luckbat

Could you be a little more specific than "a white render?"

Ken, you can see the whole sequence edited together here. (I haven't added the latest eight seconds yet.) Because I'm an imbecile. Constraining the umbrella to the geometry hand bone rather than the rig hand bone never even occurred to me. (Maybe because it's hidden?) Oh well, live and learn. Thanks, Ken.

I am surrounded by comedians.

Here is it, folks. Eight more seconds of action-packed "guy picking up an umbrella" footage. I just hope it can live up to the hype. Now I know the question on everyone's lips is, "How did you pull off the umbrella pick-up sequence?" I know, right? Well, it's a funny story. The umbrella is, of course, part of the Ebon model. It has its own bone, parented to her spine bone. However, the moment the umbrella flies out of its sheath, it needs to stop being a child of the spine bone, and start being a "free agent." To accomplish this, I created a separate umbrella model with an identical bone, set its transparency to 100%, and constrained Ebon's umbrella bone to it. So now there's an invisible umbrella controlling Ebon's umbrella. I also wanted the umbrella to spin as it careened through the air, which was easier said than done. Spinning actions need to be keyframed precisely, or else it'll look like the object is accelerating in midair. I tried a variety of approaches before I settled on constraining the invisible umbrella's bone to a null oriented perpendicular to the umbrella, allowing me to spin the null using only its Z-axis, which gives me a clean set of rotation keyframes to work from. Once it lands on the floor, Monk needs to pick it up, so I switched his hand to IK and constrained the umbrella bone to his IK hand bone. That seemed to work well, but naturally as soon as I transitioned back to FK, the umbrella slipped away, so I ended up having to constrain the IK hand bone to the FK hand bone to allow for for proper FK animation. So, to review: 1. Ebon's umbrella bone constrained to hidden umbrella bone, then 2. Umbrella bone constrained to spinning null, then 3. Umbrella bone constrained to IK hand bone, then 4. IK hand bone constrained to FK hand bone. The end result is what makes it all worthwhile, though. It totally looks like Monk is picking up that umbrella. He picks the hell up out of it. It was so worth the week I spent on this. The other major change you'll notice (aside from the additional eight seconds, I mean) is that I went back and added "acting" to Monk's performance. It's not like I forgot, it's just that the "standing up" portion of the animation was already the toughest thing I've ever had to animate, and I wasn't sure my abilities were up to the task of having the guy rise to his feet and be in extreme pain at the same time. Nevertheless, that's a lousy reason not to do it. So, I gritted my teeth, slid all my keyframes over, and rebuilt the segment. Personally, I liked the old "standing up" sequence better, but it just didn't make sense for Monk to be able to shrug off a beating like that. Oh well. Let's see, what else was incredibly hard... Hey, how about those animated volumetrics? Figuring out a way to render those as a separate pass was a chore, but it was fun to see them in action. I'll be adding that effect to some of the earlier shots once I have a chance to re-render them. I guess that's all for this time. By the way, this shot is still to be continued, if you can believe that. There are a few more seconds of Monk's reaction I need to add. Hopefully it won't take me more than a couple of weeks. Stay tuned. Shot_14b.mov

Well, there's the "Making of 'Duel'" segment on the Siggraph 2005 tape: http://www.hash.com/products/tapes.asp Other than that, this "Duel" thread has some insights, although all the test-render movies are now gone: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10501 I know of no "Stolen Smells"-specific information at all. Because it was a commercial production, the materials used to make it may not belong to Anzovin Studio.

"Stolen Smells" is a children's book that was commissioned to be adapted into an A:M-animated short by the Anzovins. Using the same style of flat lighting as The Duel, it looks like they've managed to match the 2D look of the original book very closely, though the characters are fully animated models. Anyway, I've been looking forward to seeing this since I first read about it--it's always nice to see the different styles that A:M can be used for.

If authenticity is what you're going for, I'd recommend toning down the color saturation of the cloak, as well as the blue lighting. Also, while the bandolier could very well be made out of the exact same leather as the vest, it should probably be a different color. Brown or black, perhaps.

I assume the gun has its own bone... Does the bone have any keyframes in the Chor? Is it constrained to anything?

You may not be rendering with square pixels. Are you using a preset for your image resolution?

I think there is a plugin out there that does that within limits but ultimately i think you have to finish it off by sight. a good reason to make your mesh as light as possible. Sounds like Zettle to me.

Ben, Animation:Master v13 (also known as A:M 2006) works on Intel Macs. A:M v12/2005 does not.

It works for bones that accept translation, e.g. foot bones, but not for bones that can only rotate, like forearm bones. My preferred method to set an arbitrary keyframe is to position the timeline indicator at the frame that I want, select the bone I want to keyframe, then hit Copy and Paste. This keyframes the position (rotation/translation) of the selected bone. Keep in mind that this method only works if A) There are already other keyframes for that bone, and The timeline buttons are set to "key bone," not "key skeletal." Otherwise you'll key the whole model doing this.

Hash Fellow.

Enough with the kung-fu stuff, let's get back to the walking! And the lying on the ground! As tediously simple as this half-shot may appear, setting it up was no picnic. Due to Monk's root bone being oriented in the opposite direction of the walk path, my attempts to blend in a walk cycle resulted in an inverting of the translations and orientations, causing his arms and legs to pass through each other in a most unpleasant manner. I spent almost a day trying to compensate for it before I threw in the towel and just added a second model, constrained every one of its bones to the corresponding bones in the original, and then assigned the walk cycle to that one. Ebon's cloak, as usual, gave me no end of trouble, and I was forced to re-work the rig yet again, this time de-coupling the base cloak bone from the spine bone so that I could constrain it to the floor at the appropriate moment. I can't believe how many things I've needed that cloak to do. [attachmentid=18106] Anyway, be sure to stay tuned for the next riveting installment, in which someone bends down and picks up an umbrella! You won't want to miss it. Shot_14.mov

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When Spelling and Grammar fight, everyone loses!

I assume you meant to write, "Spelling mistakes end up in the trash"...

Well, sometimes you have to wait more than 90 minutes. But really, who are we to tell you the best way to model your characters? A:M is all about serving the individual animator's vision. Make some choices, model it, and put it up for comments in WIP. Most likely you'll get praise and advice. If people think you're heading in a bad direction, modeling-wise, they'll say so.

Hey David, if you have any sage advice you'd care to share with the rest of the class...

Irony!

You're welcome. Good luck!

I'm not sure why you posted this in User Groups, but anyway--here's the scoop on A:M v13: http://www.hash.com/am2006/ and also: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=182111 And here's what was in v12: http://www.hash.com/am2005/

You're using v11.1b? You should be using v11.1i. That's the most up-to-date version. Which CD do you have?

The cat. See: this thread.

Duke, "porcelain" is a material that re-orients normals to make patches to look smoother. You can find it on your A:M CD.