John Bigboote

I figured... thanks Rob- 32 it is!

It has been a while since I've posted any fun stuff I've made with A:M... I use Element3D and C4D more and more these days... but a client wanted this animated globe with photos being stuck to it by pins and thinking how to rig it up in either of those 2 apps gave me 'the fits'. This simply uses 'orient like' and 'translate to' constraints for the photos and pins to get them to rotate and stay in place on the globe as I spin it. All moving elements in A:M... text and post was done in AE. Funny thing on this job... the client- a young woman(not that that matters) did not understand why I needed to spin the globe at all. Can't you get India, China, Austria, Portugal and Mexico all in the same shot on a globe? I asked if I can flatten the map... no- it needs to be a GLOBE. Geography! I asked her to look at a globe if she has one... no. At home maybe? No. Google Earth? No. I had to render it out so she could have her 'ohhh' moment. Weirdness... After making a globe in Element3D and then the same in A:M using spherical decal placement (easy!) I was disappointed to notice the horizontal lines have a bit of distortion that looks inaccurate in A:M... you can see the wobble to the lines in the animation- primarily in the oceans. Wondering what that is all about... I used a sphere with 8 subdivisions... I will try a higher number and see if that fixes and report back. Magna Globe Where are You3.mp4

This is a fantastic collection! Way to go, Hashers!

Here it is- half a year later... I was trying EXRs again and again for one reason or another was using the regular renderer... glad I found this thread!

Hey Rob- responding to your 'pre-roll' tip... above. I have been revisiting A:M and some of my models- and as you may remember I do a lot of work and research with A:M hair feature, trying to push it to it's limits. I have not had any troubles with the pre-roll feature and find it is quite a nice part of A:M's toolset... another feature that the other apps I have toyed with do not consider to include. I find whether you do your pre-roll before or after the zero frame the calculation times are similar. I don't want the programmers to think this is broken feature as I use it quite regularly and feel it works as advertised. For those who may wonder... what does pre-roll do? On the model in the image attached I have 2 types of hair. 1- the short bangs which are groomed in A:M's groom mode and 2- the long flowy hair that falls behind the head and shoulders. For the long hair, if I were to just start rendering on frame 0-forward, the hair would be sticking straight out from the patches normals, kind of like the effect you get at a science fair when you touch the electric ball that sends static electricity thru your body and makes your hair stand on end. So- a period of a couple seconds is needed to let the hair fall according to the gravity settings and its mass settings, and if it falls over something and collision-detection is activated... it 'should' be affected by the geometry and not pass thru.

Cool! I think I may have helped you out with that pillar, which can be seen on Sketchfab https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pillar2-1ee0e4c05f834812981e0aaa73c26804 Funny, I put all kinds of crazy stuff on Sketchfab and that pillar of all things gets the most likes and downloads! A cool Sketchfab feature I employed on this model was the addition of a soundfile, which as you zoom-in closer to the model the audio gets louder. A big ATTABOY to the 1st person who can tell me the name of the band who made the music I used... and the album/song... I'll just sit here and wait...

I AM ENTERED!

Congratulations to the WINNERS, Dan-Steve-Charles! and as always to Rob for the organization, medal creation, and getting dressed in his 'Sunday-go-to-meetin' suit for the 'scratch-off' prizes video... LOVE the production value! I hope to be able to participate in the next contest... so let the trash-tawkin' begin!

Is'nt there a 'like' button here? Anyways... like!

Wow- coming in late on this one... I coiuld never really get displacement to work so I will need to read your technique, Rob. Very cool!

Try a render without SSS on... if you still have the glitches try a render without SSS and the AO. Also- if you are using multipass, try the standard render- and vice versa.

ALSO- are you using a 'render as lines' group? I'll bet if you get rid of the render-as-lines group the dark-rendered 5-pointers will render right.

Hi Shelton- Nice model! Which AO feature are you using? (A:M has 3 that I know of...) -A:M's AO feature which is pretty slow to calculate. -A:M's GPU aka 'Screen Space Ambiant Occlusion'-or SSAO, renders swiftly but is a faked effect which works nicely. -FastAO which is a 3rd party plug-in that may have been outdated by SSAO- renders swiftly but is a faked effect which works nicely.

I see that- it does a pretty good job automatically... you just lose a degree of- control.

ProRes? Trying to figure-out how Apple ProRes is involved... I see the text file as a layer in AE, but reading it is gobbleddy-gook to me- so I won't mess with it. I have my light buffers and specularity and shadows buffers now and playing... fun! That ProEXR is the catch!