John Bigboote

And now I can't see it. Seems ALL of A:MFilms is down...

It just worked for me. FANTASTIC! What a fun piece! World-class work shaun.

Welcome back Xtaz...Thanks for pointing me twords the 'Skycast'...I've been playing with GI lately and perhaps that is the one to get... ONE word about your pyramids... ANIMATE IT!

Thanks- I just pulled it up on our little mac and I see what you mean...I'll fiddle with the publish settings. EDIT: Fixed it...it scales to the particular browser now... thanks! Appreciated! Nos-The main new diff (for me) is the new On2 VP6 compression, and the fact that it comes with Flash8 pro whereas with Flash7 you had Sorenson Squeeze which had terrible results so you needed to buy sorensonPRO for 4-5 hundred. If you visited Johnnies ANIMATION page there are 2 buttons wired to ON2 movies, which start to play fast and look great... the component and ease of use of implementing that (video streaming within flash) was very easy to accomplish and customize. THE OTHER main big improvements are the graphic effects (drop shadows, embossing) and blend-modes, and there has been major work done to the Flash8 player free-utility to speed it's playback and ease the transition from older versions. Read more at Macromedia... http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/?promoid=CABD

www.johnaretakis.com HEY- I recently finished a Flash website for a good friend and talented artist, John Aretakis. I am looking to show off my 'Flash-work' and get some feedback from my esteemed fellow Hasher's...who's opinions I respect. John is a mural painter, an art-deco neon electric sign maker, a graphic artist/illustrator, a 2D cel-animator and a 3D hash animator. He's looking to drum-up some work with this site... NEXT---it's high time I redo my own website... it just takes so dang long! I REALLY like the latest version of Flash though, there are some BIGTIME improvements. Anyway, the site is 95% done, so there are some 'dead-ends' here and there. Other than that, let me know what you think!

Hey hashers! Where do all my fellow Hasher's live? Now we can add ourselves to the USgoogle map called a 'Frapper'... Here's the link: http://www.frappr.com/hashfrapper It's quick and easy to do, you just enter your zip-code (no email/spam). If you wish, you can enter a blurb of text about yourself and even add a photo. Hope to see you there!

No...nonono. It opened quite quickly when I opened it today to make these grabs. (Quickly meaning about half a minute) As you suspected, it was when I initially imported the partial models and A:M had to translate them into 'spline-land' that was when it was time consuming (half hour to an hour-ish) Thanks for checking in Mr. PooBaa!

Cool stuff...gonna animate it working? The 'icing on the cake' would be if you included a little bit of raw-picked cotton in the picture or maybe a patent number woodburned onto the side. Also... something to indicate scale would be good... Could be a good image contest entry...

Wireframes from the choreography...

When I'm in a meeting and someone poses the question "But what will people think???" I hit the roof, and bolt for the door. Any hoo-Sir Paul McCartney played last night here in Auburn Hills MI...incredible! Thanks for your babble Chuck!

I'll post mesh early this week. Remember, ONLY the top posting was converted to A:M (the Toyota Titan Pickup truck) The images in the lower (3rd) posting were all Maya.

A good scan is hard to do, and best left to the highly skilled. DivisionX outsources this part of the job to a partner company. A car is grid-taped using 1/8" tape, with the grid as large as 2 inches in some places and 1/4" in others for finer detail. Half the car is scanned, naturally. The scanner is a large arm type, so someone has to go from gridpoint to gridpoint touching the scanner tip to the tape. A car can be taped and scanned within a day. Finer details, such as the inner plastics of a blinker assembly or a badge are left to us to scan with our 3 foot scanner arm. Another BIG advantage I missed is that from model-year to model year there can be minimal changes to a vehicle, such as headlights or trim. Once the car is fully prepped on harddisc changes like these are nominal.

Gerry- I forget how long those images took, but I remember being pleasanlty surprised. I just use my 2 local processors...I'd open the project and render some frames...but it takes a LONG time to open the file. DivisionX has a very large, very fast render farm. I have not been able to sell the idea of installing NetRender for various reasons... some of which are: -DivisionX cranks out hours of 3D footage weekly, for very high budgets, so the farm, being topsy-turvy, is dedicated to Smedge. -NetRender, though highly capable, does not encourage very well or make an effort to sell itself to my engineers...who upon researching it and reading some stuff here recommend putting it off. Durn! -Most of my animations are 5- 30 seconds long, perfect for an overnight or weekend render. EDIT- Thats a minute or two per frame...at D1 res...

