luckbat

The copy protection on the CD is intended to prevent you from doing this. The physical CD can't be bypassed.

"AO"=Ambient Occlusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurbs There's only one version of Animation:Master, so whether you get it from Hash.com or Amazon.com, it's the same thing. Last year's free models are downloadable for people who didn't get the CD, and this year's free models presumably will be as well. P.S. Animation:Master uses splines. It doesn't use nurbs.

It's not in the object's properties. It's in the object's shortcut properties, in the choreography.

Thanks! The funny thing is, there are no expressions in this animation. Well, okay, Ebon has a few keyframes on her eyes at the beginning, but Monk doesn't even have facial sliders set up yet. All of his "expressions" are the result of the tilt of his head and the shadows on his face. Which is not to say that I disagree with you--I think he does, in fact, look like he's sneering a bit as he delivers the last blow. For the record, there will be real facial expressions added during the lipsync pass. When I start building the expression sliders, I'll post the typical grid-of-sample-expressions in this thread. Technically, she doesn't actually make contact with the camera, but the real reason is, I want the camera swivel on Ebon's kick to be fairly dramatic. Up until this shot, the camera has remained completely static, except for the brief tracking move in shot 3. So, if I jiggle the camera around during Ebon's close-up, it foreshadows the switch to "handheld-style" camera movement later on, which in my view diminishes its impact. I concede I may be going a little overboard in the film-theory department here. This is probably the weakest part of the shot. It's not an elbow in the ribs, it's a shoulder to the chest, but the fact that it doesn't read that way is sort of the problem. Looking at it now (this part of the shot was done over half a year ago), I'm pretty sure Ebon's head swivels the wrong way before the hit, and Monk seems to react a few frames too soon. I'm open to suggestions. I'll buy that. Too slow? Not enough acceleration? What would you change? It's from the, uh--you know, shockwave. Umbrellas are essential when direct sunlight can kill you. The second one's a spare.

Quick update to shot 12. I've made what I hope are some subtle improvements to the "swing-and-miss" portion of the shot, smoothing out both Ebon's swipe and Monk's dodge. I've also added one more second of animation, in preparation for the cut to the next shot. (One second? Hey, that's 14% more footage!) Man, that had to hurt. Some of the other changes I've made are mostly invisible--I resplined both Monk and Ebon's faces to allow for a greater range of expression and mouth movement when the time comes to do lipsync. I sharpened Monk's cheekbones a little. I completely rebuilt Monk's mesh and skeleton between the hips and the knees, as the old model wasn't able to accommodate this range of motion. (While I was at it, I also added some spline wrinkles to the front of his pants, but they're flattened out by the lighting in this shot. No biggie.) Hope you like it. Coming up next: "When umbrellas tumble!" Shot_12_8sec.mov

Well, it's not a hard-and-fast rule, but if you forget which CPs you've modified, and you later make any significant alterations to your model, you may find it more difficult to wrestle with your splines. Since some of your CPs will act like default CPs, while other ones will retain their custom bias. Not a big deal, just something to look out for...

The upside of using bias handles is that they allow you to reduce your spline count even further, while increasing your control over subtle curvatures. The downside: the more custom bias values you set, the more you have to keep track of. But there's no distinction between lengthwise and cross-section handles from a modeling point of view. In fact, on non-limb areas, the distinction gets quite blurry. So, use bias handles wherever you feel that they improve the curves of your model. Just be prepared to remember where you set them all...

Sounds like someone needs to rent The Road Warrior this weekend...

Stuart, that icon is from the IPB Community Pack, one of the pre-fab icon sets accessible by clicking on "Avatar Options" on your Profile page. If you visit that page, you may spot some other icons that you associate with particular members...

There are example projects on the Newton Physics page: http://www.hash.com/NewtonPhysics/

The plug-in isn't v13-only, but you're correct that the downloadable v12-era version is nowhere to be found. I think it was just an oversight on Steffens part when he updated his site, but hopefully in the meantime someone else will have a copy that they can upload for you.

You probably have Mirror Mode on. Turn it off and you'll be able to select all the points you like.

Seventeen hours for four seconds? Surely you're rendering the background as a separate pass... aren't you?

