MikeV

Anyone around here from the Albany, NY region? Catskills, etc?

Hello Everyone, Well, I've been back in A:M World for about a week or so now, and I may have already given something of an introduction in another thread/post. However, since this is the appropriate place to do it, I'll do so here. My name is Mike. I'm a 38-year old... well, soon to be 39 as of my typing this, but I'll say 38 for the sake of accuracy. I'm not in a hurry to get older or anything. This is my second or third time around the block with Animation: Master, as I first was introduced to it through a co-worker back in the early 2000's. I really liked what A:M could do and enjoyed working with it. For some reason, though, at the time my mind was elsewhere. I was looking into a career in Computer Animation (attended the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale for a time) and, while I appreciated what A:M could do, I was stuck in that "it's fine as a hobbyist, but I need to learn "real 3D animation programs", like MAX or Maya", etc. I was stuck in that mindset that "to be a real animator, you have to learn the programs that cost $1000s of dollars per license". I was concerned of what my peers might think if I was using some inexpensive piece of software and not the more "professional" options. I'm not proud of it, but that was the case. I was ignorant and very narrow-minded back then in that regard. I wish I wasn't, but... well... hindsight, 20/20, and all that. These days, my outlook has changed. I'm a lot more focused on what I want to do now. I thought for a long time it was to be a game designer. Thanks to some recent "revelations" I've had, I realize that what I've really wanted to do is tell a good story. I've realized that games, as much as I love playing them, was not the way I should be be going about it. Computer animation was. Coming to that realization, my natural next thought was "well, how am I going to do this? What software will I use?". My choice, of course, was to pick up A:M again. I'm proud to say that time (and wisdom, perhaps) has changed my outlook on this subject greatly. I no longer care about "using the industry standard" software, or others' "expert opinion" on what I should be using, or why. I no longer care what others might say about my learning and using A:M. If someone asks if I'm using A:M, I'll say "hell yeah I am". I've already recommended it to a couple people I know who are both great artists and are interested in animation. They're not sure they want to "take that leap" yet, but they're definitely impressed by what they've seen. They're following what I'm doing and learning with interest. Don't worry, I'll keep working on 'em :-p. I'm also glad I came back to A:M because so far, those of you I've "met" and interacted with here on the forums have been awesome. If time and familiarity has sorta worn away the novelty of it for you "long-timers", let someone who's recently come back as an "outsider" tell ya... This is one uniquely awesome community you have here. I'm not saying that to blow smoke or earn brownie points - that's not my style. I say it because, for me, it's true. Hopefully I can contribute, encourage, inspire and help others down the road as much as many of you have already done for me in my short time back. As someone who enjoys and appreciates being among cool people, I gotta say it's been great. So... other than that... If anyone would like to say howdy on the "community" screen, my login is Wolfsong73. On Facebook, you can find me as MikeTVogel - if you see an avatar of the Aflac Duck... that's me. I don't have that insurance, but that duck is awesome. Sorry this was long (believe me, it could have been *much* longer; brevity is something I have to work at :-p), but thanks for reading!

Now that was really cool!

Can Inkscape export an ai? Thought it was just svg. I looked into it a bit, and my initial findings aren't that promising. Every case I've seen of people asking about exporting AI format results in people telling them to use SVG instead. I did see that you can get older versions of AI on EBay for pretty cheap - as low as $10 or $20 bucks. Thing is, they're all on auction mode with no "buy now"s available. The other thing is, I hate eBay.

Good news and bad news on that.... Good news: the movies are done. Bad news (for you): the movies are done. There was brief talk of a third one, but we all need to catch our breathe. You CAN do something for "Rear Window". Take a look at our previous BUS STOP project and you'll see some people did very brief segments which still worked great. Ahh yeah, I did see those other projects as well. Are community projects fired up fairly regularly? I can always contribute to one of those when I feel my skills are up to it.

Hmmm, bummer. To my knowledge there is no plugin that will export directly to version 8. Maybe I can find a copy of Illustrator 8, or later, cheap somewhere.

you mean recreate them in A:M, They are already made in Blender, right. Those look like eminently doable object for A:M, with smoother curves too. Lathing can make the legs of the Small Stand. The decorative panels with lots of empty space in the Medium stand can probably be easily done with the AI wizard which will import an Adobe Illustrator outline file. Yeah, those shots were taken in, or rendered from the models I made in Blender, and my intention is to recreate them, probably improve on them, in A:M. I'd forgotten about the ability to import from Illustrator. Does it specifically have to be .ai format? I have Inkscape, which is an open source version of Illustrator (actually it's kind of an Illustrator/Photoshop hybrid; neat program). 'cause if I can create the shapes in there and then still have them usable in A:M, that'd be great. Incidentally, about the curly decorative bits.. those are part of what was pushing the poly count higher than it needed to be. You'd be surprised how many extra faces those little suckers add to the model. What I was going to do, before I stopped working on it, was to create an alpha mapped texture of more ornate, bronzed looking shape, and of varying thickness, etc. Then I'd have a normal map, a spec map and such to give them a 3D look. The end result would be much cheaper in terms of poly count, and would probably look better, with the use of pixel shaders giving everything more depth. Alas, they won't be used for that. However, I'm sure that once I've remade them, I can find a use for them in something. I was reading some of the threads for the Oz movies being worked on by y'all, and I think it would be fantastic to be able to contribute to that. It's very inspirational and a real charge to see so many people collaborating to something like that. So, hey, maybe if I can make some good props, etc that would be something. I have a ways to go before I feel I'd be ready for that, though. In the meantime, I'll just keep going through the TAoAM exercises and finding other ways to learn and challenge myself.

