Rodney

It is admirable that you have a desire for others to enjoy the great program you have access to Rolf. Beyond having inspirational advertising though I'm not quite sure what you are proposing. We could play the game of "If only A:M had it would be successful". Everyone has a few of those and I see you have listed a few yourself. So, if I understand correctly, you are saying 'future proofing' A:M would be aided by the following: - FBX integration - improved BVH support - aspirational/Inspirational advertisement - more kids, forum members, talent and contributors - an outreach program - faster rendering - full integration with other software - identity as a hip alternative to other software - integration of other animation file formats and the ways and means to alter those - heirs to the A:M legacy - additional strengthening of (currently strong) animation features - improved readability of relationships and their hierarchies - a few more modeling tools - more marketing Those shouldn't be too hard to implement. For what it's worth, I'm in full agreement with you.

Thanks David, having fun playing around and learning. Here's a random rendering of Rabbit. I suppose I was testing glow... or something...

That decal is an animated decal... so it has parts that move and parts that do not. I was playing with that because that would be how we might animate the movement of a face... someone talking... eyes moving... all from a series of drawings rather than actual articulated models. No, not quite. I'm not following what you mean by suggesting a difference between a texture remaining in place vs a decal remaining in place. A roto won't work as well because it's stuck to a plane with no depth (unless that depth is faked by distortion, bump, etc. (which is what is animated on the cube BTW). The test here was mainly to project an image onto a shape other than a flat plane and have texture stick while moving around corners of the geometry (i.e. the left side of the cube. The next test might be to do the same thing on top of a humanoid model to 'catch' a drawing of that character. As with methods of creating psuedo 3D movement with photographs there is a limited range of movement before the method is betrayed but using multiple instances of decals (or rotos) blended together would mask the transitions. I've seen video tutorials on removing unwanted objects out of video shots using garbage mattes etc. that are somewhat apropos and a lot will depend on how much the camera moves in the scene. If the camera stays put though, that kind of defeats the purpose of the motion in the motion comics in the first place. Maybe we need a target to hit such as 'can you reproduce this?' Added: In order to get some parts of a scene to move and other parts to stay still we just have to layer in the effects.

http://premiereclip.adobe.com/videos/GwoAtou7EY5 I have no other information on this but realtime facial motion capture is always going to be a useful thing. I suppose the real trick would be to export the captured data for usage elsewhere (such as in A:M). For those of you that use Adobe CC, they are accepting signup for beta testing. DIsclaimer: The video was taken by an audience member so the audio is pretty rough. Here's a bit more from their site: This relates to something I was trying to set up in A:M a few years ago. Not facial capture from a webcam... that is way beyond me... but driving bones/motion via Group Names, which is something A:M almost does already as Named Groups can correspond to CP assignment with bones. As I'm no programmer I left off when I ran up against the need to automate the process of programatically assigning those Grouped Names to Bones. In short, I wasn't up to doing the actual work.

This is just a test to recall the process of applying a decal from camera view. Of course I'd have to wrap my head around how to optimize this for 2D line work.... Some folks doing something similar for a contest way back in the v8.5 timeframe. Most of the imagery there was stamped/projected onto flat 'cards'. Other things I recall from that were that there was some controversy over whether the entry qualified as '3D'. I even remember some of the comic-related imagery that was applied to the 3D cards; Mike Grell's 'Shaman' was one of them. Unrelated: I need to check to see why parts of the cube aren't reflecting on the ground... although unintended... that could prove to be useful. I recall having a similar discussion before regarding reflections but I've long ago set aside that exploration. I believe it had something to do with reflecting an image that was behind a camera behind the objects displayed in front of the camera. decaledcube.mov

Don't forget though that after application the decal can be edited to allow those patches to properly show a more proper mapping. The primary (and crucial) step to apply the decal via the Chor view is to select the model under Object in the Project Workspace listing. If there is another way to apply the decal via camera view I'd love to hear of it.

I thought this had been posted but I don't see it anywhere. Verve is a (free) application that it's creator (Taron) created as an exercise/experiment in programming. It is rather unlike any other paint program He demos some of the features here: https://www.youtube.com/user/333taron/videos Download Link to latest installer is: http://www.taron.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6

The tricky part of the process (the one I always have to re-remember) is to select the model's original container in the Objects listing of the Project Workspace listing just prior to applying the decal. If we don't do that we can't apply the decal. By doing that A:M thinks you are applying a regular decal... just from the current view/camera perspective. I note that it often -looks- like the decal is applied to everything in the scene but the decal only sticks to the model you select in the PWS.

Nicely done. It looks like her to me.

Here's a couple random renders from the project my daughter put me to work on. She's a tough client so there is much work ahead. I'll call these proxy models because they were created in the process of discovering what the characters might look like in 3D and as such they lack a lot of detail and have only the barest of rigging. Basic premise: a little sumo duck derisively called 'eyebrows'* by those around him steps into the (boxing?) ring with a champion fighter (a rooster) many times his size. If my daughter doesn't lose interest... their adventure may continue... *My daughter is resisting my effort to spell the little guy's name after the japanese romaji style; 'aiburouzu'.

