NancyGormezano

Thanks Mark! Jiminy crikey-croaky, I fergot to give credit! Those ladies (descendants of the Toad in Scarecrow of Oz) sneaked in for a cameo. I hope the OAG (Oz Actors Guild) doesn't start a paternity suit.

You can also start out with animating at 12 fps by changing the setting in the project property. You can switch to any fps at any time as well during your development, and A:M will remap the keys to the right frames automagically. You may have to do a "snap to frames" in some cases, eg like when going from 10 to 12 fps. Try it.

Thanks dbl ! (I may call you dbl? or do you prefer dblhelix?) Yes, I chose step 2 instead of 1 when I rendered. And then of course when I imported the tga (or jpg) sequence into QT - I chose 12 FPS instead of 24.

Well - he looks like he's holding a steering wheel and a wrench - but I had to stop the clip in order to tell. If there is more to come with this clip, then it might be more obvious. If not, then maybe you need to either slow it down, or have him do some other maneuver at some point, so that it becomes more obvious, perhaps. If you want to make the wheel look shiny - add some specularity, and some reflectivity to the wheel surface properties. You will also have to make sure that the rim light in the chor has specularity ON. I believe the default setup had it OFF (not sure). I like the joke!

Here's some different settings - I like to add specular color for interesting colorizing (make sure your lights have spec setting turned on). left thingy - spec color is turquoisey, right is golden color play with spec intensity, size, reflectivity amount, reflectivity filtering, blend Use a landscape image (or any background) in the environment material, as well as turn on reflectivity for chrome parts

great likeness!

Thanks Paul!

Thanks Chris!

I did some testing this morning where I set the ground to flat shaded. I also changed AO=75 as 100 % was too dark, grainy for my taste for above the clouds (50% was probably too light for yours). Also 75% AO looks better for the hair - retains the light pink. I would prefer it pinker. I still do not like how AO makes the 3D model semi-transparent clouds dark, and not white. I wanted a more light, ethereal look. Also felt the rim shadows were too sharp, and too dark for the environment when ground is set to flat shaded, so changed that as well to 5% soft, 80% dark. That could be worked more. The color balance could be tweaked some by changing IBL color and klieg color, shadow color. Steve, Rob - Thanks very much for the offer to re-render this with AO. If I get done with some revisions, special effects I want to explore first, and don't run out of steam, I may take you up on it, if the offer still stands at that point. Truthfully, after seeing Stian's turntable of his cathedral, and how it scintilates, flickers from the grainy noise introduced by AO, I would be concerned that AO doesn't work well for animation? Maybe post blurring would help ? AO Looks great, fabulous for stills.

Neat idea & fun project.. I'm jealous. Seems like plenty room for lots of imagination. Not knowing what this sequence is about (I wasn't able to view on Atom films) - I am wondering if your task is to recreate his original scene in a different media? or is the goal to interpret the scene with other gags?, actions? To me the audio track sounds as if it would give you lots of license to go crazy all out with this bit? More mayhem perhaps?

5-6 minutes/frame isn't a lot of time, even more so if I've got someone else rendering for me. This time, my objective was to get me enthused again, and to get something done, in a short amount of time. No need to use this clip if it ruins your AO project. I'm not that in love with the story. I mis-spoke about the hair being the cause of excessively higher render times with AO, other than AO makes hair very dark. I believe it's really the number of patches that seem to cause higher AO render times. Less patches, mo' faster I believe? I had started using a different set of characters that had more patches, and way more hair. When I saw that it might take 10+ mins/frame with the more complex models, I then dropped down to using simpler models, with less dense hair. I probably didn't have to change my models, story, since I ended up going without AO, and only rendering half the frames. AO, to me, most of the time looks great. But I don't think it's the ONLY style in town, and not for all lighting situations. I look forward to trying out Jenpy's plug-in "Thank You" other people for your nice comments. I appreciate it.

