luckbat

I'm glad to hear everyone had such a great time. I did too. Since Dennis isn't available to attend another meeting until next year, I'll volunteer to organize/host one more (probably in early December) if there's any interest. Meanwhile, I believe Dennis is in charge of planning the first NYNJA MUG 2006 meeting, so stay tuned for that. By the way, if anyone has any specific requests for our potential December get-together, please let me know and I'll try to prepare something. Oh, and of course, if you're an A:M user in the New York/New Jersey area and you didn't attend last time, what are you waiting for? Come on out to the next one and swap tips with your fellow Hashers!

Just a reminder that the first meeting of the NY/NJ A:M User Group (pronounced "ninja mug"--who's designing the logo?) is fast approaching. Here are the specs: WHEN: Saturday, November 5th, at noon. The meeting will run until people get bored. WHERE: 135 Plymouth Street (at Adams St.), apartment 208. There's a buzzer, but just in case, e-mail me and I'll send you my cell #. Here is a map. You can take the F line (York station) or the AC lines (High St. station). WHAT: A:M User's Group Meeting! Snacks will be provided, along with big-screen entertainment and a live band. Okay, maybe not a live band, but I do have a widescreen TV projector and a hard drive full of animated shorts. WHY: It's supposed to be 72 degrees tomorrow! So come on out and show off your WIPs to your fellow Hashers! By the way, if you do plan to attend, try to post a note in this thread so I have an idea of how much food to get. Hope to see you there!

I'll be supplying snacks + drinks, but feel free to supplement my offerings with whatever you like.

Does this mean a user-installable version is forthcoming?

Ouch.

Digital Life? I missed that one--I should check the calendar more often. Anyhow, see you next month!

I think you could improve things by desaturating the reds and yellows on those two signs. They're looking a little day-glo at the moment.

Nice. But most dive bars generally don't have carpets, though. For obvious reasons.

You can definitely take the AC, but I suggest exiting Penn Station and walking one block over to the F line on 6th (Avenue of the Americas). Both High Station (on the AC line) and York Station (on the F line) are walking distance from my place, but I find it's easier to orient oneself from the York Station exit. If you click back to my post on page 1, you'll find a map to my apartment that you can examine at your leisure. Rather than complicating things with a confusing set of directions, I suggest using the following guidelines to find the place (I'll try to post a photo of the building as the date draws nearer): * As you can see from the map, the Manhattan Bridge (NB: not the Brooklyn Bridge!) passes almost directly over my building. So even if you get hopelessly lost, just orient yourself by the bridge, then follow it to the waterfront. * My area (DUMBO) is lower than the surrounding area, so if you're walking downhill you're probably going the right way. I'll be giving out my cell phone number to attendees later, so you'll be able to call me if you get lost. Lastly, yes there are a couple of grocery stores on the way: Peas & Pickles, at the corner of Washington and Front St, and Bridge Fresh on Jay St. at Water.

Nope. Look closer. They're valid four-point patches. No hooks or five-pointers needed, which is why the fingertips render so smoothly. In fact, if it weren't for the need for extra geometry to define the knuckles, I could've gotten away with a simpler mesh on the rest of the hand...

Parking's pretty reasonable around here, but the streets are cobblestone, so be prepared to drive slowly. Trains work fine too. Whichever mode of transport you're more comfortable with.

Four people is enough for a User Group meeting, so it's official! The first meeting of the new NY/NJ A:M user group is at noon on November 5th, 2005. Location is my place: 135 Plymouth St. in Brooklyn, room 208. Walking distance from the F (York Station) and AC (High Station) trains.

Everybody knows about this chibi tutorial, right? http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/chibi/chibiart.htm

Well, most of us work during the day, so it'll probably have to be a weeknight or a weekend (though I am sometimes free on random weekdays). I imagine we should plan for at least three hours or so to make it worth everyone's travel time. I can supply snacks and entertainment (big-screen clips of 3D animation, etc.). I submit Friday 7:30pm, November 4th, or Saturday noon, November 5th. What say you?

No date has been set yet, but I've offered the use of my warehouse space in Brooklyn (DUMBO area). It sounds like we have enough people to set a definite date at this point. What do you think, Dennis?

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at. By sucking in the cheeks to get the toon effect I was after, I effectively made the cheekbones that much more prominent. Perhaps too much so. I'll look at the mesh from some other angles and see how I feel about it. Thanks for drawing my attention to it, Modernhorse. Oh, okay. But only because I'm shamelessly proud of myself for coming up with this little solution, which made all my spline reworking worthwhile. Check it out: angular enough to look cartoony, curved enough to look human. Simple, elegant, and the toon outlines render perfectly from any angle. Bliss.

