Rob_T
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Posts posted by Rob_T
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This gives me an idea. Perhaps if I repeat the steps from your tutorial, Robcat, each time I want to initiate new action, it will resolve the issue. This gives me a place to start; or at least a direction to try.
Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes.
BTW... is what I'm doing called rigging or were you referring to some other horrifying task that awaits me (LOL)? Just curious.
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The walk action I had issues with was the Rabbit in lesson 5. This is a completely different walk action and when I ran the animation in the choreography window it looked fine to me. Still does. I don't notice any significant slippage. I realize the lesson in 5 called for the stride points to be closer to the heel but you yourself said you have to play with it to get it right. I did, and I thought I had.
Maybe I'm wrong; I'll have to look at it again.
The walk cycle isn't really the issue though, even if it is off I'm happy with it at the moment. What's driving me crazy are these disappearing/reappearing bone properties that affect previous choreography actions.
I have years of experience editing video and so I know I could easily just cut to another camera angle, start the animation over with a new project and it would look fine. Just like all the actions are melded together; but that wasn't what I wanted to do when I started the lesson and it isn't what I hoped to accomplished.
I wanted to have Shaggy walk up to the door and knock on it and look around it and then reach out and pull on it and struggle with it and then open and walk through it and I wanted to do it all in one render/shot. And I wanted to do it that way just to see if I could.
The first script I want to shoot (once I make models for my characters as well as all the background scenery and lighting elements etc. etc) involves a chase of sorts; a woman who my hero is trying to save runs away blindly in fear and the hero gives chase to protect her from running into traffic or something like that. The chase scene lasts a good distance and I had pictured using an action cycle for it. That was of course before I had finished even the 1st of the TAO lessons.
My main issue here is that the posing actions that I'm trying to implement after the walk cycle are effecting the walk cycle because I'm moving bones in directions that didn't have properties or keyframes at all until I I moved them and once I moved them the keyframes connected all the way back to the begining of the animation, corrupting it.
I was able to resolve the issue by doubling up on keyframes and forcing the bones to start where I wanted them to start before I began manually posing them. While this fixed one problem it created another by causing the walk cycle to slow to a crawl just as it finished and then snap back into the posed animation.
Yes, I'm trying to do a lot in one scene. No I don't need to; the lesson certainly doesn't call for it. And if you tell me that I should use shorter scenes and cut to different camera angles because what I'm trying to do is too complicated for me at this level or too difficult and beyond what the program is usually used for I'll go back and finish the lesson as it is supposed to be done and cut the other render in through my editing software.
I can be pretty impatient when I'm trying to learn new things and they aren't working the way I think they should. Thanks for bearing with me.
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You know what's worse than having things figured out and not sharing? Thinking you have things figured out and finding out through painful, burning failure that you in fact do not.
This is going to be a bit of a long message. Please forgive me, I am frustrated and love the sound of my own voice.
First off. I need to come clean. I have OBVIOUSLY taken this lesson a lot further than I need to. I fully realize that I am asking to learn things above my pay grade as far as the TAO lessons go.
I've attached a .zip of the project file as it is right now. I got a lot further before the wheels came off the bus last night but the result was so bad it damaged everything that came before it and so I had to go back to this point and try again. So far I've been at Lesson 6 for over double the alotted 6 hour time frame; and not happy about it either.
I watched Robcat's tutorial on transitioning from a preset action to posed movement. I'm a little disappointed. Not in the tutorial, I'll talk about my issues with that in a minute, but with the program itself. I cannot believe there isn't an easier way to transition a model from an action preset to posed action. The steps you have to go through to continue the action are; considering the ease of use in much of the rest of the program, shockingly counter intuitive. You should just be able to select a keyframe, select the action in the project workspace and just hit a button called transition to pose or something.
Ok, now my issues with the tutorial. And I should emphasize these are my issues. Robcat I'm very grateful for your guidance. There is a better than good chance that I'm the one with the problem here and the tutorial is just fine. Here is where I ran into problems.
1) One of the things Robcat said in the tutorial: "the path action is always setting itself to the length of the choreography and the choreography is always setting itself to the length of the last keyframe." Somehow I broke this. I've been having to manually increase the size of the newly added choreography and even have to manually increase the area not "grayed out" in the timecode at the top of the timeline view. I think it has something to do with number 2.
