ZachBG

That's the weird thing. Something about the skylight rig is making the material more opaque than I intended it to be. I'm willing to bet it's because your skylight rig uses Z-buffered shadows, rather than ray-tracing. Z-buffer shadows don't handle true transparency--in simple terms, everything is opaque (though I think it's more complex than that).

Congratulations!!

IIRC--and I probably don't--weren't the headlamps more obviously transparent, like the kind of glass used for car tailights?

Hi Daniel-- It's looking good to me, though the fireplace leaves a bit to be desired at the moment. My only modeling question is the chair... most chairs of that type that I've seen don't have such a straight back; they're tilted back a bit for comfort, so the struts form a curve rather than a straight line. But if you have a chair that looks like that, then I'm obviously wrong. Also, the speckled windowframes texture doesn't look quite right to me.

Just curious--what was the focal length on the camera for that?

GAAAAH! A floating eyeball! /me falls off his chair. Nice. So that's what you look like.

Nice. This is for the 10 Second Club, I take it? No suggestions here, it looks quite solid. The wide-angle camera makes his forward motion nicely exaggerated. Only "acting" nitpick... based on the sound clip, I would expect him to reach his "extreme forward" pose on the first syllable of "problems," rather than "man." Great character!

For extra credit, put the CG elements in the reflective item toward the rear. I don't know how one would go about that, though.

Sorry you haven't gotten more responses; if I were a decaling expert I might help you out. But something to keep in mind is that most of the modeling/decaling experts on this forum are either a) professionals/studios for whom "a few hundred dollars" isn't worth the time spent, or b ) talented hobbyists who prefer to spend time on (and have the control that goes with) their own projects. I fall somewhere between the two. But if animation comes along, feel free to send me a private message.

Cute! One minor nit-pick--when he's jumping on top of the ball (a ball on a ball! the mind boggles!), the ball doesn't maintain its volume; it only squashes in the y-axis without a corresponding stretch in the x and z axes. Still, good stuff and a great sense of space with the fast truck in to the poor guy...

Wow! That is super cool! You know, I think SynthEyes might be one of those paradigm-shattering programs, like Film GIMP and, yes, A:M, which bring an effect usually reserved for Hollywood films and puts it right at the desktop filmmaker's fingertips. Now if they would only develop a Mac OS X version. But hey, that's just me.

Feel free to share it if you like... I haven't made the jump yet, mostly because I haven't succeeded in getting the demo to track any of my own footage in Virtual PC. But I have VPC on the ancient iMac which I don't do any work on anymore, so I guess I'll need to break down and install it on my laptop. Thanks for the kind words, everybody!

Hmmm... I did 3 separate passes--the original video clip (which wasn't really a "pass" at all, I suppose), the character elements without the ground plane (with the alpha buffer on), and the shadow pass--alpha & shadow buffer on, ground plane active, shadows on, shadow buffer only. Then I composited them together in Final Cut Express. It could be done just as easily with Layers in A:M though. Are you sure you've re-activated the ground plane, and that you have shadows on in the Camera render panel? Edit: one other thing: I also had to change the key sun light to cast shadows, in fact I deleted the Rim light entirely because it wasn't anywhere near the characters.

Nice. Are you going to use CP weighting to make the "plates" look right, or some kind of fan bone system?

snerk... not yet! I just downloaded the pre-made .avi and .prj file. I am investigating whether the demo works in Virtual PC, though. I'm not sure what you mean... from what I understand, SynthEyes takes a video and spits out an AM .prj file with the camera moves matching the video, even making the video a rotoscope automatically. So the .mov part just comes from the regular AM render. http://www.ssontech.com/ I think.

Stunning aerial footage of what looks like a giant Muppet rampaging through downtown Dullsville... at 11... I had a little fun with the SynthEyes demo project, and thought the results were worth sharing. My sources tell me there may also be footage from one of the fleeing onlookers... at least if I can spend the $350 bucks on SynthEyes. Enjoy! ShaggyAttack.mov

Yow! I'd ask for her phone number, but I'm afraid the big guy'd stomp me. Looks good. My biggest suggestion for the second clip is the big guy's movement--especially at the end, he looks like he's gliding, rather than running, and needs more of a sense of weight. This is the case to some extent with Miss D as well. Still, good work!

Oh, now I see (pun intended)... we're looking at the inside of the retina sphere. Cool! Guess I need to brush up on the ol' anatomy.

Hmmm.... guess I'm not clear on the layout. Can you post a wireframe and maybe an exploded view? (Exploded eyes, yum! Call Quentin Tarantino.)

What were other techniques you tried, and why didn't they work?

Thanks, Bruce!

Hello all, it is with Great Pride and Joy that I announce the final version of Duck Sauce ("A Mystery that Squeaks") is now available on A:M Films. http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=895 [Mod edit: the above AMFilm link no longer works but I believe this version on Vimeo is the same film...] If you don't know the background already, Duck Sauce was produced as part of the 48 Hour Film Project, in which filmmakers, given a genre, prop, character, and line of dialogue, produce a complete short film, from writing to post-production, over one weekend. This version, though the writing and voices remain the same, contains revisions in some animation, new music, and was completely re-rendered. These things did not, of course, happen within the 48 hour time period. The original film was shown to thunderous applause at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD, and this version (well, almost) was shown to an as-yet-unknown amount of applause at the Portland Indy Animation Festival in Portland, Oregon. If you like it, please tell your friends. If you don't like it, tell your friends anyway and let them get screwed the same way you did! Thanks, Zach (on behalf of Godfrey, robcat2075, pugless, and zacktaich)

Wow... nice stuff, Zack.

Awwww, maaaaaan! Again you give us all something to look up to, Shaun. Great stuff! :)

John, that's fabulous! What do the bones control? Wide-Narrow, Open-Close a la Stop Staring?