Rodney

Here's a fairly technical overview of the changes. The takeaway being that the Quicktime 7 API is being deprecated but the .MOV format itself is still relevant. This is primarily because the .MOV format is a container and that container can still contain video and audio code although upon compilation some warning may be generated to suggest better processing through Apple's AV Foundations that replaces older and deprecated (largely 32bit) frameworks. Link to PDF presentation on Apple's AV Foundations Note that much of this has been pending since 2013 which is the date of the presentation. It should be no surprise that most of this information is Mac and Apple mobile specific. Here's the primary AV Foundations site: LINK

I'm not sure this is actually news as Apple hasn't supported/updated Quicktime for Windows in a long time but... some folks are even recommending an uninstall to avoid exploits that might take advantage of the static code and critical flaws. Ref: LINK The bigger question becomes one of what format to use instead of .MOV format when that is a primary format for A:M (at least the 32bit version). According to a recent Ruetuers report even the US government has an opinion: The warning does not apply to QuickTime for Apple's Mac computers.

NIce tip Matt! That falls into the category of 'if it looks good it is good'.

Very interesting Malo!

What is odd about this topology is that selecting a spline around that opening in question (with the comma key) results in several spline sections from different sides of the model all being selected even though they do not appear to be connected in any way. So something is wrong in the splines themselves and we aren't getting a legit setup for a patch at that location. This discontinuity tells me that A:M thinks there is another spline that is connecting these segments. So there either is another spline or A:M just thinks there is. Malo, While generally correct the following isn't quite a true statement: If this read 'it is not possible to create a four-sided patch with a single spline' I'd be inclined to agree. We know that a 5 point patch can be made from a single spline. As you are the one that enlightened me on the possibilities for 5 point patches on a single spline I must assume you meant four point patches on a single spline. Note that all CPs in green have been selected via the use of comma key which suggests they are continuous although visually they are not. Robert, Attached is an indicator of why these splines don't constitute a legitimate patch at that location. From what I can tell the indication is that a hidden spline is running below the topmost spline connecting to the CP on the right.

The Faber Sans font wasn't installed on my computer so I downloaded and installed one from the internet for further testing. Unfortunately, this Faber Sans isn't the same as the one you used. It did work quite well though in the Font Wizard. So, I chased another rabbit there as this appears to be another font called Faber Sans reduced.

The first thing I noticed is that spline continuity took several of the spline paths in odd directions... going down the side and then following the bottom/back half of another spline down to the base of the letter. In attempting to correct that continuity it appears to me that there were several duplicate splines, although I couldn't see them. When deleting a terminal point (CP) at what was registering as the end of a spline what remained after the delete was another spline whereas deleting it should have simply removed that section of the spline. It appears to me that A:M is getting confused between terminal endings and continuous splines. This might be due to a number of things to include that the model was created using v19. So what we see here in v18 might not be what you are seeing. Diving in and recreating the splines to get continuity sorted out resolved the issue on my end but I'm not sure what the initial problem is/was. Added: As to why the patch renders after a copy/paste I'd say A:M is fixing the continuity or simply removing unnecessary splines in that process because A:M is always trying to resolve legit splines into patches. Fixin A splines rerouted.mdl

Thanks for that Elm, very insightful. I was playing with animated displacement a few months ago in order to try to get an effect like that seen in PIXAR's 'Inside Out' which they call 'effervescence' or something like that. The main difference being that I was trying to add it to the end of strands of particle hair. Your method might aid in achieving that effect.

For those likely to use Adobe Premiere for their video editing, Frame.io is becoming an even more useful project management tool. Here's an overview of recent improvements to Frame.io: https://frame.io/premiere Disclaimer: I have not yet attempted to use Premiere with Frame.io. Mostly because I don't currently have any content/projects ideal for testing in that environment.

On the very odd chance... Make sure the images don't have .jpeg as the extension. The extension should be .jpg I can't even recall if Macs even use extensions but I figure they have to be able to handle them when encountered and some folks manually type the extensions which if incorrect will not open in many programs. Wow. I hope you've discovered some magical optimization that can be exploited! Glad to hear you are animating (even if in over your head). Living the dream!

Decided to explore your eye rig and incorporate it into a character (of sorts). For some reason (probably because I've been watching the movie) the eyes made me think of Maz Kanata from 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'. I make no claim as to accuracy here as I am modeling from memory but hey... I'm amazed to see that at this stage the eye rig still works and I didn't break anything. I was happy to see that the rig automagically squetched both eyes after importing two eyes into a new model. I thought for sure that wasn't going to work. Thanks for sharing the rig Kevin!

