Jump to content
Hash, Inc. Forums

heyvern

Hash Fellow
  • Posts

    5,205
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Previous Fields

  • Interests
    Coffee<br />WAWA<br />Anything with caffeine
  • Hardware Platform
    Macintosh
  • System Description
    Mac OS 9.2 512 mb ram 400 something G4 processor
  • Contests Won
    *

Profile Information

  • Name
    Vernon Zehr

Recent Profile Visitors

2,843 profile views

heyvern's Achievements

Animation:Masters

Animation:Masters (9/10)

0

Reputation

  1. Yes but... in my opinion there are dedicated standalone applications that already have those file transfer functions and chat functions etc so why put it in AM? Just run them along side AM. Those other programs are BETTER at it than AM ever could be. I don't want the limited resources of Hash to be wasted on trivial "novelties" like "chatting" in the program. Even MS word doesn't have a "chat" feature does it? If Hash removed the chat feature I won't lose sleep over it (unless the headphone cord brushed my leg). Does anyone need Skype to have a 3D modeling/animation plugin? I mean... you may want to animate something while you are typing or talking and it would be so much easier than all that work to open up AM. Of course if AM has chat you can chat and do 3D in Skype AND AM at the same time... while modeling in 3D in skype you can chat in AM and never miss a second of productive time. Put an email application and a beer dispenser with a snack machine in AM and I would never leave the house. Put a game engine in there so you can play games while working in AM. A link to Hulu and watch TV as well. Make it an entertainment console... that also does 3D... Okay I went a bit far with this... forgive me. Obviously... I don't own an all in one printer/scanner/fax machine either. p.s. Hash never did put in my feature request for a coffee machine USB hook up that activates with long render times. -vern
  2. Yes, it was fun for a while... then the novelty wore off. I am prone to being frightened by simple things when I am deeply engrossed in work like this. It could be a tiny breeze causing a small scrap of paper to flutter on the desk and I will jump like a gun shot went off. One time I freaked out when the change in my pocket shifted slightly against my leg while I was in my "creative trance". My headphone wires are the worst. They will shift and fall funny and brush up against my neck, shoulder or arms and scare the bejesus out of me (I really need to get a wireless headphone). I had to turn the AM community thingy off. Too much stress. -vern
  3. Nice job so far... ... yikes... I would however, not buy a robot to work in my house with a but crack like that. This is just a personal preference. Others may like a good but crack on their robots... who am I to judge. -vern
  4. My trick with Thom being assembled by particles was done by reversing the rendered sequence. You can't "reverse" particles so the best way has been covered. Get both animations the way you like them. Render the second "equence". Import that sequence and reverse the time. You could just render both sequences and composite with another program or you could composite both in AM or just use the one sequence as a rotoscope and "hide" that model and particle sequence in the chor. You would only have to render TWICE instead of 3 times. So you render one sequence to go backwards with the other model hidden or not active. Import that sequence as a rotoscope and reversed the time. Make THAT model not active and turn on the OTHER one. You could also throw in camera movement this way as well but would have to reverse the keys of the camera movement for the reversed rendered sequence. See the rendered sequence used as a rotoscope will match the camera movement but it's backwards in time... ... oh my... I'm getting dizzy... is anyone else's head spinning or is it just me? -vern
  5. In my case there will be shots of stationary characters talking at a table facing each other, the camera locked. Behind one character will be a large set of windows overlooking a large production assembly line. I figure the "window" and frame of the window can be a non moving single image render. The background elements seen through the window can be a short looping animated cycle. The foreground elements and characters would be another layer in the composite. The character with no moving background elements is even easier. If I cut back and forth and keep the wide shots to a minimum this should save a lot of rendering time. -vern
  6. I find it very distracting. Also if I forget to "turn it off" it scares the hell out of me when someone chimes in. Literally I jump out of my skin. Rush of adrenaline. I had to deactivate it. When I have AM open I plan to work not chat. I don't see the purpose of "chat" software inside a program for getting something done. If I need to chat there are plenty of dedicated programs for that and my hair won't turn white and fall out when I'm contacted. -vern
  7. I plan to try something like this with my Terminator spoof to speed up render times. Since I plan to use an environment map for reflections it should work for the shiny stuff. I figure the shiny robots will require the most rendering time so if I can render them separately from the background elements it will speed things up a bit. The "background" elements will be animated but not as much. Don't many of the "big" studios (Pixar for example) use this technique? Rendering different elements in separate passes to composite? Is this done for rendering speed or other purposes? -vern
