Simon Edmondson

After the most nervous, anxiety fueled day since taking my driving test in 1981,( interview for an MA course ) today I got back to work. This is a test of the lighting setup and timing of the final scene in Ska Lake. No animation on the figures as yet and the final composition will be 1080p so not as much of the wall posters will show. Critical feedback very welcome. simon S3 000.mov

Mark and Mat Thank you for your help and replies. I shall go for V17g this afternoon. regards simon

Mark. Mat, Robert Thank you for your replies and help. I am using 18F simply because thats the one that came when I got the subscription but, will try to set up V17 later today. Just as I was about to go to bed last night a different glitch occured. Quit the program via the menu then just as it was closing, it crashed and a warning box, "Animation Master closed unexpectedly..." was displayed. Re opened it again and it crashed immeadiately. Have a very busy day today but will get back to it as soon as I can. Mark I bought a licence for V18 to use on the mini but the idea is to use that to render with the more involved setups while animating on the Imac next to it, and it is that which has been having the crashes. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the hardware side of things to know if thats what is causing the trouble.? Have had some trouble with graphics display and guess it might be caused by the things you suggest. Which version of V17 would you suggest ? regards simon

Curiouser and curuioser, Two hours ago I tried to render this scene, with the same settings, and stopped the render when the calculations in the panel, were heading up past 72 hours. This one took about 5 mins. The only difference, is that the parts of the model not in the view were hidden in this. But, yesterday, the whole model was being used and the render times were approx 1:30 per frame? simon

I got a one year subscription to 18 F last friday and have been using it over the weekend. I wondered if anyone else is have a few glitches with it ? The first one I noticed was that it crashed out if the maximum resolution was used for the maps in a z buffer render ? It came with a message saying Memory allocation failute 11 ( I think ) If a lower z buffer was chosen it was OK. but the maximum crashed each time it was tried. The second glitch came when trying to "save animation as" after rendering a sequence. The dialogue box would appear but non of the buttons woulld respond when clicked on. Tried exiting the program, restarting, importing sequence and trying again, but to no avail. Have just spent the afternoon setting up the next scene but, when I started to do some render tests the time shot through the roof on quick render and, when trying to render to file it crashes after a few seconds. It could easdily be me doing something foolish but is anyone else having similar troubles ? OSX 10-68 so not a mavericks problem. simon Ips I did copy the crash report that Apple made if thats any help ? Update. Just tried to replicate the z buffer problem. No luck, so that was probably me. Apologies.

Mark Thank you. I will look into that properly this morning. I was faffing about with the options yesterday before going to bed and tried "Toon with Fall off" This was the result. regards simon SL2F.mov

Mark Thank you very much. That was not something I had thought about. I will try it now. It has been an exasperating day. regards simon Edit Mark. Lame remark here, apologies for that, I know I have seen the Back facing poly option , but where ?

Mark thank you for that. It does help with getting rid of the blocked shadows but the light penetration at the back is still there regards simon

Mark, Nancy. Thank you for your help. Much appreciated. Normally I sett he toon lines to 0.2 in the PWS within the model surface properties and that sets it within the chor. I had done that several times with the model in the test chor to no avail. If you turn the model around in the chor, so the back is showing in the camera view you also get mesh penetration from the second light within the model space. I will try it in V15 and see if the problem recurs in that ? It is very frustrating when it changes then won't go back even when you revert to previous settings. regards simon

Here is the test project. It has two lifghts and a very simple model. In the first shot, only one light is on In the second the added light is on, nothing else has changed, notice the absence of the first ! Here is the project fileLight Test.prj Any help appreciated. Thank you. simon off to burn the calories...

Nancy. Thank you very much indeed for your help. I have been trying to follow it through this afternoon but getting some very inconsistent results. I am obviously doing something wrong but can't spot it yet so off to exercise and come back to attack it afresh. I will post the test projct later. regards simon

Rodney, Mark, Nancy Thank you for your replies and help. Here is the scren shot of it with Hall light and no bedroom light. Theroom light is turned off. This is the very next frame, The only difference in settings is that the room light is turned on. The hall light appears to be cancelled and the light is coming through the stairwell wall. These are the toon settings. The diffuse option is turned on for the spot. I just got a subscription to 18F today so this was done in that. regards simon

Mark Thank you very much for your helpful feedback. I'm having a bit of trouble with the lighting as it seems a bit wayward. At the first attempt, it worked as you suggest, with the light from the downstairs room splaying across the whole of the hall and casting a shadow on the opposite wall ( that was what I was after ). But, when I added another light the first effect changed, even without altering the settings and I couldn't get it back afterwards. So I started again with a fresh chor and tested the effect, then another fresh chor and added a light at a time. Part of the problem was the light penetrating the mesh. The cast shadow would be there but the light would go through the walls too. Double skinned the walls and adjusted the materials to minimum transparency and maximun density but, if I used a bulb, it came through the ceiling into the bedroom above. Went back to spot lights and changed to raytraced lights which was much better, also built a box around the light to prevent spillage that way and kept tight control of the cone of illumination and position so light came out the door but not through the walls. Today I've put the light on in the bedroom but it seems to have cancelled the one in the landing. I wonder if its a toon render problem ? I'm going to try some things in a while and see if they work. Will post an update later. I might try redering it non toon first then doing a toon render of the figure and compositing that in over the other. regards simon ps on a positive note, While chewing it over I did come up with a new tune on the guitar, so not completely frusrating day !

