NancyGormezano

beautiful!

These all are looking terrific

LOL...its not screwy if I'm getting what I want! I love my setup! I have a work around (I make copies of the models and don't embed them and it works) and no time to break it down if I don't have to. Uh...so let me get this straight...You don't have a problem? Then why did you start this topic if your setup is working ? Or is it that your problem is solved by not embedding? Gee. Sorry you don't have the time to figure this out. I'm done.

Here's another thing to look at - when I examine your project in notepad - I see constraint references to HiResWilliam_KhakiUniform1011...where in A:M PWS I only see the name HiResWilliam_KhakiUniform101 Suspicious? Do you have another model named HiResWilliam_KhakiUniform1011 (or at one time were working with it) and exchanged that model? I now have no idea why it works for anyone.

I recall vaguely that you said the files are on a shared network drive? We don't have that setup. Perhaps something is going screwy with that in that you think you are accessing the new file and you're not really, or there is something in that embedded gawdawful mess of a project with a zillion constraints that the file paths are messed up, and you can't really tell what anything is accessing because it's all embedded? But the really screwy thing is for you to keep doing the same old same thing you've been doing and expecting a different result. You must start simplifying your project by eliminating things until it starts to work for you to track it down, or else change your work flow. It may be a bug, or it may be your work flow, system configuration. Since it doesn't fail for me (or Robcat, or Rodney), we can't eliminate anything. Perhaps, start with getting rid of that hair constraint action, and those odd looking empty folders. Eliminate the geometry. Then look at getting rid of all those shirt pocket path constraint relationships, smart skins, etc...get it down to bare minimum where its still consistently failing. AND another thing I am dimly remembering: there was some very weird, esoteric bug in A:M with file naming? bone naming? that no underscores or dashes or something like that are allowed. It caused A:M to break, but it wasn't obvious...and it's not clear why, nor if the bug still remains.

In the 10 plus years that I have been using A:M - I have ONLY used chors. I only use projects when I am forced. I have only found a need for projects when needing to embed data in order to share with others. If you save a project - all the modified elements of a project get saved (materials, models, chors, etc), whether you want them to be saved or not. I want control over when and what I save. If, for example, I have made changes to a material: I save my material, then the model that uses the material, only if I want the model to use the new material. Also: If I've saved a model to a new name and it is used in the current chor that I'm working in, then I also save my chor that is using it (if I want the chor to use this new model name). I also do not believe in auto save because I do a lot of testing and what-ifs and I certainly don't want my experiments to be saved. A project can contain multiple chors. A project can contain multiple items that never get used in any chor, model contained in the project. For example images, sound files, actions. uhh...animating and rendering...is the normal use ....not just for constructing large models.

Coupla things I notice: I just watched Rusty's video - and differences that I notice is that he is on Win 8 and I am on winXP pro. I assume Robert is on Win 7, do not know Rodney's OS nor platform The constraints look like they should work in Rusty's video. However I also notice the way he opens the saved project: from the list, rather than navigating to it with File/open. Maybe it's grabbing the wrong project file on his system? But yes, again, the constraints look like they should work I also would suggest choosing embed all before the FINAL save of the project, just to be safe and superstitious. The other practice which is a MUST that is not being done, is that if Rusty intends on switching the body model's and heads later on when he gets this working, even if models have same skeletal system, then he should rename the "shortcut to headmodel" to HEAD, and "shortcut to body model" to "BODY" before doing any of the constraints. Constraints have been known to break if this isn't done, in previous versions. Do not know if that is still true in ver 17. I also wonder if there is some confusion as to what's being embedded where, as it is now possible to embed things in a chor, and not just in projects. And materials can get embedded in models. Ugh. Too confusing. I never embed anything unless I intend to archive it, or share a project with someone else (like now). You never know what's using what and where, unless you check the status of the component. As for differences in Projects and chors: Yes I only work with chors and rarely ever use a project (but I don't do netrendering). However, in past there were quirks/bugs with chors not saving certain items (eg Fog rotoscope maybe and other things that don't come to mind). Also the path to the particle systems files are saved in same folder as current or last saved project, even tho the paths are accessed in the chor.

32 bit

It reads very well, love the foil? bendy action. Well done. Pon's reaction is very good. My only crit would be the double take. Servant guy seems too blaise, unaffected when the foil first goes past him so closely. A natural response would be to jump or twitch unconsciously, automatically somewhat, or at least blink/shut eyes because of the close proximity and disturbance of the peripheral vision. The double take (which is good) would come when it finally registers consciously. But then again, it is a toon...and natural doesn't necessarily apply.

Uh that's weird...because I see something different when I first bring up the project (17g-32). Did you change the head control bone? But besides that - I too find that the constraints seem to be holding fine. rustyh264.mov

Uh, you're welcome...but I suspect you have accidently posted in wrong thread...this thread is probably what you want

or you might also see what effect changing the camera angle slightly might have (raise it), and possibly changing size of sea plane. ie make smaller. Either of those could reduce the effect of horizontal lines bunching up at the horizon. But making the sky dome ignore fog could probably do it for you.

To animate emission rate: In the chor pws - turn on "show more than drivers" - ie click the red thingy, for the model that has the sprite/smoke material. Navigate to the group (in chor pws) that has material (expand all triangles, +'s) - select emission rate property - set keyframes wherever you want. In this example I've keyframed 100 for the emission rate at frame 0, and 0 at frame 24. Particles will still exist past frame 24, until they all die (according to number of frames asigned to LIFE property - also animatable)

And I forgot to add: That's a cute character, & nice rotoscope! - will make an excellent, fun model.

