Simon Edmondson

I'll see if I can get Hangouts sorted out on the laptop, otherwise, I can't use AM on the Imac because of Mojave and the mini has no useable sound or microphone connection at this time. regards simon

Robert Thank you for your reply and feedback. Much appreciated. I'm not sure its the look I was after, so much as the look I was able to get. I had previously ( several iterations ago ) set up a limited tone toon shading but, that was not used in the render settings and the toon option not selected. For this render there was no ambient settings, it was all done with shadow maps (4096 ), there are two lights casting shadows, one exterior, one interior, and one spotlight not casting shadows, shining on the baby. What I wanted was quite bright outside, darker inside but with the baby standing out. Tried to do that with the BW background and the baby in colour. One anomaly that did catch my eye when playing it back, was what appeared to be a thunderstorm outside, just before the camera move in S1. The sky is a single frame mapped onto a layer and the lighting doesn;t change over time. Normally I use multiple master to have four renders going through at the same time but, for some reason, the Macmini was not happy with that this time so had to use three instead. Used embedded projects and the same render settings. It has not been a happy couple of months tech wise. regards simon

Robert Apologies if I've seemed rude in not replying. I did, but it seems to have got lost. As you know I have had a few problems recently accessing the forum. This is the first day its been possible to get here. Here are two updates on the scenes so far. Rendered in AM, notes hand coloured in TVPaint, composited in After Effects. Any critical feedback very welcome. The originals are much bigger in file size, these are H264 conversions. No sound as yet. regards simon TLC S1.mov TLC S2 .mov

Revised lighting, using z buffered shadows and AO. Revised camera movement and composition. Any critical feedback very welcome simon TLC S One.mov

Mark, Robert, Dan Thank you very much for the feed back, much appreciated. I will try some variations on the composition of the shot. I was trying to get it so that you could see the mum in the background and the notes being generated. Originally there was more camera movement but that got edited out. Time for a rethink. I've tried some different setting, moving over to z buffered shadows.This was just done using a standard render, no toon settings, but it does seem to have affected the result. Definitely not going for the blackface or thermo settings. I liked the expressionist ( pardon pretensions ) shadows but not intended. LC Baby 000.png was done in V17. Using AO and z buffered shadows for the interior and exterior lights The png output was not corrupted in V17 TLC S1 V18 was rendered with Z buffered shadows but no AO. V18 on the Mac mini seems to corrupt the png format for some reason. I've also had a lot of crashes with it this evening. Possibly something to sleep on before going for revisions tomorrow.. Thank you all again. regards simon TLC S1 V18 0539.tga

Robert Thanks for the feedback.. Much appreciated. There are only two lights in the scene, one Bulb light inside the room and a Sun light outside aiming at a null where the baby is sitting.. Both are using Raytracing ( with shadows set to 20% darkness ), because I couldn't get a decent image using shadow maps. I too thought it was a bit harsh but will have another look. regards simon Don't know what happened to the sound on this posting. It was there when I pressed enter?

Thank you Robert. I shall check that after having a large cup of tea. regards simon

A revisit of an old idea/project done to test the working method. The old one was a bit of a mess too but liked the idea. The scenario is that, the Mum is starting to learn to play the piano, and the baby has yet to walk. But will by the end of Day Three. This is a rough pass at Day One. Any Critical feedback very welcome. It was animated and rendered in AM, the notes hand coloured in TVP and the composite done in After Effects. The composite will need some work as I have very little knowledge or experience of AE Simon BEWARE of Sound !!! TLC S1 003S.mov

Robert. Thank you for your help. Pardon me, I missed the invite to live answers, I was working on the short its for. I tried it in Photoshop because, when I opened the sequence in TVpaint, which does use alpha channels to layer composits, it appeared to be black and not transparent. Will try it in After Effects tomorrow to see how that gets on with it? Thank you. regrds simon

Robert Apologies for delay, I have a large render going through of the full scene, taking 18mins per frame.Rendering at UHD because I want the larger file siz to work on afterwards. Here are the files and a screenshot of the settings used in the render options. as you can see, the tga file is viewable but, the same frame rendered as a png file, is scrambled. Both file formats were visible when viewed in the render window in AM as the render went through, but Photoshop could not read the png file when I tried to use that to view it.. Thank you for your help. regards simon TLC S2 0000.tga

Robert Thank you for your reply and offer of help. I'll send a copy of the files tomorrow if thats OK?. I've found a work around in Photoshop using Droplets to do the grunt work. Its getting late here and the the land of nod beckons. regards simon

As mentioned elsewhere, have been having a lot of tech troubles recently, had thought they were behind me now and to get on with something new(ish) but have hit a problem with alpha channels in TGA files. First a bit of background. I'm working in V18 within OSX 10:8.5. on a Mac mini, I7, 2.3ghz with 4Gb of Ram. Just rendered two scenes to TGA with the figure set against an empty background ( ready for compositing later ). All was well until I opened them in Photoshop, to find that the background had rendered as black rather than transparent. When selecting the background and deleting it, the Alpha transparency is there but, ideally, don't wish to do that for 1000+ frames. Is there a setting I could easily have missed that might cause this problem ? Thank you for listening simon ps Initially the files were rendered to png's but, V18, OSX 10:8.5, produced incorrectly parsed files. Although they looked correctly rendered when they were going through, when opened afterwards in PS The files were a corrupted incoherent jumble of pixels and PS flagged the message, "cannot open the file because it is incorrectly parsed.' This problem had occured before but, rendering on a different machine/OSX solved it. Unfortunately that option is no longer available due to the recent troubles. Any suggestions as to how it might be possible to fix this would be very welcome. The prospect of manually removing 1000+ frames backgrounds is not a happy one!

