Wildsided

See what I mean about the A:M look?

Hi everyone, it's been a while. Ever heard of Five Nights at Freddy's? For those of you who haven't it's an Indie videogame developed by a guy called Scott Cawthon. In the game you play as the night security guard of a run down chucky cheese style establishment called Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. The animatronics in said establishment are set to free roam over night to prevent their servos locking up. The problem is they can't differentiate between a human and an endoskeleton without it's suit. That's against the rules at Freddy's so if they find you.... The game is loaded with atmosphere and some incredibly creepy lore. It and its sequel come highly recommended. "But Dan" I hear you cry. "First you bugger off for months and then you come back blathering on about some videogame. This is an animation forum you moron so stop wasting our time" Well cool your jets folks because I'm going somewhere with this. Ever since I saw the 3D artwork on display in the games I got a very A:M feel from it. You know how the A:M renderer has a 'look' to it? Anyway I decided to do a little digging and discovered that there's been an A:M forum member called Scott Cawthon since 2005. Scott has been making 3D animated content for a long time so the timeline certainly fits. Coincidence? Quite possibly. But if it isn't then Scott could be the most famous A:M user out there.

Question is though Robert, have you ever managed to get it to stop moving? In all the tests I've done with cloth I may get it to act like I want it to but the cloth will never fully settle. Even with no model movement, no external forces just gravity, it will cascade beautifully across the surface and then....wiggle constantly.

Went out today and bought an Xbox 360 Kinect for a whopping $35 used at EBgames. Brought it home, downloaded a bunch of drivers and free software called Brekel Kinect and boosh, $35 dollar markerless motion capture. Haven't made any BVH files with it yet but tested it and it all seems to work so hopefully at some point in the near future I'll be able to animate something that moves totally naturally.

Looks great Mark.

Added some chimneys and photoshopped in some smoke and fog...Oh and the T.A.R.D.I.S showed up. Didn't think things were so bad the Doctor would be involved. Wonder how he'd deal with Annie.

Yeah that's the general idea Rodney. Fooling the viewer, or at least their eyes, into thinking the video is smaller than it is. Also now I have to play with HA:MR as this is the first time I've seen it.

I think this better demonstrates what I was getting at. Took about 5 minutes to set up and then for some inexplicable reason, even at such a tiny resolution, took 12 hours to render. fake3dtwo.mov

Yeah there is Mark, all the choreography settings are just left as is. I'll play about with it some more. Thinking about constraining the window to the camera so it can be moved without losing the effect. I Think some kind of glowing or sparkling particle effect flying through the window would look pretty swish.

To clarify I'm not talking about 3D as in a 3D model. I mean 3D like stuff coming in and out of the screen. I had this idea a little while ago and finally got around to trying it out. (Not claiming to be the first person to ever think of this.) Essentially I made a black window that tricks the brain into thinking you're watching a smaller sized video than you actually are. So when the object comes through the window and is in the black area 'outside' the video. You get a sense of 3D without actually having a 3d video. Works best when you full screen the video. Also sorry about the video quality, not a big fan of this new 10mb upload limit, might end up making a new private youtube channel to upload stuff and then link to it. 3d3d1.mov

Here's a much more complete looking Breckridge. You can see the South Hall to the right and the place now has a roof! Need to add some chimney's and gutters (eaves trough to Americans)

That's cool Mark, Frederator are the guys behind Fairly odd parents and the cartoon hangover stuff like Bravest Warriors (which is itself created by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward). That's awesome, really pleased for you dude.

Haven't been here in a while. Thought I'd post a pic of the Current state of Breckridge. This is the disused Quadrangle. That floating white thing is the roof of the old gym. I haven't finished building it yet.

Thanks Robert They're a bitmap Plus material and all one group. I had been using a darksim before but this way renders a heck of a lot faster.

Been doing some more work on the 3D model of Breckridge. The ground floor is almost done. All The rooms, doors, windows etc are in.

Yeah it's running android 4.1 and yeah the s-pen is pressure sensitive. I looked it up and it's apparently got 1024 levels of sensitivity. Which is doubtlessly less than the cintiqs of the world but still not awful.

I Was looking at the surface pro yesterday at future shop and it was a little rich for my blood right now. But I did pick up a Samsung Galaxy note 8 and am loving it. The S-pen works beautifully combined with sketchbook. It's the device I've been looking for years from a functionality perspective. The surface comes across to me as a note with full Windows OS which really isn't to be sniffed at. But the storage space was awful. 64gb would be no good for people who make large video files and it's price alienates the market of people looking for a mobile office companion. Just my opinion take it for what it's worth.

I tried that mark (right up until January of this year) and it made no difference to my viewing figures. For whatever reason the Internet just doesn't seem to want to buy into what I'm selling. Be it a review show, let's plays, animations or audio dramas, nobody's boat is sufficiently floated. Like Robert said though I gave it a shot. Nobody can ever say I didn't try. Thanks for all your kind words guys.

Well guys and gals the dream it would seem is over. I got an e-mail today from Blip.tv stating that due to restructuring in their business (i.e getting bought by Maker Studios, who then got bought by Disney). They're taking the site in a direction that as of September 1st will not be including me. I have until then to back up my videos if I want to, after which they will be deleted from their servers. They encouraged me to post my videos to Youtube, but I've tried going that route before and got nowhere. So I guess that's it. Ace.Co Entertainment is done.

Been keeping my eye on this one since they teased it a couple of months back. Looking forward to it.

Are you running Windows David? I accidently pulled my properties box below the task bar the other day and had to click drag the task bar so it snapped to the right of the screen instead of the bottom to get at it. Maybe you did the same and it's hiding under there.

Thanks for your kind words guys, here's a pic of the finished Tech and Lacey together.

Work on the new Gen of Ace.Co's Skeltoons continues. Lacey is finished and Tech is coming along nicely.

I make pose sliders for the phonemes and go through audio sliding between them to match up the correct sound with the correct mouth shape.

Been a while since I posted anything here, but ya know what? Gotta go fast. Speed.mov