NancyGormezano

Not sure I understand ? Why would you want the IBL images to show movement? As the models move thru space, the lighting will change on them, due to IBL image used (see first screen capture - no lights or rotoscope used, just IBL image). It's just a more interesting look to me. It's a matter of taste. A way to get easily creative lighting. If one is a stickler for accuracy, then no. Did you mean the camera rotoscopes? - yes they won't show movement - mainly good only to use for background when the camera doesn't move. Also I'm not talking about using environment map for reflections either.

That's great! Will have a look at it later, as I'm probably also going to be dwelling in the valley of rigging again, shortly. However, off to Zumba class for me in a bit - cha cha cha (I also have used parts of literig face rig, and found I changed stuff around as well

uh-oh. That's when body parts start falling off, if I recall.

Yes sorta. It's using an image for additional illumination applied globally to all models, instead of lights - In my example, I'm using a different image for the background, ie Camera rotoscope (Antennae galaxy) than I am using for the envronment map (orion nebula), for image based lighting or IBL, There is only 1 white klieg light (about 75%). Interesting things happen when combining different images. For simplicity sake, try it to see the effect with different images just for the environment image - some dark blue tones, some light red, etc. However note that there is a bug in A:M that when switches images for the environment map, it doesn't always take effect (PC, 16b 32 bit), and so you MUST do something like toggle Ambiance Occlusion to 1 % and then back to 0% in order to see the difference. It's a pain. Toggling the global Ambiance type from color back to image based also works I believe. EDIT: 2nd image I switched the environment map to a light tan leather image 3rd image is same image used for both camera rotoscope and IBL environment map

Wow, yes, indeedy. BIG improvement in time. Now it's only 30 days (24/7 - each frame rendered only once) rendering with 1 core for 10 minutes of animation. Much, much more reasonable. If you get into Global ambiant illumination, or IBL, you can fake more interesting lighting easily, and with practically no cost in render time. (don't use Ambiant occlusion of course) and don't forget: bigger frame size also means more oodlebytes of hard drive storage, for rendering, NLEditing, back up, etc.

looks terrific!

ugh...You took me seriously? Hopefully you're pulling my leg now.

So very, very sorry to hear of your loss Steve. Rough time for you. Take care.

The biggest way to save on rendering time is to use klieg lights with z-buffered shadows, instead of ray traced shadows with bulbs. Reflections really aren't all that big a deal if you keep it down to 1 ray. Real fine, dense hair close up will be a hog. Not so much if in the distance.Your other rendering hog is the frame size. If you halve it to 980 x 540, you could cut your render time in half or more (maybe even by 75%). If you're doing 9 pass - then turn off soften (just ups render time for no good reason that I can see). Obviously a faster computer, and many many computers will cut the overall render time for an entire movie. Each shot could be analyzed as to what is really needed - some shots could probably get away with using rotoscopes for backgrounds, ie render background once. Upgrade to version 17 and 64 bit OS But I'm a realist. Do the math. You may or may not have to compromise, depending on your pain/patience tolerance threshold. (Me? I aim for 30 secs a frame) For fun, lets say each frame will take average 45 minutes. For a 10 minute clip - thats 14400 frames x 45 minutes = 10800 hours = 450 days for 1 cpu/core running 24/7, no glitches (ha ha ha ha ha ha hoo hoo hoo). Lawd knows how many times you'll be re-rendering each frame (2-3 times at least). divide 450 days by # cores you'll have available for rendering and that's how long it will take. Or if you got a new 4 times faster core/desktop - it will be 112 days. Figure out how long you're willing to wait for final render, and what resources you'll need...see if it's reasonable. And then get real, and start compromising. Each shot will be different.

I think Jason needs to approve the video - shoot him an email support@hash.com ?

Oh yes. I've reconsidered & decided: me being useless, ie. disruptive, off topic, can be fun. Perhaps your chart needs to augmented? Instead of considering classifications of gas, liquid, solid, one needs to be considering specific gravity (a better measure of the relative densities of these balls, (eg ice solid is less dense than water liquid), as well as considering what material the ground is made of (specific gravity of feathers, sand? water? concrete, etc), and the surrounding atmosphere (eg, in a vacuum, under water?) as well as on which planet? Probably ambient temperature, material temps are in there as well... I'm pretty sure we don't need to consider IR signature, but never can tell with these things.

Yes, very beautiful. Maybe could use some animated varying of transparency to make it look more dust cloudy

Shape, hair looks good! Hair still looks a bit blown out for the standard A:M lighting. I have found (in the past A:M versions, not sure about this one) that turning down the Primary Strength property of the Muhair specular shader usually had more effect than tinkering with specular size, intensity of the hair emitter. Specular colors, properties work differently in 16 than they did in 15e (and before). I have the hardest time recreating looks that I use to have. I think using fakeAO would add some more dimension to the hair, and then fooling with primary, secondary strength properties might not be necessary. Image will appear less blown out. It's a tricky balancing act.

