John Bigboote

What happens when you select and hit the 'o' key?

That's quite an ambitious award! I like the design, needs say 'Hash' or 'A:M' somewhere's... what is the translation for us who are not up on our latin?

I tried to hit 'like' on this but was told I had hit my quota for positive notes for the day...(!) I hadn't used ANY!

AND- I see there are 2 new ones! 13 now! Great participation!

11 entries! Excellent! Mine is the one with the bug in it...

Gobleddy-gook! I wannsa see some 'fr-instances'... like 'here is a 100mb uncompressed video file...here it is compressed with H264, Mpeg, Pro-Res and their file sizes and respective qualities... now HEEEERE, is our NEW .thor compression... LOOK how good the quality and MY how LOW the file size is!!!' Until they do that...

Quite sure that OBJ export is the only option... MDD or BVH...

CRAZY! we are just around the corner from being able to 'shoot thru' clothing... remember those ads in the comic books for the crazy glasses?

Done and submitted, Rob- please confirm. (Last time my entry was 'overlooked') It was fun, hope there is a nice turnout... I look forward to seeing everyones entry (and Nancy's 10!)

EXCELLENT!

I am almost ready to submit my entry...!

Cogratulations William... would be great to see what you are up to. Sounds like you found 2 features that counteract each other in the renderer, I just discovered one that has me scratchin my head... use SSS and DOF together and you get a 'un-additive' unwanted darkened effect . (Sub Surface Scattering and Depth-of-Field.)

Jeez! SPOT ON!

Cloth is tricky... in any program. For a table cloth you will first need to do a 'rest' solver action to get the cloth draped nicely over the table. Next, you will do the animation of the tablecloth animating from 'rest' to the pulloff action via a connected part of the cloth to a bone. Always with cloth is the element of density- as in mesh density... the finer the mesh the better the details (wrinkles etc.) you will need to experiment to find what density mesh will suit your needs. I'll attach 2 variations of a TV spot I did back in 2005 when the feature was brand new. AV_HalfOFF_test6SM.mov AV_HalfOFF_SNOWtest_smaller.mov

Another trick to maybe try on long-hair dynamics... let a force do the styling for you. Here you can see I am generating bangs by putting 2 forces (fans if you will...) as children of the head bone in the rig. Adjust the magnitude of the force to control... also in the images... if you look close... many other tricks may be seen in the settings.

Hey Heiner- looking good, man! I see you are delving into A:M's hair feature- GREAT! To answer your Q: No, you don't need to define the body as a collision object. It is another beast aside from SimCloth altogether. Here is a sample from my 'latest' with dynamic hair and collision-detection... seems to be working a little. I keep returning to tinker with hair in new released versions to see if the hair feature is being refined or works better, it does seem to improve over time. One thing AM hair does need for collision detection is to be eminated from a very dense mesh- I think I cover that in my paper. A good trick is to generate a denser mesh for your skull-hair areas by copy/pasting and slightly enlarging and then use the Plugins/Wizards/SplitPatch utility several times to multiply the scalp mesh. Grooming the hair requires turning the dynamics and pre-roll to OFF (You can turn it ON again when done) you will get a better tactile response that way. Hope this helps! Dig your character! moonboots test2.mov

Hi William- No, I don't. too many factors involved... mainly that E3D is an 'in between' program between A:M- where the models and animation happen, and After Effects- where the camera is set. If anyone has figured an A:M to AE camera export method, maybe thqat would work. Hope you are well!

I can't wait to try this, Rob... Thank-You ever so kindly!

COOL! Here is a scene that had one of the more active camera moves... altho when the entire chor is teensy-weensy... so does the camera action. I will include the shot before/after so you can see that I did get a GREAT track out of Synth Eyes JUST by hitting that green auto button and then exporting to A:M... fantastic track! Just really-really hard to work that small. AND- attached is an image of the scene in SE... SythEyes tracked7.prj Reason Anim_before after.mov

I am using an older version I had back in 2007. There is a demo? What are the limitations? Rob... yes, I could select maybe 6-7 nulls only once I determine which ones mark my spot.

Well- I just went thru and tried several different 'units' combinations in SE and AM... just get different variations of the same thing... a very 'small' camera and nulls. (see image) Rob- I would be interested in your thoughts on doing an overall 'scale-up' once in A:M.

Yes- the nulls, the camera- and the relation to each needs to scale proportionately. Thanks for the info, Rodney- I will be giving it a good read-over... I had gone thru every menu looking for a way to scale the export, maybe there is one!

I hadn't thought of that Rob...Here is a project to see how small is small, if interested. It will ask for the image sequence, hit cancel. SythEyes tracked.prj

Excellent! Great product- well shot and animated video- I hope this takes off for you, Jason! (Oh- and wonderful FAMILY too!)

Here is a sneak peek at this years' crop of 4 TV spots for Belle Tire... some of them are still rough as far as music and tagging. The director chose to use a LOT of camera movement, and last year I was able to simply put Adobe After Effects camera tracker to use- this year, the shots were to 'wiggly-giggly' for After Effects to track. On the shoot I saw 1 guy raising-lowering the boom arm, while another guy controlled the camera axis and zoom and a 3rd pulled focus via remote. I resorted to using an old copy of Synth Eyes- which saved the day! Synth Eyes has a '1 button and done' tracker and exports an Animation:Master project file with the camera moving as tracked and lots of nulls to help you place your model in the right place. Only problem I encountered with Synth Eyes is that the scale of the scene is WAY small once opened in A:M (microscopic) and I havent figured out how to adjust scale in SE or scale-up the entire comp in A:M. It is not too much a problem working that small other than klieg lites not working as expected and scene manipulation gets wonky. All animation done in A:M V 18.0L, compositing in After EffectsCC, editorial in PremiereCC, sound done elsewhere. Shoot was done in 2 -14 hour days... animation and post in 10 days. BT_2015_small.MOV