Wildsided

thanks for the help guys. It's the hair that's killing me. The frames render pretty quickly without it. I'm already rendering everything at half resolution (640 x 360) to save time.

Guys I need some advice. I've got 2395 frames that need rendering by the end of 2morro. They're taking between 6 and 12 minutes to render per frame and that works out to roughly 5 days. I wanna know if there's a way I could make the process faster. If for instance I stop the render re-open the project and bake the particles will that speed things up enough to get this done and will the baking take forever. Any thoughts on how I could get this done would be greatly appreciated. I don't wanna disappoint any fans I have by not having a Christmas episode and I know I could get it done for christmas eve if I could get the rendering finished by Sunday morning

Hey guys, just wanted to show you the first rendered 7 seconds of the Christmas special. No background music or ambient sound yet but just thought you might like to see it. Oh and there'll be a backdrop outside I'm rendering that separately. It's rendered out at a lower bitrate and half res to keep the file size down for the forum. in_flew_game.mov

Thanks Nancy! I'd like to make a couple of different ones for variation like you suggested. It's all a matter of time really, Last years Christmas special didn't get posted until Christmas Eve (Which is about as close as you can cut it) and I had to make a ton of sacrifices with the story. I'm hoping this years effort will be a lot more solid and get people pumped up for the new year.

Thanks Robert and hello again to all. 2 posts in 2 days it must Christmas lol. This probably isn't new or exciting for the more experienced forum members but I like how this turned out so I figured I'd share it. You might remember I asked a while back about making a decal visible while making the geometry invisible and thanks to Nancy I learned about transparency maps. Anyway the reason I asked was because I wanted to test an idea to make some simple trees for this years Christmas special. There's gonna be a fly-through of a wooded area on the way to the cabin and I didn't want to make a bunch of geometry heavy trees that would take ages to render. Instead I made a series of rectangles that over lapped as seen in the screen grab below. Each rectangle had the same tree decal applied consisting of a colour, bump and transparency map. When these render they make a nice looking tree that's not flat from any angle. It's obviously not a replacement for a fully 3d tree but they render quickly and I think the effect is pretty solid

Hey guys it's been a while. Been busy making stuff and re-branding a bunch of stuff. Anyway I figured I'd post a couple of bits I've been working on for this years Christmas special. Check out Santa, my tree and the updated Gaming retreat.

Very interesting concept Rodney. Does this use more or less processing power than particle hair. If there's on thing I hate about particle hair is that it bogs down my computer when it's turned on.

Hi guys, just dropping in to let you know that I just posted a new show over on blip.tv. Check it out http://blip.tv/EpicGamin/tech-vlog-episode...l-alive-6407606

Thanks guys and Rodney that it totally the plan, gonna go for a kind of video rotoscope so the movements look more realistic. Bought a kinect and downloaded some free mocap software (can't afford true bones) but I don't have time to set it all up and experiment right now, so just copying what I'm doing from the video will suffice for now. As for the real Dan, he should be appearing in a new series alongside 'Game" the games dragon called Dan and Game's Retro Cave, where we play and review retro games, but Epic Gamin': Animated is gonna be all animated to save time and is currently top priority. In other news I forgot to post the splash screen I've made for Ace.Co Entertainment, I only had it as a 720p massive file so I re-rendered it in a smaller res to keep the file size down. Ace.co_splash_screen.mov

Thanks Jason My wife checked her card online this morning and all 3 payments are on there just so you know. But I'm sure you'll be able to sort it. Thanks Dan

Alrighty, I said I'd post some updates so here goes. Since I posted last in June I've: 1) Done a bunch of animating and scripting for the show 2) Built the bridge of the Egg Carrier and some Egg Robo badniks to pilot it. 3) Built a Tardis because I love Dr. Who and lastly but by no means leastly I made a decision regarding myself in E.G.A. The original plan was to continue doing what I'd been doing with the old show and green screen myself in to interact with the characters. There was also going to be a 3D me to throw through windows and get blown up etc known as the StuntDan. I have since decided that while 1 or 2 cg characters in an otherwise real world setting (Like with Gwen and Tech in the old studio) doesn't look too bad. 1 not CG person in an otherwise totally CG world looks awful. So I have promoted the stunt Dan to full time character, It'll be easier to animate the interactions this way, anyway here he is. stuntdan.mov and here's Dan and Gwen in one of those classic "You're not dead!" hugs

Sweet! Thanks Nancy that'll save a whole bunch of teeth modelling.

