TheToadStool

I just wanted to put some of these ideas out there to perhaps invite criticism or support for certain techniques. One of the things is that being a lone animator with big dreams can be difficult. There's so much to learn and then there's all the trial and error in addition. The one rig I'm working on seems to snap at the elbows a bit an I'm really trying to deconstruct the process and am discovering the nuance of control and cosmetic bones. It's interesting to see how many ways there are to go about a particular problem. I'm also in awe about how "animated" some of the work I've seen on this forum have been, involving a study of human feeling and movement and being exaggerated for cartoony effect. This is not a strength of mine and so I'm hoping to deconstruct the process tweaking motion capture. (Kind of like Data on Star Trek trying to figure out Humans.) For this project I have relied heavily on the tutorials of Barry Zundel which I can't recommend enough: http://barryzundel.blogspot.com/p/animationmaster-2005-tutorials.html I am very interested to know what people think about that method of rigging and what alternative ideas there out there. I'll let you all know when the film is finished. We'll likely have VR by then and animation will be obsolete but who cares ! Adam

Having to wait sometimes up to a month to get a license is one of the things I seriously dread

I wanted to compile my many experiments with Animation Master recently as it pertains to a particular short I am working on. This project is inspired by Twin Peaks, the Twilight Zone, and Phantasm possibly. I am trying to see what I can get away with regarding our favorite software- Animation Master. Recently, I've been trying to rig complicated .obj models and have been utilizing smartskinning and rigging. Some of these shorts are old and I didn't understand hair and the like. Also, there's a bit of motion Capture using Brekel Pro Face 2. Anyhow, thanks for letting me post. More updates later! Adam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcQhap93-tM

ahh yes, thank you Robert ! Putting the hair % to 2% made a huge difference. This is very good advice. I made a new material and neglected to address that setting and I appreciate you serving as a second set of eyes. "This strategy also lets you temporarily set any parts you don't need to observe to invisible or bounding box mode." I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Can you give an example? thanks! Adam

Hey, I'm guessing this topic has been discussed before and I've seen reference to it, but I am interested to know about the application of RAM with Animation Master. I have 32G of ram for my Mac and I feel that I should have some powerful efficiency with using dense meshes and more complicated hair set-ups but I feel that I am not getting what I need still. I am desperate to know how efficient I can get my set-up to be. I also run A:M on PC with solid state hard drive and 24G ram. I want to make some pretty complicated scenes that require a lot of processing. Is this possible with A:M? Can it utilize the RAM and processing to make the magic happen? Adam

Well I have to admit that my reaction to Am Track 2 was emotional. I had spent a few days trying to get it right and came up empty-handed. I think that there is something there with it, though because we did get to observe it tracking well one time so I know it can be done. It crashes a lot but I think there's something good there in the code like the smoothing seems good and the rig export. There's a different thread going on here about face capture that I was/am involved in regarding Brekel. I have found the success that I was looking for with Brekel. It exports an odd bvh that has the potential to drive pre-made poses in A:M. This does what AM Track does but is way more fun and you can also record the audio and video simultaneously which is good for syncing and reference later. A:M Track does not record audio or video which will make syncing pure guess work later. That Nevronmotion thing did indeed look very awesome, though.

sorry, I just answered my own question. You have to manually 'add image' (normal file) to the already imported diffuse file and then all the creases appear !!! What I don't get is the gloss thing. Is there a decal type that handles gloss? okokokok I added the gloss file as a 'Specular size' image. That's probably a duh. Anyway, the Animation Master import is starting to look more like the original Fuse design now with a few manual adds of files that weren't imported. Experiment successful. Now let's see how rigging one of these things goes !

Hey Matt, your model above seems to have a greater detail in the skirt folds. Is that a level of detail that can be imported into A:M? I imported a model from Fuse and some of the shininess doesn't seem to translate, nor some of the texture. My Mac makes me have to manually locate all the diffuse and opacity, and Specular files upon import, but there are also Normal and Gloss files that are generated from Fuse. Do you have any idea whether these are ignored upon import? Adam

I was thinking that there'd be a quick response to my post above reminding me how not optimal for animation these .obj files can be, thus making the format a mixed blessing. I have a question, though. What happens if you attempt to optimize the model by removing particular splines for the purpose of simplifying heavy movement areas like around the lips, etc. Is it possible to maybe isolate a spline around the mouth, delete it, and then re-decal the new, abridged surface with a simple decal switcheroo? Adam