Hi Adamn, You likely want to visit the Hitfilm forum to get instructions on resolving issues with their software. The first thing I'd do is start Hitfilm with the Shift key pressed down as that may (or may not) start the program with default settings. Animation:Master works this way. As for the update you might acknowledge the initial upgrade but then cancel after that to get back to your screen. Other than that I'm not sure. Another option would be to reinstall from scratch. That way you know you've got the basic settings set and can adjust from that.

TED Talks presents a talk with PIXAR's Danielle Feinberg on Lighting in PIXAR films. Well worth the watch (especially for those that had their dreams of being artists crushed as young children): LINK Note that is you see a download link that allows subtitles don't opt for the subtitles as the download appears to fail. Download without subtitles instead or simply stream the playback.

Hi Stephane, Good to see you again. The process is the same as before. You have to contact Hash Inc. to transfer licenses. Send an email to Jason at hash dot com and he can get you set up.

More warrior-type found object. Predator by takeby over at Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1094038 Brush in the background courtesy of the vine generator posted by Ruscular. This is not unlike putting together and painting one of those plastic model-kits. The skulls on his belt definitely need to be white...

A quick and odd lighting setup using another STL file from Thingiverse: (Here's the creator's post)

Anyone tried out the newly released Vivaldi 1.0 browser? It has some nice features: https://vivaldi.com/features/ I've just now downloaded but not spend much time looking into it. So far so good. The webpanels and moving back and forth in time should be quite useful.

I've been testing out various aspects of A:M that I don't use much and this is one. It's interesting that Chuck Gram mentioned 'Arnold' in another topic and I was wondering if he was watching what I was rendering while he posted! Here's a random STL file downloaded from Thingverse (I had visited there due to Paul Harris's post about 3D printing an animatronic eye setup). The background image (and environment map) is also a random image from the internet. It's from an abandoned theme park (one of Disney's as I recall). Initial chrome Material is from the A:M Library. About the only things that are my own are the lighting and the red eyes which is a little lathed shape duplicated in the Chor and placed over the eye's of the STL terminator. I like that the red reflects on the chrome that way. The facets from the STL are very obvious in the render. I'll have to look into ways to reduce this. One of the things I was re-testing was the use of Composites instead of directly using images (for environment maps and rotoscopes). In this way additional effects can be added such as Blur, etc. as seen in the background. To grab the composite image just select it from the dropdown menu where you normally grab the regular image. I'm guessing I should have added a bit of post processing ala filmgrain to blend the background a bit more and give it all a film look. I'm thinking of making this a series of posts with 'found objects' from the internet but modified and rendered in A:M. Feel free to join in and post a few of your findings as well.

Here's a site that let you play back youtube video frame by frame and at various speeds. I'm guessing there are some other sites that do the same or similar but this one caught my attention. I'll link with a video to one of Robert Holmen's animations because it's well worth reviewing. Note that linking into the video with frame and timing set is by the parameters added at the end of the link. In this case Time (t) and Speed (s) added as &t=0&s=0.25. http://rowvid.com/?v=pDqKABYtDB0&t=0&s=0.25

Here's a 45 minute documentary on the making of Zootopia. Well worth the watch! xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3pF9owYlRI Some take aways: - Research is important - ideas (stories, plots, characters, etc.) continuously change - It's good to continuously reinvent and accept feedback before the actual production process begins. Not stated but apparent is that production is the execution of those firmed up ideas. Lots more than that but... watch the documentary and see for yourself. I think it should be readily apparent that the major changes made to the movie resulted in a much better movie.

That may be the case and even if so can be quite useful. Someone looking at a screen (or text file) might logically relate CPs #45 and #47 together but might not consider CPs #45 and #65536 as related. Again, we'd have to look at what the code of the Renumber plugin actually produces. Easy enough to test. Interestingly, we appear to be speaking of a class of users that actually care about CPs assignments; which would appear to be programmers. It follows that Steffen might have produced such a thing primarily as a programming aid. The majority of users very likely don't care. A:M has a long history of shielding users from the arcane code that passes behind the scenes. For someone that just wants to dive in model and animate that's a good thing.