2) When I added a new choreography action like Robcat did in the tutorial it didn't appear as this nice short little bar like his did in the tutorial. It appeared as a huge long bar the entire length of the already existing animation. when I slid it over to measure up with the point in which I wanted the walk action to end and begin posing manually it increased the blue choreagraphy bar and available animation time by double. So every time I sampled the animation it would continue to play 20 seconds or so past the point where shaggy freezes and I'm trying to pose. This became frustrating for me so I shortened the blue bar and new choreography action (red bar) until the only time it took up was the area in which I was currently working. That didn't work because in the area at the top of the timeline view that "time" had already been exposed and was white instead of gray. I selected that area where the animation stopped (a good twenty seconds passed where I was working) and dragged it back to the time where I was working so when I played the animation it would stop in the area in which I was working. Ever since then I have had to manually adjust the choreography and timeline to add more time when I add more animation. If I do not the scrubber reaches the end of the time/choreography and just stops without playing the additional frames.
3) What was described in the tutorial with adding a new choreography action didn't work exactly as described in the tutorial. When I married up the new choreography action to the exact time that I wanted the old choreography action (with the walk action applied) to end all the new poses affected the walk action despite the new choreography action being in place and the old one ending. I discovered if I seperate them by one frame it worked as described in the tutorial. But I had so many other issues down the road (that bled back into the walk action despite the fact that at this point it was working and transitioned to the posed action just fine) that I cannot be sure this is not part of a bigger issue.
4) I watched Robcat's tutorials on key frames (both of them) several times and no matter what I tried it didn't help me here. I used the project workspace to control/select all the bones (that wasn't in the tutorial but it seemed to work); I tried control selecting the bones themselves; I tried nudging them to force keyframes, I tried shift/click on the keyframe button once I had the bones selected and I even tried edit/make keyframe with the bones selected. No matter what I tried there were certain elements of certain bones (most notably the hips, back, back 2 and ankle manipulation points) that had no keyframes and didn't even appear under the bone itself until after I manipulated it.
The project that I've zipped shows Shaggy walking up to the door and it transitions pretty seamlessly to him stopping, canting his head and then knocking on the door. He waits a bit and then cants his head again. That's where this project stops. Last night I moved forward. From there I had him sort of crane his neck to the right and lean back like he was trying to look around the edge of the door to see if anyone was coming. I then had him lean to the left in the same manner and then back to the center at which point I was going to have him grab the doorknob and start the lesson proper from there.
After struggling with these hidden areas of the bones that popped up (they would just appear after I manipulated them; they would say translate instead of transform and before I moved them they didn't even exist in the project workspace. Heck, back 2 doesn't even show up in the project workspace. So as soon as I move them they gain a keyframe that starts a movement waaaaay back at the beginning of the animation and slowly moves into place until the keyfram is reached. It usually ends with Shaggy canted over on his side knocking on the door sideways instead of standing straight up. And if I undo it so Shaggy is standing back up again and get rid of the keyframe, the bone disappears so I can't keframe it where it is, where I want it to be, before I make the cant to the right pose (with Shaggy standing straight in front of the door).
I played with the different areas of the shift/make keyframe menu. I even tried to force keyframes on everything just to try and solidify Shaggy's position where I wanted him. This resulted in Shaggy being turned around backwards and slammed into the door as if the two models had been merged into one. When I tried to undo it it turned everything white (complete loss of color and shading) and essentially did nothing else. Shaggy and the door became one and that was that.
So I tried to find ways to manipulate all those hidden bones and then put them back where I wanted them so they would have keyframes and although it took forever I thought I finally had it. As I scrubbed through Shaggy knocked on the door. Canted his head, leaned right, leaned left and then straightened up. It seemed like everything was working and I was ready to have Shaggy grab the doorknob and begin the lesson proper. Until I started the animation back at the beginning to watch it all over. As Shaggy neared the end of his walk cycle action his feet slowed at the very end and the last step took five times longer than its should until finally the scrubber passed into the area where the walk cycle ended and the posed animation took over at which point Shaggy snapped back into the proper movements and continued until he reached the end of the animation I had posed for him.
So essentially, I had broken down the animation into four parts. The walk to the door, the knock/check of the door, the pull on the door and the end walk through the door. I had all kinds of trouble transitioning from part one to part two but I got it. Then I had all kinds of trouble completing part two but I got it. The only problem was it ruined part one; and no matter what I tried I couldn't get part one to work right again.
So I came to the forums to write all this stuff and ask for help... but as you all know the forums were fubar last night. So I gave up. I didn't want to save the project as screwed as it was (and I was so wiped and frustrated I stupidly didn't think to save it as another file name) so I just shut it down without saving because I knew the last save point, what I have given you here in the zip file, was as close to working as I've been able to get this nightmare.