While working on the prototype for a game project I was starting up, I created some models of various props and such. I was working in Blender, and so they're all polygonal models. But that's fine. I've decided I'm going to recreate a couple in-particular in Blender. It's a good "1-to-1" comparison and, I think, will help me with learning how to handle splines better, etc. They're a small and medium sized market stand which were going to be used for a market place area of the starting town in my prototype. The medium stand isn't finished as of this screenshot, and actually needed some optimization to be really game ready (3661 faces for just a single, static object is a bit steep, especially when fewer would do just as well). The smaller stand isn't as complex, but could still be optimized a bit, and the texture-mapping was placeholder, to test my UV unwrapping job. Each of those, I bet, will be much lighter weight as Hash Patches. So, I think it'll be a fun project to undertake, to sorta augment the exercises in TAoAM. Having first-hand knowledge of what the end result is supposed to be will be helpful, too. I still have the Blender models here somewhere, too, so I can open those up for a direct reference if need be. So here's pics of each... Small Stand Medium Stand Thought I'd share that, see if y'all had any thoughts, feedback, etc.

There's also the story of Kevin Smith and how he made Clerks using a bunch of Credit Cards he'd applied for and gotten "as a goof".

I believe Keekat uses a trick to have non-spherical eyes that can still rotate the pupil in different directions. Basically, it's modeled and rigged as a sphere but then the eyeball and bone are scaled in one axis to flatten the whole structure. The pose that does that can only be active in a Chor or Action. Ahh, interesting. Can't say that fully makes sense to me right now. But I'm sure once I'm more familiar with Choreography and Action, it will. Will be a cool "a ha!" moment when it clicks. If you have the Extras DVD and are curious, there's a tutorial on how those types of eyes are done in there; Extras DVD > Tutorials > Bootcamp > Eye Tut.html If you don't have a copy, its well worth getting one as its a veritable goldmine of info and will repay the time spent in exploring its hidden ways and secrets. I do have that DVD, actually. I've been meaning to copy it all to my HD so I can load stuff up, and because you need the A:M disc in the drive when using it, so I couldn't have both in at the same time. Thanks for the tip! I'm a long ways off from being ready for that kinda stuff, but it's good to have a reference when I'm ready to tackle it.

I believe Keekat uses a trick to have non-spherical eyes that can still rotate the pupil in different directions. Basically, it's modeled and rigged as a sphere but then the eyeball and bone are scaled in one axis to flatten the whole structure. The pose that does that can only be active in a Chor or Action. Ahh, interesting. Can't say that fully makes sense to me right now. But I'm sure once I'm more familiar with Choreography and Action, it will. Will be a cool "a ha!" moment when it clicks.

Just a quick question... I'm opening up the different models that come with A:M to sorta get a feel for how they're put together, and to marvel at how you can accomplish so much with so little using patches versus polys or even SubD surfaces. I am wondering, though, why is it that with some of the models (Kee Kat, the Rabbit and I think one other I was looking at), the eyes are sorta "sunken in" inside the characters' heads? I notice that when you bring them into Choreography, that's not the case. Only in the model view. Can someone explain why this is? Is there a specific reason for it?

Man, if I had more experience and skill with A:M and could actually contribute something meaningfully to it, I'd love to join up with ya on that. I know the feeling you have... about "not getting any younger" - I'm going on 40 myself, which isn't "old", but it's "getting up there". It's weird to even hear/see myself say it lol. I still feel like I'm 20. I keep thinking, though, "I don't want to get 20 years down the road and kick myself for not trying". It's easier to give someone else advice when it's not your own livelihood being put on the line, but man.. if it's where your heart is and you feel it's something you need to do, I'd say go for it. Kickstarter is the perfect place to go for that, I think. Best of luck to you, however you choose to pursue it!

I dunno, I personally buy the "10 for a buck" deals and then use the noodles as "single serving" portions, dressing them up with other stuff. Sometimes I sautee frozen vegetables in with the noodles (and a chopped onion if I have 'em around), and cook it in a balsamic reduction (sounds fancy, but it's not), sometimes with my version of lo-mein sauce, sometimes with herbs and butter and so forth. Sometimes, I will use the seasoning packet, crack an egg into it and add some soy sauce to make a sort of ad hoc chicken egg drop soup. You can do so much with the stuff treating it like an ingredient, rather than a meal unto itself. Not that there's nothing wrong with just having it with the seasoning packet (though it's not the greatest for your salt intake o.o).

Cool! Got it. I had to copy a few DLL files from my V12 install over to the V13 folder, but it's working now. Thanks!

