also a message in the store itself confirming order and supplying information/links. You might double check to see if your paypal account (or credit card**) was charged. If not then likely the order didn't go through which in turn would not generate an email. I haven't read all the postings so if you've already confirmed that... press on. press on. (Just now read the part about checking out a guest) **For those using credit card that goes intially through the paypal menu at the store but then we'll (eventually) get the option to change to credit card. I've been using paypal just for ease of purchase lately though.

Couldn't leave this one alone so had to see how easy it would be to assign the groups to words instead of letters... NamedGroupsAppearancingB.prj

I thought of an even better approach... one that probably follows that identified in the Live Answer Time video more closely. I only skimmed the video so am not sure what all went into that approach. The idea is to create and animate named groups (using Hold Interpolation) to turn on/off transparency for each letter (or model) assigned to a group. A benefit is that if something changes (or needs to be changed) it can be done largely by assignment of the groups which then will inherit the appearing action automatically. One of Animation:Master's strengths above all other software is it's ability to leverage Named Groups. NamedGroupsAppearancing.prj

When I first read this topic several approaches to this came to mind... including use of Boolean cutters to remove letters. I tested that and it worked although I was having difficulty making it work as simply as I wanted. Then I thought... black background... colored letters... Why not just move a black colored patch over the letters to 'unhide' them? And that's what I ended up with here: Note that this isn't 'per-letter' as I didn't take the time to make sure each frame only revealed one letter. The final words 'and the' could be revealed just by moving another black colored patch back behind the patch that is displaying the title card (or models). Added the no frill proof of concept project file (see attached). TitleCard RevealA.prj

Visual Studio Code is an entirely different program (also from Microsoft)... so not quite sure what you are referring to here. BUT... Good news. Restarting Visual Studio appears to have resolved the problem!

I knew there had to be an option to keep from having to specifically activate what project runs when debugging in a solution, and there is... Right Click on the solution and open Properties. There you should see an option to run the selected project versus the default 'Single Startup project' that gets updated each time we select and set a specific project as the startup project. Change that option (radio button) to 'Current selection' and whatever project is selected in the Solution Explorer at the time of running debug (or release) should run.

Nice one John! Any time I see 'Shaggy' I am always reminded of when we were working on the Extras CD and Steve Sappington emailed me asking "Where's Shaggy????". He almost seemed to be in a panic. I was pretty sure both Shaggy and Scoobie were on the CD but... the sense of panic didn't seem to equate to the lack of presence of the model on the CD. It didn't take long however to figure out Steve meant 'Shaggy'... as in the character from 'The Art of Animation:Master' that was essential to being present for the 'Where's the Door' Excercise etc. Oh! THAT Shaggy! And yes, somehow he was missing from the files. Shaggy was added and that particular crisis narrowly averted. Go Shaggy!

Impressive work as always Mark! And very entertaining.

Very interested Roger!

Nice one John. Here's a rabbit fight right back at you!

John, Since you already have previous release loaded with license file all you need to do is copy that master0.lic file into the v19.5 program directory. v19.5 should then automatically find that license and run. (Edit: What @robcat2075said!) CONGRATULATIONS on the release of v19.5!

Woah. Adventure cat has been missing in action. Rumor is he's been out doing R&D... Until we an find out more, here's a 2D/3D ruff rig thingy:

Congratulations! You guys made that look like a lot of fun. One of perhaps the funnest things is surely rising to the challenge of not being concerned that neighbors, family or friends seeing you perform will think you've finally... if not inevitably lost your minds! Hehe! More please!

Congratulations! I thought I knew what was going to happen and you surprised me all the way through. Nicely done.

Count me in. Sunday night will work fine for me. I would like to avoid the 6pm-7pm central time slot but otherwise can adjust as necessary.

Assuming it did create that play... I like it. It is however just the start. And as such... the simpler the better... which in it's current state... this play certainly is. I can easily envision where now the play (in this simple form) needs to have an overlay of character development. How do these characters performances contribute to a compeling story? How do the character interactions interplay? Is there space for the introduction of intrigue on the part of opposing parties... those that wish the tank to be done away with... those that have motive for keeping it? Is there a villain of the piece? Is there additional layering of Shakespearian stylisms that can improve the sense of theatre? Can the presentation be augmented by using cartoon characters... or ultra realistic filmmaking? What if any twists in the story might be added to keep the audience glued to their seats? I'd love to see a play like this overlaid with the antics of... Lair of the Lizardmin.

