dblhelix

a blank model would be like any invisible shape? that's a really smart workaround, thank you! (had to search for the "action object" and guess who's explanation turned up. why don't you go add a DVD on your wishlist so i can sort that come payday? can't manage the books but you're so incredible with the speed and all. do you have "Cloudy with etc" yet?)

12 frames into an action i realize that the pivot of the hip null on Thom would be wildly more helpful if it was located in another position in relation to the box. the pivot is smack dab in the middle, as per use, and i'd need it to be on top of his left thigh, more to the right when looking from the front, but still in the middle when looking from the side. (he's quietly diggin' this totally noddable gansta rap and taps the beat with one heel.) in chor i could click into modelling and shift the pivot, but i only need the pivot to move to his right in this action. how do i plan this? and execute this? is there an animatable "offset" or somesuch? make a second null to override the hip? if i drop it into the model in the chor, i'll just have to bridge the seams carefully when the "hip influence" pops from one place to another? (ooo there's the name for the clip: hip influence!)

take them to the sandbox! pleading guilty to the pluralis blunder; when searching i omitted the star in "combiner*" and got wrong results. curiosity helped discover the material combinerS on the previous page. i also found a combiner tutorial from johnl3D, and gradient combiner searches gave me your quick recipe for glass. this was a perfect, productive day off. thank you!

i went searching, scanning the amount of results and yes, "gradient combiner" was the only one found in techref. thank you so much robcat& Fuchur! it feels borderline absurd talking in real-time to mentors far far away. if subscriptions keep this going, i'm never buying the program

it took you less time to write than for me to read LOL! one more; did a quick search for "3D combiner" on wiki where i always go for terminology first, a:m second but 'no sense did it make'. a:m gives many results, how do i specify my search to learn all there is - "material combiner" or "texture combiner" or yes both and also for decal ~, etc? edit; is this a tool? or a common description for a principle?

this question is of the large kind; how do i plan for the size and proportion of things in this spaceless place that is 3D? what should be taken into consideration? does the intended detail in materials matter? (and by materials here referring to all things not wireframe!) if so, is it custom to, say, make another model for extreme close-ups? does the intended proportion between objects shown matter? if so, is it custom to speed up the process by, say, using postproduction? does the camera present us with certain rules, as in 'you want "macro" with distance blur, scale the model x10 for starters'? does rendering enter the equation or is that just a frame size issue? does this sound stupid, it's because i don't understand lights at all! naturally i've the specific circumstances of a project to consider, but i'd like to understand general principles. is there a gunslinger around? this'll take a moment, can i cram this too into the previous order ?

that's exactly what i was going for. though it needs pauses for a bit of drama. now it's a vegas wedding. brilliant island looks nice, i'll bring sunscreen and dwell a bit, thanks! walkcycles are a bit like scales to a musician. wasn't it DaVinci who drew his own hand every morning, or so they say?

to humour one and all, here's the 12hr task, rendered in wireframe. first time uploading, fingers crossed crabby.mov ha, it works!

johnl3d; thanks, just happened to click the link ordinarily first. your project was very helpful. looking into something simple was sort of a a non-scary opening into a dissection. i wanted matches and got them; spent all day yesterday eyes a-blaze in a:m trying to move the doll with intention, using a scene from the film. yeah. no. 12 intense hours later had 2 (edit, wrote "min" first, but y'all guessed that it's:) seconds of rudimentary motion and taste for a kill. serious planning required. new software routines&defaults required. (touchpads have an option 'tap twice and the arrow will "grab"' - onto a bone - so i click again thinking it's now loose and ctrl+z = an entire "leg" vanished from hierarchies and revert did not bring it back. of course at the end of the scene. yes, re-do everything. only five hours). manipulators absolutely necessary; testing the tsm2 rig next. will be needing a second subscription. hating splines. "eight everything!". "eee-except the ones you sevened." hating constant re-scaling of windows, need a 30" monitor. mysterious abundance of rotation values puzzles: "clean" oriented routines (constraints?) needed. stupendous amount of questions tower, the kind that don't start with "how" but "why" . as in: WHY does the selection frame in the white-red timeline window not move the selection? "please re-select in this window the selected from the curves window then move them"? yes cranky. tried-and-true recipe for that; taking it in little doses as fun&games, not within a result oriented production schedule. giving up deadlines not determination. and in reasonable time, good to hear. my email is in the first post here, the spammers have already got it...

