NancyGormezano

Good on ya Matt! 4-8 hrs on each - wow - YOU are fast!

here's a bunch of matcap examples for neffy

Nice Rodney! For those who want to torture themselves even more, here's a bunch of STL files from a 3dscan collection in the UK (Lincoln?): http://lincoln3dscans.co.uk/ Not sure how well A:M does with stl's, but I see that there is a plugin importer

Excellent, wonderful character and texture style, cinematography, lighting, sound track! I am in awe. Bravo! Wonderful suspense building of story, kept me watching, wanting to see more... My one critique: ending (for me), needed a bit more resolution as to "why", or some other "surprise". Perhaps I should blame it on Dickens?

Love it! so wonderful and amusing and well done ...Very funny! .... but..but.. I don't speak German. I assume this is a public service announcement warning? Using the telephone can be fatal when ordering take-out food?

Petey and Jaydee were/are? also from Momentum Animation Studios, in Australia, but specifically Dylan Perry et al. here's from hash CG history

Yes Alain's models were some of my favorites to steal from.

I have noticed this crash/bug when copy pasting in some version (not sure which?) of 18. I haven't tried lately - but I'm thinking that the crash would occur if I used ctrl C and ctrl V but not with edit/copy and edit/paste or perhaps vice/versa? It did NOT just happen in 18O with a simple new model doing it either way. For me, maybe the crash would occur when trying to modify a model which was in an open chor or action? Or when using opengl versus opengl3 or vice versa? Try closing any open windows in A:M that aren't necessary. Switch between opengl and opengl3?

As near as I can tell, Tore's desire is to be able to have the Chor length stick to less than the length of the Chor Actions without changing the lengths of all the Chor Actions for every object. I'm able to do this but (I think) only when saving under a new Project file name... which doesn't make sense to me... so I'm investigating. NO that is not possible. The length of the chor is minimally set to the longest chor action. So NO, A:M can not do that and was not designed to do that, nor should it do that. It is not a bug. The range for his chor action for the spotlight was wrong. There were no keyframes set for the spotlight other than at frame 0.

The reason your choreography length was being set to 614 was that the chor range for the chor action for the testspot light was from 0, 614. I set it to go from 0, 28. I also then changed the chor LENGTH to 29 and the play range to go from 0 to 60 and then I saved the project. I closed A:M ver 18n/64, restarted and reopened the project. The chor length stayed at 29, the ranges for the chor action for testspot stayed at 0, 28. And my play range stayed at 0 to 60. Yours may be different because I don't know what you have your play range set to (don't think that is stored with project?) The render range is still set in the camera to go from 0 to 87 which is what you originally had. hope that helps. test_lengthshortening2.prj

Very sorry to hear about your mother-in-law. My condolences to you and your family at this difficult time. Peace be with you.

I forgot to update this topic last month - YES I made it to top half (honorable mention!) yay me. They had the most amazing entries and I am honored.

I am not familiar with the series - but some quick googling came up with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snip_and_Snap "Snip and Snap was a 1960 British animated series from Halas & Batchelor. It was directed by the Danish paper sculptor Thok Søndergaard (Thoki Yenn) and John Halas. It featured the exploits of a dog (Snap) made of paper and pair of scissors (Snip)." perhaps this info can help you google further EDIT: another link this last link actually has images and a video

woo hooo ...I made it into the honorable mention class (top half?) and with a special comment from Jake Parker (I believe who worked at Blue sky studios on rio, epic, not sure what else) that my entry stopped him in his tracks! He wasn't sure if it was CG, and Will terry - the other critiquer said yeah, it was probably made in Maya. And then I heard a low "whew" from Jake - all on their youtube video critique for this month. (my entry shows at about 11:00 mins, but it's very worthwhile to see all the entries. They do a lot of gabbing up front - so you can skip to 3:00 mins to by pass some of the gabbing) I was very surprised to make it into their top half, after receiving not very encouraging comments on their forum and here (BUT Lots of good, helpful criticism however). There were lots of incredibly beautiful wonderful entries, even the ones who didn't make top half.

here it is without the rings. I think it reads better - Thanks for the suggestion Robert. (Gawd working with glow, and SSAO and layers in PS is a pain - hard to remember which lights, models, alpha combos are needed to turn on/off )

Darker red background, more snow, some stars...I'm so sick of this - I can't see it any more - it's due tomorrow. There's always another 3rd thursday. (Just saw your new posts Rodney, Robert) Rodney: Yes - the shelf is floating - and yes, it's intentional fantasy. The theme isn't "rein drones are falling on my head" - that's just the way I'm feeling about this. The prompt was "The reindeer got the flu so Santa used ???...." (fill in the blank). The concept that I'm trying to communicate is: use rein drones as a substitute. And yes using the ortho camera , and a straight on shot might be a mistake - was trying something new - was trying to get a flat poster type look. I would have to start rearranging elements if I changed camera angle. Composition doesn't look as good (to me) Also trying to keep the background simple (no aurora borealis). Everytime I add backgound - it detracts from subjects. I originally had background as plain black - no other junk - that might have been the best for a poster look. IMO the dark red back ground works better than a dark blue in terms of color scheme. Not in terms of reality of course. sigh. Thanks for the help, opinions, suggestions. I think this is a lost cause. But on the bright side: I am trying to use A:M, and am learning new tricks.