Get well Soon Gwynne!

Robert, Immediately after deparing the hangout I noticed the swf files for the composite Tech Talk were created in Camtasia. As i still have Camtasia I felt confident I should be able to open and convert the presentation and... done. Wish I had thought of that last week! As other demos of Animation:Master are likely created with Camtasia this should make quick work of any conversions needed but I especially want to get more info out on ExR capabilities. The Tech Talk uses the Norlock project file and not the Leopard Queen but similar content is covered. Kudos to Eric Webster for the Norlock project which is on the A:M Extras CD. Thanks also to Noel Pickering for the Tech Talk. I'll double check on artifacts appearing in the MP4. Not sure how that snuck through. Composite EXR Tech Talk.mp4

Glad to hear you've found success John. And... given that a new wookie has appeared on 'Book of Boba Fett'... sorely tempted to try to modify that Chewie model to fit the newer character.

If you upload an exmaple of the STL file you wish to convert that will help assess the best way forward. Also, depending on the tools you have at your disposal there are a number of different approaches. Most of us as Animation:Master user will say you'd likely save time just using the STL as a reference and model from scratch with splines and patches.

Attached is the orignal Project file as it was/is directly from the A:M Extras CD. As many A:M users may have the Extras CD the project can be found thereon at: AMExtrasCDVol1\Data\Projects\Image-Contest\Sci-Fi-Fantasy\Leopard_Queen Leopard_Queen.zip

Robert and I were discussing the EXR format and I wanted to share the project file based on Jim Talbot's Leopard Queen image. The project was demo'd at SIGGRAPH 2005 by Greg Rostami. I must assume it is called Boris becuse of the artist Boris Vallejo whose style is captured in the image. Still haven't found the video of the demo yet but perhaps it isn't far away... maybe even on one of the Hash Inc SIGGRAPH cds. Update: I may have found the composite video. It is in .swf format so am attempting to convert to MP4. The CompDemoProject file attached only includes the EXR file. Will also upload the the Project file (which should also be on the A:M Extra CD and DVD. CompDemoProject.zip

Audiate is something of a one trick pony in that it basically just syncs audio/voice with text and allows one to modify the other. How it converts the audio to text (i.e. transcription) is it uploads the audio to IBM Watson which then transcribes the audio file into text based on what it is in its dictionary. If we look into the .audiate file (which is text) each word segment is given a confidence level (on how accurate the transcription is assessed to be. Put in another way... Initially there is only the audio file. Audiate transcribes that audio file into text and keeps it in sync within the UI so that as the user edits the text (mostly deletions) the audio automatically adjusts. The user can do various things like Right Click and assign custom words to the audio segments... or silence the segment. I haven't done much with copy/pasting of words in the audio to have the voice actually say new/different things but that works as well. So in such a case we might have said something inaccurate and later used the correct word. We could copy paste the correct word into place and press on. Finally, and this something I queried the folks at Techsmith about... the textual track can be exported as an SRT (or text) document. In my estimation it would be good to be able to bring SRT files into the program in order to iterate and improve the audio further. But... that isn't the primary purpose of the software. I would say that ideally, the user records their voice directly into Audiate... repairing badly spoken words/sentences on the fly. Once the audio is transcribed into text the user would then remove the bad reading by deleting the text which in turn would update the audio. We cannot type in a new word that isn't in the audio and have that suddenly appear in the audio. I imagine they could probably add a feature that would do a textual search for that word in the current audio and make it available for insertion. Audiate doesn't read the text... it just plays back the audio it has. My assumption is that under the hood they have a file with pointers to various parts of the audio. When playing back it follows the pointers and when exporting it uses those pointers to create the modified wav/mp3 file. The pricing is rather prohibitive for the program... but they do have a trial for those that wish to give Audiate a try. My hope is that they incorporate Audiate into Camtasia but I think they want to pay a bit more for their R&D before moving in that direction.

In other tales... I'm doing some R&D with Techsmith Audiate on some old Animation:Master tutorials. Automated transcription from audio to text... then editing the text in order to automatically edit the audio.

This isn't related to Adventure Cat but was drawn about the same timeframe. I call her 'Feature Request Lady': And yeah, she could probably appear in an Adventure Cat episode. Why not? The theme during this drawing was 'cats'... so, see if you can find the cat!