John Bigboote

http://aescripts.com/aftercodecs/ I figure these guys are going to make a million dollars, then lose it all to an Apple lawsuit. For the last 5+ years, Apple's Pro-Res Quicktime compression has been the standard in video playback and delivery in the pro world. And Apple being Apple- they made it so that Windows users could read, but not write Pro-Res files. Which has been a royal pain to Windows users (most just keep an old Apple around for conversions)... 3rd party solutions have come and gone, most simply don't work, or were too complicated command line stuff. An article I read explained that Apple had tied part of the conversion to something inherant in Apple hardware that is not found in PC's... whatever, it has been quite a roadblock... until now. I am going to test the free version and will report my findings. AE Scripts is usually a pretty reliable source for erthwhile plug-ins. $55 not too bad- they could charge $300 and sell a ton of them. They also claim a Mac version is coming soon... which begged the question, WHY? from a mac user. Here is 3 good reasons- they claim: -faster ecoding(for Pro-Res and H264) in the AE Render Queue than After Effects can do. -smaller file sizes than AE writes. -better image quality/less artifacts than AE produces. We'll see!

Resurrecting this old thread to show some E3D stuff. This was a nifty little combo between A:M and E3D (Element 3D, a GPU renderer) Client is International, they make semi-trucks. Their logo has a very particular hi-light to the letters that are cutout of the metal... 1st thought was to simply use a boolean to cut out (reverse) the letters in C4D, but then, that would ignore the particular hi-light- I know how these corporate clients are sticklers for the details of their logo (it is very important.) So I knew I had to MODEL this particular little offset highlight(it is the white edge around the text)... C4D's modeller is easy for simple stuff but I don't know it well enough to get intricate like this. But I know A:M's, and it was pretty straightforward. I also used Photoshop to prepare the images to be used as the 'metal' from the logo itself and applied them as decals in A:M. Once I had the bar with the text modelled- I used the mesh-mode deformer to put the 'bend' into the bar, and exported the model as an .obj WITHOUT using the 'generate model maps' function (when I used it... it had seems around each patch image... no good.) But, when I opened the OBJ in C4D- there were the images (now considered UV's) I was then able to send the file out to the other animators working on the job who were scratching their heads as to how I did it (ancient Chinese secret...!) Whatever new changes are coming in V19... EASY REQUEST... don't change anything with the obj exporter! It rocks! Once I confirmed everything was looking good in C4D I saved it as a C4D file (yes, I used C4D as a very expensive file-converter...) and imported the .c4d file into Element 3D- which resides as a filter inside of After Effects. Element has some nifty render features... on this, I employed DOF, AO, shadows,glow, and set some E3D physical materials onto what were once my A:M groups. As a quick test, I used E3D's replicator to duplicate the model 8X and gave it a spin... an AE camera and 2 AE lights(AE is SO clunky in 3D!)... the lens-flare was another AE layer with Video CoPilots lens-flare applied. RENDER at 1920 X1080 took 2 seconds per frame- 10 minutes to make a :10 loop. I am using E3D more and more in these corporate jobs and A:M is a perfect model generator and animation program for it. (as far as animation goes, the graph editor in A:M just plain ROCKS! I struggle with C4D and After Effects graph editors and come to realize... they just don't GET IT.) 3Dlogo spin test.mp4

I hope your vision in your right eye returns! Dannng! What a STORY! My brother had macrodegeneration... sucks!

Yes- tis! Have you seen the real-estate scanning solution 'Matterport'? Turns your whole house into a 3d tour with highlight and bullet points called out. Camera runs some $3-4K... https://matterport.com/

There are some cheaper ways to do similar... the kinect cameras for Xbox do 3D scanning, don't they? And there was an app I had on my iphone... 123Dgo or something like that...

I am seeing people 'in the biz' turning to Jpeg2000 or even GoPro codecs lately, as the Animation Compression seems to have gone wonky on us.

Fun! Done in A:M and C4D to SketchFab. https://skfb.ly/6pXww

Very cool, John. I was going to suggest the eggs were coming from some other anotomical location...but... John- you should do a little experimenting with A:M's FOG feature, I think it would benefit an animation like this so we would not see off all the way to the horizon. Really easy to use feature- one that other 3D apps just don't seem to 'get' but is SO simple and straighforward in A:M

From James at SF... Hi there, Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass it on to the team. For now, it looks like the software can export some of our supported formats, like OBJ or 3DS. Best, James James Green Product Specialist Sketchfab

Sketchfab has easy exporters for most all 3D softwares, you install as a plug-in and then can easy-peasy upload from the software to the site. WE CAN REQUEST that they write an A:M exporter, and who knows- maybe they will if enough of us do? https://help.sketchfab.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?utm_source=website&utm_campaign=exporters&type=exporters Man, I wish we still had Arctic Pigs!

I would never short myself- too many other people willing to do it better than I could! My excuse is... a lack of wanderlust... last 7 vacations were spent visiting parents across the country... and I live in a beautiful state that I can't get enough of exploring and revisiting. It is interesting seeing what United Airlines is going thru right now- on the travel front.

Is that counting USA or no... if so- I am on THREE!

Yeah- save and close- reopen... bingo. Happens.

Welcome back, Martin Hash! I honestly did not think this day would ever come! Thank-you for the update, your writing has always been worthy and memorable reads (Martins Minutes) I remember you saying in about 2004 that 3D production had matured- well, it sure had-where do you see it now? I will look forward to seeing you around here, and hope you settle into a comfortable role... Q- Have you kept a current version of A:M and used it over the past decade?

The trip- not the destination... that is keeping the cart in front of the horse, Rodger! It is looking really nice! Like a moving postcard from yesteryear! Would the electrical connection up top on those have sparks dripping down?

Just catching up on this thread- great works, Rodney!

It looks like some are working- some not. I haven't played with Bullet- but usually you need to make sure your axis point is pretty centered on each puzzle piece. Also- are you working with a floor that has an increased mesh density?

Great stuff! How were render times? Yes, Nancy is one of the best A:Mers in Hash-Land!

Your cartoon goat is very heartwarming. Any plans to animate him?

Wow- are you saying you made the goat, and it is to be the mascot for the city that will host the World Cup? That is BIG! Congratulations. AND- you made the model for the medallion for the stadium souvenir 3D print? HUGE! Great work Serg!

Yay! Cool new feature! For ai we had 'the ai wizard'... will svg be implemented in similar fashion? Hey! When did you go from 'unavoidable smarty-pants' to 'persistant smarty-pants'? You thought no one would notice?

I still have not heard back from the Foundry support regarding a modo license... been 1 week now... I fear they blew me off or didn't receive it... meanwhile A:M support hooked me right up with my new sub's NetRender license!

I remember seeing the advertisement in Animation Magazine every issue in the early 1990's for Playmation...

I hit him up on Monday mid-day... he got back to me Wednesday... not bad.

I'm with Simon--- coming to age on Normals- thanks for the link, Rodney... now I have to play to get my bearings... So- better than bump maps which create illusion using 2 channels (greyscale) Normals use 3 colors...R,G,B.... and R=X, G=Y, and B=Z or depth... what is the base purple generated from and represent?