John Bigboote

$10(with shipping) for a phone version? Why not! (ordered. Great find, Mark!) I will also keep an eagle eye out at flea markets, garage sales... seems to me a larger version could be found there, altho you need to keep the glass thickness quite thin to minimize double imaging. I would love to find (or make) one about 1 foot by 1 foot for use with a larger monitor... hallo'ween! Ironbat- thanks for showing your plexiglass design in process... that is gonna be SWEET!

Looks like Adobe's definition of 'animation' is only -drag and drop a preset action. They have exporters for the rig to maya or max... our best approach would be (as discussed previously) to rig the charactor in A:M using your preferred rig.

Arms look right to ME... I was playing with obtuse proportions... I tried exporting that same model from Hash back into Fuse and can't get past this error: I deleted all groups, so there can't be any geometry in multiple groups. There IS documentation and you need to DL the 'Content Creator Pack'(100mb)... docs: https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203829146-Creating-Custom-Content-for-Fuse

and then simply exported to Mixamo, let their algorythems work on it for 60 seconds, and wham! the character is looking around in an exploratory action... with incredible blends, weighting. incredible! How can we integrate this better with A:M? I want the rig!

Just rediscovering this... pretty danged cool character generator! Need to further explore rigging options, that Mixamo is looking pretty sweet, AND- we need to bridge a way to get our models IN to fuse. ANOTHER interesting Adobe thing is with Fuse generating characters and Mixamo doing a rig... you can then animate right within Adobe Photoshop. I haven't discerned however, if by the loose term 'animate' Adobe means 'apply one of our library stock actions to...' OR, can you actually go in and drag the limbs-head-torso around and generate your OWN character animation. I need to explore. It would be sad if you could not hand-animate, stock actions only get you so far and have NO appeal to me.

Great point. When working in workbook mode I tend to open windows and just leave them tabbed for easy navigation... when working with dynamic HAIR an open instance of the file in the background will KILL tacticity!

That is pretty a danged sweet little illusion concept! I imagine you mainly need 'on black' animations... lots of particles look cool too, and you will take care of compositing the 4 sided video that needs to be made? I want to make one of those....!

I like the Youtube idea, or Vimeo? I have a highly neglected Youtube channel... but always blown away by the stats Youtube provides... charts and graphs about user locations, gender, where they were directed from and much-much more... all very highly comprehensive.

That model does not look too dense... usually very dense models lag on paste. 15 seconds is long. Can you use another program that has a 'purge memory' function like Photoshop or After Effects to dump your physical memory? Rob's ideas might do it too... I would do a save as to the project, close AM and reopen the new project... maybe even restart the computer.

GREAT! Ya- show-n-tell would be appreciated! Now I see your particle illusion stuff (snow and explosions?) Fantastic particles!

Try this link for Maniac's: https://sketchfab.com/search?q=maniacgraphics Cool stuff, Terry!

I've played a little with sketchfab, it is very cool. Their new feature is that they can now display animation/actions on your 3D model... which I looked into trying to do from A:M. The file format needs to be an FBX file which (i think) houses the geometry of the model and the baked animation of the action. I was not able to discover a way from A:M to FBX for Sketchfab. Now that someone has developed an A:M to Blender utility, that might be a way. This is one of my silly 3D pinups, utilizing Sketchfabs amazing library of materials. SO- I grouped CP's in A:M into a colorized group for dummy colors, then re-assigned materials to those groups in sketchfab. I would LOVE to play with animation. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and buy Blender... (joking!) https://skfb.ly/DUyN

All entries must be at least 1440 x 1920 and keep the 3:4 aspect ratio. The winner must summit a rendered image with no background of 480 x 640. SO- the 1440 wide image will be the 'flattened' one with full color thruout (like a jpeg) that voters will see and vote on... AND- the 480 wide should include transparency (like a png?) that would be used perchance upon winning. I'm just wondering because I am ready to submit an image, and my dyslexic brain sees how this can be read both ways...

COOL! Are you capturing your own mocap files?

I would start out by animating Eddie in choreography mode 1st... animate his bounding box to get a nice smooth flow of where you see the action going, get the spin down pat and copy/paste the start settings to the end. Next, in skeletal mode generate some 'key frames' -like when he is pushing-off, when he is mid-spin... when he lands...etc THEN- start from the ground up... so get his feet and legs looking like he is properly treading the ground all the way thru... get his base spine bone animating with weight, coil and recoil... the arms and upper body and head come last and are instrumental as well in adding to believable locomotion, balance and poise. Working in passes like that allows for experimentation, saving incrementally allows you to scrap an approach and start again knowing what you learned or applying new ideas. Be sure to post your ensuing versions!

