MMZ_TimeLord

That was cool! I'll grab that to examine the process. Could be used to 'move' speaker cones during music videos to coordinate them with bass channels, etc.

Shelton, I was thinking about a compressed air type of force blowing all the particles away later as an added animation 'bonus' but, nah. Not necessary. Robcat, Yeah, I suck at lighting, I'll be fighting with that over the weekend. Need to utilize some Occlusion maybe. Again, I'll mess with it this weekend. Cheers!

Okay, so I'm pretty happy with the new particle simulation. I will probably turn up the 'lifespan' to keep them all showing during the whole animation next. (Upwards of 16 to 20 seconds is all that is needed.) There are still a few 'stuck' particles, but they will probably be hidden better when the main sheet is turned to opaque white plastic. On to material texture application and maybe some HDRI set up. Enjoy! Hypower_0002.mp4

Another pass today. Getting MUCH closer to what I want. I'll probably add some material textures now and refine the lighting setup, maybe do an HDRI background for fun. Lastly, in Version 17 Beta 4, there were options in the Choreography to Bake both the particle emitters AND the Dynamic systems. I did both, but still ended up with the 'dancing particles' problem when using multiple nodes in NetRender. Is this a known issue? Not even sure where to look anymore... been far to long. Ended up rendering this on a single node over night. Took 11 hours 24 minutes to do. YIKES! Still some tweaking to do with the particle emitter shut down on the bits, but VERY close to what I'm after. Oh, and particle life is at THIRTY SECONDS! Enjoy! Hypower_0001.mp4

Gerry is right. I was VERY disappointed that "Monster House" did NOT employ motion blur. I suspect their deadline did not allow for the extra render time. *sigh* Gave me a headache to watch it, but it was an EXCELLENT story!

The problem with the particles being emitted in one-frame clumps has been fixed in current versions of A:M, I believe. Thanks for the heads up Robert. I'll be re-rendering tonight as there is more yet to do. I'll look for that on V17 Beta at home.

KJ'd Beast, I did actually animate three actions. Spin up from zero to 3500 RPM, running 3500 RPM and spin down to stop. The RPM was off of 3500 RPM a bit and synced to 1 second intervals which is why the bit appears stationary at full speed. I have corrected my three actions to a true 3500 RPM high speed. This makes the bit appear to spin slowly with a lot of blur. Here is the completed animation. It took over one hour on my old Pentium 4 laptop within A:M (V14.0c) as I don't have the subscription version on this machine. Hy_power_Test002.mp4 I have also changed the bitmap for the chips to be a crescent moon shape drawn on the 20x20 pixel square image. Lastly, I think I will take your advice for the stamped size and specifications for the bit on the shank. All of the surfaces are default at this point as I have not yet applied proper color or bitmaps for texture. That will come when I am happy with the animation. Steel type texture and surface properties will be applied to the bit and White opaque plastic surface properties will be applied to the material being drilled (Polypropylene). I am going with a white plastic instead of my first choice of clear Acrylic due to the nature of 'faking' the drilling of the material. It would show through a transparent or semi-transparent surface and break the effect. The profile for the bit I actually found online through Google images and used it for a rotoscope for building the outline. It started as a single spline circle with eight control points. I then shaped it and then used the Duplicator Wizard to extrude and twist the shaft flutes. The cutting edge was simply closing the top. Here is the part of the image I found through Google that I used, a closeup of the top and a view of the cross section for your viewing pleasure.

Gerry, No. This is strictly a sprite particle emitter with object collisions on and the initial velocity low enough to keep them from passing through the model. I'll have some more updates this afternoon.

Hey all, I've been tinkering with this model for a few days and got some good mechanical pieces done. I've hidden all the modeled machined areas and am in the process of animating the machining steps to make the real thing. So, just for fun, here is the first step. Drilling a 3/8" hole in the end of some acrylic. I have to make the material semi-transparent with some translucency to duplicate clear acrylic yet, but you get the idea. The yellow area at the tip of the bit is the particle emitter for the chips and is animating the emission rate. Also, the chips are just square sprites. This was rendered with six Netrender nodes on my design machine in a period of 7 minutes and 2 seconds. I have multi-pass at 16 (4x4) and motion blur on. I may increase my multi-pass, but I'm very happy with the results of the bit turning a very near 3500 RPM in the shot. Enjoy. Hypower0000.mp4

I agree... good demonstration of the effect and it's relation to real world vision.

Your best yet! Great work!!!

OMG! A practical use for A:M... STOP! You are going to unravel the fabric of space and time!!!! I've used A:M in the past for some design work and it's an excellent tool. My only bitch is the lack of solids modeling. i.e. - make a cube, subtract a cylinder and have a cube with a round hole in it., etc. Cheers!

Yeah, Congratulations on that review Jason!

DAAANNNGGG! That was some serious hail! Actually I would suggest draping the two sides FIRST, then down the middle and securing the center piece to the other two. This way any rain will go over the center tarp and then down the sides and not run underneath. As to the irregular geometry on the back of the house... just respline it to your needs. Seriously, probably would probably be better off cutting around the various protrusions and taping to them. Good luck!

Excellent work Charles! I especially like the model kit. VERY nice!

John, I would try that program on a "clean" vocal track. i.e. - Voice dialog only. This will get you better results. Lastly, if you need to extract voice from a song, you can use a bandpass filter to isolate the voice better and really drop out the music for the most part. THEN use your program on the resulting vocal track. I would love to play with the program you used. Is it open source? did you write it? If not, commercial product? Where can I get it? Cheers!

Yes, Yes... Happy Birthday!!! Hope you are having fun out there!

I found the images I used for free via Google image search. "Seamless Lightning Textures" I believe was my search criteria.

John, That looks VERY similar to what I did for my start up animation (Boot Animation) for Windows 7 and Android. Take a look... The center is two spheres one just inside the other and they both have the same seamless lightning texture on them. Boot Logo Test.mp4

I am unsure if I met Paul in person. If he was not at the first two Hash Bash gatherings, then no, I did not. "Of all the things I've lost I miss my mind the most..." I will say that Paul's work was helpful, insightful and inspiring to me. My family and I send you our virtual hugs. "Time and people pass, but fond memories can last forever when shared."

That's pretty nifty. Now, can you manipulate the mesh in more detail WITHOUT adding more to the rig? For general skeletal rigging this is a huge step though.

Mark, Just got mine yesterday. Watched it today and really liked it a lot. Can't wait to see what you come up with next! Cheers!

No extra charge. Just let me know if you have any questions about the model materials, etc.

If you would like, you are welcome to use this model of a disk brake and caliper for your car. Not sure if it's the right style or not. I know the rim is wrong, but the rotor is cross drilled and slotted and the caliper is a four piston type. The caliper DOES use a few Boolean Cutters to make the modeling easier on me. Also embedded in the model are the materials, including a rotor "glow" material for when the rotor gets hot during the race. Wheel_Assembly_V16.mdl Cheers!

Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy... BIRTHDAY! *HUGS* from Noelle and I Hope you had/have a great Birthday!