Dearmad

Tone down the color!?!? Isn't there anough of that already in the real world!? I like the shape to the hull- boats are such pelasing shapes.... must have been fun to model.

Do you have an overall "look" to your design for your project? I'm not familiar with your stuff- is there another thread?

A practical light is one that fills the purpose of indicating a "real life" light souce without necessarily illuminating a scene in the ay expected by that "Real" source. Like if you had a lightbulb in a lamp (say a point light)- you wouldn't necessarily use that light as the real source of light in your scene. Or christmas lights on a tree- I'd have them but very dim (or faked with glows/ambience, etc...) and light the scene with other lights to get the "effect" of the practical lights. This way I control the light easily and to my exact liking. I borrowed the term form my theater days.

I've never found achitectural stuff or mechanical stuff to be a problem in AM. Never understood how people thought so strongly otherwise. The modeller (once I spent my year in purgatory with it) is a lot of fun to use and very quick. And since it's pretty strong with organics, adding those human details to mechanical things is very simple as well. Didn't mean to hijack the thread.... continue on. I'm just up waaaaay too late and feeling a bit loopy.

In moving to a new location for a scene I always work on the lighting solution first... I usually spend about 3 days working on just the lights before I bother to animate. And even after that I continue tweaking them as I animate... I think lighting is EXTREMELY important- right up there with the materials as far as setting the tone of a pice. Anyway, I've heard people do the lights afterward, but to me it makes more sense to animate after I know where the lights are actually placed- I roughly already know the action as I have storyboards. After I get all the lights in place and have tested actors out at their various positions I think it's a good sign if I like the solution well enough to want to make myself a large still... So here's a much reduced in size sample of where Ballet Pour Ma Fille is currently at. I'm rather proud of this lighting set-up. The rather *bright* light coming from downstairs is an open door where the sunlight is streaming in. It closes in this scene, and the sharper raytraced shadows will disappear. 5 lights: A key, A fill in the alcove, The sun practical outside, the doorway practical, and an internal spotlight softshadowing. No post processing. This is straight out of the 8.5p renderer... One thing that did drive me nuts lighting this little scene was how AM screwed up rendering transperencies when you intersect a non-transperent object with one that is transperent. I wonder if that ever got fixed in the latest version? One stupid thing I did... but I'm proud of it anyway: the chandelier strings ARE indeed chains. Each individual link- didn't take that long to model but no one will ever REALLY see them in the film. I can only make them out in the full size image I made for myself at 1544x2000. Ah well... Comments and crits welcomed.

This reminds me of some other star trek spoof done in AM... what was it called... Hm. I can't remember- anyway they animated a few episodes and then sorta disappeared off my scope.

You're gonna be disappointed then... because she doesn't deliver the package to you or anything... In fact she doesn't even send you a note telling you why she couldn't come...

Working for me... about 25% done. Oops, didn't see you fixed it.

Looks neat. Like frozen quicksilver. Sorta surreal.

Ah... that final touch made the character for me!

Well call me an idiot (if you must) but I wouldn't want to see those aniticipation poses made too strong, and think making this animation too "snappy" would ruin it's sort of laconic feel. Cocking his head, for me, would ruin the funny understatement of his reaction. Now, maybe having him "see" the tomoto before we do would help in anticipating its appearence on the screen so it is easier to "read" what occured, but having him react too much would ruin that moment for me. Anyway, all IMHO. As usual, funny voices...

Yeah now *DAT'S* what I'm takin 'bout!!! LOL Brings me back to my Polyray days.... Here's a sample of a script: All text- and does probably some silly mechanical looking piece of animation which was the best I could do at the time! I can't take credit for typing it all in- I modelled in Moray, then exported the script, then used a utility I programed to calculate the math for inbetweens in two scenes where things moved... I'm getting a headache just thinking about it now. T1TWN7.DOC

Pretty. I like the amount of modeling detail without reliance on image mappery tricks. Seems well balanced. One concern is the "noisy" bit on the undeside of the handle (whatever that's called on a gun- sigh word finding problems today). It doesn't read very well for me- will it be textured in a color that contrasts with the rest of the stock?

The first time I really went to town for an animation in AM- and I mean REALLy went at it- channel editing and everything, I remember a moment when my wife walked past me, took a look at what I was doing and sneered. I mean she really audibly sneered too. You know: "Tsh..." I didn't understand what could have caused her reaction- but she thought that what I was doing looked so *ugly* that she couldn't understand how anything interesting or even amusing could come out of it... So now, sometimes I sit back, load up ALL the channels to a character in a scene and sort of look at them... they really are sort of beautiful to me; hard to believe I'm responsible for all those lines and that something known as "character" can come out of them. And that I might spend a few hours tweaking the position of the little dots until they're juuuust right.... without even looking at the 3d representation- you just get to know them to some extent. Cool stuff to me....

Another bit of animation is nearly done... I'm feeling fatigued enough with it to post just to show that I'm alive and so is this project. It's in the "sweatbox" now. Ravel sorta lopes in a little too fast for me, and his face is not animated yet (just his eyes), but his thinking is actually sort of there- something I'm a little proud about. It's funny, but nothing in my entire film will be any sort of "cool rock on!" scene- it's a pretty quiet little film telling a story that's probably more sophisticated than I should have aimed at with my first AM project... ah well! Link to the sweatbox from here: http://www.applesnake.net/ravel.htm

Also, humbly, I point you to: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3676&hl= For some practical things thta might speed you up.

Last one.

Smile wireframe

Some other JPGS from the originator to follow:

First of all: Wow. I like your sense of pushed proportions to her face. Unrealistic and still VERY attractively done- excellent artistic sense. Top notch. Secondly: If you want, you can email me the shots and I'll post what you send to this thread. Keep in mind each image should be <1MB for this board. I'd love to see the stuff you have to post. Just click on my handle for this board or go to my website and click on email

Tres excellent design, man! Muscly, low, and ready to groove...

And this, sorta represent where I'm at right now.

This:

Congrats. Seriously, you reminded me of the two times I realized that when I began working with AM. Once was about modelling- the other time was about rigging. I realized a lot of the rigging "solutions" out there were actually more like hobbyists who couldn't put down their stamp collection long enough to go actually mail something using a stamp. You're on your way- keep learning how to meld what YOU do with what OTHERS have done with what YOU THINK is the best way to solve YOUR UNIQUE problem. Or something like that!

It's always amazed me how much material you've pumped out- hamlet was funny! Did you finish Hamlet? I need to download the last bits- got the first 2.