martin

​You've probably all seen this before but here's an easy link. Animation:Master History I don't know what my role in A:M will be? Most of those 10 years I didn't even go to 3D animated movies. Maybe you know that Ed Catmull was on my PhD Dissertation Committee, and he was aware of the Avalanche betrayal at the time. I want to think he didn't participate but he never responded to any contact during or after that, so watching Pixar movies is too reminiscent. I'm okay with it now, only a tinge of regret remains, so I plan to watch all the Pixar movies I missed (not yet though). Truthfully, I'd like to make another movie in the future but that would have to materialize gracefully. BTW, Robert Taylor tried to contact me just before he died but I couldn't respond at the time. I feel bad about that. One of the reasons I came back now.

It's like Old Home Week, good to hear from you guys! Last month I was visiting Dylan Perry in Australia, the creator of the "Petey & Jaydee" animations. He also was away from A:M for a long time, but coincidently, he had just done a small project the month before I visited, and he plans on doing a bunch more for his "Super Happy Drifting" videos. Dylan had stayed with me several times in the past, twice for over a month, but I hadn't really heard from him for the decade, however, when we met up, it was just like old times.

An Open Letter to Animation:Master Users; It's been a long time since I've been around the Animation:Master forum, but I'm back. After recently Facebook-Friending a bunch of old-time users, Elm from SoulCage, asked where I'd been, and rather than write all this just to him, I thought I'd tell the entire Animation:Master userbase what transpired. I started Hash in my mid-20s while I was still at Hewlett Packard in the late 1980s. 3D was my passion: I spent weekends & every lunch working on the progenitor program, Animation:Apprentice, using a technology I'd developed called voxels. The big breakthrough of spline modeling came in my hotel room at SIGGRAPH in 1990, with the first rendered “Hash Patch,” and Animation:Journeyman was born. It was a roller-coaster ride after that: first with Playmation being used at Will Vinton's studios, then a purchase of the technology by Microsoft, and subsequently the development of Animation:Master as you know it today by myself and a handful of other guys who hitched onto my star. It was awesome & it was awful, ending after two decades in betrayal, disappointment & self-doubt. I always wanted to make movies, that's why I started writing software in the first place, and during my career at Hash Inc., I made 3 feature-length movies & several Shorts, so goal achieved, though it was a Pyrrhic victory because the financial failure of the movies meant I could not fool myself into thinking success was just around the corner. I lost my naive optimism, which is essential for anybody trying to do the impossible. I never wanted to write software as a profession but the people I hired did, and I lost sight of my goals. It was especially brutal that the people who prevented me from doing what I wanted then stole the opportunity I had created, including my reputation. In the beginning, people thought I was brilliant, but by the end I was the goat, made worse by the fact that I never made any money from two decades of 24/7 programming. Thank god, my wife, Gwynne, was supportive by working to pay the bills at home. She saw what was going on before I did, and suggested I get out, but I thought I owed it to my supposed friends/employees, and I still had the dream of making movies. Basically, what happened is our “professional” customers intentionally torpedoed us. Dale Carmen, of RealFX, literally told me that he was behind a giant online attack. Avalanche Studios, specifically Jeff Bunker, who we worked for as free programmers for years, were purchased by Disney then they secretly hired the programmers who had gotten all their credibility from my efforts. People who I had trusted for years stabbed me in the back, and cast doubt on my abilities. There was absolutely nothing left to work for. Having lost faith in myself, I separated from the situation, left programming forever, and tested my meddle & intelligence in other fields. Turns out, I'm still brilliant: one of only 20 people in the world with doctorates in science, medicine & law; traveled to 100+ countries on 7 continents; wrote books & magazine articles, produced podcasts, developed a philosophy, and showed that it was always me who was the special one, everybody else was a hanger-on. And you know what? I also gained wisdom enough to not care. So what if I lost back-in-the-day? It was still a good ride: achieved my big goal of making-movies, got recognized by newspapers & magazines; and did something noteworthy with my youth. So now, after a decade away & regained self-confidence, I can look at Hash & Animation:Master, and see how excellent they are. I want to get back acquainted with tradeshows, customer art, and the forum community. Thanks during the past 10 years of my absence go to the only programmer, Stefen Gross, who works tirelessly & without any sort of remuneration to keep the software up-to-date & fix bugs. And thank you to Jason Simonds for keeping day-to-day operations going all that time without any sort of pay except my gratitude. Thanks to my son, Heath, who still demonstrates at tradeshows. And, most importantly, a special THANK YOU to all of you who have supported Animation:Master through thick & thin. I'll just sit in the background for now. I'll never write another line of code, and I won't have anything to do with all the stuff that made me leave in the first place, like the constant request for features, complaints about bugs, questioning my motives & business acumen, disrespectfully asking me to work for free or give money, none of the truly odious things that made things such a drag in the past. My mantra will be “it's for fun.” I will talk animation on this forum, and if you want to talk politics, my other forum at MartinHash.com is open to you. In fact, I invite anyone who thinks they can hold their own in a debate, or just wants the entertainment of lurking. Sincerely, good to be back. I missed you. Martin Hash