So there it is. HELP!
I've included the walk action in the zip file because I made it myself, therefore you probably don't have it. If you need anything else from me to analyze this problem please let me know. I'm basically stuck and don't know what to do to go on from here. I'm afraid if I invest tons of time in part two again I'll just ruin part one again. Thanks for reading this massive wall o' text and big thanks to anyone who can help.
I realize I'm asking for help with things that according to the lessons I don't need to know yet but despite that these are things that I intuitively feel I need to know, that I should know about how the program animates.
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Hmmm. No video tutorial for this lesson. Guess I'll have to stick with the book and some of the examples here. I liked yours Spleen.
Wish me luck.... off I go.
Yeah, this is the one that's a real bitch. It really is a big leap from the previous exercises.
Make sure you've watched my vid on keyframing options. And if you're planning to have the character walk up to the door with a walk cycle, watch my vid on adding animation after an action.
Can I just say how much of a God you are Robcat. I decided to redo lesson 5 with a walk cycle up to the door and I've spent the last half hour banging my head against trying to end the action and move back into posing. I couldn't find info on it anywhere. I was coming here to ask the question only to find you had the answer waiting. Awesome. And I've already watched both your keyframing Tuts. Numerous times.
Thanks again and thanks Spleen for the vote of confidence.
EDIT: Holy crap you were not kidding. Wow that's complicated. I would have never ever figured that out without your Tut. Thanks.
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Hmmm. No video tutorial for this lesson. Guess I'll have to stick with the book and some of the examples here. I liked yours Spleen.
Wish me luck.... off I go.
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I had no idea that this forum actually hosted files. It took me a minute to find the interphase. Wow that's... unheard of actually; and really great. I'm reattaching the above files here with the Zip. Thanks Robcat.
When I saved the Rabbit Model it did give me some noise about it being an older model or something. So maybe you are right and when the lesson was made the Rabbit could move his arms like that.
As for the stride length. I tried adjusting it a bit but it isn't as simple as saying hey just adjust it. I went back into the action menu and played with the stride length and then I would save it and reapply it to the model; but that messed with the film length, adding frames every time I reapplied the action, and no matter how many small changes I made to the stride length I couldn't get it any better than what I had in the video. I'm not even sure, since reapplying the action added frames, that the model was walking during the time period when the new stride length settings were applied.
I just reread that and I'm confusing myself. To put it short, I would adjust the stride length but I'm not sure exactly the right way to do that without recreating the choregraphy and path from scratch every time I make a stride length adjustment.
Anyway, if anyone has time to check these files, especially the stride length and then send it back to me with a different name so I can see it done right I would be grateful.
Cheers and thanks.
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I actually rewatched the lesson because I had a serious problem and saw that whoever did the video lesson actually did have a problem with pass through. That Rabbit has freakishly large hands and they really want to get in the way.
My serious problem was related; as most of my problems with A:M are, to ignorance.
I got used to checking my animations positioning, once I felt I was close to being done with a pose, with skeletal mode off and muscle mode on. The only reason I did this was to hide the skeleton so I could get a better view of what the Rabbit looked like as I scrolled through the animation.
The problem was, the stride length indicators will not adjust without the skeleton turned on. I'm sure this makes perfect sense to anyone experienced in the program, but as I completed and refined my poses I spent more and more time in muscle mode watching it over and over and making small adjustments. When I thought I was finally done I saved my action and then tried to set my stride length. No matter what I did those little yellow boxes would not light up, would not let me adjust the stride length. I banged my head against it for about a half hour, went, had dinner, and then I rolled the tutorial again while I started writing a post here for help.
Fortunately I noticed the one difference between my interphase and the one in the tutorial just as I was about to hit the post button; so I was able to figure it out on my own.
So for any other newbies out there. If you are trying to set your stride length.... make sure your skeleton is on.
That isn't the only problem I had with stride length though. I can't seem to get it just right. Watch the vid and you will see what I mean.
http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w37/Qui...Lesson5Walk.flv
I played with the stride length for awhile and it still, to me looks like it's slipping just a little bit. I've rewatched the video and it isn't that noticeable but it was more apparent in the project window (actually if you click on the link to watch it in full size and then maximize the explorer window you can see the slide a little better). I've already invested tons of time in this lesson and I feel like, with the exception of this stride issue, I've met the requirements of it.
