danf

Alright, I think I'm understanding the tools at my disposal better. Let me posit my thoughts for your evaluation: First off, if I want it to look REALLY good, I should just do it by hand. But if I'm lazy: A walk cycle always has a continuous speed forward. Fortunately, you can vary that speed with the "ease" channel to fake paused moments. To make this easing look right, I should just animate the walk cycle action without the pauses, and add them in the choreography using easing. Now getting more specific to me: The secondary movements I had during the pauses of my old walk-cycle should be added as second actions over the eased walk cycle. For the sake of making that easier: I could try (although this sounds sketchy) to cut out the keyframes of my secondary movements and paste them into a new action, which I apply during the eased portions of the new walk, which I can create by deleting those old secondary motion keyframes and sliding together the steps themselves. Sounds doable to me! I'll take a shot while I wait for someone to tell me why this is nonsense

So if I'm reading this right: You recommend using the "ease" property to control the moments that distance is actually covered? Is there no way to make irregular movement patterns part of the walk cycle? I'm imagining trying to move the model off center for moments of the walk cycle, and then catching it up during moments that it moves. This question also relates to any non-symmetrical walk. If one leg walks farther or faster than the other, how to make that look right?

I think I figured the problem out, I'm not sure what solved it, maybe renaming. It wasn't a lack of the slider (I was in the new pose editor), it was the slider not doing anything. But it seems as long as I name them, I don't get these problems.

What is the official "CREATE" button after making a new pose? I'm making sliders for different facial expression elements (eyebrows raised, etc.) but after carefully putting all the teeth in place for a "mouth agape" pose, I closed the window, and when I started working on another pose, the last new pose slider no longer had any effect! Is there an official "save" function for a pose you're working on? I'm trying out renaming right now. I remember the TAO:AM tutorials always left renaming the pose for the last action. Hopefully that's significant.

And... THANKS!

How do you guys convert your animations to NTSC video without getting interlaced fields or desynced audio?

I'm working on a shot where a driver is seen from the front of their car. I've added subtle shakes, which have added a lot, but I definitely need objects to zoom by. I'm not a stickler for their non-uniformity (we can pass systematically placed palm trees for all I care), but I've encountered a problem: The first passing tree was nice. The second one I set up to complete the same distance in the given time, and then dragged its keyframes forward in the project workspace. Now it DOES pass by later, but during the time before its first keyframe, it appears stationary at (0,0,0). This is obviously unacceptable. What am I missing here?

I was able to map an image sequence to the sign! I'll try the "Crop, Range, Length, Speed and Frame" portion tomorrow, it's been an unfortunately long day .( I may have actually hit it at moments before, but I was thrown off because at times it would render all glitches, and I thought it had loaded wrong, but this was simply a problem with the shaded view- a preview render revealed all of the frames I'd intended to import.

I'm starting a job soon, teaching teens to make movies. Since I've been dabbling with A:M, I was thinking of showing them some of the basics, get them excited about special effects. However, I'm registered on my home computer. If I go to one of my work computers, can I log in my account and use A:M? It's fine if it deactivates my home copy until I re-log-in there, I'm really not trying to pirate it. I'm trying to see if I can bring it to a class, that could very possibly get some kids to save up for their own copies. Of course, if the answer is a simple no, I understand. Whatever it takes to keep this awesome team employed I could talk to my bosses about a new investment...

Wow, this thread has become incredibly comprehensive. I'll get to try it tomorrow (long day, need rest) but I'm pretty sure Gerry showed me how to do what I was asking, and heyvern perfectly explained how easy that clock he made was. I'm pretty sure this case is closed, but I'll post my awesomely functional sign as soon as it's done That sounds like hubris... I should just say "I'll see you when I run into my next hurdle." But seriously, you guys are great. P.S. thanks robcat, I don't blame you for not knowing about the PC-mac difference, you've been a great help the whole time, w/ the show more than drivers tip, it got me really pretty close.

