John Bigboote

Isn't the 'waving the flag' a pre-SimCloth cloth tutorial? I think it's obsolete. Sounds like you will want to use hair and a force. Lots of experimenting.

Not that I know of...but It's pretty simple once you get the basic premise of it. To try it out, make 2 geometries(in the same model)-one to be cut and one to be the cutter (helps to make them different colors, and closed masses, like a lathed sphere-or an extruded box) Now, go into bones mode and assign non-parented bones to each mass. On the properties panel for the cutter mass, select 'make boolean'. Now, bring that model into a chor and slowly animated one shape intersecting with the other and do a quick render... BOOLEANS!

The 'cutaway' surface adapts the attributes of the negative shape that cu it away...see my old video(below) AMbooleans.mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhv88Vakq6Y The spot as it will air. Final with audio, VO, supers and disclaimers...

AHA! Several of us have had that happen till Will Sutton told us how to fix it. In your choreography properties under 'dynamics' change the default value for 'Reduction Tolerance Error' from .01 to ZERO and re-sim. OR--- Just try no Simulate (Right click on the chor and select 'Remove Sim Data') I find a lot of the times that a simulation is just not necessary.

That's good stuff!!! I'm getting to like that Ernie...just wish like Heck that he had dynamic constraints on his antennae! That's encouraging...the 'straight-up' part... Looking forward to more.

It was made at D1 resolution (720 X486) although I am thinking about re-rendering at a hi-res because it would be great to see in hi-def and also because we are trying to sell that client on the benefits of the higher resolution. Maybe this weekend I'll set up the hi-res... THANKS FOR THE COMPLIMENTS!

Thanks! The billowing snow was added in after effects- but it was an element I made in Hash highly blurred. HA:MR? Where are we that? Is it a viable product? I thought we were waiting for 'the next big release...' and, would the snow particles work in HA:MR? The grid for the cloth is quite dense, and once satisfactorily simulated makes for a mighty heavy project file that takes about 15minutes just to open...

EDIT: I just updated this video as it came out of post-production, ready for broadcast, whereas before it was simply animation... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhv88Vakq6Y FINAL EDITED SPOT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtW9yMyTvY The original TV spot, from summer 2007. Hi--- I just updated an old :30 spot for a winter furniture sale and at the last minute decided to employ A:M's particle generator for a snow falling effect. I'm quite happy with the resulting animation, and with A:M's powerful toolkit! I originally used a filter in After Effects (Cycore's CC Snow...which simulates snow falling in depth .) It was good, but was obviously 'pasted' over the scene and did not move with the camera. So then I made a large transparent(100%) patch in A:M and applied a 'streak' particle generator to it. The resulting 3 minutes per frame render prohibited further tweeking on that, so I switched the material over to a sprite generator and used the basic 'blur' sprite off the Hash CD. This rendered much quicker (around 5 seconds per frame, NO multipass) which meant I could tweek settings without worrying (size, number of particles over time, gravity, etc) I let it render the full sequence and composited in After Effects... turned out GREAT! It's hard to believe a $50 animation program is capable of these results in a production environmment! THANKS HASH!

Once your video is imported, it can be used many ways. It can be applied to geometry as a decal(drag and drop it onto your model) OR- it can be used as a rotoscope (A guide for which to setup your animation or to model to...) To have your video act as rotoscope, drag and drop it from the 'images' to the camera in your chor. Switch to software render mode (9) and the video 'should' be visible when looking thru the camera (1)...at this point you may want to make it transparent or ghosted so you can see your scene behind it better. Scroll to another frame, and the movie should scroll as well. SOMETIMES this does not work so well, and the user will need to update graphic card drivers or switch from OpenGL to DirectX or vice-versa... Another way you can use the video is as a 'Layer' in the choreography. It will simply be placed in the chor and fully scaleable/rotatable/movable. This feature makes your A:M choreography quite a capable little 3D compositor.

Try a quicktime video. Images/Import/Animation

Hmm. Hate to contradict...I find sprites MUCH faster than streaks. Fr'instance, I am doing a snow scene right now and streaks were taking 3min per frame so I switched to sprites... 5 seconds per frame and I can generate much more of them. You may also want to experiment with a 'Force' set to 'vortex'... this creates a whirlwind effect that will carry your sprites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGcOYhBKho

THIS is the way I like to do it... 1- Go downtown...now, I'm a country boy so when I go downtown (Detroit for me) I'm knocked out by the tall buildings. It's much worse when I go to Chicago or Toronto...if I ever see New York I'll prolly die. 2- Shoot pictures at as Hi resolution as you can. As straight on as possible. 3- Use Photoshop to 'RE-square' the imagery using distorion tools. Retouch the crap out of it. 4- Also in Photoshop make art for your depth(bump or displace), reflection, ambiance (for backlights) as you see I did. 5- In Hash- use minimal geometry and lots of decals. Scale to taste. I have more like this...will try to upload later...ENJOY! BUILDING02.mdl

Ask JohnL3D for some of his experiments!

-and---only if the targeting is 'constraint', and not 'spring' or 'none'...

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Great stuff Stian---my 1st impression is that the smoke rises too fast...

GREAT! I can't wait to see you animate Neil Peart playing drums! HEY! I did a similar job to the 'Rollin Stones' a few years ago...wanna see it?

Very cool! and quick job! I did a Ford F250 once...(see attached movie) Mike Rowe would love us! There is an old thread you need to look up...shows how to rig such a truck so it will track over hilly terrain (following a path)while spinning the wheels, steering the wheels and I even threw in a dynamic constraint to get some secondary suspension...(see trucktest movie attached) GOOD WORK! 2003_Ford_F250SM.mov trucktestSM.mov

Very cool! The differing foot sizes don't bother me one bit!

and TO YOU too...Ernie, BenD, and Luuk! Here;s to a great year for Zign-Track! (was that a dynamic constraint on the ball of the cap? Cool! I was wishing you would slap a quick dynamic on his antennaes...) MERRY CHRISTMAS!

GLAD TO HEAR! I thought they were a bit 'out of season...'

Hey Hashers! I did not know what to get you all for Xmas and you were ALL on my list...so I made a neat little model! This is a graphic firework (see movie for example) that is safe so you won't blow your fingers off. The effect makes use of Hash's boolean feature to reveal and unreveal the burst. You can make your own bursts to change things up... There are 2 poses with the model- 1 reveals the burst and the other UNreveals it... HAVE FUN! Have a VERY Spliney Holidays! BOOLEAN_graphic_firework.mov FIREWORK.mdl

Cool model Paul...it's a cross between Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters, Stripes) and Weird Al Yankovich! Hope you figger the cause of that...did you set the error tolerance reduction factor to zero (instead of default .01) before baking?

Yeah...there's not too a lot to reference. Did you calculate the length of the stride properly? (3.142)