John Bigboote

Perfect ashtray for Phillies... LOVE the refraction... reminds me of one I did awhile ago complete with cigarette and smoke... https://youtu.be/t0GT3tDGvAE

Yes- I can see the uses for this, GREAT! Of course- the video really sells it, so thanks for the feature, Steffen- and thanks for the video, Gerald!

It is a 'pricey-dicey' approach... but you could 'try' getting an importable .obj from turbosquid.com OR- DIY. http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Index.cfm?keyword=jet+interior

Very good! You break it you bought it!

Subscribed... HAPPILY! 2 hours on UV editor... JUST what I was looking for the other day... THANKS WILL!

GREAT USE of the MEDIUM! Love the projectors!

WHILE keeping us abreast of your learnings. It's the C++ that scares me... I don't 'take' to computer codewriting too well.

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/unity-udk-cryengine-game-engine-choose/ Good article on what they consider the 4 'best'...

another classic!

GREAT! I remember when Jim Talbot did his amazing 'Tiger Princess' image- I begged him to do a 'Mickey Rooney' camera move on it (Mickey Rooney= 'little creep') and he did and it too was wonderful. I am always stunned when someone puts so much time into a 3D creation and then just generates a few images from it, don't get me wrong- stills are great, I love em... but your model and software is capable of so much more.

The amount of SOFTWARE out there nowadays is overwhelming too. A decade ago, an After Effects 'filter' was a simple utility that had an amount slider and generated a certain, simple effect... like a blur for example. 2 minutes was all it took to experiment and understand what it does and how to use it... and ideas were generated. Today, filter packages are robust, expensive and DEEP! The Trapcode packages, each one(not all of them... Shine is pretty simple!) could take a month or more to master and seemingly once learned a person could almost make a full-time living off. Element3D puts the power of GPU rendered 3D in an After Effect filter... Cinema4D is linked to AE via a filter! It goes on and on! There are SCRIPTS available (see http://aescripts.com/) that do a myriad of tasks but can be tricky to 1)find2)download3)install4)learn5)get to do what YOU want. And that's just After Effects... the entire 3D 'world' has exploded with software... Maya and Max are still strong and the standard for large facilites... Cinema 4D has gone from a clunky Mac-only 3D app to a motion-graphics and beyond 'standard' with an never-ending user-base and 3rd party... Lightwave, modo, BLENDER! Messiah, on and on... sculpt apps like Rhino, ZBrush, MudBox, Heck- even Photoshop now boasts 3D capabilities and UV paint features. 2D animation programs, drawing programs, web programming programs, video editing programs... I am overwhelmed!

Great stuff, Rob! Question... where did you get that tuba sound effect? LOVE the energy and attention to detail you put into these things... can't wait to see the final-vinyl heart in this one...

REVITALIZE US! We are a bunch that can use revitalization... foe-show! Depression IS common in this business... post-mortem after a big project... and the whole sink-or-swim, all-or-nothing, work-or-worry chess-nut. For me, it has been... how did it get to this? To keep my lights on, and the wolfs from my door... my current employment situation invloves too long of a drive, incredibly arduos and imbecellic corporate/pharma videos that are made at obtusely high resolutions (9600 pixels wide by 1920 high for example.) go on for way too long and involve weeks and weeks of revisions, script rewrites, constant client educating, and last minute rush-rush renders. 99% After Effects which keeps me out of the 3D game. I got into this business to make funny cartoons... now I am making 4 minute info-mercials for sales reps who need to be convinced to push a new sleep pill or cancer hope.

Very cool... I just watched it about 20 times- love it in motion!

Just did some catch-up on this thread. Great looking imagery, interesting SSS findings, and an informative flood story. I had not even heard of last years Austin flooding, and sorry to see how it has majorly affected your life and plans, David. I hope 2015 marks the 1st of many a dry year for you... making it your productivity the only thing that 'flows'. My niece lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan- another medium size town that has been devastatingly flooded. Even tho it is on the other side of the same state I live in... we heard very little about it in the media. Floods just don't get 'ink', seems.