So I'm asking the pro's here, if you you could take a look at my stride length settings and maybe correct them for me, then save the project, model and action under a new name and send them back to me so I can compare mine to yours. I feel like this stride length thing is very important to the "quality" of the animation, I'd like to see it done right and compare it to what I did wrong so I can have a clearer picture of how it works.
Here are links to my project, model and action (at Mediafire).
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ul5rhfwmzgg/Lesson 5 Walk.prj
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cwniu5gjnzg/Rabbit.mdl
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jntxmjmzotm/RabbitWalk.act
If there is anything else I need to provide so you can see what I did on this lesson please let me know. Thanks.
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I have a small question about this project. I watched the vid and am trying to complete the lesson step by step with the manual. In the manual the first keyframe pose has the Rabbit's left arm so far behind him that from the front view you can see his left forefinger appearing behind him on his right side.
I tried to emulate this pose but it contorts the shoulders horribly. I moved the hips about five degrees to the left but it wasn't near enough and since the rabbit doesn't seem to have a "collar bone" that can shift both shoulder bones on the X axis there is only the one shoulder bone and no matter how you turn it. it's just twisted too far back to get the hand visible from that angle.
Now the person who did the vid tut didn't send the arm back this far, so I suspect that this was artistic license for whoever drew the image in the manual and I should just get as close as I can and make it look as good as I can.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or mossing something. Thanks.
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The information on the pass throughs is useful but in the case of the Knight it isn't real applicable. At the end of the lesson the manual says to "make the animation my own" or some such thing and I read that as encouragement to alter the lesson. So I did a different pitching style; and that was a mistake. Primarily because the kind of pitch I wanted the Knight to throw (and did throw without too much embarressment) just isn't well suited to the model. His short, skinny arms and barrel chest make it nearly impossible to hold his hands to his chest, while contemplating the pitch and checking the bases, without causing a pass through.
I certainly could have used option "B" and left the arms out further but that would have defeated the look I was going for.
In the end though it was my inability to edit keyframes and being too lazy to start the lesson over that is really at issue. When I posed the Knight there were no pass throughs; they were all caused by the tweening and by the time I noticed it I didn't know how to delete the keyframes responsible without risking having to start all over again.
Robcat I watched your tutorial and its wonderful. I didn't even notice the timeline element to the project workspace. The program default has it minimized to the point I didn't even know what it was. Your tutorial has really explained a lot. It's also made me a bit in awe of all the stuff this program has to control.
Rodney I was playing with my libraries and I expanded them all the way out. The tab I know to be "Tutorials" turned out to be "HTML Tutorials" once I expanded the liibrary all the way. I assume that's what you were referring to. I tell you what, if I ever get good enough at this program to make a tutorial I'm dedicating it to you. I doubt, from the complexity and sheer volume of stuff that I have to learn, that it will be any time soon.
If you still want me to start another subject on HTML Tutorials I will, the function of the program is definitely broken and it probably wouldn't hurt to let folks new to the program know not to try and open too many of the included tuts unless they enjoy crashing the program; but I think the mystery, at least for me anyway, is solved. Thanks.
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Actually, standing up and acting it out is exactly how I planned the shot. It's funny you said that. I had the vision in mind for how I wanted it to look and I'd say I got about 80% or so of what I wanted. For starting with a new program I'm pretty happy with that. The biggest issue I had showing inertia (follow through) was after I had already keyframed the pitch itself and it was so sloooooow that I was discouraged about the idea of showing a big follow through. My biggest issue on this project was, as I said before, not understanding how to delete keyframes and misjudging the amounts of time actions would take.
If I had known how to erase the keyframes I would have stopped when I saw how slow the pitch was and gone back and re-did the time index to make it faster/more violent. Since I was stuck with a slow pitch (without possibly having to redo the whole lesson) I stuck with a small follow through. I was also afraid that a larger follow through would send the knight further out of frame which would highlight my next mistake; the problem I had panning the camera.
When the pitch started the knight was actually front/center on the camera, but after the follow through he had actually walked a small step out of frame so that's when I panned the camera. The problem was that I should have gone back and keyframed the camera to front/center just as the pitch was thrown because changing at the end as I did, without a keyframe, caused it to slowly pan during the entire shot. It was distracting. So I zoomed ithe camera out some so the pan wasn't so apparent. If I had known how to delete the keyframe I would have deleted it and fixed the pan the way I wanted; so it was a compromise.