Fuchur, I think your third point is where my problem is. I don't see the "imagesequenz" checkbox here on the mac version, and I'm pretty sure I'm running the latest one. Here's what I see:

I'm still having several problems here. First off I don't know where to start reverse-engineering digitalnumbers.prj, so while it's an inspiration, it's not quite a TAO:AM tutorial either, so I'm back to robcat's method, which seems to have merit, but I must just be hitting incredibly unique glitches, because it seems like I keep missing by the skin of my teeth. Let me go through the different problems I've had and the solutions I've tried rather than come begging for solutions again: I made several jpegs numbered sequentially but even when I selected "import animation" it would only import the one I clicked. I tried adding names, same problem. I made them all targas, same problem. I pasted them into quicktime and made the .mov file zipped below, it usually imports as a black square. I then used Quicktime to export ITS version of an "image sequence," and it exported about 1/5th the image files I had before. The rub: When I import one of THESE targas, it recognizes it as some combination of the original constituent images. When importing each of the new targas, it has a different mixture of the original images, I believe no overlap. This hurts really bad because it's basically what I wanted, only it's not doing it exactly the way I want, and without some of the specific frames, some of the humor won't play the way I planned. (Don't worry if you d/l, the 69, 666 and 420 are strictly inside/subliminal jokes) At this point I pretty much think there's a problem with the mac software, because I have come so close, and followed directions to a T. This is probably the only prop in my first animation that requires this kind of decal, so if someone would like to just paste it on, or even take a guess at what my problem is, I'd be much obliged. If you'd like to try it out, I have my gas sign model and a .mov of the sequence I hoped to decal onto it here: http://homepage.mac.com/somniac/.Pictures/Gaspricesign.zip

It's an outdoor scene, and the sun doesn't need to be seen. I did imagine I'd rely largely on shadows to imply the sun's location, and then use the sky's color to imply the rest. But some good points got raised here if I do choose to show the sun, and that is whatever I want to show as the sun, I get to choose very specifically for myself. Whether it's stock footage, a lens flare, or a cartoon I drew in illustrator, the aesthetic is completely in the animator's control, and that's a nice reminder.

That is brilliant beyond belief. You people are like Mother Teresas of animation.

My question is totally covered in the subject title. I want a sunset/sunrise shot. What will this take?

Sorry, I still don't see where the "import animation sequence option" is.

I'd create an image sequence of this display in a paint program, going from lowest price to highest price, and apply that sequence as a decal to your sign. In your chor you can control the displayed frame of an image sequence. It would be easy to make it go up-down-up-down as needed for your story. And easy to revise the timing of that as you refine your animation. Is "image sequence" a technical term? I made a bunch of .jpgs of the various prices, but I don't see an obvious "apply image sequence" option under applying decals.... (the glitches I'm getting w/ jpgs is another problem, I'll just mass convert them..) Is this just another way of saying make it a movie, and then I can control the movie within A:M? I like that idea because it includes rolling back and forth through the prices, which I think would look cool, like a 70s alarm clock. I would love more detail on how to make this work.

Once I've created the "poses" involved, the biggest factor becomes timing. Of course, sometimes I didn't make keyframes where they belong. This results in a lot of selecting all the body-part keyframes down a particular frame, and then moving them. But my monitor isn't big enough to make "selecting all the different body parts' keyframes" into a graceful motion. There's a lot of scrolling involved to even reveal all the keyframes at a given frame! Is there an easier way to distort an object or project's timing?

I'm making a character walk, and it's not even a very zany walk, but there are certainly times when he's moving forward, and moments when he's recovering from hitting the ground. Problem is, the walk-cycler seems to take all frames as equal parts of the forward stride. This results in some moments that my character slides forward, and others when he seems to moon-walk. Is there a way to vary the forward-movement within a single walk cycle?

That's fantastic, thanks.

Nice point. I'd used hide to make selecting easier, but I hadn't considered it as a selection that other selections can be made within. I'll be using that a lot now.

I'm making facial poses right now, and I find that lots of emotions have common traits (for example, both anger and sadness would have a slouched mouth). So my question is, once I've made one pose, can I select the positions of SOME cpts and then use those to jump-start a new facial pose? I hope people don't mind me asking as many questions I can think of- this board's response time is too good to pass up

So there isn't an easy way to create a group comprised of some of another group's CPs without selecting them all from scratch? I ask because some areas (like eyelids, which are touching eyes) are difficult to select. On another note- AM: Track looks really cool- are there videos posted anywhere of it at work?

I made a group for "top eyelids" but realized I wanted to move them independently at times. So I selected "top eyelids," hit "G" for group mode, held alt and deselected one eye's cpts. But NOW my "top eyelids" group doesn't select the cpts I deselected at that moment. Is there a way to narrow your cpt selection from a group without altering that group?

Is there a way to turn the X/Z axis into a shaded texture map? I'm also making a road, but I'll probably make it finite.