(had to open it in browser window) figures. it's a map. and a real cookie cutter always does two things. [attachment TornPaper.png] yes i see, thank you! i think that'll be really helpful in speeding up renders with full/total shots. there's something that probably needs clarification: so not dodging a smart way to make a paper doll! this "fluff" lining, it sort of brings a corporeal dimension to these faceless, armless abstractions of life. what's missing from all above descriptions, is the crucial part the 3D plays. the fluff might sound like a - - oh well; but what it is, is the blood and guts of this character and we get to see them up close. the 3D fluff is really very necessary. that one 5sec scene, even if it's the only one, is going to be worth all the work it takes to make it as "real" as possible. when nothing at all happens (you're watching silhouettes on one color background), the impact of whatever happens will be magnified by contrast. this level of the story is still very raw, that's why i've not been explaining it with due emphasis.

oi! it's a giddy piggy! i can only download the .prj file about this time tomorrow, so not able to comment on findings till then. it's.. not entirely unlike christmas. suspecting the best reply will be to post your giddy piggy right back at you. no no, wait, you're the one who can make fire? - expecting to find matches. you're giving me a tummy ache just by using the word 'sorry' in there. but i'm onto you, you little holographic bunch of youse; you trap the unsuspecting newbies with overflowing kindness, reel them in while they're paralysed by the weight of their gratitude and 1,2,3 - they're A:M devotees for life.

the speed, wobbling, all perfect. so much character&mood in just a few seconds!

hey, thanks for getting back, searched the cookie cutter when you first mentioned it; ~"it tells the program to render a hole". did not understand at all that this would help me make a piece of paper but i see now i didn't have enough information. more importantly: - still hoping that these shapes could have 'fluff' linings, as if torn from thick cellulose and fibers were left sticking out. don't i need patches along the sides to assign hair to? - not finished with story components, and am planning/hoping for a perspective as if camera were placed on the glass where the doll lies, giving a side view with the shadow& reflection on the glass. would a sideless patch give a "realistic" feel? - when taking photos of the actual dolls on an actual glass, discovered by Coincidence a way to help show physics by the placement of the head in relation to the bodies that was so! good! it's a keeper. can i move a head in relation to a body in a rig? - scaling a neck bone maybe...? - at the same time, discovered the legs are a complete bore most of the time and i'll need bones to speed up boring animation = i'll be making a primitive puppet-on-a-string rig. i believe the only constraint needed throughout is 'orient as' so the dolls will "stay on the glass" automatically. you've probably no clue how scary a swamp the whole 'material&rendering' business seems to a beginner. i've decided to start with a simple leg rig then just animating my crude models till in serious need of change (and letting the story finish brewing). with my current deadline and my dayjob swallowing the entire summer, we're in october by that time! so i'll be quiet for a bit but the problems will come. rest assured on your nice kitchen chair..

in newbiespeak for a newish LCD, - set your graphics card gamma to 1 - set your monitor gamma to 2,2 (- make sure your monitor' brightness and contrast are set to factory defaults) - download the 17-bar robcat greyscale-chart, scale it up and make the window only show the bars and no large black or white areas and leave on the screen (if you have a desktop bgr in color make sure it doesn't show) late at night in a pitch black workroom - turn off screen, wait a couple of minutes for your eyes to forget the light, then turn on your screen and adjust brightness and contrast (with actual buttons on your monitor) so the bars look evenly graded. if you "loose judgement" turn off screen, wait a couple of minutes in darkness then continue and when finished, you should be at the starting point, to be able to judge your work in a relative, representative environment. this is for black and white, not RGB. i'm working on a laptop; it seems wisest to do the color etc corrections in the slower but trusty stationary with an LG LCD. also, as it happens, i'm testing scanned drawings where the pencil is manipulated with selective color > neutrals > successively increasing black, then morphing into cleaned PS drawings. was in grayscale but switching to 32 now

i recall spending a day or two googling this general subject when struggling with publishing; testing something (lowering to 1.0 feels very familiar) at complete random in desperation and in vain. none of it stuck to memory cause everything was isolated bits of info with nowhere to anchor. here's logic, context and reality. school was never this good before. thank you!

newbies at work: i thought of that but couldn't see the option. ha. ha. right, choosing from the list; something's on its way. chosen to inspire your career in 2D. on three different pages got three different delivery schedules worse by the page; starting with apr 28, last one said may 18 at the latest.. maybe that was a joke. it's used, "shelf-wear, never read" so i'm a little bit curious if this holds true. if not, please, please don't hesitate to return it, put it back on your list and contact me, ok?

(no deleting here; edited away off topic content)

that's it. all there. everything just so. ctrl+s ctrl+p. ctrl+n robcat, did you write all that architectural beauty just now? you and me are going to have a talk. in a post below. (this site seized while answering, if there's no post after this it's due to techstuff) Gerry, your avatar image is so strong i have to make my first adress about that; everything you say comes through the perpetuity of comfort in that character. brilliant. ctrl+s ctrl+s ctrl+s as to learning curves, have you heard about the -this is real not a joke- math formula for a (bell..?) curve that on descending begins to rotate in 3D around x-axis ad infinitum? there's my experience of a learning curve. Fuchur! raising a term from parentheses into a headline while making a mnemonic film of the entire process. nawwwwwww! (translation: what you did was so brutal there was no allowance and i had to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum for room to respond.) (see how a "naaaaaw" suddenly seems concise and reasonable?) admin? rodney is it? sir? this immensely valuable trilogy should be gently pinned for posterity; headline changed to something like "The basic logic of workflow in assigning properties to objects and shortcuts" in grey below: "as simple as the headline isn't"