And that's really what bothered me about the lesson. Like I said, I think it came out ok and now with a day's distance from the result I like it even more. What bothered me was the compromises I was forced to make because I didn't understand how to delete the keyframes and fix my problems and I wasn't inclined to go back to jump street and start over after all that posing.
The head nods are the pitcher communicating with his ... nonexistant catcher as to what pitch he's going to throw. I don't know how much you know about baseball but that's how they communicate. The catcher makes hand signals to indicate different kinds of pitches and the pitcher shakes his head no or nods it yes to indicate the pitch he's chosen to throw. So I put in two no's and a yes... then he checks the bases to make sure none of the runners of first or second are too far away from thier bases and planning to steal a base... then he throws the pitch.
So yeah, I guess I had a story in mind and I guess I did tell it fairly well. A little ball park ambiance and some sound effects and it would go over fairly well I'm sure.
Thanks for the input Rodney. So do you work for Hash, are you thier forum moderator hanging out the welcome mat or are you just the nicest guy on the internet?
Also, I would like to know more abuot the specifics of doing this:
Another effective technique is to work in silhouette with the character entirely one color.You can get that effect by cranking up the Ambiance on the characters Surface properties or via the Choreography.
Is this in an upcoming lesson or can you give me a bit more instruction on how it works?
Thanks again.
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Sorry Rob, (for me) the link to your Photobuck says,The action that you were trying to perform has failed.My biggest problem was keeping limbs and hands from disappearing inside the body of the Knight or inside each other. Two things I wished this lesson covered in more detail.
I'm not sure what the lesson would cover .
There's not a lot to say except 'Avoid passthroughs. When you find your objects intersecting make sure you adjust'.
Admittedly, the Knight is not an optimum model for staying away from passthroughs in this exercise. But thats actually a good thing because the focus isn't on passthroughs as much as animating/arcs.
Note: It's fun to try this exercise with some of the other basic TaoA:M Models. Animating various models using similar poses/actions can help a lot when it comes time to model and rig your own characters/models.
Wow. Really wierd. I tried the link after I posted the forum post and it worked fine. Here is the actual link.
http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w37/Qui...esson4pitch.flv
Before I used the link inputter with the scripts here on the forum. Maybe now you can just copy and paste the URl. Sorry about that.
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I've looked at some of the other entries... and now I'm glad I don't look at the other entries before I try a lesson. Wow a bunch of these are really good.
I thought about going the extra mile in the way I did with the last few lessons but I'd like to speed up the learning process and using programs I already know to spruce up stuff from Animation Master isn't going to teach me Animation Master any faster. So I stuck to the basics.
I made the pitch a little different than what is in the lesson. I was a pitcher when I was a kid and I never liked that delivery. LOL.
I also added a few signal shake offs and base checks to make things a bit more interesting. I panned the camera right and back a bit just to see what would happen.
I'm not "delighted" with the outcome. It isn't bad. I just don't think it's great. There are a couple nice moments. I put too many frames in and that really slowed the pitch itself down too much. Once I get a better feel for time intervals I might go back and redo it.
My biggest problem was keeping limbs and hands from disappearing inside the body of the Knight or inside each other. Two things I wished this lesson covered in more detail.
1) If it exists, a way to use constraints (and more on constraints in general would have been nice) to keep one part of the knight from disappearing into another.
2) If I make a mistake and want to go back and delete a keyframe... well that wasn't realy mentioned at all. How do you tell which frames are keyframes and which are tweened? Do you have to delete all frames until you reach the mistake you made and then re key everything from there? Should I write down what frames I'm making key frames so if I find a mistake later on I can go back and alter that one keyframe without having to delete a whole bunch of work?
I'm used to Premier Pro where Keyframes are vital to effects and editing and they are always enumerated in the timeline by a diamond or circle or coloration chance (depending upon the timeline as there are several within the program) so I'm looking here for some kind of indication of the keyframes.
What happened was I got to the end and noticed that the pitching arm at one point went inside the knights body and pretty much disappeared. Since I couldn't remember what frame I made the keyframe (once I got rocking and rolling with the positioning and keyframing workflow I just had at it with abandon) at I had to go back and do a rather nasty patch job. Since deleting keyframes wasn't discussed I was afraid to touch it at all for fear that I would acidentally undo a bunch of work. So at the end, the fist pump\hat tip is kind of dirty.
Anyway. It was interesting. Not my favorite lesson so far but I think it came out ok.
http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w37/Qui...esson4pitch.flv
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I had so much fun with this lesson that I stayed up waaaaaaaay too late. I hope no one is offended by my sense of humor with these. Just trying to enjoy myself.
