Paul Forwood

That looks excellent!

That looks very good! Can you just remind me whether you are driving the pose sliders from video clips or from a live feed? Either way its pretty awesome stuff. I'm just wondering how long the process is from videoing your face to having all the captured key frames in the choreography, before cleaning up and doing the blinks. Is that instant or is the Syntheyes part of the production a time consuming process?

Amazing!!! You seem to have broken through so many of the barriers. The hair looks pretty good and I can't wait to see how well the cloth works. How many passes are you using for these renders? One little nit-pick, (if you want it): Rom Pitts's right boot appears to have a visible seam running down the front, where the wrinkles don't match up.

If the images used by the sprite emitters have an alpha channel, (they are 32bit Targas or Png files), then they should render just like a cookie-cut image. I haven't tested PNG images in a sprite emitter but I think that they should work. On top of that you can adjust the opacity through the sprite system and sprite emitter properties.

It is good to see you posting again, Mike! And good to see that you are continuing to make progress with Ebon. This update looks excellent but I feel that Ebon could be more expressive if she blinked just before she says, "don't", as she lowers her head, and maybe when the foreground figure turns away from her. Blinks help to convey something going on inside, an emotional struggle. But what do I know? Perhaps vampires don't need to blink. Also this is just my personal opinion and may have already tried using blinks and found that it doesn't work as you would like in this shot. Very nice render and lip sync. The blog is very good too.

Bones. The only way to get CPs to animate in a smooth curve is to attach them to a bone and animate the bone. Without the bone to rotate around your CPs will just move in a linear motion, or a succession of linear translations. Place bones at the centre of the eyeballs and assign the CPs of each eyeball to their local eyebone. Take a look at some of the models on the A:M CD or on the Extras DVD. Do a search for rigging tutorials.

Bravo! No less than I would expect from a team that included the amazing Bradbury boys. Well thought out and well executed. Congratulations to the whole team.

Uhmm. There already is a button that you can use to toggle normal pointers on and off. You have to configure A:M to use it though. Go to Tools\Customize\Commands and drag the buttons that you want onto your toolbar. This feature has been around since A:M 10 or 11 I think. Simple but not obvious.

You see! What did I tell you? Awesome! Stian, can you educate me and explain what those large chromed cylinders on either side of the cab, in front of the doors, are for? Are they air filters or part of the exhaust system? I'm just wondering if they get hot.

Very nice model and rig! I can see poor old Thom feeling left out soon. Well done David, Mark and Jeff! A couple of things that I noticed: 1) It was not possible to translate the neck bone forward without creasing the neck. 2) I wasn't able to push Squetchy Sam's eye widening to the extremes that I would have liked. ------------------------------------

Excellent, David! What film is that sound clip from?

Very slick! I hadn't seen this thread until now so it was a real pleasure to view all three pages in succession and then your final reel. I'm impressed.

Nice work, Matt! Yes, Inkscape seems to be a great pretender to Adobe's Illustrator. I have it installed but as I have Illustrator I haven't played with it enough to know it's potential. Inkscape does seem to give you all the tools that you would need though.