Hey Matt, thank you so much for mentioning this product, Adobe Fuse. I just imported this .obj. My last model took me like 3 months to build, this one took 1/2 hour ! -adam

congratulations to you all ! How exciting! Very exciting that you got some results form A:M Track 2. I think all the winning entries are great ! Adam

hey that's cool. Interesting characters ! -Adam

Hey, you guys are great. Thanks, it'll get worked out

I just wish it were more straight forward

Hi I just wanted to say that I just recently purchased a new license and a new set of render nodes and the experience has been a bad one. I feel like Hash customer service is ignoring my issues. I purchased render nodes and the .lic file did not take and customer service has just stopped responding to my emails. I purchased additional nodes in 2014 and the same thing happened, only customer service fashioned together a new .lic file that did indeed work. I just got a new computer with 8 virtual cores so I thought it might be fun to up my nodes. I am starting to get really upset with this insane process of getting a new license. I have not found it to be straight forward (plug and play?). Also, the folks at Hash have completely stopped communicating with me about my .lic issue so I feel abandoned a bit by a company that I militantly support. I seriously want to know why it takes 3 weeks to get a proper license installed? I mean, ya'll appear at expos and comic cons etc., you obviously want business. Why put energy into that and then ignore simple requests from people once they buy the license? I really want to recommend this product to others but right now I'm kind of depressed about my life choices. Adam

that is very cool !

I do appreciate your warnings about the process of rigging a face capture. It got me to thinking. First of all, I wish to apologize profusely to Luuk and eveyone whom may have come in contact with my negative rantings about this. I have been trying to make a short film that is heavy with dialogue and I realized that by doing face capture, I could get a smoother product and could perhaps get done a lot quicker. So, I tried A:M track 2 which I want to say, is exactly what we NEED as users of Animation Master. This program should be developed and made great. Simple as that. First of all, if you can manage to get a proper capture, which I HAVE managed to do on one occasion, the rest of the process is PERFECT for animators using Animation Master. A:M Track 2 allows you to export a standard rig for whatever face template you choose as a .mdl file which you can use for the character model you are creating (in this case I chose Standard 2, a more complex rig). Additionally, you can export your capture as an .act which you drag right on your rig! The rigging for this process is basically self-explanatory and that part is a bit of trial-and-error to get the rig to behave the way you want it. Even greater news with this program is that it smooths out the capture and it does error correction. When I do manual animation, by using Preston mouth poses, I get a bit over descriptive with the lip syncing. I want it to look realistic, somehow. I know some people don't really care to make realism or naturalism, I guess, and are content with a more basic interpretation like what can be achieved by merely using the dope sheet process with perhaps a little tweaking. Anyhow, I believe that A:M Track could be a really powerful tool and it could be marketed directly at exactly the people that are on this forum. You need like a web cam and some lights, some of those green pom-poms, and theater glue. Oh, and a white sheet. Not a big investment. Another thing is that this program is an Animation Master specific rendition of Zign Track which allows a probably better track experience with multiple camera potential, etc. A:M Track 2 only allows for one camera (which is great because I only have one!) This version does those specific exports which couldn't be better for the likes of us. I just wanted to get a straight ahead face capture and allow other processes to dictate the movement of the neck and body, so this would be perfect for that. I want this to work so badly and I think it should be developed and made better. Animation Master would be a more attractive product with a handy face capture plug-in. Seriously !!!! This is the basis of my ranting and I just wanted to take a second to talk about how great this could indeed be. My purpose is to invite actors over to my studio and engage them in this process and sell them on how expressive and creative this process is. As it is right now, I find this program to be way to temperamental. I wouldn't want anyone to experience this because it was crazy-makin' to try to get it to work consistently. I wish I had learned enough about coding to tackle these issues myself. Adam