Anyway, I liked it so much I did two. The first one is a drunk rabbit on the loose!
Obviously I polished the image off in Photoshop. I've never considered myself to have great Photoshop Kung Fu but I'm still way better with it than I am with Animation Master. Don't bother reading the article. Other than the headline it's gibberish.
This one I took a bit more seriously. I was going to do exactly what the lesson called for and post it... then I came in here and took a look at all the great stuff. The color changes and all the poses. I was inspired. So I did this.
GO TEAM ANIMATION MASTER!
This one is almost completely Animation Master. The only thing I did was add the "AM's" to the rabbit's shirts in Photoshop because for the life of me I could not figure out how to apply a GIF or JPEG as a decal. I played around with it a bit but I've been jumping a bit ahead here and there on lessons so I figured that might be one thing I should probably wait for the lesson and learn right. The dude made it look so easy in the demo though I had to give it a try. I couldn't even figure out how to import it. LOL.
Anyway. Hope you like them.
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Lesson 2 is complete. 40 seconds per frame for full frame rendered AVI? Is that normal? This four second vid took almost 45 minutes to render. 56 MB for four seconds too. Wow. LOL.
Rendering time depends on a lot of things...like reflective surfaces, transparent surfaces, refraction, ambient occlusion, materials, volumetrics, hair, cloth, etc. So, it depends on what you are rendering how long it will take. As for file size, that depends on the type of file and compression you are using.
You will also notice that the stage and background look slightly different from the examples in the manual and there are no shadows. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.My guess is that you didn't have "Cast Shadows" turned on in the lighting, Rob.
Thanks. I'm a little afraid of the render times. I thought I had a pretty good computer LOL. I haven't gotten to the lesson that tells me how to adjust the lighting or turn the shadows on (I have no idea where the controls for that stuff is). I didn't see that in the PDF part of lesson 2. But I've learned from Robcat's notes on my lesson one that there are some differences between the PDF lessons and the audio/video ones on the site. I'm just about done with lesson 3 so I'm going to post that and then tomorrow I'm going to go back and listen to the audio/video versions of the first three lessons. Then from there on out I'm going to do both at once.
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Changing the camera view didn't work for me. I tried several different views by using the T key and moving the environment around. It still didn't help me with the "Y" Axis.
You really couldn't do this?:
Oh yeah, I added the element to lesson one no doubt. I admit that. But sadly, no, I was unable to change the Y axis by changing the view. Why? Because I misunderstood the differences in views. When one uses the number pad keys as hotkeys to get to different views it is NOT the same thing as using the T and M key to move the view around. I didn't get that. I do now. What I did was I kept moving the environment around with the T key trying to find an angle at which it would let me adjust the Y axis. It never did and after an hour or so of fighting with it I found the properties window and used that.
Now I've been using the PDF document for my lessons. I wanted to be sure so I went back and checked. In lesson one the hot keys for changing the views are shown but not explained and in lesson two the instructions simply say "Move the actors into position on the stage as shown."
I have listened to some of the lecture on the audio lesson but I assumed they would be similar and I'm pretty good at following directions so I've just been reading the PDF lessons. I guess I should go back and listen to the audio/video clips now because from what you have just shown me there are some serious differences. I'll say again though, I don't see any clear mention in lesson one or two, in the PDF document, (TAOAM.pdf) of how to adjust the Y axis. And that's where my problem came from.
I'm starting to feel like I'm getting piled on here though so I'm going to stop going on and on about it. I will say in my defense that it has been my experience that if a new user can't find something or struggles with a feature of a product it is rarely the users fault. Not that I'm looking to blame. I'm really digging AM so far. Three lessons in and it's getting more and more interesting by the minute. What I want you to get is that the presentation that sold me on the product made this all sound like it was the easiest thing in the world. I suspected that the program was going to be far more difficult to use than they were letting on and so far I've been pleasantly surprised. But when you ask questions like "how would I create my own model in this program?" and the guy answers "oh you basically just trace it in the program" well you know there's a little horsehockey going on.
Also, I enumerated my difficulties, because at the beginning of this thread Rodney put a rundown in post #5 that lead me to believe that it was encouraged for newbies to explain thier difficulties and how they overcame them. That's all I was doing. So if someone else came along and couldn't figure out how to adjust the Y axis maybe they would see my post and catch a break.
Thanks for the audio clip. It was succinctly everything I was unable to figure out on my own in lessons 1 and 2.