Holy McMoley I haven't posted anything on here since June . Anyway simple excuse is that I've been busy working on the show and I will post some up to date clips/screenshots etc later, but first a quick question for the more informed among you. Is it possible to make an object transparent without the decal on that object becoming transparent as well. Say you decal something and it doesn't cover all the geometry, can you hide the excess so just the decal shows?

lol good thing I meant jason in my original post. It's so rare to have people's names when it comes to software/business. But yeah I sent a message off to Jason not Steffen. Yeah the wife wasn't impressed when I exclaimed "What the F***" at discovering the mix up. Believe me if i could afford and had the staff (or any staff) to need those subs I'd be on top of the world. Heck if i had the money i'd have A:M Paint and A:M Track as well but all in good time.

Hi, I've already Emailed Support and Stephan directly, but yesterday when I went to renew my sub there was an error at purchase confirmation that read as though the order hadn't been accepted. I tried another couple of times and got the same error. Giving up I went back to my account summary and saw I'd been charged for 3 subscriptions! I later got order confirmations for all 3 subs but I only need 1 and it's my wife's credit card I need this sorting as quickly as possible so she doesn't get annoyed at me. Plus it told me the orders hadn't been accepted so it's not like I deliberately bought 3 subs. Anyway the 3 order numbers are 8277, 8278 and 8279. I have activated 8277 and would like the other 2 cancelled and refunded. thanks Dan

That's funny, using Open GL completely screws up my A:M (both on my old Vista machine and my current Win7 machine) to the point that nothing displays correctly or even at all. But everything is fine in Direct3D. Go figure.

Thanks for all the comments guys and gals. EG:A is coming along nicely Have about 3 to 4 minutes of footage done now, 2 minutes of which is all the same scene, the rest is parts of scenes but it's slowly becoming one cohesive unit. In the meantime I've also been working on my games dragon for the reviews aspect of EG and so I figured I'd post an update for anyone who's interested. Pretty much all the 'dragon' aspects are there he just needs some added details and rigging.

random double post wasn't me promise.

The player (which is strictly speaking the camera) moves in 3D its just the environment isn't made of 3D objects in the popularly accepted sense. It's more just flat planes with textures on them to represent the environment (Floor and ground are generated separately to the walls). Any 'objects' within the environment are sprites that can change depending on the angle the camera is looking at them to make them look 3D. Alternatively the sprites can be set to always face the camera, it's less work to make the sprites that way but it looks less realistic. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with this, that first map looks great. It's a simple layout but it's tight and restricts the players' line of sight. Gonna be sweet dude.

Evening all, Just stopping in to shake the cobwebs out of this thread and post a quick render of the dimensional portal opening above Bowser's castle. I'll be having the Egg Carrier emerge from within, from a few dramatic camera angles but still setting that up. Pretty simple set up, its basically a flat ring with an inner 3d ring. The flat ring generates the streaks around the outside and the inner ring has a particle emitter on its inside edge. portal_opens.mov

Well doom maps were generated using a technique called ray casting that simulated 3d space from a 2d floor plan so you could call it raycast3D, ID software also started referring to the engine as id-tech 1 so it could be called id-tech 1 style. Nice AK by the way.

The way the guy turns off the TV before he answers the door would indicate he's watching something he doesn't want others to see and whatever the delivery guy is dropping off is in a plain brown package. I'm thinking he's getting a bit of x-rated entertainment.

They can be used in all kinds of ways, if you were making a doom style 3d game you could render out the guns from behind and then position them in your game making software and animate them to bob along in 'front' of the character. For a side scroller you could paste the rendered gun into your characters hands or render out a quick rotation so it can spin in place as a pick up. Hell of a lot easier than drawing individual sprites.

Man that sucks, Paul was a great guy. I know words from a stranger don't mean a whole lot but I'm genuinely saddened and sorry for your (and the communities) Loss.

Tasty