John Bigboote

I was in the same quandry when I made my Jeep-TREO animation. What I ended up doing was renderring BOTH with and without and then half mixxing them in AfterEffects. By rendering the character WITH background in toon mode I got the main plate, then I renderred JUST the character with an alpha in shaded mode. In After Effects I could then bring down the transparency on the shaded to just where I wanted it. Also because of the alpha I could use a filter called 'simple choker' under 'matte tools' to add a thicker outline around the character, which I call 'the powderpuff girls' effect. A thicker outline around the perimeter of the character REALLY pulls it off against the BG. Just suggestions. Your animation looks really cool. My animation can be seen here on A:M Films to see what I am talking about... http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=754

OK. I tried it. I liked it. A LOT!! I followed the easy tutorial and added porceline to my CrimeBomb and MissDemeanor characters and did a compare...MUCH NICER! Of note: I tried dropping the material onto my character 'MsD' who has hair and I crashed...I then went and dropped the material on JUST the attributes I want smoothed...skin...clothes...etc SEPARATELY and it did NOT crash. I notice about a 10% longer render per frame...which is worth it for the smoothness. The guy with the shark at the top of this post needs to have a look at his basic splinesmanship and maybe work from a sketch... GREAT idea doing a shark though, not too many of those in these Hash waters!

I too, am new to the porcelin. Does it increase render times? How come you have to 'dig' thru the CD for it? Why can't they put it with the available materials? Thanks for the tutorial Pablo- it could'nt be simpler!

Thanks Ross! Thanks Rodney! Thanks JIM! The walk cycle was actually animated for another character, and a last minute drag-n-drop onto this one. I can do better, wait n see! This project was inspired by the new 'Incredibles' movie...I hope to initially just get some good samples I can plop into a demo reel to offest all my motion-graphics, and then I would like to make 4 or 5 short episodes of a very formulaic nature. Maybe something I might pitch to spikeTV or some other non-childrens production... ROSS- Here's my little explanation of how I get the cleavage to bounce.(attached jpeg) I would love if Joe Williamson(?) of 'Hunter Dynamics Test' fame could illuminate how he does his magic... God Bless our emerald coast today, may Ivan's wrath be mercifull.

And a 4th...thanks for the Hash Forum generousity! This one shows Miss Demeanor's 'dynamics' in another action. Also testing some new facial pose sliders here. i LOVE the new DISTORTION BOX feature....! This adds a whole new dimension of squash and stretchiness! For this animation... I made a pose called with a +100-100 value and named it 'Head Squash- Left-Right' used the distortion box tool to squash everything BUT her eyeballs, then I sort of slid that pose back and forth in this animation. Hope you like, if I offend anyone...please let me know and I'll never place 'jiggle' on the Forum again. I DO find it an intriguing aspect of nature and fair game for over emphesizing in animation. MissD.mov

And another...These animations are mostly me becoming familiar and testing my new characters, add things and taking away...general kibbitzing...so the animation is NOT fully tweeked but feel free to comment. This is CrimeBomb juggling some timebombs: juggler.mov

OKAY...I'm gonna catch hell for this one, but I can't resist! I've spent WAY too much time playing with the dynamic constraint on MissD's bosum, and learned what it can and can't do for you. I'm still learning. This is the silliness that occurs with too much jiggle... tiedup3.mov

Still playing around with these 2... Here is a title sequence. 3Dtitle.mov

Yes- Hash gets fussy with sprites and alphas, glows as well do not appear in the alpha. But here is a quick Photoshop workaround: Open a middle frame One typical of the imagery, say frame 78...)in Photoshop. Find the 'actions' window and choose New action, name it and 'start recording'. This will automate the process you do on 1 frame to ALL the frames. Now Photoshop is 'recording' what you do: Choose 'All', Copy. Go to channels, click on the 'bad' hash alpha channel and Paste. You know have a workable alpha, tweak it with the Brightness and Contrast effector. In Actions window, hit 'stop recording'. Close the frame WITHOUT saving. Now, under file, find Automate-Batch. Your action will be the default, so leave that, simply find the folder where all your .tga's are and choose 'save and close'. Now hit okay and stand back and watch as Photoshop does your wishes to ALL the frames in the folder. NOW open the sequence in After-Effects, AVID or Premiere and say 'Thanks to the guy on the hash Forum! DAMN! I'm good! BTW- your sprite looks really cool! ATTACHED- Example of the action as I did to your file in 10 sec in Photoshop...

Do you mean animated 'gif' files? I have not heard of animated bmp files... or are the bmp files needed for your psychological software?

YES! Nice bump-mapping...i LIKE the blockiness in the cheek area, works for me! What rig and rig solutions are you using...fan bones...TSM...weights...smartskin...cogs...?

Awesome- here's my two bits. 1- I saw an earlier version where as the character stepped in from stage right he paused and then looked at camera...I thought that worked and missed it in this version... 2- As your character is running away at the end...which is hilarious... you need to add some inertia to his direction changes, as they are quite abrupt and everything else is SO fluid. can't wait to see more from you, your style is ripe...keep it up!