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Very nice. I'm going to show this to my Nephew tomorrow. He loves this kind of stuff (he's almost 5). Great work.
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Lesson 2 is complete. 40 seconds per frame for full frame rendered AVI? Is that normal? This four second vid took almost 45 minutes to render. 56 MB for four seconds too. Wow. LOL.
Anyway, if you watch the vid you will see that I didn't use the rabbit, knight and ... Pink Panther looking thing. Instead I just rooted around in the extras disc I got when I made the purchase and found three different models that worked with the can can motion preset (many models did not work with that preset, some shook thier heads left and right, other did simply nothing which was disappointing because I really wanted to see the giant robot do the can can).
You will also notice that the stage and background look slightly different from the examples in the manual and there are no shadows. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
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Next time, hit the "2" (front view) key on the numpad...or the "4" (left view), "6" (right view) or "8" (back view) key. That will give you a different view than the camera ("1" on the numpad) and it's very easy to move the model on any axis from those views, Rob. You could have also hit the "N" key while in any view, including the camera view, that brings up the translate manipulator...which also makes it easy. If you want, you can also move the model around using the properties, so, you have a lot of options.
Incidentally, the "7" key on the numpad gives you a "birds eye" view, "0" gives you a bottom view and "5" gives you a top view. The "T" key will allow you to turn your view and the "M" key will allow you move the view up/down/left/right.
If you run into problems, you can always ask questions on the forum...that's why it's here.
Hope that helps.
Changing the camera view didn't work for me. I tried several different views by using the T key and moving the environment around. It still didn't help me with the "Y" Axis. I'll give the hotkeys a try though. That might be the ticket. Thanks for the advice.
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Lesson one was tougher than I thought it was going to be. Partly because of some rather important, yet missing information in the control scheme and partly because I tinkered with it. I actually finished lesson one quite awhile ago but I thought I would go back and start from scratch since some time had passed since I completed it. One of the first problems I encountered was a result of my using the program on my desktop rather than my laptop. It worked fine (but slow) on my laptop but once I transferred it to my desktop it was faster; but I had a major problem with "ghosting" on the mouse cursor. Every time I moved an object, clicked on anything on the stage or opened a menu a rectangular area would not move, or would distort, and caused me all sorts of problems.
I'm using an ATI All In Wonder 9600 Series video card and since I've had nothing but problems with it I figured that it might be responsible. I changed my "Smoothvision 2.1" settings (in the advanced settings of "display" in the control center for Windows XP Pro) from 4X to "Application Preferance" and also changed the Anti-Aliasing settings the same way and it seemed to resolved the issue as the program works fine now.
As you can see I added the knight to the image and played with the lighting and the bones of the knight to make him look like he is holding on to Keekat's hand a bit. Nothing spectacular but it caused me some major problems as I didn't know what I was doing.
The first and biggest issue I had was, nowhere in the first two lessons does anything in the instructions tell you how to move a model on an axis without scaling it. Once I made the Knight smaller I was hapy with his size but he was still standing on the floor and I could not get him "up" into Keekat's hand no matter how hard I tried. Every time I grabbed a control point and tried to move him he scaled larger or moved on the "Z" or "X" Axis. No matter what I did I could not figure out how to move the model on the "Y" Axis. Frankly this is something that really should be included in the lessons because I remember having the same problem with Lesson 2. Once I placed the three models on the stage area I could never get their feet to stand flat on the stage and it took forever for me to figure out how to move them.
The solution, for those who don't know, is to click on the model and go to properties. This allows you to adjust the characters position on all axis using the numerical values that appear. If anyone knows an easier way to move a model on the Y Axis without opening properties I'm all ears as it seems to be the one kind of motion that is all but impossible outside of the poperties window.
Anyway, that's lesson one.
Moving on. Now that I know how to move things on the Y Axis Lesson 2 should be a breeze.
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Hi Rob- Welcome to the forums and Animation:Master! I know this app (like most 3D apps) can seem frustrating and counterintuitive at times, and like robcat said most new users just want to see something move! You can do that easily without bones or rigging, but of course the bones and rigging are what real animation (and not just spinning logos) is about.
Check out Largento's excellent tutorials in this thread http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32833 for a super-simple method of learning a little more about splines and cp's. He shows a number of shortcuts and pointers that I didn't even know about after using AM for nearly ten years.
Also, keep in mind something I've said in some other threads recently that I've decided to put in my sig: "Learning Curve" is a euphemism!
