R Reynolds

Robert, How long did it take you to import the OBJ file. I've had four cores churning away for more than 30 minutes.

Even with no interior, neither could I Matt.

I started to play with texturing the exterior and as usual I got carried away and finished it. For reasons unknown the reflectivity of the glass material got jacked up from the usual 10% to 35%, so the multiple reflections of the surrounding grey environment got out of hand. I don't know why I didn't notice this until you pointed it out. 10% looks much better. Thanks Robert. The detailing holds up well in this shot but it highlights why I need to install an interior (like I need a reason) since all the decals show on the inside. I modified the Toronto Transit Commision logo so they wouldn't issue a DMCA take-down notice. This last one really hasn't much to do with A:M but I just want to show off my success with resurrecting a JPEG of an old folded billboard graphic (top) and turning into a believable side mounted ad. Too bad I couldn't find a better substitute font for that craftmanslike hand painted script. I went through a lot of free fonts and the best I could do was use one font for the uppercase and a different one for the lower. The lowercase still had to be massaged to make one letter flow into the next. And what exactly is the connection between motor oil and a fine looking couple sitting on a beach? (At least I assume he looks fine, it's hard to tell behind that giant can he's leaning on).

It seems appropriate that a new year brings a new model. This one is a PCC (President's Conference Committee) street car from the middle of the last century. The design was the final attempt by all stakeholders in the street car industry to sell a fast, quiet, state-of-the-art vehicle to cities with street cars and withstand the spread of diesel buses. And we all know how that turned out. Once it has an interior, its going to be painted in a scheme similar to the Toronto Transit Commission which had the largest PCC fleet in the world and kept running some "Red Rockets" into the 90's.

Two funny things about that angle; First, you're looking at all the buildings I have that are close to being presentable, so the composition is more driven by the desire to not see the "ends" of my back lot rather than my skill at composition. Secondly, I realize now that you can see the back of the Phillies sign with the decal showing through the single layer of patches. If this was a daylight shot you'd also notice that there is no support frame to hold those signs up. Time for more detailing. Meanwhile with Nancy's help I got the headlights of the taxi to shine on the diner. Now I'm putting the taxi in various locations to figure out the best looking intensity and dispersion angle Right now I'm gauging intensity by how washed out the interior is. I think this is the best so far.

Keeping randomly changing X,Y,Z rotations; it doesn't do it all the time which is what makes it so strange. I'm pretty sure it has something with the Euler angles max values of +/- 180. It only recalculates them if you input an angle that would require either of the other angles to exceed abs(180). It happens, now and then, regardless which of the three available "Euler Orders" options you choose for the lights bone. Please don't waste too much time on this, as I said, it's a minor annoyance.

I'm trying to simulate the diffuse light from the illuminated sign on the top of my Checker cab with an array of small kliegs. I've worked out a chart of all the aiming angles I need. As I import each light instance as an action object they come in with Rotate X, Y & Z = 0 then I type in my desired angles and the lights snap to those values. But if I change my mind and type in one new value, like Rotate Y, all three rotate values automatically reset to new values. They're obviously not random because the orientation of the light doesn't move so it's like there's a function running in the background that automatically re-calculates the datum for each axis. It's a minor annoyance but I'd be interested to know what's going on...is it related to that mysterious "Euler Order" property?

Thanks Nancy. It's not my preferred solution...I don't like the idea of having to finish a model in a choreography...but one has to work with the available tools.

I've added light sources to the headlights of a car so it can do some night driving. They work well on most of the scene but don't show up on a building that has a light list. Typically to fix this I'd drag the chor instance of the light into the building's light list. But since the light is a bone within the car it doesn't have a chor instance to drag. Anyone know of a work around? Thanks.

And here's the closest thing I have to the composition of the original painting (shown on the right). Clearly I've made way too many compromises to claim I've made a convincing copy. The lady in red is elsewhere for reasons previously discussed. The facade across the street is wrong and too far away. But I want to use Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning" facade and I want the street wide enough to accommodate rails for a locomotive or street car (my next modelling project). The street light has to be in the shot to both support the street car's high voltage feed wire and to cast enough light across the street. And don't ask me to explain how I can be fairly close on the perspective of objects within the diner and then have the angle of the background street be so "off". At any rate, if I do say so myself, I think my lighting has better "middle of the night" atmosphere. Let's just call it an homage to the original.

Thanks for the encouraging words, everyone. It's funny, as soon as I see this technique, my first impression is "Look! I'm in a Ken Burns documentary". Thanks Steve. If you like full daylight, how about the middle of the night? I'm going back and forth on how much light the street lights should cast. Currently I'm leaning towards maybe too dark but I like the look of isolated pools of light on the road.

My back lot is taking shape. Here's the diner on the intersection with the Hopper Building across the street..

Why is it important to you for A:M to interact with other 3D products? You like its rigging, animation and data management. This makes me guess you are less impressed with A:M's modelling and rendering. Why don't these features meet your expectations?

Good stuff, Matt. How much help do you get from the crew that shoots the live action? I know shops like ILM and WETA have enough clout to get footage with a reference sphere to match their lighting. Or do the video files just show up on your server with a rough storyboard and an arrow "insert Tireman here".

Thanks, Jason.

Now that I've come up with an excuse for the lady in red to be absent while leaving some tell tale items behind, I think I can move on to detailing the surrounding street.

The lady in red is also going to leave behind her smouldering cigarette, so the diner needs ash trays.

Thanks, Gerald.

New animation; same start and end framing as previous but better resolution (640 x 360), a more natural camera move and a backing sound track. It's not long enough (I had to butcher the original music to make it come even close to fit 390 frames) but it's good enough to make me want to keep trying. Phillies_shot_B.mp4

Clearly this user needs to justify, in his own mind, the multi-kilobucks he's paid to C4D, Maya and who knows what else. But to give the devil his due, I agree with the following: I know I cherry picked these quotes just like a movie studio does to warp a bad review but he's correct that you're either all in with A:M or not at all. I believe that was Martin's concept from Day 1. But this user seems to begin with the premise that you can't do "real" 3D animation without a team of both animators and 3D modeling / texturing / rigging / animating / rendering programs, therefore a program that isn't compatible with the rest of the team is useless. "One animator at his kitchen table" rejects that premise. And considering this user's out of pocket costs over more than 10 years, I'm surprised at his restraint when he calls the price merely "sensible"...stupefying would have come to my mind.

Although the lady in red has stepped out temporarily, she's left behind her red leather clutch under the watchful eye of charcoal suit guy. This material test render has a checkered box to give something to reflect in the clutch's black phenolic frame so I can fine tune its surface texture.

I'm coming around to the idea that if you're not sitting at your computer modeling, the least you can do is have it cranking out frames. While you're at your day job, it's nice to know that you're still making progress on your hobby. The link is at the bottom of this post, just below my name. On Feb. 8, at Hash Support's request, I uploaded backups of all the tutorial files to Hash's FTP site. All those files have links to the old Hash directories. He said he could "fix the links" once they were sent.

I've never been happy with the recorded sound of my own voice, too nasally with no resonance...but I'll take it any day over sounding like Dick "I am not a crook" Nixon.

Glad you enjoyed it Matt. You started this with your suggestion, now I'm hooked on tweaking camera moves...will have a refined shot sometime next week. It disappeared last month for reasons unknown. At that time I let Hash Support know about both the missing thread and the fact that the links to my tutorials are broken but Support (I assume Jason) hasn't got around to them yet. No big deal, the fact that nobody has complained to me about the broken links since the server change-over means demand is low.

I can't wait to find out why you did the copy-flip-attach before getting the correct shape. Oh the suspense!