Robert Thank you for your reply. It has been four weeks or so of teeth grinding time, possibly in time with the Timemachine HD that was gradually grinding to a stop. There were three attempts, the last migration took 8 days and didn't give me back all the files I wanted. Lost all my email contacts for example. Now trying to rescue that data onto a newer HD but, the drive is barely moving, and the estimated time remaining is showing at 111 days ( not a typo ), its already had 6. The house spring cleaning has been bypassed for more urgent things. Thats my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Agreed about OSX numbering, only thing more irritating is the naming system. I migrated from PC's after a lot of reliability problems post Windows XP, both hardware and operating system. This is the first time I've really hit trouble with the Macs and its really because I didn't pay attention to the ext HD. Lesson learned, at least I hope so. regards simon

Mark Thank you very much for your help. I think I've found it ( not sure of anything tech wise at the moment ) It has been such a nightmare the past four weeks, If I wasn't grey before, I would be now. regards simon

By way of update on this problem. I has been a very frustrating few weeks trying o sort out the problems, compounded by the HD the timemachine was on starting to give up the ghost. That is starting to settle down but, have tried to migrate V19 from the Mojave machine to a MBP running OSX 10.9. When I enter the authorisation code it warns "that code is already used" and allows no further progress. Is there a way to correct this problem ? I should add that, as a result of all the tech problems, I have lost nearly all info on the original Imac HD. The code I have was written down when I bought V19 last year Thank you for any help. simon

Robert Thank you very much for all your work on this project and all your help to me on previous productions. The very least I can do is donate my copy of the book to you. Please accept it, as you stopped listing desired items some time ago. regards simon

Robert, Mark Thank you for your help and replies. I went and had a look at other programs on the desktop, and several of those were no longer available as well, FCP, Logic Pro9 and Logic Express. As they are the main programs I work with, other than Photoshop and Lightroom, it seemed like a good idea to revert to El Capitan and get rid of Mojave. A friend gave me a mac book pro with FCPX on it and, for me at least, its horrible. Aside from the samples and loops the same applies to Logic ProX. Anyway, hesitations about needless upgrades aside, I've gone for reinstalling from the Timemachine backup. It is going to take a very long time. At this point, its saying the estimated time is 260+ hours. Hoping that is an over estimate as 11 days seems like an eternity, Will just have to get on with it on a different machine. One without Mojave ! regards simon

After several months of frustrations with El Capitan, 10.11.6, I was obliged to upgrade to Mojave, 10.14.4, today. One of the reasons I had been reluctant to do so had been the question of compatibility with AM. Haven't tried it fully yet but, on opening it for the first time, a message from Apple flagged up saying it was not entirely compatible with Mojave and to contact the developer. The first thing noticed was that the drop down buttons in the PWS didn't seem to work. Could move the bones in an action but, not close down the drop down lists. Is there a patch available for V18 or a workaround? Thank you for any help. simon

Heres a link to a private listing on vimeo. You'll need the password: FredSWE I tried to post it here but it wouldn't load with sound (?) Its a 720file from a 4K original. I hope to try it on the festivals game but, just personal enjoyment at the moment. Any critical feedback very welcome. simon

I'm grabbing it now with clipconverter. Thank you. regards simon

Robert Thank you very much indeed. Thats a lot better than sequence I have already. I think it may lead to a different animation rather than redo the current project. Should be more fun though ! regards simon

Apologies. Clearly not looking in the right place.Bit preoccupied with more mundane, less enjoyable, non animation matters regards simon

Robert, Steve Thank you . Can you remind me how to connect up? Its been some time since I did. Rgards simon

Robert. Thank you for your reply and offer to help. Unfortunately I can't be sure about tomorrow as things are a bit hectic at the moment. What time is the session ? regards Simon

Presently trying to edit the F curves on an animation sequence and having all sorts of "fun" doing so. Can anyone kindly suggest a broad strategy for going about the process?. Mainly trying to stop feet going through the floor plane and smooth out positional changes as it approaches or moves away from the keyframe. If I adjust one bone until it works, it inevitably affects the position of another. Its probably age catching up with me but, it can get very involved and confusing very quickly. I wondered if there was a fairly standard way of approaching the problem, such as starting where in the bone heirachy, what type of interpolation to use. I appreciate this is a Chicken and egg type of question but, just wondered if anyone had a regular method or workflow they used to deal with it? regards simon