Mainly, mostly because the render times were just too, too long. I prayed to St. Stian of the Eternal and Everlasting Rendering, to grant me patience, give me strength, but alas, Beezlebub showed up instead. Funny, how Beezlebub appeared to me in Bruce "the Undie Guy" Monahan form. I blame it on him. . He inspired...ok...ok...challenged me to get something done when he posted his satanic entry. I averaged 22 secs/frame without AO. Took 3.5-4 hours to render half (662?) the frames. I needed "instant" gratification to keep me going...nay, correction...get me started. I forget what it would have taken, in 15j+ with AO (3-7 mins/frame?). The hair is a bear. Ver 16 beta3 was giving me fits, and on the 32 bit version, I'm not sure how much time it would have saved (20% or more?). I will check out beta4, at some point.

Yes, yes ... it could use tweaking. Might add some special effects in post. Might add some sound effects, in addition to music track. Might. Might not. I rendered out every other frame, and I think I like the "stop motion" feel. So probably will not render out the "other" every other frame. This was a good exercise for me. It's been a long time since I've produced anything. Took awhile to feel more at ease. Story is a bit lame. I winged it from the beginning, and changed it many times. This was the least lamest. Music is royalty free from Kevin MacLeod - Incompetech.com. It's unfortunate that I didn't start out with some music, but this piece "Comic Plodding" seemed to fit the best after I got done. It's a good site to check out for music. Thanks in advance to Matt Campbell for the use of his money wad. Thanks to TWO for the Chief Loon model, a basic, generic, amenable to modification model that is also squetch rig enabled. 2final0000.mov

Ah Ha! (I just edited my previous post)

Really very, very nice. And I don't usually like space ships! I have to ask. Why so many splines on the .... ummm... long blue thingies? Everything else looks so economical, spline wise. EDIT: I just looked at your reference photos, so now I understand about the splines. I suspect you might have been able to get similar effect with a cylindrically mapped decal with large # of repeats. Looks good!

Excellent!

Cute litte guy. I remember him in your bus stop entry. I think the arm motions could be snappier in parts, and he could use a little more deliberate finger posing. I like your acting choices and render style as well.

"translate to" AND "Orient like" are the constraints to use

Oh yeah ! fun!

I bought the 2001 Beetle based on it's looks and that it was fortified with Turbonium! I thought the horn would go boop-boop, as any self respecting cartoon car should. It was not cheap. Stupid stuff breaks on it. Constantly. Even the idiot lights telling you "Get thee to a repair place QUICK and they will tell you whats wrong because the manual doesn't" break. It does get good gas mileage (33 mpg highway) YES! We were stupid to buy. I also own a 1994 Subaru Legacy. That has, and still works like a charm (only 30 mpg highway), and requires only normal maintenance. The only thing broken is the air conditioner. But it's ugly, boring. We expect our cars to work and last forever here in California, land of perfect weather. (We did take the beetle camping for 3 weeks, and remarkably, we could fit all our gear in trunk and back seat)

Right click on the frames at the top of the timeline, then set the play range to whatever you want. Your chor can be any length, but you will not want to always play the whole thing thru. Especially when one has a very long chor.

Aha! So that's why I could barely see the problem (uhh...couldn't see it at all). I use a CRT.

No, because they keep getting stolen or fall off. We've given up replacing them on our 2001 bug, at $65 a pop. NICE image (I will never, ever get another VW bug again. What a stupid car. The dumbest things go wrong, and cost an inordinate amount to fix)

heh heh. In astronomy terms: An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer. I shoulda said partially occults. Ya want bettah I shoulda said occlude? But regardless, it seems that it might be an even/odd incantation/occultation/occlusion thingy perhaps? And a paucity of patches? Doo doo doo doo. Or more succinctly: a doo wop a biddie diddie yum diddie yay! (hope it works for you)

Hmmm...tried in 15e as well - and get same funnies - it appears that the problem occurs when a cutout patch occults another cut-out patch. If you change your view angle (or separate the rows) - so that they don't overlap - the problem doesn't occur. That obviously isn't going to help you. Have you tried decaling instead of making it a patch image? I don't think that has the same problem. Also not sure if spec is also contributing to problem with cut out patch images (try setting spec color, size, intensity = not set) EDIT: Blah - never mind - I just tried decals versus patch images in both 15e, 15j+ - all still look funny - but funny in different ways