Simon Edmondson

Thought I'd have a try at some basic exercises and trying to get a ball rolling properly. In preparation for the idea, pose sliders were used for the rotation and spins. However this was not one of my better ideas ! Does anyone have good advice as to how to achieve it ? The ball is setup with a single bone for the mesh and that controls the rotation and spin and the distance with the model bone ( hope that makes sense ?) Might there be a better way ? regards simon

Rodney I'm not sure how to do that ( report I mean ). I'll see if I can get a simplified prj file to illustrate it then post later. regards simon Ps Here's the files flats.mov Lego_Houses.prj

Terrific work Sebastian. Love the visual style too ! regards simon

After one of the most exasperating afternoons for somewhile I remembered earlier advice that channels are not the same as layers in PS. At that point I was able to follow Nancy's excellent advice and got what was needed. I also found were the fault was with the render artefacts ? When multi pass is turned on the artefacts disappear. This is the result with multi pass House_flats.mov This was the result with no multi pass House_flats_NMP.mov regards simon

Nancy Thank you very much indeed for your help I shall try that forthwith. I looked at a couple of Youtube tutorials and one of those Visual Quickstart books. Frustrating afternoon relieved. regards simon

Rodney. I went back and tried your suggestions, with mixed results. The original flats had about 24 patches so I reduced those to 6. Redid the png files ( still having trouble with TGA but will get there ). Reapplied the cookie cutter decals and rendered the sequence. This was it without motion blur House_flats_000.mov Notice the anomalies are still there. Then tried it with motion blur turned on This was the result. House_Blur_000.mov No artefacts? regards simon

Rodney Thank you once again. I will try to follow that up this afternoon. regards simon

Its very rare for me to be able to answer a question but, There is an option on the tool bar at the top of the screen to "Show Bias Handles". If you click on that, then on the point in the graph editor you want to adjust, the bezier handles will show up. regards simon

Rodney Thank you once again for your help. The images were png files. There were made in photoshop CS2 from jpg originals. The transparent sections were made by deleting the green screen background. Copying the image and pasting it into a PNG with Alpha channel. I tried to use TGA using the same process but couldn't get them to retain the alpha channel, even if I saved with 32bit depth ? Regards simon

Rather than start another new thread, might I ask a related question on this one ? I'm working on an idea I tested before. Working in V15 ( V17 was rendering something else at the time ) The flats have cookie cutter maps,( png files ) , applied. It is a standard chor using a single keylight with shadows turned on. This is a screen shot of frame 18 of the test, with the properties for the flat at screen left. When It is actually rendered to file, this is the result Notice the strange artefacts on the flats ( thin angular lines, behind and through the flat, ? When the still frames are saved as an animation this happens. House_flats_000.mov Notice that the artefacts seem to change on each frame rather than stay the same ? Does anyone have an idea as to what the cause might be and, most importantly, how to fix it ? Any help gratefully received. regards simon

Rodney Thank you for your help. That does seem to have done it. I had corrected the settings back to the original when the problem arose but it returned. Curious. The "Render hair /particles" options keeps coming back under V17 too, no matter how many times I turn it off in the render panel and under the tools option. regards simon

I managed to get my entry for the wall contest done in time and was working on a higher res version for myself when the following strange problem occurred. Here is the model from the view of an ortho camera. It shows the shades as they have been previously. This the same scene rendered from the perspective camera, immediately after the above. All the settings are the same the only thing that has changed is the camera viewpoint and type, ( orthogonal to perspective ). As you can see. It now appears as if she is wearing a mask at the opera ? Does anyone have an idea what the problem might be and, most importantly, how to fix it ? regards simon Ps One slight complication (?) The chor and project was originally setup in V17 but then animated and rendered in V15 due to a lack of co ordination on my part. This problem only came about when I went back into V17 for the higher res version...

Happy Birthday Gerald.

Don't want to sound too pompous here but, are we really talking about the difference between education and training ? It is fairly straightforward to pick up a lot of technical information yourself, it is readily available in many forms especially on the internet. A large part of education is, and should be, about the acquisition of that information and those technical skills. What differentiates good education from training though is the outcomes. Once read that the major difference is that, training produces predictable outcomes while education does not. One is a closed process, the other is open ended. If that sounds a bit airy fairy or wooly ( and it is a bit ) then try the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity in education, http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says...creativity.html When I went to ( Fine arts ) college we received very little by way of technical instruction and a lot of discussion about what we could/should be doing. At the time I thought that was the wrong way around. Now I understand the benefits of it, even though I've had to acquire the technical skills since. The educational process should ( in my opinion ) be about opening up the thinking of the person to the possibilities available. It is very seductive to concentrate on the technical skills because you get tangible, demonstrable, results. It is the adaptability and flexibility of thinking and approach that are the benefits of education ? regards simon

Its been a bit frustrating trying to isolate the problem as sometimes it does it and, occasionally it doesn't. Here is an example of when it does. The red background is just to make it show up even more. Looking at it closely I noticed that the strong lines don't cover the whole area and, were the clouds overlap it appears as though they are off set slightly on the one in front. As if projected at the flats of the model ? I will go back and check the stamps for the decals. regards simon Ps May have found the problem. It appears to be something to do with using a transparency map. I will do a test to see if I can replicate it. PS2 It does appear to be caused by the transparency map. Will try a full render and post later. Sequence render without transparency maps. No decal animation in this version. About to work on that. Why_09_clouds.mov