For reasons I already went into a few posts ago, I have no new footage to show this month, so I decided to make this post extra-long to compensate. Here's a breakdown of what's been going on: To begin with, I did a full redesign of Monk's hands. Because it's adapted from Ebon's mesh, Monk's mesh is a little... off in some areas, notably the fingers, which were too rounded and slender for my taste. The Bruce Timm style that I've been emulating uses very squared-off fingers, so I decided it was finally time for a re-splining. I may have overdone it, actually--from some angles he looks like an Autobot. I'll have to see how it looks in motion. Next, since I was already redoing the mesh, I decided to address the other main area I've been disappointed with: Monk's cheekbones. Designing models for toon rendering is a tricky business. Many of the techniques that go into doing smooth, realistic modeling fly out the window when toon lines are involved. Whereas other Hashers are doing their best to eliminate creases and wrinkles, I spend my time trying to create them--at least in certain places--since the toon renderer draws toon lines at areas of maximum creasage. In order to get more prominent cheekbones on Monk, I completely resplined the sides of his face and jaw to minimize five-point patches (which wreak havoc on toon shading). As you can see, the curved line often used to define the cheeks of male cartoon characters now appears on Monk's face as well. Shadows will likely also see some improvement from the new mesh. Finally I moved on to the "fight scene," although honestly it's really more like a brief scuffle (don't get your hopes up, folks). While it was fun to finally do some real full-body animation, minimizing model intersections is proving to be a nightmare. These models have a limited range of motion due to their cartoonish anatomy and my limited rigging experience, and getting their arms to stop constantly passing through their own ribcages is a chore. Speaking of range of motion, I'm back to re-rigging the cloak again, as my previous Smartskin work was never designed to accommodate things like armlocks or yanked limbs. It's not that I didn't realize what I'd be animating, just that I didn't anticipate the extreme poses I'd be having to make. I know what you're thinking. Hey, sounds like a job for SimCloth, right? Right. Unfortunately, there's a reason we haven't seen anyone using SimCloth outside of a few short test clips: it just isn't up to the job yet. Supposedly the next few years of A:M's development will revolve around the needs of the Tin Woodsman of Oz project, so I'd expect SimCloth to get some major attention from the Hash team in 2006. For the time being, though, it just can't keep up with the sudden movements my characters are making. Believe me, I spent three whole days playing with all the SimCloth settings and re-calculating. Over, and over again. I really wanted to have something cool to show you guys for all my efforts, but unless you think watching Ebon's cloak crumple up like tinfoil is cool, no dice. So there you have it. New head, new hands, more cloak Smartskin, and a lot of failed SimCloth tests. I'm about halfway through choreographing the "fight scene," and may have a rough render to showcase in a few weeks or so. Thanks for reading.

Sure, but like KenH said, why would a spy be stealing jewelry?

One option is to meet at my place, in Brooklyn. It's only one subway stop from Manhattan and quite spacious. I'm happy to entertain other options as well, of course.

See: this thread.

There's something off about the scale of the wall texture. It makes the room look miniaturized. The floor and ceiling seem fine. In any case, I'd suggest beveling that wall corner, because concrete as pitted as that would likely not have such sharp corners. A charcoal-colored rubber baseboard would probably help too, not only in terms of realism, but also graphically, to draw the viewer's eye into the room a bit more. Incidentally, do underground pipes really just disappear into the floor like that? It seems like that would make them hard to maintain. I assume they'd be accompanied by some sort of floor plate or something. Ditto that one black wire.

Fan bones are intermediate bones that can help to blend between two hinged bones. They're often used on shoulders and hips. Here's an example using an elbow: http://free.hostdepartment.com/s/sonofpat/Elbows.html See also CP Weights, which might be better suited for your crayon: http://www.hash.com/am2004/Modeling/CP%20Weights/index.htm

I'd recommend adding a few additional spline rings with fan bones to smooth out the bending. At the moment, it's looking a bit like a crumpled garden hose. Easy to fix, though.

Keep in mind that Shaggy wouldn't hesitate to murder you in your sleep. So let's not get sentimental, here. He had it coming.

I'd make the shadows less dark--the lighting is looking a little harsh for cartoon lighting, methinks.