switching emphasis between projects on monday, summing up and after gathering a foundation for troubleshooting one last area is as basic as it is murky. i can't confidently use terminology yet, so this is going to sound a bit weird: lots of people have time and again made the same mistake, as have i - confusing in which window to set the value for a certain thing. and they are different things. each time someone comes to help asking 'have you set the parameter in this window you have to remove it and do the same in that other window'. (PWS vs. chor window, object properties vs. right clicking etc) this was at its most confusing when reading about lighting a scene. how would one go about learning the relation between all "these windows"? is there a concept for this i can search for? techref isn't helpful. since the windows we newbies misuse exist, someone made it so. understanding why would help in organizing workflow and getting into good habits. another fuzzy thing and in a similar way. although, here i'm expecting a "go test, whatever suits you, it's there!" the hierarchies for materials.. you can choose your, say, mapping combinations to suit your wishes. "bump on top of diffuse", "i used an environmental for bump", and specularity, HDRI whathaveyou. it's easy to search for "diffuse map", learn how it differs from a bump map; how to make one and where to put it and what to expect from it. this is not a problem. this is the tip of the wing of the fly on the top of the iceberg that is mapping. well, you know. i don't speak math, programming or engineering. anyone fluent in newbie? or do i come back with a situation?

(i've been using AE as a hammer and what happened two years ago was i got served a cold one.) this quoted sentence brought an image of ancient analog times, of watching a color/lighting corrector work on a film. in the now, this would be TGAs, a couple from each scene, being corrected for final values/unity before applying values to the whole scene, per scene, before final render. more than self-explanatory, really. and yet there was so much trouble. -- a good teacher not only answers the question but fuels further curiosity. thank you ypoissant! Fuchur, i've no idea what you said there, and it still feels like my brain just took a shower. ok the allowance but the concept of negative color.. and that was not a question, because robcat, hand at the holster, posting wishful tutorial thinking in a new thread. in case you have a minute? and, umm, if someone could please make time increase as exponentially as curiosity?

this i also recall, after failure and pre-32, changing to "north american web" in PS and deciding it made a difference but not big enough. still, i think i left it on in PS but continued in sRGB etc, the old monitor friendly space in AE. maybe here is the root to some of the evil? what about color space for a film to festivals that accept DVD/miniDV and use reasonably priced projectors that munch up half your film's saturation? and AE color space after A:M, for web? "use 'none'" is the only advice i've gotten on this, repeatedly. but the list at "working space" is so long?

inaccurate enough to leave me mixing the terms, as you can tell from my post! not a techie.. this is interesting, have to test this. thank you! for those of you who, like me, had to read the above three times before understanding, el stupido account of 32bpc in action: i tried to publish a film on youtube. the film was made not according to the publishing requirements, but to honor the story. this time it resulted in a foolproof list of "top three don'ts for internet publishing": + miniature detail + large black&white gradients + motion blur that there is also a comprehensive list of the film's visual components. didn't work. the look on youtube was dancing squares, rectangles, and an odd appeareance of a character in the cubistic mess. it was disgusting. yes i tried different renders! i googled for a week full time: "no problem" "here look, this is how well it turns out" "no i never had that". during the second week i stumbled upon the term 32bpc in a chapter on black&white. almost an association, not a remedy. and though i've forgotten today's breakfast i remember the sound of my jaw hitting the floor two years ago when watching the gradient background uploaded in 32bpc. the image had become a space. the first experience was that of beauty. if the addition was about information, then the information was light. even in solid black areas. the second experience was the tangible 3D quality (gradient=shadow). after the first render, the difference on youtube was clear as day. there were artefacts, but now you could actually see the film. Coincidentally, vimeo was brought to my attention at that time, and there, only a couple of stripes bulked up in the background. (all this was prior to youtube's HD-option)(but i maintain their compressor is a vendictive fanged abomination) in the tutorial he instructs you to use a photo of your own and see what happens. that's probably a good way of getting a practical sense of what channel depth can do. it's not necessary for everything, but there might come a time it'll save you hide.

year 1999; sitting in a classroom watching 'Alien Song' as an inspirational introduction to my first ever animation learning experience in... softimage. isn't that funny?

- - - ! got up to read my yellow render section and sitting down, you've replied. unreal, gunslinger. thank you so much! edit; attempting to contribute, maybe someone wonders 'why 32?' for the first time so here's a really good tutorial for AE explaining the principle. you can click the 'HDon' button on the right so it becames 'HDoff' and an easier load to buffer. http://vimeo.com/6916475