Many (most?) digital cameras use an HD resolution of 1440 X 910. That's where we got the resolution we used for TWO, (1/4 that=720X405). All that Megapixel crap is color info, interlace, frame rate, etc. In fact, HD video cameras (and HD in general) can only change the color of a pixel every 4 pixels (that's why it's called "4:1:1").

Great. Get him talking with A:M Track. Use some A:M Hair on him. Art Contest entry? (If there's ever another Art Contest?)

Interesting modern feel (and looks good) but very weird: strange palette, odd mix of character & background, obscure intent. Was is subtle? Was it ironic? Was it an advertisement? Art? Who's the audience? p.s. I saw "Watchmen" this weekend & I wondered the same kinds of things - and I liked it too.

Knock yourself out... BUT no complaints about hanging! No complaints about how long it takes! No complaints about how big the files are! No complaints about crashing!

I'm just being over-the-top theatrical for entertainment's sake.

BTW, cool image, Josh.

DPI!!! My head's going to explode! (Please, never mention "DPI" and "resolution" in the same breath again or my heart will fail.) 720 X 405 will work fine (better than fine) if you're doing an animation. 1200 X 800 looks pretty good on a computer screen. 2000 X 1600 will look great in any magazine or 8X10 print, (we use it for posters!) p.s. Quick, Robert, jump in front and block me with your body when the next guy brings up megapixel render settings.

What! Are you rendering a billboard!? I read all kinds of BS in these forums about resolution. At one point I even wrote a long Tech Note about it to try and straighten out all the misinformation. In a previous life I wrote the mechanism software for the HP Deskjet printer, and one of the things I wrote the code for was resolution. And, of course, I wrote 99% of A:M's renderer... There are few people on this planet that know more about resolution than I do, and anything over 2000 is ridiculous. TWO is rendered at 720.

I can say from experience that Rodney is a better animator than most of the people in this forum... And if you exceed Rodney's expertise then Robert (robcat) has been known to help someone who's struggling and there's darn few animators better than him.

You know what Winston Churchhill said the 3 things the British Navy was known for? (You'll need to use Google cuz I ain't gonna say...)

My goodness - and I thought going to Africa was an eccentric way of getting skinny?!

Cool thought processes, and informative too!

I'll answer for all the lurkers with a resounding, "Yes!"

That I'd like to see!

I assume you're using A:M Track?

Oh, man - I'm hearing a story just looking at that expression.

Oh, yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about. Another tour de force, Ernest. When you're done with this series, you need to fly up so we can talk.

I'm there!

Martin would NEVER do anything like that...he has 'people' to do that. Head's up, Mike. James will be there at the end of the week (NY Comicon). Heath will be there Friday. You can run but you can't hide.

I heard there's a pill for that.

Mark, seriously - I had dental surgery and my top lip is swollen up bigtime. If you're going to be posting things like this that make me smile, you should at least warn a guy first! (Good to have you back, man.)

That's a great experiment, Paul! I'm thinking "story" as I watch it... (My measure of an animation's appeal.)