Paul Forwood

If you take care with your lighting and try to keep your renders pretty flat, avoiding complex textures, in A:M then Flash will stand a chance of producing frames composed of less shapes. I think you have to play with the settings in both A:M and Flash and find a happy medium. You'll probably never get the size of the files down to what you would if you drew each frame by hand in Flash but by making some compromises at the outset you can still get good results.

Kali, the AI wizard is only for importing and not exporting but doesn't Flash have a built-in trace function anyway? I'm pretty sure it does.

Yes. I noticed that too. You also have the same thing going on at the corners of the mouth. Can you try some non-symetrical facial poses and see how well the mesh holds up?

Hey, man, I'm gettin' deja vu.

Hi. New here, eh? Welcome. Regarding your screen grab, it would be helpful if you could set up the choreography window so that it displays the object you are having a problem with, (your crab), and expand it to display the action aswell. When all the relevant information is visible on screen do a screen capture and post here. Your current screen grab doesn't display any helpful info unfortunately. So, important info for us to see is: action in PWS, (Project WorkSpace), and also in the Timeline.

Welcome, Busby! Good work, especially for someone so new to 3D! I haven't got a solution to your problem, haven't played with dynamic chains recently, but as you're working with one of the 'masters' you are in a prime position to pick his brains. ;-)

Thanks, David! I guess I had better upgrade to QT 7 then. I loved the animation!

I would love to have a look at this, David, but QT won't let me view it. Any chance of a Sorenson 3 or DivX version?

Yes. Very nice low patch modelling. I look forward to seeing more of your progress.

Very nice detailing! I saw a very interesting program on the restoration of the Golden Gate bridge recently and was amazed to learn that every single piece of the bridge was re-designed, improved and replaced during the works to withstand the most extreme earthquakes. What an amazing feat! Keep your hard hat on and always wear a safety harness! Nice work! Are you making this to any particular scale?

A tip to follow when you can't see the results of some modification that you have made: First try pressing the spacebar to refresh the screen. Because there are a number of refresh glitches at the moment you may still not be seeing what you expected. To work around these refresh bugs it is a good idea to save your project and then immediately open it again. Its a good habit to get into. Save often and reload often.

I love the look of this, Robert!

Well done. I like what you have done on this project so far.

Well, I have tried your project in 12.0s and 13 alpha 6. I don't see any particles in A:M 13, just the chair. In 12.0s I can see the streaks and a square emitter, or something, but no splashes.

What version of A:M are you using? It works well in 12s. Also make sure that you have particles turned on. Thats a clever use of flocking! Edit: I haven't tested your project. Just my own tests with flocking.

Oh, yes! I look forward to seeing this come to life. You could probably find alot of inspiration for troll tales right here in the forums. ;-)

If you are using Win XP you should have a program called Movie Maker in your Accessories folder. This will give you some very basic editing abilities. I have never really tried it so can't vouch for it's abilities. If you're on a Mac I think you get some bundled video editor too but as I don't have a Mac I can't swear to that. You should not overlook A:M's own ability to import your movie as image sequences. You can goto Images/Import/Image Sequence to load your Targas and then select the sequence in your images folder, right click and choose Save Animation. Using this method will also allow you to make use of A:M's new compositor. Something that I haven't played with yet. Alternatively, there are often 30 day trials of video editors available for download and of course the free compositor, which was originally recommended for use on the TWO movie. I haven't got the link to hand but you should find it in the original brief for the movie which should still be pinned in the movie forums.

Yes to everything that Robcat and Stuart suggested. I expect it is a combination of particles and lights. You have to learn use both of these prudently if you want to keep render times as low as possible. As Stuart suggests, try making the most likely candidates inactive in the choreography and note how your render times are affected. Start with multi-pass set to 1 and work up from there until you find a good balance.

Yes, I agree, it looks really good. Let me guess... someone was over-taking on a bend? The truck looks good here but you wouldn't want to see it coming straight for you!

Is the parrot's name Jeff?

Interesting render. The only times that I have seen the tearing is when the camera's picture plane cuts through the displaced geometry. Try bringing the camera's focul point back and away from the displacement and see if that works.

I moved it to here. I didn't want to possibly start two different conversations in your thread and I felt that it's new home is probably where it belongs. Gary, are all these clips eventually going to be edited into a complete story or are they test renders? Whatever, I'm enjoying watching your progress.

Norwegian Blue? Pining for the fjords?

Hi, Gary. You've been a busy boy. Haven't you? Looking good!

You could lose alot of those splines on the top of the ears