Even after years of using A:M I find myself continually impressed by the breadth of features that are at our disposal. I was recently looking for a simple video/editor/viewer to do some basic reorganization of rendered frames (also from A:M) and thought to use A:M's own Choreography based linear editor. Needless to say it outperformed my expectations. I even discovered a few new things too. For instance, I didn't realize or had most certainly forgotten that saving out an Action of what I had edited together in the video actually could be reutilized (or just saved so that I could return to that earlier editing point). Did I run into any snags? Not really, although I do wish I could use some form of 'Save As Animation' via the Chor that is similar to the one used for resaving image sequences into other formats because I'd prefer not to rerender images that have already been rendered where possible. I do realize that due to my realtime editing/adjustment of the video sequences that new sequence would require some serious manipulation... and even replication/removal... of other frames in the source sequences and that is something of a tall order...but importantly (I think) it'd be copy/delete/sort operations rather than rerendering. In the end I suppose it's a small price to pay to rerender all the frames once they are in perfect order and this allows for additional compositing effects too. As I often stumble upon other cool things in A::M I do occasionally wonder if A:M already has one of those shortcuts too.

Love it. Nicely done.

Looking good thus far.

clipshare is a completely different website/company

Here's the download topic in the Troer directory of the forum: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=40743 Note that I only assume the download at the link is the most recent release... it may not be.

Very nice! Working part by part in different modeling windows is definitely working for you.

If you are running a current subscription I don't know why you wouldn't use the latest version (although you can run multiple versions simultaneously). So, yes, if you have v18 licensed (or have subscribed) download the v18 installer. If you have the perpetual/never expires license then you have to stay with v16 as that'd be the one you purchased. It sounds to me like we are missing some important information here. I will now assume you purchased v16 with the perpetual license for v16. If that is the case then you'd want to dowload and install the v16 installer as that is the release/version you paid for. If you purchased the 12 month subscription back in 2011 it's long ago expired. This latter doesn't appear to be the case because Jason probably would have seen that expiration and not sent you a file you didn't need.

I'm assuming you received a 'special/new/update' license file from Jason here... The location you want to place your license file in is usually C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V18.0\ (for the 64 bit version) The location you want to place your license file in is usually C:\Program Files(x86)\Hash Inc\V18.0 (for the 32 bit version) Place a copy of the .lic file in each of those folders/directories. If this is license is copied into the folder correctly you shouldn't even see an activation screen.

Nice hair! I adjusted the mesh to make the hair longer and played with the Ambiance Color settings to get something of an Anime hair styling. I like! P.S. Please forgive the nasty pass through of the hair through her shoulder. Gulp. I didn't notice that until after the render. I've also added two more normal renders of the hair prior to getting distracted by the ambiance color adjustment. hairdo test.mov

Source: Numberphile I've always like Tony DeRose and here he discusses the process of subdivision, averaging and such that they've used in computer animation. At the end he discusses the weighting that allows for smooth curvature by identifying the limit that can be used in smoothing that just happens to be an equivalent to smoothing to infinity. There is to be a follow up video but I don't think it's been posted yet.

Why did I think of Nancy when I saw this... http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/printed-teddy-bears/ Of course, automated sewing has been around for a very long time...

MOX code will be open. The plugins are just (basically) working proof of how they work (targeting software platforms that the majority of FX creators have in their arsenal (After Effects and Nuke). Anyone will be able to take the code and use it in their own program. I say basically because they also will be fully working plugins ready for production use. Some folks may not need anything else beyond that as the internals (open image formats used by MOX) can already be generated by other programs. Note that I *assume* the code of the plugins will be available to review. I don't know that has been explicitly stated but the concern itself has been specifically addressed by Brendan in interviews. Even barring that ability to look at plugin code... all of the elements of the MOX format are themselves open source so once up and running programmers could use that open source code to program their own plugins. But Brendan has no intention of letting programmers need to go that route so I assume even the plugin code for After Effects and Nuke will be available for download and documented on git. Assuming some critical mass of adoption of the format is reached somewhere in the process other utilities will be written (i.e. foregone conclusion). It should be noted that some software (primarily high end video editors) have already embraced (i.e. they can access) the MXF wrapper planned to be used for MOX. But finalizing all the various formats and creating working software to demonstrate the benefits of the open format is what the crowdfunding is all about. Brendan's primary contribution is to work at approx. 50% of what he'd normally make from programming the code. Although outside of your question/statement, this last bit of info is interesting as a measurement of how much it might take a programmer to create a specific plugin/feature. i.e. if Brendan is saying he normally would be paid $40K to get such a format up and running and accessible that lets us know how much money we often expect programmers to 'freely' code for us. Note also that this isn't the creation of any new codecs (and in an interview Brendan suggested that one company bought another at several million dollars to get at a new codec they could call their own... the cost of which suggested he didn't want to go that route) but rather to use open source codecs in an open source wrapper to achieve am image frame movie format for FX production... the benefits of which are outlined elsewhere online (including indiegogo).

The After Effects plugin (stretch goal) has been reached. The folks at Video Copilot made sure of that with a $4K+ contribution. With six days to go I'll guess that someone will fund the Nuke plugin as well. Time will tell. It'd be nice if a standalone viewer/converter could be created... or perhaps a commitment to add the format into Open Image.

Saw it. Enjoyed it. Need to see it again.

Whoops... a few minutes later... already funded. Now moving on to the stretch goals of After Effects and Nuke plugins (I'm confident those goals will be met because of those deeply invested in those products). Too bad I'm not in a position to suggest an A:M Plugin.