danf

It was the diffuse falloff turned to 0. Thanks for pointing out the skin group as the specific affected area!

Suddenly, when I do "final" renders, the shot I was setting up looks completely wrong. Namely, this character looks either toon rendered or over-exposed, and I can't find what's been changed in the surface info. Does this effect look familiar to anyone?

So for that tut. we'd imagine the ball is a squetchy character, bouncing around freely? That's a pretty liberating exercise! I really need a second A:M instance, b/c I'll be rendering into next week at this rate...

I can't believe I was too lazy to count frames! That should've been the second step after just watching it! You sold me, I'll work on the bouncing ball next. Oh, and if the bouncing ball is the first lesson in an animation class- what's the second? And third? Actually, if you could just write out a series of exercises which would cover all of the necessary skills in character animation, that'd be great. But seriously, thanks for the Diagnosis exercises. These are cool.

I agree. Context is a lot of it. I'm changing my guess: I think the third bounce is too fast..? But I'm going to hop on the "I'd be happy if I made it" side of the ship. Is this actually a good bounce and you're trying to throw us off, rob, you sneaky cat??

Alright, since you never get riled up, I'll assume you're open to having your dogmatic stance on the 12 principles of animation pointed out to you. And I'll do it in a way you can understand, in a deference to authority: In Richard Williams' "The Animator's Survival Kit," on page 39, he writes: "The bouncing ball example is often used to show animation 'squash and stretch' - that is, the ball elongates as it falls, flattens on impact with the ground and then returns to its normal shape in the slower part of its arc. It might squash and stretch this way if it was a very soft ball with not much air in it, but what I've found is that you can get a good enough effect with a rigid coin - provided the spacing of it was right - so this added technique is not always necessary. Certainly a hard golf ball isn't going to bend all over the place. In other words, if you do this squishy squashy thing too much, everything comes out a bit 'sploopy', like it's made of rubber. Life ain't like that. At least most of it ain't." I hope we've all learned something valuable about "rules/laws/principles."

This edit is me holding back my beliefs.

I found the element that was taking up my render time!!!! I realized by just watching what it said it was thinking about during render. I noticed it was taking a disproportionately long amount of time thinking about my ground surface. I realized I had initially deleted the default ground and made my own crappy one. I don't know what I did wrong, but when I imported a default ground surface, it divided my render time by three.

It looks to me like the bounce speed changes. It starts way faster and sharper bouncing than at the end. Also, I'd like to contest the notion that "there should be some squash when the ball hits," because not all balls are squashy. If you don't believe me, video tape a golf or billiard ball bouncing off concrete. If there is squash, it's not discernable to our eyes. You have to represent what you're depicting.

I have a couple minutes of animation, by my estimate, about a week's worth of rendering, and I'm going away for the weekend. Is there a way I can set my computer up to just "go!" while I'm away?

Brilliant, robcat! I think I understand the mechanic far better than before... The dip exists largely to transfer the weight to the foot giving the leverage for the turn. This heavily exaggerated dip however looks a little cartoonish for me, and while my guy is a cartoon, I also want him to at least believe he's a normal person. After doing the action a few times myself, I find rather than dipping, I often use the leverage foot to boost my center of balance nearly over the straight leg, in sort of a parabola, while I pivot around the leverage foot and then drop it down where I was throwing the parabola. Taking a step in this way would be kindof like throwing a ball, you lean over to heave up the stationary foot, and give enough momentum and the right trajectory to your hip to land where you want, (take a dexterity roll for this, eh?) A clumsy character might not land it perfectly.

Yeah, it's non-MP... I was told it's comparable 16 pass, but I can see how it might fall short. Any thoughts on the shadows? His face and butt look seriously wrongly shadowed. Is there a way to create a sky-wide ambient light, or should I just apply a glow value to all surfaces to soften the shadows from my single sun light?

Thanks for your points. It's funny how having your nose buried in a motion can blind you to some of the obvious things!

Oh haha! I just noticed ONE problem, somehow my badly-texture-mapped ground came back. I'll fix that now.

I made it, but feel free to rip it, I think there are plenty of problems. http://homepage.mac.com/somniac/.Pictures/s08what2.mov Here are a few problems I notice, and I wonder what the solution might be: -the depth of field antialiasing is falling along a LINE!!! That's no depth of field to me. -Weird butt-shadows! What's up with that? I should note: -I have a "fill light" since in the video I've already established the sun is to this character's back. What I'd ideally have is a sort of ambient dome-lighting, like what the blue sky actually does. Is there such a method? -Slightly jerky step? I think my character's motion is mostly timed right, has the right personality, but there tends to have this hip rigidity. Any ideas what makes this look so abrupt?

Thanks guys, these are certainly lessons worth learning, although they might be better mentioned in some tutorial

Don't worry, I'm doing alright. I think I can catch most of the way up in a single day.

Is it possible both .prj files were saving over the same .cho file which had been save..as'd independently?

I'm very carefully holding my composure together right now. Tell me if this is possible: I built my scene, I "save as..."d the file. I made a choreography involving four of my most complex shots. I saved it as. I opened one of my other Duplicates, it looked familiar, but I just deleted all the keyframes since I had built the scene after I'd started choreographing anyway... I built another 2 shots today, Then I go back to reload some of the other shots I was hoping to render over-night, and it seems the last time I hit "save," it somehow saved over ALL the "save as" files. They are ALL what I just did now. I can't find any of the work I've done over the last two weeks. I only had undo set to like 20 levels... Is there a proper order when saving to make sure you're saving on the right file? Sometimes when I open it it has already chosen which file I will be working on, and when I "Save as", am I now working on the newly saved file or the old one, making the Save as an independent instance? I thought I knew how all these basic things worked, but suddenly I feel like I don't know anything. I'm looking for either a solution, or condolences, as I start making this vid again. at least I have some scratch renders...

Why not just use the Theater mode of Halo 3 to machanima your video? Worked for Red vs. Blue...

Oh that makes way more sense- the part I didn't realize by looking at your models was that you first placed the null by the hose start. That makes a ton of difference. I thought you made some dual-constraint where it was bound equally to each, which I'm sure is somehow possible, but I don't need to delve into right now. The funny part is what a small portion of a short shot this hose actually is- This rigging system just prevents it from DOMINATING the focus of that moment.

That's really interesting- the non-multipass renderer antialiases to fake effects that would normally take 16 passes to achieve! That's a load off my mind- and processor!

Really, just the gravity null was enough to relieve the headache, I could keyframe the remaining problems out of existence without frame-by-framing it. Thanks so much for this, even though I only understand some of it.

Okay this is probably me regretting skipping the bowling tutorial, but how do you create a target, and more specifically (since I was able to copy/paste your target): how do you create a "Roll Target" that stays between two points like you've done?

Some birds have feathers that appear one color but from angles slightly backlit they reveal an iridescent sheen. I think it would look really good as a dark grey that reveals a rich purple from the right angle, if A:M can do that sort of thing, that is...