  8. I think the question of "what is cheaper" to do, real vs. computer isn't about the cost. In some cases it might be the same cost to film real objects as opposed to using 3D. The benefits of 3D come in for absolute and total 100% control over every aspect. PERFECT product shots, PERFECT lighting, PERFECT camera moves. Nothing left to chance. Also in many situations the product may not even exist yet. A product might only exist as "blue prints" or "cad" designs. Being able to get a jump on the advertising in advance of production is always good. They do that with cars all the time. Print ads of cars for the next years model are often not real, just 3D. I remember having to do some stuff with a product that technically existed but... the production had changed slightly. The plastic was a different color. The shape had changed slightly. They didn't have any prototypes for photographing at all... so... had to use 3D. Real photography was not even an option at all. -vern
  9. Uh... er... gravity? In what situation? Hair? Particles? Newton dynamics? Dynamic constraint? I believe hair and particles use the "force" setting in the chor which is on by default. Newton dynamics have the gravity set in the properties for each object. There is no "gravity" that you can "turn on or off" for plain objects. -vern
  10. I thought Yves shader was "broken" in 15e? I was trying to use it a while back and it didn't project correctly. Has it been updated somewhere? Or is this a different shader? The spherical mapping didn't seem to work right. Fantastic amazing mind blowing renders by the way. Good grief you would almost think AM is some sort of professional 3D application... uh... wait... it is.... never mind. p.s. Where can I get those genetically modified "coreless" apples? Those will sell like hotcakes. -vern
  11. Yes the fog image was removed per the client request. They wanted the logo on an entirely black background. I just made the camera color black so the fog is black. -vern
  12. Thanks John, That's normally what I do. In this case I didn't create the original extruded letter models. I noticed some creasing and bad spots and went through the whole thing very carefully... I missed that one tiny spot mostly due to not doing tests at high resolution (stupid vern). ---- On the subject of the QT Pro export. I can't understand why it's getting "washed out". Is that just the nature of the extreme compression of the codec (H.264)? The original targa files look great (same as the still frame in the first post). The problem is I'm using QT Pro on the Mac. The original files look the same in the mac before and after export but on windows the exported H.264 output is washed out compared to the originals. -vern
  13. Well it's done! I added some motion blur just at the end for the kettlebell falling. It's subtle, about 10 frames only 5 passes at 20% but enough to soften the motion. For some reason QT export "washes" it out. The "original" looks fine. I need to fix that. pkb_final_motion_blur_hd.mov I have to say not bad for a few days work. A few days work to complete a project in AM for me is like a nano second. -vern
  14. Thanks for the feedback! Animus, holds on the letters... I tried a few other things first but decided I really wanted that opening to zoooom in FAST. It's actually a teeny tiny bit slower than I wanted but close enough. I used a lot of bias tweaking on the key frame curves and if I tightened them up it makes them go wonky and I have to tweak them again. It looks good. I wanted those letters to really zap in and SLAM into place quickly. I think they will be using this for the intro to training and demonstration videos. (I realize now I could have created just one action file for all the letters and offset them. It would have saved a lot of time but I thought of it too late.) Nancy and John, The fog image... I've never used fog before really. So then I was sitting there with this logo trying to figure out how to have the letters "appear" out of "nowhere"... hmm... how the heck... mist? Dust? Particles? Gradient combiner with animated transparency?.... ... hold on a second... fog? Will fog work? YES FOG! Then the problem was the request for a black background. A big black kettlebell on a black background... .... it nearly drove me nuts so then I figured out that image trick in the fog. I never used fog so it was all pretty new to me. Of course after playing around with the image in the fog... the client wanted to take out the color. At that point I was arguing that the black kettlebell would "vanish" against an all black background... but just to be cooperative I did a quick test render (the one I posted above). It actually looks BETTER than the color fog image. It works. It took about two hours to render the final... and DAGNABBT! Have to render again. Look closely at the image I posted. Look at the left side of the letter "C". There's a black "smudge". An obvious "dent" in the model. The AM AI import is always a bit... hit or miss when it comes to this stuff. I thought I had fixed all the wonky connected splines but I missed a spot. I also rendered with an alpha channel which I thought was even worse because it removes the background until I realized the background is entirely black anyway... I took out the orange fog image. . Anyway the black smudge on the C might be fixable in photoshop... but do I spend two hours painting out the spot on 180 frames or do I go to bed and let the computer do it? Easy choice. -vern
×
×
  • Create New...