Rodney

Here's an interesting (hand drawn) flour sack animation by Ron Zorman. The aspect I like best is perhaps the transitions of weight throughout with the flour sack interacting with those various objects. Not that it's high-falutin' awesome or anything but that it's subtle-like. There are a few inconsistencies (the typical continuity problems that exist in most stories) such as when flour sack feels obvious pain in his foot during one sequence but is oblivious to that pain later (when we are set to anticipate it). Ron Zorman is a character animator on Ren and Stimpy and many Pixar movies.

Thanks guys! I've tried to paint watercolor before (the real stuff... not the cg flavor) and it can be really hard to get a solid color spread across an area so I'm pretty pleased with the look of this one. I have my doubts the effect will hold up with animation but I'd be glad to be surprised in that. I suppose there is one way to find out! Aside: When I considering the pine bristles on the branches I immediately thought A:M's particle hair would work well,and after placing the hair material on the branches and letting A:M render... it looked exactly how I imagined it would which... as I am very much a tweak as you go until something starts to look better kind of guy... is a sensation I hope to feel again. The toon render... that I had to tweak considerably as the early tests didn't have the line quality I was looking for. I eventually settled for a very thin line with 88% of underlying color and that worked a whole lot better. I did struggle a bit with lighting and color as each time I started to hone in on what I was after I noticed one element that still wasn't working... tweaked myself right out of those other desirable settings. In the end I did composite two rendered images together in Black Magic Fusion in order to bring some of what I considered the ideal color (specifically red) back into the image. I think I could accomplish the same composite in A:M but it'd take awhile longer to get there. And needless to say the text I'm adding to images these days is comp'd in via Fusion in a few seconds as well. As A:M doesn't have directly editable text capability Fusion has found a perfect fit in my workflow with A:M.

Tried something a little different (remodeled character basically from scratch and threw in a basic rig)... then thought I'd try toon rendering... then thought I'd go for a watercolor look...

I know you can have a bone revert to the size of another via the 'Scale Like' constraint. One way to do that would be to set that up as a 'On/Off' Pose and then you could toggle between any size set and the original/source bone it is constrained to. In this same way you can set one bone to be a percentage of the length of another as well. Added: An interesting aspect of creating the constraint within a pose is that it give us a method to tell A:M to ignore the command (in this case of copying the length/scale) when the pose is turned off. If the length/scale of the bone should always be the same length then no pose control is necessary. Of course even then there are alternative ways to interact with the scale... for instance, by using/animating the constraint settings themselves.

The holidays can be rough on folks so... Hang in there. (This is a frame from an animated doodle I recently did named 'Sintercuss'... with the idea being to get an idea moving and take it to it's logical conclusion in one or two sittings. The areas tested included the use of limited (minimal) animation, sound, volumetric effects, text, etc. A few lessons learned include making sure there is enough contrast in the character to read well in a variety of lighting conditions and to plan on the doodle lasting more than 10 seconds because, while certainly not impossible, it's hard to tell a story in less then 10 seconds.)

2015 is going to be an exciting year.

You'll need to drag/drop your group named 'Lips' to a place lower in the Project Workspace listing's hierarchy. Right now it's hiding behind the 'Head' group. I have a video that demos what I'm talking about... (see attached) Named Group Hierarchy.mov

On many occasion I have tried to do a google search on Bob because I know there is a lot of information about him out there but haven't been able to find it. It's not exactly easy finding relevant material based on a search for a guy named 'Robert Taylor' who goes by 'Bob'. Bob's old website contained a whole lot of pilot ideas for animated short films and features not yet told and for awhile we could even download a copy of a 3D model of Keekat's little sister at one of the footnotes. The site's pages occasionally can be found (mostly via internet archive) and there are even a few interviews with him (entirely too short) out on the internet to be found. If what he said during one interview can be believed he was bitten by the animation bug when as an orphan he felt alone in the world and through tears saw a short film featuring Goofy on the television. Now, if that sounds a bit like the origins of a superhero that isn't too far off the mark because his speed and skill at drawing were legendary. Truly super-heroic stuff. I'm not sure how accurate that tale is as Bob does come from the generation of animation directors skilled at creating awesome back stories for themselves out of pixie dust. Alas, life is not screened in perpetuity like most cartoons are and his life's story has now come to a close while we are left with our own fleeting impressions of Bob. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and the many whose lives he made just a little bit better through his prolific storytelling, animation and cartoons.

Have you ever spent hours and hours working on an image, tweaking the littlest things, changing them, changing them back... going through the entire process all over again... only to ask yourself, "Was there a point to all of that?" Here's an image that applies... for no good reason... I started tweaking rabbit... then hours went by...

I'm very sad to hear this news. Bob was an an extremely talented artist... and fast!

Well done Adam. You are off to a great start! You've got a lot going on in that teaser and is shows you've been exercising your skill.

Thanks for the link Mark. And thanks for the Ocean Generator Mark! That Ocean Generator is great stuff!