Originally I had it as black, then blue, then purply - then dark red, etc etc so...I had been experimenting with a variety of backgrounds. And yes. I'm still not satisfied. It's been a loooonnnngggg struggle just getting a composition that I liked. I am going to continue experimenting with more painterly styles . eg overall a less saturated image, with grainier, less defined edges, background in pale ochre tones, most likely color scheme will still be red, purple, ochre - just different proportions yes indeedy. I was just about to do some more experimenting this morning...we'll see.

Changes: angled rotors for better view angle added hat for dawg bigger wreath, bow. More ambiance on bow changed texture on lettering to wood increase ambiance on santa's goody bag, ditched stars raised belt buckle, changed color, stretched Santa less and less opaque snowflakes lighter background duller red bottom strip EDIT: made Santa smile more and added more oomph to back lantern light

Good points Robert. Thanks I've been dealing with this too long so I forgot that the props might not be obvious from this straight on angle. (I might angle the props if I stay with this straight on camera view) Not sure what you mean by object in the upper left? do you mean upper right? (lantern on a shelf). The other stuff is just some fantasy snowflakes in the background? Or do you mean the red light on the prop for the car? I like the straight on perspective - for more of an illustrative, folk art type feel. But I guess I'd have to make that more obvious some other way or communicate more obviously that it is a stylistic choice. Or change the camera angle. Or use the perspective camera...Hmmm, I shall play.

This month's prompt from Society of Visual Storytelling is "The reindeer got the flu so Santa used ???...." (fill in the blank) Here's my "probably" entry (I am resisting adding more detail, stuff since I tend to over complicate my compositions..but ya never know) If you see something that looks familiar in this image - it's probably yours. Yes. All artists steal. But good artists steal a lot! (or something like that?) Thanks to Matt Campbell I frankensteined his wonderful car (peaked it and textured it with wood, got rid of roof/cab), modified (rigged) one of his Xmas ribbons, made an image hose of his snowflakes (I used in Painter) Thanks to "Tin Woodsmen of Oz" - frankensteined one of KuKlips desk's, shelf, lantern (probably all Stian's?). Cape came from the witch. Santa goody bag from "Scarecrow of Oz" (retextured, painted) Santa's suit originally came from some very old Santa Lion model, which I modified to fit my "Captain Crazy Pants" character, who grew a beard for the part. Also the Captain served as a starting place for Santa's dawg. The Rein drone originally was from some very old cartoon horse (Hash CD) - which I had modified for TWO, but then modified again for this (rotors, wood, peaked, saddle) The mouse and raggy doll are old models of mine. The hairy wreath is new, and so are the reins with sleigh bells, fully rigged so that the reins can take any path (did not need the rigging for this image )- will upload that tomorrow for others to use. I'm not a total mooch, ya know. This is the first time I've played with using an orthographic camera, and using bulb lights. I have typically stayed away from bulbs because of render times, but ver 18n on my system is sooooper swift. I will use them more and more.

NICE! (and high praise indeed about A:M's renderer, since you've been testing so many of them...good to know, now I don't have to test!)

Heres what an insane Assembly action with gawd knows how many action objects looks like that was done for KuKlips workshop (this is for both interior and exterior) - pure craziness. Also note with actions, and chors that have so many models - it might take 1-2 minutes to load...

Yikes. 140,000-300,000 patches! A:M starts bogging down on my machine when a model becomes more than 15,000 patches. Large patch count models are handled best by having many many different models, and assembling them all together in actions. That's how the enormously overly detailed sets (detail which was never to be seen usually) were done on Tin woodman of Oz and Scarecrow of Oz. What you can do now: 1) Yes get rid of those 240 windows - either by making them a decal (my preferred way) or 2) if you insist on having modeled windows, other modeled detail, then SPLIT your model up by copy, pasting just the windows (and other stuff) into multiple new models ie, into however many new models it will take to get each model into a reasonable size patch count - say 10,000ish. 3) Create new action (or new chor) - starting with bare bones building shape, ie cube, or whatever you have left on bare bones building after deleting all the stuff you moved to new models. Drag the new mini models into action (or chor). In an action they will become action objects In my opinion it is hard to work with action objects in actions to build something...but thats how the obsessed worked with them in TWO and SO. It is easier to import all the models into a new chor, delete all lights, cameras etc from chor, save the chor; which now, is really saving just the "pointers to the models - ie instancing. You can then import that Building set chor into any other chors, and it will bring everything in. Hope that was clear?

Me too. Have you tried to make something more cartooney? It wasn't possible to see how from the videos that I watched. I don't have CC, so I couldn't try. I guess the question is: How do you add your own models (model parts?) to be customizable in Fuse? I imagine they are obj (or something equivalent) - that fit with a standard skeleton. I assume that is done in Mixamo. But then I would wonder why would I need Fuse to modify? I just looked at Mixamo - that auto rigging thingy is the bomb . Not sure, unless I am trying to sell models with different clothes options, different proportions, etc, why I would need Fuse? I assume most of original model content is developed in Mixamo. All very interesting.

FABULOUS! You've done it again Serg!