AND- Here is a small sample of DivisionX's work. Traditionally, if an auto-manufacturer wanted to generate turntable footage for it's model-year advertising, it would bring it's entire line (Ford Motor Company's 'line' of products is some 24-30 vehicles) to studio to be placed on a turntable and filmed, a slow spin taking almost a minute. Then, if they needed alphas, they would spend months in a paintbox or Flint/Flame...rotoscoping mattes. TODAY, the 3D computer animation process has been good news to animators- bad news for photographers, retouchers and cinematographers. Small things, like an flawless alpha channel ---Or the ability to let an agency art director place the virtual camera 'exactly' where he wants it--- or the fact that images can be rendered at any resolution (DivisionX recently put an truck advert on 1 side of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, viewable from passing airplanes) ANOTHER example of a BIG cost cutting advantage is that due to union stipulations test drivers in car commercials must be paid residuals each time a spot airs, which can add up. With 3DCG, the car is virtual...so there IS no driver... Here are couple of images: Feel free to critique, but understand that each image has been considerably art-directed by 'trained professionals', appeared in many TV spots/magazines, and some of these images are over 5 years old. A web site has been in the works and will launch in a week. There are many other companies doing this sort of work and each offers a unique approach. Since I am sort of 'behind the scenes' here at DivisionX I thought I would show-and-tell with my A:M community, which I owe a debt of graditude. Enjoy. ALSO: DivisionX is hiring! Must be Maya savvy, 5 years experience in photorealsim, renderman and MEL experience, work out of Detroit, MI...which aint all THAT bad! Contact me.

Since people are getting more and more interested in 3D cars...a little show-and-tell. I work in Detroit for 'DivisionX', which is a 3D/graphics department of Grace & Wild, a major post-production house. DivisionX is a small group of Maya artists who have come up with a 'formula-approach' for recreating photorealistic cars and have successfully captured a peice of that blooming market. I am not a 'sheetmetal guy', so I handle the day to day graphics and do character animation for the group and facility... so I am 'loosely' a part of the group. This summer, while toying around with Maya, I tried to export a vehicle to A:M to see how A:M would handle the task, and this is what I came-up with: I found the density of the polygonal models ( the cars are grid-taped and scanned, as opposed to using CAD data, which is far denser and holds much unneeded data) needed to be loaded 'peicemeal' (glass, metal, trim, interior...etc) and even then took quite a long time to open in A:M (each group taking up to an hour to load, during which time A:M appeared to be 'locked') Once it was a mesh in A:M, it was somewhat tactile in zooming and turning, pretty easy to work with. Some creasing occurs, which is hard to fix, and if left be would not stand-up to close inspection. The render time was not too bad either, maybe a min or two if memory serves. Overall, with maya being able to 'snap' a model open, whereas A:M needed to peicemeal it in a day, my experiments were backburnered. Here, I'll post a jpeg and a .mov of some of what I did looked like...(the lighting is not what I am showing...so keep your pinkies down...) And in my next posting I will show some of DivisionX's work, to give folks a good idea of some 'high end' automotive 3D. I hope you find this informative. NissanTitantest.mov

The walls need some 'grunge', as in dirt and cracks in the plaster. How about some tacky beer mirrors or neon?

It was just meant to be cute and fun and add a little motion to an otherwise static scene. I only had an hour, including render time, as an edit suite was doing an impromptu reel of my animation and the title the assistant editor made in Photoshop was ghastly. There are NO implied messages. Paul is NOT the walrus, in this case. Let's not 'overthink' it. Thanks for the replies, Yves D.Jo, Agep and Nancy.

Nice product design...I don't know if that background is working for the overall image though...but the phones look quite believable!

Steffan's Plug-in: http://www.sgross.com/plugins/plugin6/sample_e.html Forum to read history of: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15577&hl= Drakheim's tutorial: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=A...pe=post&id=7842

Whipped this up in an hour for my reel...shows some of the capabilities of Steffan Gross's AWESOME newton Physics plug-in...which I am gonna use every chance I get. The collision detection scheme is the BEST I've seen yet coming out of A:M, and the plug-in is oh-so-easy to use. A GREAT addition to A:M's toolset. At D1 res each frame took 40 seconds. (No multipass) And big thanks to whoever wrote the helpful tutorial for the plug-in... I've lost the name. QUICKTIME is Sorenson3 compressed .8mb MCsmall.mov

Zach... That rocks! Looks like you are goin to town with Syntheyes, the CG looks quite at home with the live-action.

This is great...I feel like I'm at the hardware store... What---no bolts? Sometimes such a simple object can be quite complex to model. I toiled on a baseball and found the seams to be mathematically difficult and came up with what I thought was a genius path-based solution to placing them perfectly on the ball, and when I was done I was quite proud and posted here to the forum where it was recieved quite unceremoniously....it was, after all...just a baseball! THANKS for sharing the models guys!

Thats cool Fitz! JUST 1 thang... I would LOVE to see the poneytail with a dynamic constarint chain added to it... you have to get those automatic 2ndary motions working for you...

I just found a copy of JSLSkylight 16 on my harddrive, I must have downloaded it a long time ago, I'll try that out... I like to stay away from things that require 16 pass multipass because of the excessive render times...when you get into rendering long scenes...gah! Now for the next (step 2) it says 'every group needs to be white'...any easy way to go about this? I'm thinking the easiest way will be to save a copy of my model as modelWHITE.mdl and in it I'll delete all groups/decals and make 1 white group and then replace the original model in the chor with the WHITE one...

I think the edge lighting may be from what they call (in step 2) the poissant domes with kliegs and z-buffered shadows... do you guys know where i can learn about this 'Poissant dome with kliegs and Z-buffered shadows'... or is this really similar to 'artbox'... (thanks for the link above...nixster)