Robert Thank you for your reply. The idea was to have the clouds change over time so that it would appear as turbulent storm clouds churning away. The values of the different maps was changed over time in the graph editor and then ping ponged or cycled for the duration of the sequence.. I've got some tests going through so I'll post them later. regards simon

Further to earlier postings Here is frame 000, rendered as png, last night at 22.34 Here is frame 000 rendered as png at 23.37 The only thing different was the time of the render. Nothing else was changed, except perhaps the number of passes ( see below ). I am trying to repeat that on a smaller scale now so as to understand what the cause is. A curious anomalie is the file size. I think one was rendered with 5 passes and the second with 3 passes. Could that be a cause ? regards simon

Can you point to where that problem was discussed? What was that problem? How did you convert from tga to jpg? (using what software? what settings?). Why are you converting? If just for posting here, then upload the original tga anyway and we can look at it, if that is the file format you want (before assembling the stills into QT movie) How are you doing the cloud model that is giving you trouble? (eg: is it a 1 flat patch with a cookie cut decal?) How is it different from the other cloud model that isn't giving you problems? Is it only on certain frames that it is rendering funny? Is your lighting and or some settings changing on those frames(accidently?) What are your toon rendering settings? Nancy Thank you for your reply. The problem we discussed earlier was a render effect in V17 with the toon settings, http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44941 Its in the WIP list under Render Effect. All the Cloud models are flat planes with three texture maps applied, Diffuse, Bump and Colour. They are all planar applications, Bump and Colour use the same Decal and Diffuse has a second. Each decal is a short five frame sequence set to cycle repeat in the chor. The lighting stays constant throughout, as does the clouds position, only the camera is moving. The tga to jpg conversion was done in preview on the Mac, the result was the same in Pshop. I didn't post the tga because it had been pointed out that was inappropriate for the forum previously. After last nights findings I set up a test render overnight, only to find that the problem had returned with the png files. I will try to isolate it today and post a test later. regards simon

Just done some further checking and get some strange results. This is a jpg of the first frame of S9. Its converted from a tga render As you can see, it has the black lines. This is a png file of the same frame As you can see. no black lines. Both rendered in V15 under OSX 10.68 regards simon

Mark Thank you for your reply. Not sure what happened but, I posted a response with some ref's and it got lost. So, will try again. I wonder if it might be a problem with the V17 toon render, similar to the one discussed the other week ? I tried it in V15 with the following results. This is a screen grab of the model This is a png of frame 150 done in V15 and this is a screen grab of the same scene in the mov file. ( they were rendered in V17 ). Stepping through to find the frame I noticed that the lines appear and disappear quickly, 2-4 frames. I will try to setup another render in V15 overnight to see if it works better that way. The goat shaking his head is going through in V17 at the moment. regards simon Ps started on in V15 but it seems to be doing the same in that. something to sleep on methinks...

Rodney Thank you for your reply. The goat shaking his head is going through now. The cliff walk, angst has been removed in the edit. Hope to do the water spout tomorrow. regards simon

Sebastian Thank you for your detailed feed back, much appreciated. There is a pop at 57 seconds, its caused by a slight shift in the mountains in the background. I had thought it was the same until rendered. It really shows up at full res so will try to correct it. The bit were he's walking along the cliff top was supposed to be him argueing with himself about being dumped. The angle was to imply his possible options or at least those he was thinking off. The strange lines in the clouds are caused by the texture maps applied. It was a look I wanted to develop but am still working on. I made a series of tonal cross hatchings in PShop and applied those. The discrepancies are caused by the scalings in the chor. What I was after was a stylised render of a turbulent cloud. The maps cycle randomly in each cloud. The 'story' is quite simple, he is bouncing along on the way to see his girl, only to be rejected on arrival, She walks off smiling, he is devastated and, goes to the mountains debating his life - teenage angst I suppose- just as he thinks it can't get worse, it does. I tried several versions of the rock getting hot ( about six I think ), some where it went through two or three colours and flashed with the temp changes. It was pointed out to me that the hottest part would be almost immediately after the lightning hit and that it would start to cool from then, although still too hot to stand on. Its an exaggerated 'toon' but couldn't be too exaggerated so went for the shortest version. regards simon

Not sure about the final edit yet but, this might be the final narrative. Only addition may be the goat shaking its head at the end. I haven't added the water splash yet but hope to get that done this afternoon. There is no sound yet, hoping that it reads without sound and that it will be enhanced by it when the foley is done. The intention is to use vocal sound rather than words for the exchanges and angst rants, similar to the way they did in Morph, Pingu and The Clangers. The first 10 seconds are blank because that is were the Titles will go. its about 2mins 30 long. It was going to be about 20 seconds or so longer but have chopped those. Any feedback welcome. regards simon Why.mov

I had same problem, even with setting the checkbox in global tab. I think the problem (and perhaps Simon's) is that I have "use settings from the camera" set in the render options, rather than "use settings from this dialog". If I save my chor with particles off in the chor's camera data, then when I reopen it or A:M, the particles/hair will be off. Nancy Apologies. I haven't caught up with this yet. Thank you for your reply. I will try that now. regards simon Ps I changed the settings in render under Tools to "Use this dialogue" and it seems to have worked. Thank you.

Been waiting for the sound while working on Why. This is the version without music, which was the original idea. Any critical feedback welcome. regards simon Boo2.mov