I feel your pain. I dread it as well. There are only a few, as far as I can tell, who actually enjoy rigging. It is rare, rare, rare for me (if ever) that there hasn't been some tweaking, fixing up, customization that needs to be done with the installation of any of the general solution rigs. That's a mighty tough order. Would love to see that button as well. But then it needs to be maintained, someone to run to when it doesn't work. Software changes, plug-ins change, people leave, button no longer works. It's kind of a dilemma. General installation solutions seem to end up with a more complicated rig than necessary, and the innards, workings get obscured from the user. The literig, 2008 rig are the easiest to hack. I found it more helpful to break the literig, 2008 rig into separate parts, and then pick & choose which parts I preferred from each. Until there is a supported general method (and people live forever), I think it's best to understand the basic parts and be able to look under the hood. Unfortunately for me, if I'm not doing rigging on a regular basis, it seems like starting over each time.

Terrific. He must love that

Love it! AND, I took a look at some of your other youtube videos. As I've always thought: You do some wonderfully creative, imaginative stuff!

more info - Looks to me like the constraints in the IK leg relationship are funny, especially the "AIM roll" for the foot bones. I deleted them and the IK legs seems to work. Not sure what's going on there as the the targets don't show when I try to recreate the AIM roll constraints.

Yes, that would be relevant if we were animating at what ? 1000 frames/sec? Oh yeah. Interesting video. I've seen it before. here's my previous post in case you might want to read it, see where I got the images (yes I'm delusional) I'm done with this conversation, it's becoming useless.

read my post more carefully: I have no idea what speed the camera(s) were taking images. It was not meant for use in any animation. The pictures came from reality based physics websites that had nothing to do with using it in an animation. They weren't concerned, nor had probably ever heard of stretch & squash. The images were used to demonstrate the path of a bouncing ball Here's one of the websites where I got one image. S&S was manufactured by a bunch of animators smoking dope.

What are all your render settings (eg passes, AO?, SSS?, etc). What kind of lighting are you using (bulbs, shadows?). How many rays in reflectivity (1-2 is no big deal)? Any rendering done at 1920 x 980 is going to take a longer time than most. You sure you need to render that large?

David: Please do not think I was critiquing your squetching at all! I like, prefer TOON, interpretive animation with squishy, squash. I like your animation in all it's imaginative glory. But if one is going for realism, my point is that there is basically NO (to minimal) stretching at all on any ball, no matter what it is made of, as it nears the ground. And if it's barely inflated, it won't bounce much either. It will deform on the bottom when it hits the ground. I only posted that silly image with my overly squetched caption to serve as an illustration that stretch & squash especially of a ball is toon behavior and can not be accurately explained in terms of real world physics. But some people like to use imaginative analogies to explain the behavior. I could have said tennis ball/ping pong ball/ eye ball turns into bean bag as it gets closer to the ground. Real world captures of bouncing balls are shown in this post. Theres no stretch and there's no noticeable squash (need to be closer up). Pity tho. Reality sucks.

I musta have missed the physics class when a bowling ball turned into a bean bag on it's way down to meet the floor due to gravity. If this helps you guys understand mechanics, forces, conservation of energy, mass, laws of motion, Potential, Kinetic Energy, vectors, etc, as well as body mechanics & physiology...then who am I to question reality?

At first glance I can see that your right arm IK relationship contains references to left arm bones/controls - you would have to delete those and make sure the right bone constraints stuff was ok as well. I haven't investigated any further into left arm IK relationship, nor the legs IK either. I'm not off hand that familiar with the steps of installing literig (did it a long time ago) - It's hard to tell from your descriprtion as to what went wrong, where in your process of following the installation instructions. Have you opened up the relationships (edit the relationship) and tried to correct them?

All I've learned from your post is that either you're not able to get my point or else you are not willing to get my point. You win.

I am not disputing that it's a good idea to start with a bouncing ball, and then introducing squash & stretch at some point. And I do agree that in real life - deformable, elastic bodies, humans will stretch and squash realistically, and the body parts will move with "realistic overlap" to satisfy the reality of the physics of motion, energy. Realistic and even plausible 3D/CG is about moving parts (head, torso, arms, etc) in some sequence, over some arc/path, over some time in some plausible way. Deforming realisticly modeled, or even stylized humanoids in a excessively, exaggerated toon type way is a hard sell. It looks odd. However, deforming them in a realistic way can usually result in something more plausible. On the other hand, 2D, traditionally has been about transforming drawn whole shapes, silhouettes (not parts), not necessarily (and not usually) in a realistic way. Excessive deformation of more "toon" proportioned shaped characters is a much easier sell. What I was suggesting is that explaining exaggerated Squash & stretch of a bouncing ball in terms of molecular energy is not appropriate (as in your critique). Nor as you suggested above: It muddies the concepts. Explaining it as a stylization, illusion, exaggeration to help sell the movement, compensation for frame rates, persistance of vision even, would be more "plausible", IMO.