I love the colored toon shading. (How are you doing that? Post? Colored lights?) As far as the rigging goes, you might want to rethink whatever method you're using for her "wings." The faster she runs forward, the more the inertia and wind resistance will force them into a horizontal position. Unless they're supposed to be completely solid, you'll probably achieve better results if you add some lag.

Oh, I see what's going on. The loincloth is a separate piece. If you don't notice it in the beginning, it looks like the cape gets stuck through his midsection...

It's possible you're not in Animate Mode. That's the black letter 'A' on the toolbar. If it's not clicked, then no keyframes will be created when you move the model. There are other possible reasons this might be happening, but that's the first thing I'd check.

Well, if he ducks even one frame later, her hand will connect with his face. But you're right, it does seem like she misses by quite a wide margin. I'll see what I can do. Thanks so much, Stuart! Alas, a cut wouldn't work at all, since it would cross the camera axis. Frankly speaking, one of the prime motivating factors of that camera move is that it's the only way I can get the camera out of the corner it's in without creating a jump cut. (I could, of course, avoid getting stuck in the corner in the first place, but it's the best way to frame Ebon's close-up at the beginning of the shot.) But... She missed! Completely agree. This was a compromise I had to make for logistical reasons. Namely, if I allow Monk any extra time to wind up, then Ebon practically has to move in slow motion to compensate. Hmm... If I have him duck lower, I might be able to follow up by having him push himself off the ground more forcefully. That might help sell it a little better.

I don't think it's nit-picking. That arm should be the center of attention in that moment, so it's important that it look right. I spent a few minutes jumping around taking practice swings, and you're clearly right. Both the arm and the hand position are way off. Fortunately, it's an easy fix. I'll take care of it tonight. Thanks for pointing this out, Mike.

There is no shot 13. There was supposed to be a shot 13, of course. It was a close-up reaction shot of Monk's face as Ebon takes a swing at him. But after all the keyframes were in, I felt it was better to stay in shot 12 for the duration. I've been dropping shots left and right since I started animating this thing. I don't know what it means, or if I made the right decision. But the result is that my scene's entire "fight sequence" is now contained in a single continuous seven-second shot. I think it looks pretty spiffy. That doesn't change the fact that I am completely, utterly, sick to death of shot 12. I assume you guys are, too. I mean, I've been posting the same five seconds of animation to this thread for five months now. Five months! If anyone were paying me to do this, they'd have fired me by now. Ah well. It wasn't all hellish. I did learn a lot about rigging. I even figured out a way to keyframe my cloak rig's lag properties, allowing me an unbelievable level of control over how the cloak moves and flows. And I think I'm a better animator than I was five months ago. But whatever. It was the most difficult shot I've ever animated, and now it's done*. [attachmentid=17276] _______ * Not counting the, y'know, finger movements, lipsync, facial expressions and lighting work I still have to do. Shot_12_final2.mov

Are you selecting the model before you hit Copy?

If you have an extra $30 lying around, consider getting the "A:M QuickStart 2" CD-ROM from Anzovin Studio: http://www.rafhashvideotapes.com/amquickstart.html Not that there aren't plenty of free tutorials out there already, of course. But some people prefer video...

These are most of the model formats that A:M can import/export: http://www.innovateenterprises.com/AM/ I don't believe A:M imports many animation formats other than BVH (motion capture file format). Although I still say it's more trouble than it's worth, here's a thread from some folks who imported 3DS models of Halo characters into A:M. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8439

I love garden burgers... in theory. Most brands of garden burger are awful. The one I like best is the "Grillers" line of patties from Morningstar Farms, but they seem to be really hard to find in my neighborhood. Maybe I'm just not shopping at the right places.

"Greenscreening," or "chroma-keying," only makes sense in the context of live-action film and video. They're the only way to isolate foreground objects so that they can be composited with separate background imagery. If you want to pull characters from already-rendered game footage, I guess that's sort of like live-action, and yes, you'd need a way to separate your characters from the background. But I still don't understand how you can make the background green without manually painting over it on every frame. When making objects in CG, there's no need to use chroma-keying since there's no background to remove in the first place. You simply tell your 3D app to render your models with an alpha channel (More about alpha channels here: http://www.am-guide.com/TinCan/AM_&_Alpha.htm). If your 3D app or compositing software doesn't understand alpha channels, it's time to throw them away. There are many free and inexpensive compositing apps out there that handle alpha blending, so you should be good to go.