Here's a little drawing I put together to note a few things I didn't know about lightning. The first is that the ends of each branch of the lightning tend to flare/brighten back and forth was the energy 'searches' for a conduit to the ground. The second is that electically charged tendrils of energy have been photographed reaching upward from the ground as the tendrils wave around seeking their own conduit to the sky. The tendrils from various conductive surfaces all seem to be inviting the lightning to come down. The lightning and a trendril then move toward each other and as they begin to form a connect the stored energy within the lightning suddenly transfers to the ground. Here's a video that describes the process: I assume you may be going for a more stylized approach to lightning but that might be a good starting point. The idea being to have a point in the sky that moves back and forth along a line (of low resistance) and a point on the ground where it will hit (that will flare slightly just prior to the lightning strike. At the moment the ground fires the lightening ceases from it's wandering and strikes. Here's another slow mo recording of a lightning strike. This one showing how it progressively grows outward/downward. It's hard to see but it does appear to be several flashes on the ground just prior to the lightning strike. lightning with environ 2.mov

Myron, it's great to see you again. I'm afraid the CD version went away about the time you purchased v15. There are two flavors currently available 1) $79 annual subscription - expires 365 days after activation (Note that you can use any subscription version during this subscription period... v15 through the current release)* 2) $299 perpetual - doesn't expire but updates only extend through the current year - after that you can still use that version but have to purchase to move to newer versions. *I recommend the annual subscription as it works the best for most folks. There may be specials offered but you'd have to contact Hash Inc for those. If you can meet them at a convention or tradeshow they often offer great deals there. As for the two things you need moving forward... we'll have to look into those. I'd love to hear more about your project so if it isn't hush/hush super secret start a WIP topic and away you go! Added: There are a couple of methods for creating lightning bolts. The easiest would be to use a single spline and the ramp up the roughness/noise. If you spy any reference out there on that internet that suggests 'just like that!' that would provide something to shoot for.

Nice detail! You have a very vivid imagination.

That's certainly an option. The difficulty with that would be control. If the hair movement you need can easily be keyframed (say, by posing three or so key positions and then inbetweening those) then simulation is probably overkill. Another concern with Simcloth hair would be the penetration of the meshes which would often either 1) keep hair from animating appropriately 2) keep the simulation from working. An argument could be made also that if that much complexity is required then the better option would likely be particle hair. I believe folks tend to overthink these things and in many cases should consider a more classical animator's approach: (Note that this approach also works well with Particle Hair and Simcloth so that is yet another good reason to start with a more classical non-fully-simulated approach). - Set the key poses you want the hair to hit (Do this via pose to pose, straight ahead animation... or both) - Inbetween those key poses (when in doubt favoring the key pose the movement originated from*) - Consider Overlap and Follow Through (so that the hair has weight in its movement) *Inbetweening is something computers do without thought and thought is exactly want we want to get into our animated movement. Consider, for instance whether the object (hair strand or group of hair strands) is slowing down or accellerating. If inbetweening exactly half way between two keyframes we get a steady motion with no change in speed (this not very entertaining... and works against the principle of Exaggeration). If inbetweening via thirds then we might choose the 1/3 point in our inbetween to create a Slow Out of the first pose... thereby creating acceleration in the movement. Choosing the point at 2/3 as or breakdown point would create a Slow In to the second key pose... thereby creating the effect of deceleration. Simulation is one of those 'you get what you get' things. When using simulation I generally use that as only a starting point. - Save prior to simulation - Simulate - Save under a new filename (that way you can return to the original or this one later as necessary) - Identify Key Poses (those worth keeping) - Delete all the unnecessary keys - Finish by finessing those Poses All of this to say, 'Use Cloth Simulation for hair'? CERTAINLY!

A new trailer is out... and it's looking good.

I was having trouble keeping sprites inside a container as well. One solution I came up with was to increase the number of patches by using the Split Patch wizard. When even that failed, I added a second (fully transparent) shape just outside the first to assist further. I suppose yet another method would be to color the background the same as the shapes (in your case white) while keeping the background inside the globe a different color. Then when the flakes escape although they'd still be there, they'd effectively be invisible (white on white).

It's funny, a few weeks ago I was telling someone at work about my interest in computer animation and he mentioned '5 Nights at Freddy's' and I said I hadn't even heard of it. Last week he asked if I'd looked into it yet and I had to admit that I still hadn't. Now I can say that I have. At a guess I'd say that he isn't using A:M although it sure looks like he has in the past. If he is using A:M he's melded it with a lot of other processes/software. I assume that the majority would be the game creation tools he uses.