I actually saw those linked elsewhere and they are excellent. I actually know Largento a little bit as we are both Webcomic guys and I bumped into a lot of his posts over at the Half-Pixel forum. That forum died in a site revamp which was a shame because of how many of us used it on a daily basis but I was thrilled to find him here.
I'm going to do what I'm told and go through the lessons in order. As much as I want to know how to do everything right now I realize that it will take time... but I don't have to like it.
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I've made it through the first two lessons without a great deal of difficulty and since you guys seem so sure that it's the way to go I'll continue in order. Thanks for the advice.
I'm not a problem child I'm just.... impatient.
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Probably the biggest challenge I've had so far in trying to figure out how this program works is understanding the control points and splines and how they behave. It's hard to think in three dimensions when you've only ever worked in photoshop and other mostly 2d programs. I've had a devil of a time figuring out how to get splines and control points to move and connect with each other the way I want them to. Every time I think I've got a control point lined up with something I want to join it to I turn the model and findout I'm off on one of the axis and nowhere near the point I wanted it to join.
Yes, it is challenging to work in 3 dimensions on a 2D screen.
Have you done the modeling tutorials in "The Art of Animation:Master"? Those are an essential starting point.
You know that brings up an important question that I wasn't even sure I should ask. The tutorials seem set up to teach you how to animate from the get go and I started working my way into them a couple months ago and immediately lost interest. Maybe it's because I'm so familiar with programs like Adobe Premier Pro I didn't want to go on and on about things I kind of understood like camera angles, drag and drop effects and the like. All that stuff seemed like putting the cart before the horse to me. I feel like, before I want to know how to animate and move my characters around and film and render the motions, I really want to understand what all these buttons do, I want to know how all these different structures are formed (bones, frame, hair, lips and probably a bunch of stuff I don't even understand enough to mention yet) and what thier purpose is.
The tutorials have me playing with models I have no understanding of and I find that a little frustrating and I keep getting sidetracked when I find a bone joint and I ask myself "ooh what does that do? What will happen if I move that up and down? Can I sever it from the main body of the model and if I can how will it behave when I try and move it then? And what about these control points; if I break them off here will it significantly alter the look of the model? And what's this Halo of circular control points that appears around the model when I click on the hand and what happens if I grab one and drag it until the Halo gets bigger?"
I think you can imagine what happens next. KeeKat ends up looking like a butchered Quasimodo and I've completely lost track of the intent of the tutorial.
With all this in mind if anyone has a better idea of a place for me to start I'm open to suggestions. I really want to make this work.
I'm signing off for the night but I'll be on in the morning and throughout the day. Thanks for any help.
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Rodney,
I'm glad you are so helpful. It's a real boon to have someone like you here in the forum. I guess I was confused. I thought the Tutorial tab was for learning how to use the program; not creating tutorials for others, you are right I have little interest in the that since I have no idea what I'm doing myself. I agree that saving is important and I think we've all lost work from time to time due to bad saving habits. I know I have. What concerned me was that I had this brand new program that was locking up and crashing on me as soon as I touched one of its features. Not usually a great sign. Since it isn't an important part of the program though I'm going to go into ostrich mode, ignore it, and hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass later.
I was gone for two months but now I'm back with a vengeance. I really want to learn this program as quickly as possible. I've moved from my laptop to a significantly more powerful desktop so hopefully that will speed things along as I noticed some slow response on my laptop.
Probably the biggest challenge I've had so far in trying to figure out how this program works is understanding the control points and splines and how they behave. It's hard to think in three dimensions when you've only ever worked in photoshop and other mostly 2d programs. I've had a devil of a time figuring out how to get splines and control points to move and connect with each other the way I want them to. Every time I think I've got a control point lined up with something I want to join it to I turn the model and findout I'm off on one of the axis and nowhere near the point I wanted it to join.
My biggest challenge at this point is trying to figure out how to make a model and how to assign a skeletal structure to it.
As for the HTML stuff you were talking about... are you referring to my webcomic? I think you may have lost me there.
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Wow. I'm always happy to see someone reaching for a dream. WP is a great so I'm sure you'll do fine. And since I know you from the Half Pixel forums I know you do your research. Best of luck. Hope to see you around here often.
exercise 6 door stuck
in TaoA:M and the A:M Technical Reference
Posted
Are these rigs available for commercial use (hilariously I'm asking questions about rigs while not knowing what a rig is)? Once I get to the point where I am creating animations with my characters I intend to sell hi res versions to sponsors and DVD's to everyone. So I have to be careful what I take from others.