You are showing the properties for the model - you need to show/change the view properties for the rotoscope - click on rotoscope1 (in PWS in the model under rotoscopesl) and the properties for rotoscope1 will show up in the property window. Then change rotoscope1's view property to left (or right or whatever), and then click in the model window, and change your view in the model window (to left, right or whatever). You can add additional rotoscopes by right clicking on model/new/rotoscope/pick the image (can be same image)...then change the view property of the new instance of the rotoscope to front (or whatever). If you want to reposition the roto (for a particular view) - change the model window to the view you want, click on the rotoscope, and move it (You can close the community window, if you're not using it, and you will have more space available for everything else on your screen. Similarly, you can also close the chor window, if you're just concerned with modeling for now.)

Have you changed the view property for the rotoscope for the left (side) window? The front window roto property should say front instead. Notice both views are using same image, but positioned differently My screen does not look like that. When I hit properties I get nothing. What am I doing wrong? Post a screen grab of what you see. I was using 16b-32 PC. I have View/properties on because I have Tools/options/global show property triangle NOT checked (you may have it checked). I also have show advanced properties checked (perhaps you don't?)

Have you changed the view property for the rotoscope for the left (side) window? The front window roto property should say front instead. Notice both views are using same image, but positioned differently

Right mouse button, or as others prefer: right click Even if you have 1 image being used as a roto for 2 different views, as long as you have designated it in A:M as for left rotoscope (in left window), and for front rotoscope in front window, then positioning one in the front view should not effect positioning in left, unless you have both selected at the same time?

On PC when you are in the model window go to menu: window/new window (alt+W) then change the view in the new window

Crocs go after the baby hippos...tasty, easy little snacks, if mama isn't vigilant...I have seen croc mayhem in action - very gruesome.

fabulous!

The animation looks good, very impressive! Realize that this is not final render: but hope gloria gets some hair, & the scintillating of ocean horizon gets hidden (fog could work).

Thanks Mark. Ah ha! now I see what you're talking about. I am now suspecting that your player for QT movies (more recent than mine, and different) has some funny setting. I use an old version of QTpro & player, and when I open Simon's big original file - the transparency settings are set to dither, and the background looks blue, as expected. However, if I change transparency to pre-multiplied with white in the QT player, I get white for the background, if I change it to pre-multiplied with black, I get other weirdness. So it looks like the alpha channel is encoded somehow in the file from A:M, even tho, the option was turned off in A:M, but the player knows what is in the alpha channel, and what isn't. Check the properties of the movie in the player if you can? EDIT: - I just noticed that when I compress Simon's file in QT pro, and re-open that file, that changing the transparency settings has no effect, so that the background does look blue no matter what setting I choose. Yes perhaps the animation codec, and none codec has alpha info, but the others (intermediate, etc) don't. I also just noticed that when I rendered something to mov file (16b 32 bit) with none codec, that file came in with dither in the QT player, and the sky was the color it should be. Changing to premultiplied white caused the imagery to have white background, even tho I had alpha off when rendering.

I am still not understanding "black with blue outlines" ? I haven't seen it in your renders - can you do just one frame/still so we can see what you're talking about? Like I said - if you only see it within A:M and it does not show in the final movie- could it be a Mac only display thing? I also don't have a choice of "Apple intermediate codec" for rendering to a QT movies from A:M. It must be a Mac only thing? I've uploaded image to show the options (codecs) I have for creating QT movie from A:M. If I were to do a mov, then I would probably choose none. However, I typically render to frame sequences from A:M (jpg, tga, png). Then I import those sequences into QT pro - save as a file.mov (with no compression). AND then export another version (different name) with compression (with settings that I showed up above). Then I can play ad nauseum with the compression, frame size settings, to find some compromise between size and quality, if I have saved the original QT mov uncompressed. There could be different optimal values for each movie, based on how noisy, or quickly the imagery changes in the original. That's the nature of the beast of compression. I use 24 fps or 12fps (stop mo look) in A:M (and QT pro) - because it's easy for me to divide (2, 3, 6, 8, 12, 24) and traditional animation (and film?) used those rates. If you are delivering to video then you would have to convert somewhere else to Pal - so for you, if it's easier to use 25 then it's whatever works. If I were delivering to video here (29.97 fps) then I too would probably have to do a conversion (premiere, AE) or live with slightly off sync sound? I too am not that familiar with the consequences, so don't listen to me.

When I play that large uncompressed file - the background looks blue. So I'm not sure what is the problem? Yes sometimes I have noticed that the resultant file (or frame) viewed from within A:M after rendering, the background will look black (as if the alpha was turned on), but it's not in the actual mov file. Yes, your file size is large because the animation codec was used (from A:M? or QTpro?). Animation codec is essentially NO compression, or uncompressed. When I used QT pro to compress your original uncompressed file, (file/export/options/movie to qt movie/settings/ - I used my default or what was set last-not necessarily required: H264, quality high, keyframe rate 48, frame reordering yes, encoding mode multipass, dimensions 320 x 240, data rate automatic, optimized for download) and I got a file size of 967Kb (down from 20MB). (Don't ask me what all those settings mean, I'm just following someone else's suggestion). Hope that helps in using QT pro to compress your A:M frame sequences or movies.