John Bigboote

Those look to be artifacts from the compression of the QT. ANOTHER difference between V6 and V15 is that V15 can now accept 16 bit color depth images, in .png format. What I did (if I remember correctly) was to transfer the QT to an image sequence...open the image seq in Photoshop (using an action) and transfer it from 8 bit to 16...guassion blur it a little to 'clean it up'... and save it as a .png sequence.

Another approach to higher passes is to render the image at higher dimensions and then reduce it in Photoshop.

That's funny...something EVERYONE can relate to!

I never 'took to it' either.... I think there should just be a link to this forum for help.

It would be cool if A:M allowed rendering the neg frames...though I can't remember why I wanted this... I also thought it would be cool if A:M allowed a -1 frame value on renders, so you could render a sequence backwards- because I would like to be able to get 2 instances of A:M going and have one start at the beginning and one at the end...anyways--- As Rodney stated, the neg frames are where your 'pre-roll' will happen for particles. Fer'instance-I have been working with my 'long haired' characters, and found that if I want the hair to fall to the front of the body- I can place my character forward a stride or 2, and have her 'back-up' as the 2 second pre-roll calculates...

Smooth camera moves, with motion in different axa at once like we see in Matt's animation, are pretty difficult to get "for real". A GOOD QUESTION: We do DO a lot of live-action shoots of the 'tabletop' variety here where I work. We have 4 'cyc-ed' stages including the largest sound-stage in the midwest, as well as a full compliment of lighting, dollies, crew and cameras (Including the new 'Red' camera that shoots 4K digital) I have been involved in various live-action product shoots for years. They are a bitch, I avoid them at large costs nowadays. The time, manpower, and energy involved is tremendous...throw an 'art-director' into the mix and the timeframe multiplies enormously with little to no gain. The best camera-camera man- dollie- gaffer can NOT make a perfectly smooth camera move. The amount of post-production sometimes equals or exceeds doing it all in 3D. There ARE times when a shoot is the best way to go... for instance, for the water-pitcher video we need scenes of water pouring in slo-mo into the pitcher and into water glasses. We set-up a down and dirty shoot (1 day with 3 begrudged stagehands) and shot 90fps water pours and got BEAUTIFUL results (there will still be a lot of post) but we never could have gotten water THAT realistic using Realflow, A:M or Blender (or any other app) Real is real, after all!

Wow- there's some great stuff, Fuchur! I could'nt watch the 'lasik' animation anymore.

BINGO! Thanks Nancy! Now THAT is an OLDIE but GOODY!!!

A great start. I find animating to be very 'additive'...in that you start out with something (like this) then you clear your mind, take a break... come back to it with 'fresh eyes' and see what else it wants. My 1st impression is that it 'wants' a little hip sway added, maybe a little hip up and down as well. The hands are good, but try offsetting them to get a little 'lag' on them. Then- take a break...

Thanks folks! Glad you like... Draagn- there was a tutorial on water a few years back...I just looked for and couldn't find it... Jim Talbot or Yves or someone--- it involved using a material/combiner animation that you could then render-out to an animation sequence- and that sequence would work as a good source for making water bumps and displacements. I never really understood the process, but I DID make myself a nice :20 animation sequence that I have used ever since...(my bad) BASICLY- the sequence was a moire of slowly moving soft masses, and applied to a surface (like the surface I have for my water surface) and set to 'bump' or 'displacement' would do a fine job of emulating a water surface. My surface group is also set to be transparent(75%) and highly specular and- most importantly, refractive with a value of 1.25% I'm still looking for that old water tutorial...