Sorry, I'm a skipping record about this (not a broken one), but I am on a mad search for face capture that will work with Animation Master. Animation Master works well for me over here (even on MAC) and so I can afford to sit and think about luxurious ideas such as body and face capture. I have said that I think one of A:M's great things is its ability to use .bvh files. When I discovered this it was a renaissance ! Anyhow, I cannot find a reliable face capture program that can somehow translate to A:M. I have busted my butt to try to get the A:M track 2 to work and although the tracking seems to be there somewhere, the program is too temperamental to be of use to anyone. This is my opinion and I am perpetually a noob, so I challenge anyone out there to tell me that you have actually used this program with some success. My recommendation is that Hash remove this product from the website. It could be great but it's just not there and should not be sold. It weakens the A:M brand to have it on the site, as I believe 3D painter does as well. Again, my opinion. I get that these products are sold to be affordable options for A:M users who are a pretty inventive group but I would rather pay more for something that might even KIND OF work. Actually, I like when an application not only works but is GREAT. As I have said before, I am having a great time making .bvh files with ipisoft which is a great program. A:M is a great program. This is my proper job trying to learn the language of this program so that I can create weird art with it. I am not a tech person who likes to create impossible problems for myself out of boredom. The point of this post is that I am asking the community if anyone has a recommendation how to do face capture and apply it to A:M. I have seen dozens of apps for this that are all over the map, for video game design or big brother surveillance, or whatever. Faceshift looks great but I think Apple took it off the market. Anyone have experience with this? Adam

Thinking back on it, I think the jpegs were messing with my netrender. I stopped using .jpg for A:M some time back. I remember reading somewhere that A:M prefers .tga. I didn't want to just spew bile about .jpgs not working with the program so I've been thinking about what it was that made me abandon using the jpegs. It very well may have been a 'gremlin' that I discovered while trying to render projects through Netrender. Netrender would crash on a project but the same project would render fine in A:M. I think I just troubleshot it until I realized that changing those .jpg decals out did the trick. Adam

yes, Jpegs are horribly flawed for some reason. Don't use them at all, they cause 'gremlins'.

You are correct, I had neglected to upgrade. I am now at 18.0p SSE3. I hope this is the new one. Thanks! Adam

One of my theories (and this is extremely non-technical) has to do with constant saving of a project, as I earlier mentioned. It's as if there's a cache or something that gets really full and is emptied upon saving? My problem seems to be that the moving of bones in the PWS causes too many items to become updated indicated by a '*'. The astrix indicat that these items are unsaved. I'm guessing the computer has a cache for unsaved data that is emptied upon saving? It is this bogged down cache that SEEMS to overwhelm my system and crash it when bones and bone groups are moved around. This is how it feels to me. I mentioned mac earlier because A:M seems to be slightly at odds with Mac files and graphics. It has gotten to the point that I just bought a new PC and will be getting a new license for PC. My friend whom uses A:M on PC enjoys so many advantages that I don't. He can see his emitters moving in a simplified mode, his rotoscopes work and are consistent. His layers are visible in a choreography as he moves around a POV. This information is extremely helpful when animating. I just assume the bones crashing issue has to do with a dischord that exists between A:M and Mac but if y'all are experiencing it too then it's a problem. Also, I noticed that when building a model from scratch, A:M keeps creating these 'rotoscope' files that are essentially non-files. THe actual rotoscope files still exist but these empty ones keep getting automatically created for some unknown reason. Anyhow, by the time I get to creating hands or the face, the system will barely move. Somehow the creating of CPs and their manipulation seems again to create a cache of some sort that becomes full. What I do consistently with each model is copy the entire geometry into a new model at some point mid-geometry creation. This seems to reset it. Sorry to rant as again I am highly caffeinated and have the whole day off to work on this stuff. It is possible that this may be of help.

I have this problem a lot and I use Mac. I assumed it's a mac thing as a few issues are definitely mac things. That part of the rigging process necessitates a near-constant use of command-s.

it worked !!!! I wonder what it is that I did to get it to hold like that . Is there a hot key that is easy to hit in the frenzy of animating that could cause such a thing? Thanks for saving me tons of work trying to figure this out and/or just working poorly around it ! -Adam

Matt, your wisdom is invaluable! I've been messing with that hair all week and am planning on redoing the hair entirely now that I possess more experience, etc. I used the SPLITPATCH plug-in which is very helpful but also sometimes makes the model unworkable and has to be replaced with the mesh of an earlier model. This is a very wonderful plug-in but I'm guessing it can cause problems in the geometry, perhaps if the patches become too small. Not sure, exactly. My model has a very dense invisible face Dam which the hair still penetrates, etc. I split the dam mesh thinking that the more dense it is, the more resistant it might be to penetrating hair. Not necessarily the case. I am very excited to start model #2 for this project so I can utilize some of the other techniques you describe involving more controllable hair. Hair is a powerful tool and I hope to master it. We shall see ! -Adam