luckbat

Speaking from experience, I'd say finish your models before you start your final animation. (No reason you can't do tests while you're modeling, though.) The reason for this is, you never know when what looked like a minor costume change might directly affect your character's range of motion or balance. You'd be pretty upset if you moved your character's sword scabbard from his left leg to his right leg, only to discover that his right arm was constantly passing through it in the animation. You'd have to spend days re-keyframing just to work around a simple costume tweak. Anyway, you can see where I'm going with this. You're always allowed to make changes to your model after you've started animating, but try to get as much of the work done as you can beforehand. At a studio, all models have to be "locked" before final animation can begin. (The animators would kill the modelers if that wasn't enforced.)

On the one hand, your risk of being jailed or fined by the copyright police would be zero. On the other hand, that guilt you're feeling is from using Luciano Michelini's song 'Frolic' without compensating him. Why not use some public domain music or a free sound loop from Flashkit.com?

I can't believe it's taken me a month just to do a five-second revision, but now that my new G5's fully operational, maybe the process will begin to speed up a bit. Here's a rough pass incorporating some of the comments I've received to date. Honestly, I've spent so much time on this thing I can't even tell what it looks like anymore. [attachmentid=13928] Here's what you should expect to see: 1. A much more vigorous (too much?) grab-and-yank, with more initial resistance from Ebon. 2. Actual hip movement. 3. More bobble-headed whiplash action on Ebon. 4. A new camera path. Not necessarily a better one, but the models ended up so far from their original positions in this revision that I had to completely redo the camera move, although I tried to preserve the spirit of the original. The framing's been slighly improved, in my opinion, but to most people it'll look exactly the same. Still to come: There's no hand movement as yet, and I haven't paid much attention to arcs, either. But I wanted to get something up before I go blind from staring at this thing. Feedback, as always, is encouraged. shot_12_take_3.mov

No, it's a copyright violation. Both are illegal under current U.S. law, but one is not equivalent to the other. Well, that depends on what you're planning to do with your little film, doesn't it? All you'd accomplish would be to waste $120. From http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp Mailing one's works to oneself and keeping the unopened, postmarked envelope as proof of right of ownership to them (a practice known as the "poor man's copyright") has no substantive legal effect in the U.S.

No. Like Ken said, only the dimensions in pixels matter. The "correct" resolution of a decal depends on a spectrum of factors, including: * The resolution of the final image * How close the model is to the camera * How much detail is in the decal * What rendering method is being used * Your lighting scheme * Motion blur/Depth of field ...and many more! The bottom line is, start with low-res textures and do some test renders. If you notice some pixelation, swap in some larger textures. Keep increasing the resolution of any texture that isn't smooth enough for you until it renders acceptably. So why not just use 32768x32768 textures for everything? Because it'll slow your project down to a crawl. Try to use the lowest-res textures you can get away with. Some people even maintain multiple versions of their models--one for general use, and one for closeups. DPI--dots per inch--is a print term which is meaningless for screen images. Use "resolution" instead. Yes. Don't use JPEG; the compression artifacts will ruin the texture.

Daaaaaamn! That's an expertly splined (and lit) face. But is your chin really that round?

Yes. Some people also call it the graph editor.

Yeti is the 2006 CD. Sorcerez is the 2005 CD.

You become a Master at 100 posts. At 200 posts, you can choose your own title.

Here's what I noticed: 1. When Greenguy crouches before his jump, he shouldn't bend over like that. It looks like you were basing the motion off Jeff Lew's drop-from-the-ceiling move, but since he didn't drop from the ceiling here, he doesn't have a lot of vertical inertia that his torso needs to absorb. In real life, you'd have to keep your torso pointed in the direction that you were planning to jump. It can rock forward a little, to absorb his horizontal inertia, but most of the movement should come from the legs. 2. The kick comes too late. By that point, Greenguy is already starting to fall back to earth--in real life this kick wouldn't be as powerful as one that connected during the upwards part of the jump. Either speed up the initial jump launch so you can sustain a higher jump arc, or make Greenguy kick sooner.

Oh but there is.

Note: Darktree is not the same thing as Symbiont.

Sorry you were sick, Dennis. You missed a great time with Colin, I'm afraid. We had five people total, with our time divided among sharing anecdotes, watching animated shorts, critiquing each others' work and eating the chocolate-covered marshmallows that Colin bought. But don't worry, we'll have another meeting soon. Who knows, maybe we can recruit more celebrity guests in 2006!

Ah well. That's how it goes. There'll be more meetings to come, don't worry. We often hang out until well after dinnertime, so if you should happen to finish early, jump on the F line and join us!

Could you describe your problem in more detail? I rendered the first frame of this animation, and the pink nucleosis is clearly visible.

Two words: Animated distortion

You can animate the model's Surface -> Transparency property from 0% to 100% over time.

Yes. An "aside" is a technique used in a dramatic performance whereby the actor will step 'aside' from the action and deliver a soliloquy or an asinine remark to the audience which is assumed to be unheard by the other characters on stage.

Oh, it's on, baby. You can't keep a good NYNJA down. This is shaping up to be the biggest crowd ever! See you all on Monday.

You could just use a distortion grid to do that.

No, I can't get it to be reproducible. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

It's not just a re-draw glitch. I've been getting the same spline popping in my renders, around my character's wrists. I'm also using TSM on a Mac--dunno if it's a coincidence. Like Seana said, it's not entering muscle mode that fixes it. You have to click on the offending CP before the spline will "snap" back into position.

First of all, that's a demonstation video, not a tutorial. Its purpose is to summarize the features of TSM as quickly as possible. Second, Smartskin has very little to do with TSM. Every A:M model/rig is different, and things like fan-bones, CP weighting and Smartskin have to be handled by the individual artist on a case-by-case basis. TSM works in conjunction with whichever combination of those techniques you care to use.

Thanks, Mike! It looks like I need to cut this shot together with the previous one before I can determine exactly how much the grabbing motion needs to be sped up. So much to work on, this weekend... P.S. She's actually a vampire. The bandages and the hood are for keeping out the sunlight. (And to make her look freaky.)

I always love your diagrams, Robcat. I appreciate your taking the time. The "nose trail" in particular was a revelation. I moved the cloak a bit in the revised version to show the leg better, though that's mostly cosmetic. I don't understand what you mean by "no visible setup," though. A while back, Martin mentioned that Hash is looking for a programmer to work on A:M's toon features. That's no guarantee of anything, but it's encouraging to know that they've got enhancements in mind, at least.