Hmm.. I just did the same thing and you're right. No wonky patches. I didn't get any warning messages, though. It just pasted it into the window.

Yeah, same thing happens to me. It's fine for the rest of that session, and then it's back to wonkville when I reload. As for how I made the handle, I basically drew out the first spline, a closed spline, and then extruded, rotated, translated and scaled it all 'til I got it to that shape. As for the 5 point patches. Those have always given me trouble for some reason. I select the points and it seems almost like a coin-toss whether the 5-Point Patch button will activate or not. Something with them hasn't fully clicked with me yet, apparently. Incidentally, I'm in A:M atm and am logged into the community. If it's easier to ask me in real-time about anything, could always do that.

Also, wanted to add this.. I'm loving this community so far. I was a bit concerned coming back to A:M since, as I may have mentioned before, I haven't seen much "presence" of A:M out on the web, etc. I've been pleasantly surprised. Y'all are quite responsive and seem to be eager to help out and give feedback. After trying to be part of the "communities" for other applications and such, feeling fortunate if I got so much as an "I don't know" two weeks after asking something, this is quite a positive and refreshing experience so far. So, thanks!

You can post images, animations directly to this forum. No need to go to photobucket type places. The forum allows jpg, png types for stills, and .mov's for animations. Prj's, mdl's and zip's are also allowed. I'm also noticing that you are using vers 2006 (Sasquatch) - which version is that 10.5? 11.1?. Since we're almost on vers 17 now, there is no chance of any bugs being fixed for that old a version. If someone has your version installed (not me), then might be able to tell you what you are doing that causes the anomaly in that version if you upload the prj or mdl. Oh hey, great tip! Thanks. Will definitely be helpful in the future. It is the disc with the White Sasquatch on it. On the cd artwork, the date is 2006. The Program's title bar says it's Animation Master 2005, but the "About" info says it's version 12.0w... Though I did download an update from the site, so that's probably not the version that came on the disc. Also, here's the file with the wonky cup handle... CoffeeMug.prj

So if I just loaded that it would do the same thing? Can you post that model? I'll try it. Possibly, though I suppose the version of A:M used and some other factors might come into play. I won't be home for a few more hours yet (hooray for errands straight after work), but I'll upload it when I am.

Hey thanks! I'll definitely check those out. I guarantee they won't be too basic for me lol. It's always good to re-visit the "basics" from time to time anyway. Edit: Just wanted to note quick that I did check those out and they're actually quite brilliant! It wouldn't occur to me to have tutorials in a comic book-like layout, but it works! I think having a "frozen" visual reference to show what you're doing at each step really helps convey the idea. There's actually a few things in there that I didn't know about before, but I do now. So thanks!

Well it's not something I was particularly concerned about as it's a one-off thing and not something I've ever experienced before.. But if you think it might be something of concern, then that's cool.. Here's a quick side-by-side I did... Mind you, the "before" is immediately after the program loading with that project loaded. All I do is press Ctrl-Z and it fixes itself. http://tinyurl.com/7h3tr3b And for the heck of it.. here's the rendering I did last night and couldn't upload... and still couldn't to photobucket, 'cause it still says they have maintenance going on. So... using imageshack instead... Anyway! http://tinyurl.com/6uj79ec I still need to make the black areas black, which are just over the rim of the cup and inside of it. I'll do that later.

Thanks for that... I actually did get the cup to look okay. There's no creases or anything in it, it's just not quite as nice a transition as I'd like from the handle to the cup. I imagine that's something that will improve with time, repetition and experience. I'm actually going to do another cup tonight just to double check myself and make sure I've "got it". Then I'll finish that plane and then move on to Mr. Giraffe. The distortion I mentioned in my last post wasn't an issue with the patches or the splines being "off". The splines themselves were fine. You could see them still flowing the way they're supposed to. The way the patches in one little spot inside the handle just looked really weird. Like someone took a piece of paper and crumpled it up, or like what will happen to polygons when your video card drivers are corrupt. They get all jumbled. As soon as I use "undo", without even changing anything, everything pops back into place and it's fine. Almost like it just has to update the view or something. It's just something random happening when I first open that particular file.

Yeah, I'm gonna finish the plane, then move on to the giraffe again. Here's something weird, though When I re-opened the file with the coffee cup I did, the handle was all corrupted. The patches on the inside of the handle were all twisted and distorted. I deleted that spline and re-created it, and it was fine. Opened the file again, and it's all corrupted again. Weird. First time that's ever happened to me in all my times using the program. Edit: Okay. Nevermind. Apparently it was just a rendering glitch. I moved one of the handles a little bit and then used "undo" and it looks fine now. How bizarre.

For modeling, Flower Power and I'm working through the airplane one now. For animation, the CanCan one, and that really quick one with Kai Kat. I'm putting more emphasis on modeling for now. I also have "Animation Master 2002: A Complete Guide", which has tutorials in it. I'm going through the ones that should be applicable to all versions, like he basic splinemanship ones. I've also read through Jeff Cantin's page. I also worked through the TAoAM book when I last used the program, though of course it's been a while. Some of it is still familiar though. I remember the giraffe one giving me a bit of a headache at some point. We'll see how I do this time around.