luckbat

Right, but Milkshape is a poly app. Animation:Master is not. I think it would, but you'll probably want to do some tests to see which method works best for you. Some people prefer using one app to do everything. It's really a matter of taste. Er... I don't understand how you can "create" a greenscreen in post. It has to be there on set when you videotape your scene.

Oh, boy. The thing is, it's impossible to give a straightforward answer to this one. Polygons and splines are as different as pixels and vectors. Yes, A:M can definitely import OBJ files. But once the polygons are changed to splines, it's a very, very different model. As many other Hashers have said, the work required to tweak an imported poly model so that it looks right is almost always more time-consuming than the work required to build a proper spline model from scratch. Pretend I said the answer was "no." That's a bit like asking if A:M recognizes calculus. XML is simply a text-based markup format for data. Yes, although I personally would export the Hash animation with alpha channels and combine it with the original video using compositing software. But you can definitely do this in A:M. If the video was shot with a greenscreen, then yes. If not, then pretty much no software can do this--not without extensive rotoscoping. We've got tons of answers. Ask away.

You are such a stress case, Teresa. Click on the link in the bottom right that says "Show rest of markers."

I'll gladly join you in Long Island for a BBQ, though I might have to bring my own marinated tofu. Hosting the meeting in Brooklyn is equally fine by me. Whatever works for people.

It's true. You haven't lived until you've seen Thom pop out of the ground, grow a thick coat of yellow fur, prance around like a drunken drag queen and then get decapitated by a miniskirt-wearing cat-girl who wags his head around like a pom-pom. No, really: http://hiruko.cool.ne.jp/am/composit_02_1k.wmv

You can't. But you can add a third camera, and constrain it to the other two so that it "jumps" from one to the next at the appropriate time. (This is done by changing the Enforcement percentages to 0% on one and 100% on the other. Make sure the Interpolation Method is set to "Hold.") It is not. But the technique above should take care of that too.

Okay.

Project WorkSpace.

It depends on your video card. If you play the DVD using VLC, you can.

What everyone wants to know: Where did you get the money to make your own feature film?

Short answer: Yes, available importers are here: http://www.innovateenterprises.com/AM/ Long answer: It won't work. Polys and patches are so different that you'd end up spending more time tweaking the imported poly model than you would have modeling from scratch.

Five seconds, but the cloth demo had fluttery sound for me. The other one sounded fine. MacOS X 10.4.6; Camino 1.01

I believe this is a known bug that Yves is working on. Submit it again, though, if you want it given more priority... Otherwise, you're stuck rendering the toon lines in v10.5, which didn't suffer from this bug.

Seriously, dude, you could get freelance work with mechanical-modeling skills like these. (Might have to learn rigging first, tho'.)

Hmm. If you pull this one off, we're going need to find a good rigger.

Soon, I hope! I want to finish the animatic pass before I do a lipsync pass, but hopefully that won't be much longer. I'm expecting this scene to be about 2 minutes long, so I'm more than halfway done with the first pass. Well, for this project, shots 1-11 are in one Choreography, with shots 12 and up in a second Chor. Each Chor contains multiple cameras, allowing me to render out the same sequence from multiple angles. Those rendered shots are then cut together in a compositing program, where I can fine-tune the color and contrast. Any time I need to revise a shot, I make corrections to the relevant part of the Chor, select the appropriate camera, and re-render that portion. Since I render to folders full of targas, I don't always have to re-do the entire shot, just the changed part. And since the backgrounds are composited separately from the foregrounds, unless I change a camera position, I only need to re-render the characters.

No, there isn't, but the SplitPatch plugin should work.

Please FTP the uncompressed full render to my server. I've e-mailed you the FTP information. I'll retrieve the file, compress it, and host the compressed version(s). Yeah, once you deviate from your storyboards, it's tough to stop. ("Hmm. What if I twirled the camera around this guy's head like a tiny moon...?")

Screw that. If hosting's a problem, I'll host it for you. My provider allows me 2TB of bandwidth per month.

Things that are outside the camera range can still cast shadows and reflections, so the renderer has to include them in the calculations. If you know for sure that these items have no visual impact, you can feel free to turn them off.

Patch count has no significant impact on render times.

Yep.

You'll need to cheat by shrinking the plane. Dragging the plane until it was so small that it didn't even render as one pixel would be nearly impossible. And then after that you'd be stuck staring at a pixel for five minutes until the plane got close enough to the camera to see. Make sure you're using a short lens length on your camera, though! The shorter the better!

Yes. You need a greenscreen (or equivalent) any time you need to place a virtual object behind a filmed object.

For the shot KenH describes, you'd probably want to invest in some motion-matching software like SynthEyes. Then you could use a moving camera, instead of locking it on a tripod.