Thanks for your input, Rusty! I had been using A:M 14 Beta 3 but that was just foolish. I will wait for the full release before I go back to that version. So these recent tests were done in A:M13s on a standalone PC. Dynamics are enabled, targeting is "Constraint", Stiffness 50%,Is Rod=On. Collisions are On with Radius=1cm, Bounce=5%, Friction=50%. Sorry. I should have made that clearer. I was refering to the colour and shading rather than the shape or volume. I expect that silvery white hair will be more difficult to give definition to because the diffuse colour is already so close to the specular colour. I have a bright, pale blue for the diffuse colour and the specular colour is almost white. I have experimented with other colours but I am not getting the results that I was hoping for. It is such a complex mix, (hair properties, lighting, reflections, dynamics), that I think I need to spend more time experimenting with it. I just realised that none of these tests were done with a sky dome or any reflective geometry and I'm thinking that probably contributes to the quality of the hair render. Must try that next. Yes. So do I. The movie above uses that technique but I have been using cookie-cut strands and helmet hair in a search for a better solution too. Splitting the hair up into transparent strands that have a hair material applied gives me more control of the hair style and the dynamics. Duh. I'm so-o-o stupid! I could have removed the 5 point patches from the emmitter! I forgot, when I was grooming, that it was being emmitted from the transparent geometry inside the head. Thanks for waking me up. The attached movie does use Muhair and I will continue to play with the various properties until I feel I have a grasp of how to master it. I need to know if the environment plays an important role in the quality of the finished hair. I try to avoid very high multi-pass renders because of the time it takes to render. 5 or 9 passes is about the most that I am willing to give to it at the moment. That could be one of the things that drives me back to helmet hair for this project. I'm not giving up on A:M hair yet though. --------- Here is a compilation of some hair that I have tried on this guy so far: --------- Cheers!

Try puting it at 0,0,0 with the central seam sitting right on the axis before you do the copy-flip-attach.

Here is something that I have been WIPping up: If you scroll to about 3/8ths of the way through this movie you will notice a frame where the hair completely disappears. Is this a known bug? Anyone else seen this? I have been trying to get a good mix for silvery-white hair but it just comes out looking too flat. Also there seems to be an issue with hair guides not behaving well on the edges of 5-point patches. Does anyone have any hair tips? I am also experimenting with modelled hair. Looking for the best options.

Ha ha! Nice work, Matt! (Mr. BootAY) How did you get that flare effect in the first one? Is that composited in? Got any more?

Yes. There is an AI Import plugin built into A:M. It has been a while since I last used it though so I don't feel qualified to give you any tips at the moment. You access the AI plugin by right clicking in a model window and following the path: Plugins\Wizards\AI and then just browse for your file, configure how you want A:M to treat the import. I am pretty sure that it only handles Illustrator 9, and earlier versions, so you may need to prepare your Illustrator artwork first. Edit: Sorry. That should be Illustrator 8, not 9. -------------- Having said that, I went and tried the AI wizard in A:M13s and haven't managed to import anything yet. In fact A:M has stopped responding. I'm glad I remembered to save my project first. I know that the AI Wizard was working in previous versions of A:M. and this might just be the files that I am trying to import. Anyway, good luck trying. Show us any good results you get, okay?

Yeah, this should be good! He looks like a candidate for the Squetch Rig.

Oh, just another one of your absolutely AWESOME WIPs, Stian. Ho, hum... --------------------- 10-4

The best method that I have found for using copy-flip-attach is as follows: 1) Select and copy the geometry that you want to copy-flip. 2) Copy the geometry into a new model window and position the model so that the spline that will form the central spline is aligned with 0,0,0. 3) Select all the CPs on the central spline and scale them so that they are all on the axis that you will flip across. 4) Select all the geometry and then perform the Copy-Flip-Attach. 5) Select all the geometry and Copy-Paste it back into your original model. I have noticed that if other geometry is present, even if hidden, it can effect the copy-flip-attach command. This is why I usually do the copy-flip-attach in a new object. Also it is non-destructive this way. Your original model is still there until you delete it. Also be aware that if you attempt to delete half your object by just selecting CPs and deleting them that you are likely to be left with splines that need to be broken before doing the copy-flip-attach. Doing it by copying half the model and pasting into a new model will avoid the neccessity to break, (K), any splines. Good luck!

Try drag selecting the CPs rather than just clicking on them. That may require hiding some geometry first but it usually works for me. If it still fails you probably have added a CP that is sitting very close to another one and is not easily visible when selecting. Zoom in and click-drag the individual CPs until you find the rogue CP.

Good news, Gazza! Just so we can work out the logistics... where , approximately, is "the office"?

Awesomenumenumenum!!! Nice work, Lee and Kevin! I did a quick scan of previous posts but didn't see any mention of what you are going to do with this guy. Is he for a movie or a game?