heyvern

There's nothing like an empty wallet to help you lose weight. Same here. It's called the "I'm broke" diet. Good luck on your adventure. If you ever have a Pirates episode that needs some Newton physics guidance let me know! I might even give you an advance copy of the "Rad Doll" rig when it's ready. Let me know what control rig you use for your characters so I can set it up. It could be good for... walking the plank... falling from the crow's nest through the sail rigging... launched from a cannon... -vern

This is so cool. It's almost as good as my nephews' remote control helicopters I played with over christmas. -vern

I feel so left out... I can see the topic fine. -vern

Sorry but I have to disagree about closing the windows when editing materials. What I do is apply the material to the model or group and do a "progressive render" (shift+Q) around a section of the model in the model window and then tweak the material and watch it update. I've been doing this since v15c and I'm using v15e. I'm still not clear on if this problem has "just started" or has been an issue all along? If it just started maybe one of those "screamin' game" installations has mucked up something that AM relies on for displaying materials? Maybe reinstalling AM would help? Aren't games notorious for installing "gizmos" or changing settings in the system for display? -vern

Oh that works just fine! I like it. -vern

I bet he used Newton physics. You can either set the weight of an object with Newton groups so the base is heavier or offset the center point so it tries to stay up right. -vern

There is nothing more important for a computer than a UPS. A sudden power outage or surge can really do nasty things. When my power went out this morning my computer didn't even blink. I have a really big UPS that keeps two monitors and two computers running for about 30 minutes. Plenty of time to save files and shut down. This is about the second or third time since I got my UPS this has happened. In the past every time this happened I would spend at least an hour fixing things and getting back up and running. The Mac was even more prone to problems with sudden shut downs. A UPS is worth every penny. You can get some for pretty cheap. You can even hook them up so that it shuts down the computer automatically when the power goes out. -vern

That's BRILLIANT for pass the ball! I love it! You should definately render that one. Make it a huge plexiglass sphere with some scratches on the surface and some... uh... my hyper-reality syndrome is acting up again.. -vern

What changes have you made to your system recently? New software? New hardware? Do you have power outages in your area? Any that happened recently? If so do you have a UPS? My power went on and off 3 times within ten minutes early this morning around 3 am... who knows why. If I didn't have a UPS it would have wreaked havoc on my system. Years ago before I had a UPS the power would flick off like that and trashed my system. I had to reinstall both the OS on my Mac and my PC. If the crashing just recently STARTED then this would indicate some change has occurred. Reinstall AM, do some kind of check on your ram and your OS. AM doesn't have some kind of April 1st "start crashing" bug I'm sure. -vern

Flash back to my youth! Anyone remember the movie "The Gate"? Following the instructions from a heavy metal band album and playing the songs backwards two kids open a gate to another dimension that lets evil Gods into our world and take it over. During the movie there are these absolutely terrifying (but slightly humorous) weird little lizard men creatures about the same size as Thom in that animation. These little creatures attack one of the kids who fell into the gate. They run around terrorizing the other kids and are quite frightening. Those little "Thoms" running around reminded me of that movie. I had nightmares from that movie. I own it on DVD now and watch it when I need a good scare. Great job! I loved it. p.s. Stephen Dorff was the little kid in that movie. And to think he grew up to be a vampire. I think there is a connection. -vern

I see it working very similar to the rag doll physics rig. It wouldn't be a "perfect" match but it would be "close enough". The problem is no absolute angle limits on newton chains for the wheels in the newton "proxy". But if you got close enough the added physics would create the illusion and your cool rig would handle the rest. The powered newton object could drive the car using a translate and orient constraint. You make the weight a bit top heavy and the car will sway back and forth as it rolls over the terrain while the suspension rig keeps the wheels grounded. ---------- I would love to jump that truck off a ramp! This could be a whole new episode of Change Your Pants! I can see Thom driving wearing a helmet. A huge crowd in a stadium. Backseat POV shows Thom in the driver seat as he turns and gives a thumbs up. Cut to a front seat POV Rabbit and Shaggy in the back seat hugging each other scared out of their minds. Thom speeds towards the ramp. Between the ramps are a bunch of trolls or tanks with sharks... or maybe a couple of Balrogs. The truck hits the ramp and flies majestically over certain death. Cuts to different camera angles some in slow motion. Slow motion shot of inside the truck with Rabbit and Shaggy screaming and holding each other as the bounce around. A cool shot from the trolls POV on the ground between the ramps looking up at the car shows off your incredible rig with the drive chain and wheels working together. It lands on the other ramp bouncing and shaking and skids to a stop. Rabbit and Shaggy stumble out of the back doors. Thom gets out and gives a big thumbs up to the cheering crowd as Shaggy falls to his knees and vomits behind the truck. Fade to black. Roll credits. -vern