Have you referred to the Hash Online Documentation? http://www.hash.com/htmlHelp/v11.0/Technical_Reference.htm cool test, I find that TONS of tests are in order to get oriented with hair, I'm rendering one now as I type...

Alas- NO. I can NOT get my dynamic restraint to render. I can see it working in the choreography but it WILL NOT RENDER. I just tried it 20 different ways and all were for naught. I wrote hash support. The only thing I can figure is there's a conflict between the dynamics of the hair and the dynamics of the dynamic support. When I send my project file to Hash do I need to send all the models, decals, matierials etc. separately? Yeesh!

And here is a fun action test, where I was really glad to see MissD's V11 hair perform quite well... the Mustang in the background was from somebody here on the list, I was just throwing props in to populate the scene. Once again, the dynamic constraint is NOT working (in her chest) Perhaps I'll turn off the hair and render a movie and see if it works then...yeah- thats what I'll do. And this is an action blending into another action and back into the first... I smartskinned the big guy, but need to remove it all and do it all over again... tricky stuff, that smartskin! Happy Holiday (to all that applies to) CrimeBomb3.mov

Hey Forum! Thanks for the kind words... I am attaching the 'final' version of the movie from earlier and another one I did quick on the side. Both are actually tests to use action blending, which for the most part works pretty cool, with a minimal of hitches. I think I stumbled upon a 'bug' or 'limitation' whereas when using v11 hair with dynamics'on' that any 'dynamic-constraints' do not appear at render time, like the program is only able to arithmaticly handle one, not both. I say that because I (naturally) put a bone in Miss D's 'chest area' with a dynamic constraint to add a 'jiggle' factor... and in my chor I can see it bouncing away REALLY nice...but when I render the movie that secondary action does not appear. Pity. I'll prepare a project file and send it to support. THIS IS THE SAME MOVIE FROM BEFORE BUT WITH A LOT OF REVISIONS. CrimeBomb2.mov

Nice POOCH Dale! That has 'mascot' written all over it!

And here's MORE weirdness, I can get my dynamic action happening real nice in the chor but whenst I goes to render... NADA! I'm rending out to tga's, hair, reflections and shadows all at final resolution but the dynamic 'springy' doesn't do it's thing upon render. Has Joe Williamson 'hunter' commented anywhere about how he does what he does?

Thanks Frank- that makes sense now. I seem to have it working...I think I had too many bones in my chain (2) so I made it just 1 and have somenthing workable, lets hope that HASH has that on the list for future revisions!

Hey- Inspired by Joe Williamson's Hunter, I have been trying to get the Dynamic Constraints to work on some parts of my model. Hash has a nice simple tutorial in the online reference but the menu is different from the menu I get in my A:M v11.0o... (see attached illustration for clarity) I am trying to get the 'stiffness' control to work-Can anyone set me astraight on this? BTW- I would have posted this in the general A:M forum, but I see they do not allow attachments there.

Thanks Dale, No- not a short film...for now just some demo-reel clips, maybe eventually some formulaic episodes... Yeah- I overdid the hair at the end!

Thought I'd share my latest with the Forum. I'm dreaming-up a 'superhero' premice. 'CrimeBomb' is a masked crimefighter who's lazy ways forces him to take on a 'sidekick' to improve his ratings. Misty wins his heart and gets the job, only to learn that she has to do all the dirty work and CrimeBomb gets all the credit. She is unsure if their ratings are improving because of her crimefighting or her outfit, which CrimeBomb designed and insists she wears... Both are rigged with TSM1, awaiting TSM2...CrimBomb is heavy with fanbones and smartskin and needs a lot of work, MissDemeanor's hair is V11 with 2 separate matierials 1 for short hair and 1 for poneytail- which has an pose to enhance swinging back and forth. Also on her I modelled a thin box with full transparancy which goes along her backside and moves with the rig, from neck to waist, this helps with the collision detection. More to come... CrimeBomb1.mov

Thanks guys...I'll address his arm proportions, but as you guessed they are over accented. I followed Ross's advice and went to the ARM and found 'Son of Pats' shoulder and hip tutorials very helpful... http://free.hostdepartment.com/s/sonofpat/shoulders.html I am currently fan-boning it to death. I'll fan bone a joint, run it thru TSM, make notes, adjust, over and over and over. THANKS for the sage advice and pointing me to (hopefully) a solution.

OH- Here's an Arctic Pigs version of the model for closer scrutiny. Arctic Pigs is a GREAT way to show your models, methinks. Giant4bv10.model

Hey guys... I'm working on this superhero-type named 'CrimeBomb... I have modelled quite a rigging delemma. Any advice on the best way to approach such a big-armed figure? Any rigging gurus out there want to try their hand? I'm sort of awaiting TSM2, learning what I can about fans and coggs and smartskins... thought I'd run it by the bunch of you, whom I highly regard. THANX1,000,000