John Bigboote

I am confused by this test... I can not believe C4D took 4 minutes!(which version?) To my eye, it seems A:M misinterpreted the displacement maps... I love to see these tests tho.

Is it used to keep the instrument's shape during non-usage?

I don't know if the mask on the model is needed, since SSS is self-cancelling. You could render your normal pass, then render a black pass with the SSS as white and composite it additively in post- being able to crunch, blur, and color as you see fit. SSS only shows up on groups where it is activated and only shows in the thinner geometries.

Is that the book where on the cover it asked... 'You can draw... why not try ANIMATION!'...?

Which one do you mean? My suggestion or another? The translucency map method that William was referring to... your's employs A:M's SSS.

Illustrated:

One thing to keep in mind, and this SSS workaround does not consider... is that SSS is a light-driven effect, meaning that a strong backlight is needed in order for it to show-up. Good examples of SSS are a flickering candle where you can see the light absorbing and diminishing thru the wax... or a flashlight held up to your hand, where you can see the light illuminate thru the thinner parts of your flesh. Element 3D, which has a nice SSS effect, requires the usage of either a backight/rimlight or an HDR optimized for SSS, and I have found the same holds true in A:M- where I place a strong (200%ish) sun or bulb light behind or rim-lighting the character I want an SSS effect on. You can place the light in a light list so it only effects the character and not the entire scene should you want.

Interesting! I always go back to the muppets... you got OPEN... and CLOSE, and derivitives thereof. Lipsynch can often be overthought. I had a client who was making a generic character that he would later- in post, make say anything the script called for... I asked if he simply wanted open/close mouths for simplification and he said 'no, make the character repeatedly say "Freak-off and die..." sure-enough, you could slip almost any voiceover on that character and it worked! I would love to see the original Preston Blair animation books... Oh, and Minneapolis is MN.. MI is Michigan.

That looks cool... realtime render! A:M's SSS feature is working quite nicely nowadays, and seems a swift render feature as well... So- you are saying can we add a 'translucency map' to the decal map types? Interesting... translucency in A:M is one of those features I never really got a grasp of as to what it does or can do. I've been toying with it and SSS together... would the ambience intensity map type do similar with the appropriate color?

Hi Lens! It is not you, this is a very common problem, I believe Rodney was just talking about this in another recent thread regarding 5 pointers. Somethng about using the period key to select them then hitting 'shift' to close the patch. What I have always done is to hide everything BUT the 5 points that will not close, then drag a lassoo selection over all of them and the button becomes available. If not turn the view and try from another angle... Hope you get this and continue your A:M journey!

another... SSS!

Hi Stefff, No... no painting, no decals, just settings in each groups properties for color, specularity etc. I think there is a matcap ambience shader on his suit... and I have been toying with Sub Surface Scattering settings for his skin which adds the red to his fingertips, adds white in his inner ears and other nuances. Also, barely visible- is a hair added to the group that puts a littte bit of stubble to his beard and scalp. Finally, I do a post effect for Ambiance Occlusion which helps to define edges with a slight amount of shading. Thanks!

Trying Rodney's most-excellent advice: HMM! It just worked this time... and the file is 5.5mb!

smaller... seeing if it will auto-play. I am trying to figure this out on Facebook too. I see you can link to a gif from an external link (like tumblr) and it will play without needing to be opened... other people are doing it but every time I link to a gif it appears as a still image... there is a trick I am missing!

It is hard to see but there are springs in his nose and ears causing nice 2ndary actions.

Here's the action. I think I used this in my 'Bus Stop' entry. It is a GIF loop- so I guess you have to click on it to get it to open and play... I was hoping the gif would just play straight off but I must have exceeded a file size limit for that.

Great stuff! Very informative... I love the show-n-tell, our forum needs more imagery.

I think that as the GPU render gets faster and faster and better and better we will start to see a meld between movies/games... or interactive movies. I am disturbed by what I call 'doom shoot-em-ups'... I was playing DOOM 20 years ago, the graphics are much bettere but the game is basically... DOOM! Are game makers in a rut? That forest looks amazing! Is that on the PS4?

I stumbled acrosst an old character and a cool animation- I decided to throw some new features on the render and see how it looks... (SSS and AO)

Thanks- yup, I see it now... that saves me from dragging multiples in. I like the way the other wizard sets them in an array... would be great to have some sort of mograph in A:M... dreaming!

Did a quick test with ND for comparison... I had to drag 20 instances of the nail into the chor and place each one of them so they were not overlapping one another. As far as the collision-detection of the shape tho...I don't think this is lacking at all. nails.mov mp4 version: nails.mp4

This must be an advantage to using the cloth method over the Newton Dynamic method. The Duplicate wizard only works in the model window(apparently), and ND needs the model to be centered-up on the XYZ axis's. To do this animation with ND would require importing each instance of the nail into the chor and placing them in the XYZ dimensions (and rotating them) one by one. Pain in the Butt! Begs the question... could the Duplicate Wizard be made to be available in the Choreography?

I will check those... they came in with the Saucy rig and I have not dinked them so I assumed they were spot on.

Yeah- my model is a bit dense and weighting is a B*TCH so I decided to wrestle with the MirrorBone plugin... it hasn't been working directly as advertised for me... 1st, I realized I had to get the naming convention down- I had been using capital letters for Left, Right... 2nd- I was told in the Mech tutorial to run it on the Center Pelvis bone because that was the root bone(for the lower half of his rig) but everytime I did that it would make a duplicate set of RIGHT leg bones right on top of the ones that were there... 3rd- I went 1 bone down in the cahin and increased the sensitivity from .1 to 1 and things started to go better. It also helps to DELETE all of the left leg bones before you do the MirrorBone... it will make new ones.

So far so good... going slowly... I am on the legs and tried the 'mirror bones' operation that Mech did- it did not work the same way for me. (I have terrible luck with any 'mirror' operation in A:M) He opened the wizard, hit okay and BAM! It mirrored all his bones as advertised AND seemed to copy the weighting over as well. Mine (I set the checkboxes the same way Mech had them) Made NEW legbones additive to the ones that were already there on the left side, and did not do any weighting at all. I will forego that and redo all the bones and weighting in 'Matt Mirror Mode' -which is me doing it myself.