Interesting... I use Trapcode Particular but there is no way to track like this does... anyone reading this thread and wanting to learn more about Particle Illusion: http://www.wondertouch.com/pillusionae.asp $300

At issue with the Mascot contest (I plan to participate!) is the matter of transparency. I know Hash Inc. wants the winning image to employ transparency cleverly so that the users desktop shows thru in the bootup process. However, there is no way to demonstrate in the voting phase where and how cool your transparency is... or even that you have any in mind at all. A possible solution would be to show a 2nd image with the Photoshop transparency grid comped behind the image so transparency can be shown and considered thruout the voting process...

That's very cool, Rodney. Could it be done with an alpha channel so the users desktop would be visible? It kinda relates to my idea for an animated mascot... so imagine if you will the anteater would be doing some simple action... over and over. Could be as simple as replacing the .png file with alpha with a .gif file with alpha... but I imagine there is a lot more to it than that. Along the lines of Rob's enhancements to the choreography... it would be nice to update the camera so it defaults to a 1280 X 720 resolution instead of the current D1 4X3 camera- just SCREAMS 1995 circa.

Lookin GOOD, Terry! Cars are not too easy... I shy away from them nowadays. There used to be a feller here on the forum that did legal animations and from time to time he would need a specific car modelled-up from photographs... for ca$h. I liked it... did some 3 or 4 cars for him.

I am in no way able to "start my own 3D software" but I think that since the software is for making animation... the splash screen (in this modern day) should be a loop/sequence/gif... and while I am at it... could we update the 'rendering' animations ever?

When my Dad died- strangely enough his PC died at the same time... everyone said 'oh-no- we have to save his files...!' I took his CPU to a local Best Buy in Mobile Alabama where they lived and the guy was able to salvage all the files onto a removable or DVD disc. Cost was about $150 and then no one has shown interest in his files since...

Genius? never! Lucky guess! That was the 'secret sauce' for making that Little Caesars TV spot linked above... I simulated over and over until I got myself about 15-20 hero coin fall actions, then I populated them in my hero choreography one-by-one with a rotoscope of the logo text as a resting-place target. The same actions were applied to nickel models, dime models and penny models... and since it was an action file I could slide it down the timeline to where I wanted it... staggering them. A funny side note (I may have already told...) These spots were made for a small (1 man) ad agency that had the Little Caesars account. The man was very integral in art-directing the spot and was LOVING the way it looked in final render. Once it went thru post-production another animation house that used maya gave him a critique on the photorealism being 'not quite there'... which turned my client sour on the spots and they only ran on TV locally for about 1 month and were pulled. 2 years later I am working at another company and my old post house calls me asking for my project files, 3D and all. I stalled them by saying 'sure- I'll put it up on the your network!' and hung-up... never to answer their calls again. Shortly thereafter- I hear that Little Caesars was pulling the account from the 1 man agency and going with a new bigger agency in NYC... as I was wondering if I was part of the 'fallout' in the account loss I start seeing the spots on air again... nationally and in big time slots. Turns out- the new agency had no new creative to run and LIKED the look and feel of these spots to run in the interim- so they ran for about 3 months. I received no monetary compensation but felt vindicated that once outside of the 'Detroit politics' my animation stood a fair chance! EDIT- Crashing? Should not be! I did those spots in 2008 and A:M (as I remember) was very very solid.

Link has gone dead on this... waiting to see if Marcos will 'tip his hand' on the A:M/C4D/OctaneRender process...?

Rob's approach sounds good- here are my thoughts. I never really tried importing a chor into another chor, so I don't know... other than to say- make sure your 'Animation Mode' is set to OFF before you go about moving anything- this could preserve all those keyframes. What I did (in that Little Caesars animation) was to do my simulation in the chor, save the simulated choreography action as an Action... now you can bring it into another choreography, and as I said above- turn OFF animation mode and place the model with the action where you need it... this may get complicated with multiple dynamic objects as I think about it...

Good to see Soulcage using NetRender! It is, in my opinion- the BEST thing that has happened to A:M in years! At any given time I have 8-10 processors going in the background while I am working away in A:M!