You're almost as crazy as I am! At least your rig looks ten times better. I remember this rig. In fact I was thinking about this rig the whole time I was building my Newton car. I would LOVE to "rig" your "rig" to Newton. Imagine it bouncing over rough terrain, the wheels and suspension springing and bouncing, reacting to real physics and weight as it hits bumps. The suspension compressing as it hits. You could "drive" the rig with key frames while it bounces and steers... the mind boggles. Wasn't there some use of this in HA:MR at one point? I can't see for sure in the animation but is there any "flattening" of the tires in contact with the surface? I wonder if a series of bones could be constrained with an expression to "squish" up based on the closeness to the surface constraint. Maybe a distortion box? I think I asked this question the last time as well. This stuff is inspiring. -vern

I don't know if v13 had Newton built in or if there is a version available for it but HOLY COW! If you have a desire to do that sort of thing with AM, upgrading and using the Newton physics plugin is the way to go. If I were a new user to AM I would upgrade just for that one feature. I spend HOURS running complex simulations over and over and AM NEVER crashes or chokes. Newton is ten times better than rigid bodies. I believe it is much faster simulating as well. -vern

Here's my plan for the final version: In keeping with the "enter left exit right" theme I will start with a closer cropping to the left to follow the ball as it enters then zoom out for the back and forth. Then pan right and zoom to show the ball exiting on the right. The "tv" set won't "block" the exit this way. I could do a bunch of fancy other stuff but that's just gilding the lily so to speak. Plus I plan to do another different idea and didn't want to waste a lot of time on this one. This is one that hit me the other day and as I was thinking about it I decided to go with an "old hand held video" look and focus on the realism. Imagine the kids in the late 70's early 80's got hold of the parents camcorder (the big one that sits on the shoulder) and were goofing off in front of the pong game. I have sound effects and everything. I timed the "pongs" to the video, then played it back on an old set of speakers and record that while bumping the microphone and and moving around. Works quite nice. Gives the perfect "distance" to the pongs without fiddling with audio software. The crappy old speakers playing the bleeps and bloops also add to the effect. Also the final render looks VERY real. Refraction through the glass of the screen that "curves" the game graphics, reflections and specular highlights on the glass, a bit of a blue tint to the screen graphics and scan lines. All of it done ENTIRELY in AM. I used the "grid" plugin material for the scan lines. I was able to "cheat" that material and make it just very thin tight horizontal lines. With the bloom post effect it looks very much like a tv screen. I used one of those camera shake actions that I found here or somewhere, years ago. Added it to the camera and then tweaked the motion and the focal length for the zoom effect. I have suddenly become very interested in that technique that has been showing up over the last few years. I think it started with Firefly and then the new battlestar galactica and most recently "Cloverfield" used it. You can have even "average" effects but you throw in some hand held camera tweaks and it looks ten times more real. Whole thing only took a few hours. p.s. I now know the ENTIRE history of Pong, the very first commercially successful video game. Amazing story. Did you know the first "video tennis" game was actually invented in the late 50's early 60's using an oscilloscope? That guy doesn't get as much credit as the founder of Atari. -vern

So this was one I thought fitting due to all the newton physics stuff I'm doing lately. This is a low res render without the cool sounds and tv scan lines... and glass refraction etc. All done with newton physics except of course the paddles. I'll let you bright people theorize how I hit the ball with the paddles... it wasn't easy. pongscreenB.mov -vern

Nancy Nancy Nancy... . You really know how to do feathers and hair. I should have you do the next episode of "Change Your Pants!". I am planning to feature hair... and feathers. p.s. If you could do a version of Thom like that with hair materials I could animate him. Yeehaaa! -vern

Thanks for this question! It lead to my rag doll physics concept. Constraining that newton object to the spline inspired the idea. If a constraint can make it look like the ball is hitting the rubber band then the reverse would work. Constrain a character to a newton object. I don't think I would have even tried that if it wasn't for this topic. -vern

Works pretty good I think: rubber_band_ball_bounce2.mov rubber_band_ball_bounce_sim.zip -vern

