[Character Motions]

Hi,

 

I've been trying different ways to get what I am trying to do for about three weeks now and haven't been able to get it right. I'm trying to have a character walk into a scene, stop, and then maybe put his hands on his hips, or turn toward the back of the seen, or both. Here is what I am doing.

 

Add a character and a path and constrain the character to the path.

 

Add the resolute walk action to the character.

 

Using Path Ease have the character traverse the path, part way or completely.

 

Turn toward the back of the scene

 

For the most part the character does this, except that he starts to turn before he completes his walk. That's not too big a problem if it is only his head. But, if I turn his feet the motion from the walk doesn't happen.

 

I've tried setting a key frame at the end of his walk, I thought that would freeze everything up to that point. My key buttons at the bottom of the chor. are set with the A:M default. However, when I move his head say as frame 00:03:15, the key frame marker on the timeline for the head moves also.

 

I've already purchased two A:M books in addition to the A:M TAO manual which came with the software and none of them explain these key buttons in detail or really give a good explanation of key frames. I thought I understood this concept from some other simple animation software I have used.

 

Can anyone help?

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Adding AVI file]

Hi,

 

The biggest problem I had been having was the CODEC being used to write my AVI file. The CINEPAK compression CODEC seems to work fine for what I have done. I inserted my AVI video as a layer and moved it into the camera focal range and set it's size to fill the camera shot. That is what I want to do. You also may have to adjust the angle at which the camera views the video. I have also had a problem with frames not showing as loaded but that may be a memory problem becuase when I move through the frames and then go back the frames of the video are there. And, when you render the video the video shows up.

 

Another thing you have to work with, and I haven't really began to tackle this is lighting. When I rendered a short sample the video appeared to bright.

 

As I get better at this and find out more about how to do this, I'll post back to this message or to another one.

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Actions and Choreographies]

Thanks for the suggestions and help. I'll see what I can work out. If I continue to have problems I'll add either screenshots or the project file.

 

Greg

[Actions and Choreographies]

I have watched that tutorial about 20 times and don't seem to have a problem walking and waving. Here is the sequence of things I am doing and where I get confused. I put an AVI clip as a layer in the scene. I then define a path from off scene to about half way across the avi layer. I add the knight character and put the resolute walk and wave on him and constrain him to the path. Then I have the character walk into the scene, this is where I have a little problem but it is ok for this scene, and have him turn to face the avi clip which is behind him. The character starts to turn during the walk, but that is a key frame issue I have a solution to from another post. Then after the character turns he waves at the clip. That all seems to work fine.

 

Here is where the problems begin. I want the knight to walk the rest of the way to the right end of the clip and then turn around and stare at the clip. If I add another resolute walk to the knight it shows up on the left portion of the timeline but not on the right side where I could manipulate it. I can find nothing that tells me if I have to start a new action in the choreography, continue in Choreaography Action 1, or what. I tried to add another path to the scene and constrain the knight to that also, but failed miserably.

 

That is where my initial question came from. Is there any documentation that explains the choreography, choreography actions, and so on? I thought something like that would be in the book I purchased, but I haven't found anything close to that.

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Actions and Choreographies]

Hi,

 

I guess I'm more confused than I thought. Is there any place to really learn how to work with actions in a choreography? I'm trying to do some simple stuff, I think. Like get a character to walk about 1/2 way across the screen, maybe wave and turn toward the back. Then have the character walk further across the screen. I got the whole keyframe thing down now and the first part works OK. But when I want to continue the walk I try adding a new path and constraining the character to the new path and then try to add the walk from the actions again. except the walk doesn't add with any duration. Do I need to start another action in the chor? Is there any place or book that describes these interactions?

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Character Motion]

Thank you very much. I hope I can figure this iut from here. I've been really busy the last couple of weeks. But now I hope I can concentrate on A:M for a while. I also purchased David Rogers' "Animation:Master A Complete Guide", which I hope will be a great help.

 

Thanks again,

 

Greg

[Video Codecs]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[Character Motion]

Hi,

 

OK I've got my AVI and import issue taken care of, at least for now. Something I don't expect is happening when I add a character and motion to my scene. Basically, I'm just doing the walk and wave exercise from the tutorials with a little different twist.

 

I define a path on my screen, from left to right, and contrain my character to the path. I would like the character to walk down the path to the end and stop. So I add the walk action to the character and set the constrain ease to 100% as it says in the tutorial. Making sure my character has enough walk action to get to the end of the path. When I play the scene everything looks fine. So I set a key frame when the character stops walking. I move ahead a few frames, about 1/3 of a second and I postion the character to face the back of the scene.

 

My thiught is that the chracter would walk to the end of the path, stop, and then turn toward the back. However, when I play the scene to that point, the chracter begins his walk and then part way through it he begins to turn to the back. I thought that when I defined a key frame at the end of the path that is where the turn would begin. Am I missing something?

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Video Codecs]

Thanks for all the help. I'll look at these. In the mean time I found a package called Video Cleaner, which is $30 with a 30 day trial with watermark and two minute limit. So far I have been able to use the short movie I created with this one. I'll test drive the other suggestions also.

 

Thanks again,

 

Greg

[Video Codecs]

Hi there,

 

I've been trying to get a video clip converted from WMV to AVI so that I can bring it into A:M. I've tried Movie Maker, which I understand from another thread here that it probably won't work, Ulead Video Studio and Virtual Dub. Working with the A:M support people they suggested I might try a more standard codec than the ones used, Virtual Dub uses Microsoft DIB and the Ulead codec was not obtained by AVICODEC. Does anyone know of a rendering package which will create an AVI movie which A:M can bring in? Or, can someone tell me how to change the CODEC on the packages I am using? I can't seem to find a place to change the COODEC to one of the ones suggested by the help desk, MS Video 1 or Cinepak.

 

Thanks,

 

Greg

[Adding AVI file]

Hi,

 

I am trying to learn about all of these topics, like decals and that. What I have been able to do is load a jpg file and have a character move around the picture. Although, the render quality was pretty bad. For the most part I would like to insert a video stream into A:M and have a character interact within the video stream. When I inserted the jpg file I inserted it as a layer. I don't want anything else in the camera view except the video stream and my character. With the jpg it worked fine once I got rid of the ground and resized the image to block out the light.

 

Is there a manual available for A:M? I have the book that came with the product, but that seems to just go through the tutorials, which I have done a few of them a couple of times to get the hang of A:M. But is there a book that explains what things are and their relationships to each other? For example, what is a choreography, are there any constraints, can a character be pinned to more than one path in a chpreography, etc? I like to experiment as much as anyone, but having something to digest about the basics and how to do things would be nice.

 

Thanks.

 

Greg

[Adding AVI file]

Hi,

 

I'm very new to A:M and for the past week or so have been doing the tutorials. In the end I would like to add animation to an existing movie file, currently wmv. I understand I have to convert to a supported AVI format before I can proceed. If I add a supported AVI file as an image, how do I get that movie to be the plane of existance for my characters and their movement? I figured I might as well practice with something close to the final product I am looking for.

 

Thanks.

 

Greg