Don't know if this has been mentioned: https://www.buildbox.com/buildbox/ I think it is pricey, but has a drag-n-drop no coding necessary environment. If your project has a nice budget- look into it! EDIT- yeah, just reskimmed all the valuable input in this thread and did not see Buildbox mentioned... wonder why? Possibly because it is almost un-affordable... I think it costs about $2500 if I remember correctly... EDIT EDIT: Read a review of Buildbox or 2... not good- highly limited in what you can do. Gamesalad looks good tho! http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/71822/new-game-maker-launched-called-build-box-thoughts

xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY9nDwTSrFc&feature=youtu.be One of my 1st tests with the Fisheye Lens... 2008!

Would love to see a camera move on that scene- even a minimal one... very impressive... NEEDS the DAME!

Hey Tom- GLAD to see you make use of the lens! It was a collaboration between user 'Ben- Bent to the Max' and myself several years ago, and yes... it is a very simple camera appliance that utilizes the refraction feature to generate cool 'fish-eye' effects. Since Ben's name ryhmed with 'lens' we called it 'Bens-Lens'. I was frustrated with A:M's apparent 'lock-in' to the 2 point perspective look- even with a wide camera field of view... I took some classes in perspective drawing and fully understand 2 and 3- even 4 point perspective... but I need to study that 5 point one to see what the heck is going on there. No- I don't think you can change the number of 'vanishing points' with a slider. It should be noted that since Refraction is 'render-intensive' that this lens will add to your render times. I mostly made this hoping that someday 'fisheye lens' would become a standard feature in A:M... I remember it did not go over too well and Martin dismissed it as fruitless saying that the wider camera field of views basically do the same effect. I have seen the 3D program modo now includes a nifty fisheye lens that works exactly as I had envisioned, even goes so far as to do a 'negative fisheye' effect(imagine THAT!)- at a price. ENJOY! and share what you create.

Perfectly clear. Thank-You very much John! I hope you worked out your car situation. I ended-up using a similar effect in Adobe After Effects called Trapcode Sound Keys, but the client got weirded-out by the tight reaction to the audio. BUT- boy do I EVER want to give amplitude a try now that I know how straight-forward a plug-in it is to use.

I'd recommend using Ambient Occlusion... either A:M's inherent AO(slow renders) or A:M's V18 built in AO(a post effect) or either of Jenpy's FastAO CPU or GPU versions.

This might be a question for JohnL3d... I may have a use for a 'sound triggered' action... and remembered that A:M V18 has a new feature called 'Amplitude'. IS THERE any instructions on enacting this new technology? I searched the forum, found some movies that John had made... just wondering what the process is to find it, get it to work, and what properties it can control. ?

Cool test Rodney- thaNKS! Quite a 'pop' upon standup... that the rig or the animator? I've always(once I get around to it...) added 2 poses to my characters called FIST R and FIST L, taking the fingers hand from full flexion of each finger at 10% to a full punchy fist at 100%, while at it I will add muscle mode embellishments to the fist in the pose as well. I don't think that task falls in the realm of the rig-creator, rather the animator/rigger/end user/US. Also- make the fingers stagger as they become a fist, with the pinky falling in first and the pointer last... as this is the way most people actually are programmed to move. When animating, keyframe the 2 poses going back and forth and you will get some natural human motion and get your modelled hand away from 'karate hand' all the time. Another useful pose would be POINT R, POINT L...

Exciting news! This may be my new rig... ease of install is one thing, animate-ability is another. Have any sample animations?

The PROBLEM with 'weight first smartskin later' is that under certain circumstances your weighting will perform perfectly as anticipated, but when you try an altogether different action you might find that a different weighting package is needed. I find that I am constantly re-weighting my characters every time I attempt a different unique action. Smartskin is great but I have found from time to time it tends to 'go away' or gets lost from the file and needs be re-programmed, or as I re-weight it becomes something that needs to be deleted. LATELY- my approach has been to get the character weighted and rigged as economically as possible... animate freely without concern for snapping joints or constricting wrists... and then go about the a 'last pass' of correcting 'issues' via muscle-mode animation in the choreography. I believe I read an article somewhere that explained that Pixar employs a team that does similar corrections.