Robert makes an excellent point and I was tempted to mention a good workaround to the problem of rotoscopes problem in my previous post. I tend not to use the default rotoscope... or at least avoid it wherever possible. I prefer to use a single patch with an image (or image sequence) applied to it. In this way I can manipulate the 'roto' in just about anyway I need to (rotation, scale, skewing in any dimension...) To go one step further one could apply a 'roto' image (or sequence) to a grid as a decal and then distort that grid as necessary. This method of distortion is even more useful if caricaturing a subject. You can get the basic features right but exaggerate via the grids distortion. Other software often relies on setting up two to four rotoscopes... one for each of the cardinal directions but it's even better to be able to capture those 3/4 views that a single image rotated in space can convey for you. In A:M, yet another alternative to the classic rotoscope would be to use a Layer, which can be rotated in any direction, but if I'm going to go that far I usually find that a patch image will work even better. Layers have the ability to adjust some surface properties that 'rotoscopes' do not... such as cranking up the ambiance setting so that the finer details (the ones that are less important) are removed. Patch images have a whole lot of other options and can be manipulated via poses, etc. Specifically to Robert's cautionary note is the fact that one can recreate the general perspective more easily by allowing for the view of the camera. If a sequence of images roughly the same size can be strung together and then the view adjusted while creating the model. But this doesn't address the issue of the 'error' the camera perspective produced in the first place when it captured the image so... This leads me to the ultimate suggestion which would be to try to use a sequence of images for reference. I'm not suggesting anyone slavishly use this reference footage to trace from but instead use it to capture the feel of the character in movement. And.. all this advice is from someone who prefers cartooning because 'realism' is too much work!

I will add that if you are using your rotoscope only from the bottom (i.e. splining over the top of it) then you might want to place it on top with the transparency turned up. Then as you adjust your CPs and splines you can better see where they are off from the original reference. While all features are important that triangle between eyes and nose is the area to focus on. Within that area I'd say the eyelashes and tip of nose (from the front view) are in need of attention. The eyelashes appear to be largely missing and the nose should be a little more bulbous. Hope all of that makes sense. Edit; Some of the images you've posted suggest you are using the method I describe above.

I like your latest improvements. I'm new at color correction but I think that alone will help to sell a more realistic look for her. Here's a quick take on adjusting the color... I also added a little film grain... not sure if that helped much. I tried to keep your original on the right exactly the same but some changes might have crept into the final composite. The color adjustment did blow out the hightlights a bit too much for 'realism' but I was trying to soften the skin a little as well. Perhaps that has moved my adjustment a little further away from the realism you are after? I"d say the biggest difference remaining between your two images might be her upper eyelashes... or lack of them in your latest improvement. F2_3a (color correcting comparison) sm.mov

Very nice John. One of the earliest models I recall making in A:M was a snow globe... yours is about 1000 times better! If you could get the particles to always exist (i.e. not spring to life) that would give the feel of a classic snow globe. I suppose this one (if in the real world) would have a tube going up through the middle of the tree with a vacuume that sucks the particles up from the ground and launches them out the top of the tree. I've seen aquariums that have similar setups. Bottom line: That's a really nice presentation!

Do you know anyone that is currently distributing their product through steam? Someone convince me this would be a good thing. Various copy protection schemes have been used before so others could be used also. If it could be shown to be profitable I'm sure his could be accomplished but I expect the constraints in getting from here to there are considerable. Start a topic devoted to Steam distribution of community products (your own or someone else's) and we can do the ground work to demonstrate its viability for A:M as well. If we could define the following that would also be useful: - vast audience (a rough estimate of the number members in that audiece would be a good starting point... factoring for activity in that audience also being important) - pretty effective protection (not sure how to measure this and it's unlikely Valve publishes data publicly... also, more interest and access increases risk... it would be good to see what Valve claims concerning their security) Since we are dreaming of the future, perhaps we could go all out and create a new A:M related product for Steam.

I'd personally like to see other software more open to A:M Hash Inc has been going it alone for most of it's 25 years because other software companies haven't been up to the challenge (i.e they invested deeply into different often incompatible approaches). That is changing (usually in fits and starts) because technology stands still for no one. As a case in point the FBX format... FBX has only been a viable format (for what it is presumed folks would like to use it for now) since about 2006. It started life as a motion capture format and after years of making the rounds to different owners was finally extended to its current usage. Since then the format has continued to be refined to overcome encountered obstacles... but here then it meets with other incompatible formats. And so the cycle of advancement in technology continues. But all of this assumes a few things that aren't (from all perspectives) universally true or precisely definable. For instance, being 'a hip alternative to other software that is fully compatible with that other software' is a pretty tall order. How many new forum members do we need? What should we do with the ones that are 'less talented'? Will an influx of highly motivated kids add significantly to the signal to noise ratio? Will those that desire support their own stated goals. History has proven that 99% of those who are passionately devoted to ideas are in love with those ideas *until* they become reality. Often at that point they become discouraged because the intial implementation of that idea isn't 'fully formed'. Learning took place. This is why most technicians don't require (or allow?) customers to view the whole process of a solution... because when the engine of their car is ripped out and scattered all over the garage... they will likely get discouraged... perhaps even fearful. In their shortsightedness they might even abandon the process that they claimed was so vital before. But this is all a lot like making an animated movie; ideas are easy. Making that movie is hard.and at best very time consuming. It requires commitment. At least it does if we ever want to see the final results. Edit: Well said Will! I'd say exactly what you've done with your short film... stop making excuses and waiting for to appear fully formed. Use the software as it is right now.