Ha! I am rendering another version that uses a "proxy" physics object (static) path constrained to the rubber band at the point of contact with the ball. The steps are: 1. Simulate ball newton physics. 2. Simulate cloth rubber band 3. Add proxy physics object with a path constraint to spline in rubber band. 4. Adjust ease so the proxy physics object lines up with the ball at the point of contact. 5. Remove the ball physics motion keys from step 1. 6. Resimulate newton physics 7. Set the proxy physics object to inactive or just delete it. Now the ball will "appear" to bounce off of the rubber band and continue to act like a newton physics object. -vern

I always go "too real". Here's my attempt using cloth and newton physics: rubber_band2.mov rubber_band.zip -vern

That's a tough one. You have two different simulations going on; springs and physics. Either Newton Physics (better) or rigid body physics. The "rubber band" tube could be done with cloth. Unfortunately cloth and newton physics don't interact well. It's either one or the other... the chicken and the egg... the horse before the cart. . You can simulate cloth or physics first but not at the same time so the ball wouldn't be able to "bounce off" of the rubber band. The ball could hit the rubber band and cause it to move or stretch though. You could have a dynamic constraint to behave like a spring. The trick is how to have it "springy" from the center to the ends AND also be "flexible" to some degree. Usually springs are "stiff" and vibrate like a "stick". This is a tricky one. Not saying this isn't possible. Someone else may post with the perfect solution. I just can't think of one easily without playing around with it. -vern

Yes! There should be a name for this weird phenomenon. I encounter it ALL THE TIME. I even EXPERIMENTED with it. I had a problem and KNEW as soon as I posted a question here I would solve it. So I didn't post it and kept working. No solution. So I wrote down the question WITHOUT posting... still no joy. As soon as I posted the question... bingo! Solution. It happens all the time to me here and on other forums as well. -vern

Exactly... that's my point. A "nice" one size fits all shiny material doesn't exist. It all depends on the lighting and the environment to determine if it looks "good". Many of the surface attributes I use only have a diffuse color, specular and that's it. They look "good" because of the lighting and render settings, mulitpass, raytraced shadows etc etc. There aren't any "easy" shortcuts. If something is not lit well it will look like crap. The best model in the world will look like crap if it isn't lit and rendered correctly. I struggle with lighting. Lighting is my nemesis. I have a model that is only... eh... so so looking... but man if I light it just right it can look like a million bucks. Lighting can make or break a 3D scene. I did a portrait of Dave Bowman from 2001 for the Sci fi image contest one year. I got my lighting set up directly from someone on the forum. A simple light set up with just 3 basic lights. I tweaked it around a bit but MAN! That light set up brought that model to life. Study photography lighting web sites or books. Real world lighting knowledge can be of great use in 3D. I had a friend years ago who was a wiz with 3D lighting. He was not experienced at all with 3D but he had years of experience as a photographer and knew exactly how to put in lights in 3D programs. There is another thing I do when creating shiny reflective chrome; I will sometimes use shapes around the shiny stuff that reflect into the metal to give it those nice... uh reflective thingies. When you see nice reflective chrome what makes it look "good"? It's the lights and darks of the reflected environment that wrap around the shape in a pleasing and realistic way. Rubber can be pretty straight forward as I said. Dark gray color (to taste). 20-45% specular intensity, 90-100% specular size. Maybe some "noise"... very subtle. That's it. Just those attributes and you have rubber. You can change those values to change the surface properties of the rubber. If the rubber is "slick" or "hard" it might have a smaller specualar size with more strength. It might be a darker color. Maybe it's a tiny bit "shiny" or wet and would have a slight reflection... but then it starts to look like plastic. Sometimes lighting alone can create an illusion of a "material". I remember seeing a tutorial for lighting a 3D car. It used different colored lights for specular values that created a sort of "SSS" effect on the "paint". The end result looked like a "real" car. But if you stuck that model or those materials in a chor with one light... it would look like crap. -vern

Is it too late to hire someone to kidnap him and drag him to the meeting? The economy is bad... I bet there are lots of people who would do stuff like that for cheap... I'd be willing to do it for a few bucks... but... I used all my tranquilizer darts on the neighbor's dogs. Or we could rent a van and reenact that scene from "Old School" where they drive by and snatch the fraternity pledges. I can see it now. Rich blind folded and tied to a chair in your living room Don... -vern

That bike does look good... but... yikes! Won't that be an awfully bumpy ride? I get sick just looking at it. -vern