Rodney. Thank you for your encouragement, much appreciated. I've had aconsiderable amount of help her on the forum the past three years for which I'm very grateful. regards simon

First pass at opening scene for the dance sequence ( the dark rectangle in the top right is an error ( since corrected ). He's going to walk into the bedroom, turn on the light and close the door. Any critical feedback welcome SimonSL Two.mov

After doing a search I came up with this post: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5544&p=29589 I haven't tried toonation plugin in the recent versions of a:m but that post (by Rodney in 2004) came up with some preliminary info about some of the styles: Nancy. Thank you very much indeed for the info. It will be a great help. regards simon

Nancy It is some time since I looked at them, I was interested in the sketchy, watercolour and ink options, non cg basically... You have clearly put a lot of time and effort into your understanding of the materials and render options and get such outstanding results as a consequence. I think that may have to be the next area for me to explore in greater depth. I forget the name of the person involved but he wrote some render options then donated them before moving on to work for Pixar ( he may have been english too ). I did contact him briefly to ask if there were any instructions but didn't get very far unfortunately. regards simon

Robert I'd be very interested in those if you did choose that option ! regards simon

Terrific images Nancy. Its been a while since I tried but, had trouble finding instructions or outline for Toon Nation are there any available ? regards simon

Robert Thank you for your reply and help. I tried some variations before getting your message and, 100% is best, as you say. Still had a few glitches but got around those by double skinning the front wall and triple the side wall. Going to Try a larger scale overnight. this was the brief test at VGA. regards simon Light Test.mov

Rodney, Robert, Tore Thank you for your replies. I was using Z buffered shadows with the Darkness set to 30 rather than the default 80%. I tried a double skin, to not great effect, but will follow up the other suggestions this evening. regards simon

Setting up the opening and closing scene for the Dance sequence, its taking part in the young mans bedroom at home. Have made the model of the house and now trying to set up the lights in the chor. The first problem is that the lights are penetrating the mesh and showing up where they shouldn't. Is there a way to avoid this ? This is the scene, looking down the stairs to the hallway. The light source, a Klieg light , is outside, to the right of the model, in the street ( its supposed to be a passing car ). As you can see the light cone is penetrating the mesh of the Hall wall and, in the upper left, that of the bedroom wall, seen through the bedroom door. What I wanted to get, was the light coming through the windows of the front door and the bedroom window so there was a brief illumination of the scene before he steps into the hall way from the lounge and turns on the overhead light, then ascends the stairs. Is it necessary to have a double thickness of the wall mesh or is there another way to avoid the problem ? simon

Its a while since I read the Betty Edwards book and, having loaned it to someone who hasn't returned it, can't look through it now. What I remember of it was that it was basically dealing with what the educational psychologists call "the reality gap", which is where youngsters want it to 'look real' but are unable to achieve that and get discouraged. At that point they often revert to schematics, or furmulaie , to gain an acceptable result. Such formula stopped the person from seeing what was there and used the method instead. A head is an oval for example, with two dots for eyes, a line for the nose, and another for the mouth... What Edwards did in the book was to use various exercises to stop the student from using an established method of representation and to get them to actually look at the subject as a series of shapes, tonalities and surfaces, which could be re - presented through the pictorial use of graphic media. The use of negative space, silouhette, tonal contrast, could be used to get the desired result. My recollection is that she taught a beginners drawing class and used the techniques she developed to form a curriculum to help people improve their ability toi draw the 'real', in order that they can then transfer those skills to draw with imagination, emotion, "expression" and atmosphere. She was providing the foundations on which the students could develop their skills in other directions. By getting them to see, rather than repeat other systems, she was building a visual vocabulary which enable the students to articulate their responses in different ways. Simon Ps In case this all sounds too pretentious on my part, should add that, before my mishap, I applied to do a Phd in " the acquisition and development of visual language". Also, the PFG, in PFG studios on the end credits of my work, stands for Pretentious Fat Git.

This is a quick version of the old file. No real material settings but uses an animated jpg sequence for the ripple effect. With no claims as to it being high quality, was this the sort of effect you were after Paul? regards simon Ripple .mov

Paul. I did something along those lines a few years back. The effect was actually quite easy to achieve using animated maps to control the bump/ displacement, reflection and transparency for the ripples. Later project used cookie cutter decals to get rain drops. A combination of the two might get the effect you want ? regards simon Perhaps you could start a thread and explain how you did it? Robert I'm a bit bashful about explanations in such company, but will try to have a quick bash later in the week if possible. regards simon