Hey Spliners! Been awhile since I did any 'show-n-tell'...I've been busy, and A:M V15.0E is at the CORE of my operations. Here are two recent jobs, one for Healthy Balance fruit juice and the other for HoMedics new water filter-er. I'm having good results with Yves new ENVIRONMENT SHADER, but I still tend to render with reflections ON anyway. Both of these animations were needed in HD (720P) and average render times were around 4 minutes per frame, totally acceptible for an overnight render. The juice bottle is actually an engineering file imported to A:M as a .OBJ prop, and given dummy attributes right in the choreography(color, transparency, reflectivity, specular, refraction etc.) It was a highly dense 80mb polygonal file, but rendered quick and without glitches- I added the label and cap as separate model files. You may see the Healthy Balance ad in national campaigns, it has people interacting with the bottle...look for it! The water pitcher also came to me as a polygonal engineering file, which we converted to OBJ/3DS- neither of which rendered well. The model was too dense, and too many different parts and many bad splines- SO, I used it simply to generate rotoscope images, and remodeled the pitcher myself in A:M to it's exact dimensions.. I used my favorite Darksim texture (PLUSH) on the white plastic-which gives it a nice 'rimlit' feel, and the environment shader can be seen in the clear plastic. I used a heavy amount of white FOG, but set the pitcher to 'IGNORE FOG' which is a look I like and will use more often. The water is a bump matte animated texture, and the handle holes are a displacement map. BOTH these sequences are straight-out of A:M with little-to-no post-production or color correction. AMrenders.mov

Looking good Nino! I like those render settings...COOL use of 'toon!

You will want to use the 'MuHair' shader and MAKE SURE-as Fuchur said- to turn ON the 'Plugin Shaders' in your render dialogue. EDIT--- there are some MAJOR revisions done to hair in the latest version...well-worth the upgrade for anyone working with hair.

QT's are sometimes a problem. Could be the compression, could be your video card... you may need to 'keyframe' the beginning and end of the 'frames' so that A:M knows there's more to it than 1 frame... sometimes saving/closing/reopening is enough to kick it. I would recommend that you convert your QT to a jpeg or tga sequence and use that insteadly.

A couple of us '10 year A:M veterans' were recently noticing how we are still learning 'little things' and have yet to wander into major areas...after TEN years!!! The program is deep, but it IS friendly. I had an intern last summer who 'took a shining' to A:M and I was amazed at what he was doing after just 2 weeks. 1 month is a little ambitious... I suppose if you EMERGED yourself into it and shut the curtains on your normal life... WELCOME

I'll have some of Paul's 'virtual cake' made by Rodney... unless Rodney dropped it on his virtual floor! Happy Birthday...MR. Forewood!

Cool! More! More! We beg for more! You have a neat little sci-fi thing going there! Good job!

Looks great, you lost the 'fog image' ay?

Yeah- a great design and backstory...did you model this or is it from the game? If you... I beg, animate it!!!!

I was going to mention the 'C'... when it comes to extruded text in A:M... there is most-always a little 'reworking' involved whether you used the .ai or font wizards. Some fonts more than others. I've found a good thing to do is to look at the bezier-points in Illustrator, or Photoshop and try to pre-think how they will convert into patches... patches LIKE 4 sides...so look at each letter carefully to make sure that 4 sided patches will evolve in the wizard, and add a point here and there as needed.

Where has this thread been hiding? I just saw your 'I want to be loved by you' Pass the Ball sequence... WOWZERS! Oh- and these render tests are interesting too... IBL and toon... great stuff, Nancy!

NICE! You have discovered one of A:M's (shhhh) 'hidden' strongpoints: MOTION GRAPHICS. The sky is the limit to what you can do with this app. THANKS for the word on 'fog images'... I still haven't tried that feature (after 10 years!) but I DID just recently start using the 'ignore fog' feature. I was trying to adjust the fog's 'in' and 'out' limits endlessly until I discovered 'ignore fog'. FOG in A:M adds a LOT to your realism...even in small doses, and it does NOT add too much to your render times... MUSCLES. I too, have been spending too much time sitting in front of a computer and as a result my 'upper body' has gone quite soft. My legs arent in bad shape because I play ice-hockey 2X per week in a league all winter. Recently, I discovered that my local high school has a program where they share their state-O-D-art workout facility with the public for a very nominal fee. I have been using the treadmills, weight room, and pool all spring and can actually feel a bicep in my arm again... LOOK IN TO IT, it's well-worth the time and expense, and more and more community high schools are doing it to offset costs. NOW- if I can only save my eyesight! These monitors are KILLING ME!!!

CUTE KID!!!!

Wow. You give-up REALLY easy. Maybe you are not cut-out for computer animation, maybe just stick to surfing. What version of A:M are you using?

I'm almost 10 years on A:M now... still learning new things every day. It's a deep pool, but the water is fine!