Thanks for the exploration of the Planet material. I was using it the other day and trying to make some sense of it myself. (not very successully!) Theoretically... This might be a little unrelated to your posting but the main thing I can think of is to make sure you give yourself enough scale on your model to take advantage of the Planet material. While you can scale the material to allow for smaller models at some point you run afoul of the resolution of your screen. Thanks again for the write up on specifics. Much appreciated. Added: If you don't have a video screen capture software like OpenBroadcast I highly recommend it (especially the studio version as it appears to be more fully featured). Not just because you can share what you have here but because there is surely coming a day when you want to remember what you learned with Planet material settings and find you've forgotten and must explore it all again.

I'll have to disagree with that but I don't know your reasons for forming that opinion. Let's assume we are in agreement but just looking at the same thing from different vantage points. The principle of primacy could be used to argue a 'first saved best reinstated'. But that would run up against the principle of recency where 'the most recent is more easily recalled' because it's what we have immediately at hand. In this scenario the master gets lost and is replaced by the new which may or may not be 'better' in the present light or situation.. At any rate, I can't subscribe to the underlying idea that any CP order is as good as another with perhaps one exception. That case might be in a perfect state where CPs are equal. In other words, it's the change (potential or realized) that makes the reference useful or necessary. To counter the idea from a different angle consider that the idea of ' one is just as good as another' would suggest no need for optimization. All orders being equal suggests nothing can be improved upon either. We all know this isn't the case. But optimization itself is variable (some orders being more appropriate than others) because what is optimal (well ordered) in one case will not be so in another case. The master model by itself doesn't provide anything particularly useful outside the closed system. It's when matched up against other models whose make up is different that we have opportunity for useful contrast and comparison. If the CP order of a (master) file is in a optimized state then it might be ideal but if not it may not have full title to that of mastery as of yet. In this we might have to consider from where we are taking our measurements that define mastery. I will assume that in A:M each CP is named and numbered in chronology. If CP number 17 is deleted, the next CP created is 17 but the next available number after the current count of CPs. (I've never checked so may be wrong here!). I must therefore assume that a heavily edited model has CP numbers all over the chart with respect to order and placement. A reordering of CP numbers then optimizes them based on some specific criteria (which I can only guess at). I must assume it's not from top to bottom of mesh. Nor is it from right to left. Although... importantly... once ordered, these numbers can be recalculated that way if necessary. This ordering can then be used to determine and project other efficiency. Without yet looking, I *think* the order (of renumbering CPs) is according to spline assignment and continuity. That would make sense to me. And this would be my exhibit A against the idea that 'any CP order is as good as another' in that I would think that CPs are best ordered when they align with spline assignment and continuity.

One purpose suggests itself to me but it's not for direct use but for reference. What I would imagine it could be used for is a comparison of one model to another. For instance, if a model is saved and then altered and saved again with a new file name those two models can then be compared and the change isolated via a difference check. Further, several comparisons could be ran to extract more useful information. For example: the comparison could be made both before and after the renumbering of CPs to firstly isolate the area that needs to be inspected (all other areas can then be set aside as trivial unless needed again). The renumbering process is executed and another comparison ran which identifies the CP order of change. Now we have the area of interest and the identity of CPs that remain unchanged and those that have changed. We can flag those that are unchanged as clean and those changed as dirty (or vice versa if the output direction of dataflow needs to change). Clean can be manipulated further without refinement while those dirty must be processed further with respect to the ideal topology (which may or may not be the original model that was saved). Then it's mostly a matter of assigning CPs to their most likely equivalent in another space (i.e. yet another topology or change) More practically speaking, renumbering of CPs seems to be a step one might take just prior to saving a (master) model that one wants to use as the exemplar; a model that is considered final and will never change. This is the equivalent of a read only file one that should be referenced but never altered. This exemplar is the model that is production ready and any change (in topology) from it will prove costly because that change will break something further down the food chain. As a best case scenario the change will just go along for the ride (and might not impact anything) but it sits in a hotspot waiting clandestinely for the opportunity to break things. This whole workflow would be of interesting usage in combination with versioning as iterative states of the same file could walk up and down the historical record showing the states of change (and even inbetweening them as necessary to create a form of resolution-independent view of prior states). This would be the ultimate undo because all changes could be dialed back to a former state. And moreso... the data can be used to project and identify potential/future states. A near equivalent of 'living data' that can aid the animator by maintaining/repairing and 'animating' itself.

This is the only topic I could find that appeared related to the subject (guys named Detbear and Robcat... and other animals) contemplating the renaming of CPs.: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44008&hl=renumber&do=findComment&comment=378740