Tore

Some years back, I had fun participating in the 10 Second Club’s contests (well, even was webmaster there for a period). I never won anything, but much better: learned a lot. Today I stumbled upon the small vids on Youtube, some of which were made in Animation Master. Certainly not masterpieces, but fun to watch again. Here are the A:M ones:

Thanks, Rodney! Didn't even know that A:M had this functionality!

Ha ha! Geil, Sebastian!! Great punch in that one! Maybe something for Monsanto and Nestle to consider for their next GMO campaign? And very smooth graphics, I must say! How do you achieve that great semi-cartoonish look? Is that all in post, or do you set it up in A:M as well?

Great interpretation of the story, Rodney! Absolutely agree. Many of - well, all off - Kafka's short stories where in fact sketches and not intended for publishing. Kafka called them "notes" or commentaries, and often didn't even give them a title. It was Kafka's friend Max Brod that after Kafkas early death (and against his expressed wishes), gave the stories titles and published them.

Thanks for all the nice words! Rodney, I’m sure Kafka would have been quite excited about the possibilities in 3D animation, had he known about it! And would have been an avid Animation Master user ;-) Thanks for the DOF advice, Sebastian. I might rerender to get better quality when I get the time – either using your method, or by increasing the number of render passes. We’ll see… Yes, Simon, “Amerika” is one of Kafkas novels, and has recently been re-published in US as part of his complete works. With some great cover art btw.! Nancy, you just wait til my next Kafka-short… I promise you THAT’ll be obtuse :-) Oh, and did you notice that I have taken up your advice from "Trapez" and dropped the subtitles and got a professional narrator... and I am in fact right now in the process of giving Trapez the same treatment.

FINISHED! Just uploaded the completed animation to Vimeo :-) Feel free to take a peek at: https://vimeo.com/77304887

Simon, I don't know if you're aware of the "Springboard" software. I have used it for a couple of years now, and I find it very usefull for all kind of preproduction and timing. It is a kind of animatic/storyboarding/scripting tool with precise timing. Its possible to make freehand drawings as well as inputting sound, pictures and text, and then playing back the storyboard in real time. It is very reasonably priced. Maybe it could be massaged to be used as an exposure sheet of sorts... You can find it here: http://6sys.com/springboard

Not exactly an exposure sheet, but nonetheless a usefull tool: http://animationtiming.blogspot.dk/

Surely there is something odd going on with the splines in the old model. So i made a new one from scratch, checked all splines and individually decaled each face. The result was the same: Jumps and jitters!! I then subdivided the old model as per Nancys advice, and this seems to solve the issue, and works just as good as using the bitmap plus solution. So now I have two workarounds, but still: is this a bug that should be reported, or just "one of those things"...?

Playing a bit around with the scene file, I was surprised to find that the jittering consisted even when removing the decals all together. Apparently this has nothing at all to do with texturing, but is some problem with the splines in combination with certain camera angles/movements. Anybody experienced similar problems? Propably should report this as a bug?

Excellent!! That did the job! Have just re-rendered the sequence, and the texture stays on rock steady! Thanks a lot, Ken :-)

Here is a simplified version of the scene. Thanks for trying to solve this :-)

Hmmm...no double patches (tried to rebuild the model from scratch). And nothing wrong with the normals. The jitter appears on other models too, under certain circumstances. As far as I can see it has something to do with tiling the texture/decal, but I cannot find any consistency in when it happens. :-( Thanks for the replies though :-)

Heeeeeelp!!! What's happening here? The (tiled) decals on the building in the background of this shot jumps and jitters when rendered!! Anybody experienced anything similar, and maybe even have a remedy?

Slight alterations on the watchman character.

Excellent idea!

A couple of renders more...

Thanks a lot, Robert! That made things much clearer! Hadn't thought of the difference betwen the two types of ambience. :-)

I am slightly confused. I am trying to get to grips with ambiance lighting and occlusion in A:M rendering. The problem isn’t abscense of options but the opposite: there is so many different places ambience parameters can be set, and it is not clear (to me anyhow) which of the similar labeled functions does what and what cancels each other out. Below is a collection of the possible settings I have found ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Camera: Global Ambiance (%) Camera/Render Options: Ambiance Occlusion (On/Off) Occlusion Sampling (%) Transparent AO (On/Off) Camera/Render Options: Plugin Shaders (On/Off) Ambiance Render Shader (shader) Ambiance Color (Color) Choreographies/Choreographie1: Global Ambiance Type (Color) Ambiance Color Ambiance Intensity (%) Ambiance Occlusion (%) Material: Ambiance color (color) Ambiance Intensity (%) Ambiance Blend (%) Ambiance Render Shader (shader) ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Is there anybody that can bring enlightenment to this?

Yes, Kafka would certainly recognize the indifference of our times. His indsight was indeed sharp! He was such a great and yet very modest artist! This story - Give it up - has two characters, the lonely man trying to find his way in the empty city (maybe his life?) and the watchman, denying him information on how to reach his destination. "Give it up!" is the only answer the watchman gives him... A very simple and yet unbearable story!

Wonderfull, Nancy! Love all that life you manage to put into your figures!!

I’m afraid I have to disappoint you there, Paul. No bustling traffic. These Kafka streets are in essence pure desolation. Maybe some old papers blowing in the wind, but that's it. After all Kafka was the man who wrote: “I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.” (!)

Trying out different styles of texturing, and yet again enjoyes the wonderfull renderer built into A:M!! :-)

As if I hadn’t enough going, I’ve begun a new project, “Give it up!”. This is a very very short story (a couple of minutes) made from yet another piece by Franz Kafka. Staging and head modeling is done 100% in A:M, but the bodies of the characters, their UV-mapping etc. as well as the rendering as seen here, are done in Zbrush. They’ll later be imported into A:M and rigged, animated and rendered there.