Dearmad

That's remarkable. You're progressing a lot with your skills. One thing that makes me chuckle is the three point patch with the hook in it- AM11 handles that with aplomb, apperently, but earlier versions would make that part stick out with some crease or something.

Yeah it's a good start. The wheels *are* seperate from the body mesh right? Just let it rest for a day or two- your concept is good, just need some patience, man.

Why not some interesting goggles or eye pieces like that with doodads on it?

Oh man, whatta lot of work ahead of you- what are your plans- spoof or serious? Willing to share some of them yet, or is it all hush hush?

Nice! Modelling looks smooth- WIREFRAME please! Allow us to learn.

LOL- funny cop. Wonder what sorta wierd walk cycle he'd have. Oh you wanted a crit- well I'd fix up his shoulders a little- geometry there seems a little rough. The details to his face could use some smoothing too. You going for a jelly donut smear on his shirt front type of humor or is it a serious role you envision for him? I like his overall proportions.

Man... I got Am rendering in the background, netscape going and now I need to open up a picture viewer for a TGA? :rolleyes: Try sending JPG's or something. ;) Well, let's see if I crash out or not. :D

That is actually an attractive face- not just personaly, I mean -er- well, I mean the balance to it has some sort of internal consistency that a lot of people's models of faces seem to lack- like the artist was more in control in your case than the software (which happens a lot). Anyway, I wonder if her eyes would come to life if your dropped her upper lid a little. Animating that hair is gonna hurt no matter how you do it because it's such an integral part at this point to her look. I don't envy you the task, but I'm looking forward to seeing what results. Overall, impressive- keep refining her to your own taste.

I like it. Looks a little like a miniature painting.

That was pretty nice- liked the green lettering effects. Creative approach to the finals week info. But I gotta say it: 40 lights!?!?! Why...?

Dude. Please, you MUST do something for me. Register over at CGchannel and then POST these suckers LARGE over there in the finished gallery/3d section- SHOW them that AM can do this kinda stuff! if these models don't make frontpage over there, NOTHING deserves to make front page! Go here and register and POST! http://www.cgtalk.com/ Make a rukus on over there amongst the lightwavers and 3dmaxers. Now, wireframes please?

C'mon SOMEONE out there's gotta be making stills or something they could call "finished" and post in here.

Scared him off?

Ok, that is seriously scary looking to me! He looks like he could go either horror or comedy with equal grace! :lol: Very funny character!

robcat, Hey I hear you- believe me this is the biggest bite out of animation I've ever tried to choke down- and I'm still feeling my way through it. So as for the floatiness- I know, it's something I'm working on. I think the poses could be held longer with less transition time on some actions... gotta love the way AM will let me fix that without toooooo much work. Keep up the crits people, I AM taking notes! And Mooncaine, I'm just gonna ignore that... (shivers) LOL "Also added some controls for their dresses..." AK!!!!!! Glad the other notes gave ya something less creepy to think about. ) I'm still back in 8.5 so I imagine one day when I upgrade all sorts of goodness will have been added to AM.

yeah that bit with his arm- I'm still thinking about it... one of the probs is the limited height of the character... I may just lower the whole freaking table and bag!

I posted a small clip in the sweatbox area of my site for those interested. While crits are welcome, and I'll certainly act to improve the animation based on good crits, I won't be putting up a "corrected" clip- I'm not assembling final footage in any way at this point- just wireframe/4 poly-patch outputs for assembly in Premiere. Once It's all sweet (or least not too bitter) I'll be rendering final scenes. This scene was a little tricky- involving Ravel placing a prop inside another prop and closing it... man, 'twas tough. Anyway, go easy on my animating "skills;" they're my weakest point I think. My Webpage The "sweatbox" place

Looking pretty nice. Only conceptual quibble I would have is a personal choice one: I like longer fingers when a figure is spindly like that. You planning on adding some geometry to the shirt or is skin-tight the order of the day on this one? Where you going with this one? Got a story/scene planned already?

Good luck! B)

Oh, I'm definitely keeping the volumetrics on the streetlights, just toning them down. In fact the cars that go through the night scene have them too... old fashioned 1910-style cars with volumetric lanterns! I *like* the look. Thanks for all the comments folks. I'll post other things in here in the months to come- but don't expect much with graduate school on my back! Hoping to finish sometime in 2004, though.

I agree, now that I think about it- I will tone down the lights- I think in that render I was just making sure the darned volumetrics were working! Took awhile to get them on. Zaryin, Have faith- the final renders are at 1600x900, and the final short will be at 800x450- so I'll post a few high detail renders once I get to final renderings- I'm only doing wireframe renders and a few shaded renders to test out animating at this point, and I'm outputting compressed DiVX instead of frames (TGAs) for now. Next one I post will be high rez though, just because you requested.

Another scene. The village outside of Verdun, 1916. I'm not animating in this scene yet, and this render was done awhile ago. This is the most complex set. Thousands and thousands of splines.... I'm pretty happy with the atmosphere. Only non-procedural textures in there are the stars and the cobblestone bumpmaps. Everything else is procedural. Yeah, I know... longer to render, but I just love the way procedurals hold up at any angle and at any distance if you design them right. And this way the clouds can animate and blow with the wind and deform just like real clouds. I love that effect. Trust in me to overuse it in this short! My second favorite building in this set isn't visiable, it's JUST around the corner, a church with a really tall spire with a ballerina at the top of the spire in gold. You can see the spire sort of.

Interesting. I usually do a color map first for a few reasons: 1) It takes more finesse to get it just right- bump maps are usually pretty straight forward for me. So I may end up totally redoing colors (not just vlaues but overall placement/shapes, etc.) until I get the right look- which would mean redoing the bump map had I done it first. 2) Deriving a bump map from a color map is pretty easy, especially using color filter layers. Just my opinion.

One small detail in case it wasn't clear: Fireflies was done using Polyray, not AM- and my own animation program for keyframing ('Tweener, a program in the DORK section of my site). In a word- PRIMITIVE tools. I have no excuse for animation like that any more, though I was very proud of Fireflies when I did it- since hey, I coded the animation program. Modernhorse: Yes the music is french... big clue at the site: It's Ravel's of course! In fact Fireflies sort of led into the dreamy plot idea involving Ravel himself for "Ballet pour ma fille." The Firefly music is one of his waltzes from "valses nobles et sentimentales" work. Played by me- which avoids *some* copyright problems, but since there's still an active Ravel estate, not all of them. Well, to all interested in following the film, I wish you luck, since it's going to be a long ride.... but I *will* finish, no matter what. Thanks all for looking!

Ouch, but at the same time. (For inscrutable reasons since before this forum was born). Try removing the plug-in, as in delete the offending sucker and run AM. If it works, then maybe try reinstalling just the plug-in? Alternatley, delete AM, defrag, reinstall components from a clean slate? I'm still back with 8.5p and that shader's been with AM since at least 8.5. I cna't believe this bug is something added in via the .exe... that would be pretty silly. G'luck.