Simon Edmondson

Rodney A few years ago ( about 5 I think ) there was a trilogy of French/Swiss films which used the same story and characters but shot it in different ways so that it became a Thriller, a comedy or a farce, they could be watched in any order. I saw them at my local Art cinema in Norwich. I didn't think they were very succesful but, they received a lot of critical attention at the time. It was an interesting idea, possibly not the sort of thing that would get an opening in US corporate finance ? I'm fortunate in not having worked for a large corporation but, I think the sort of practices that Rob describes are not just limited to to large companies. Small educational colleges experience them too ! To stay on subject. My all time favourite short story was written by Richard Brautigan and is called "The Scarlattiti Tilt" It goes. " It is Very hard living in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man learning to play the violin" Thats what she told the policeman as she handed him the empty gun. Now thats economy of means ! I tend to agree with your view as to trying to stay outside the story however, as always in such debates, it comes down to questions of degree and interpretation of involved ? I try not to use autobiography but there are things I've seen or experienced, they are not really about me, or at least thats my conceit I suppose. Used to worry about it but now tend to ignore the question. On the same them, possibly the Road Runner cartoons could be regarded as telling the same story in different ways ? Chuck Jones even had rules for the timing of Wile E Coyote's falls off the cliff. You can watch them separately or as a series. They set up their own world and the action and story are consistent within that world. I still find them very funny too. regards simon

Might that be a variation on, " It ain't what you do, its the way that you do it, And thats what gets results... "? Sorry. On a more serious line, I've not worked in a big company with a lot of writers 'chipping in' to story development so I can't really comment on that. My background is in Arts education. I have a limited experience of writing scripts for others to make. ( My first effort was changed by the director on the eve of production but thats a different subject ). The limited experience has opened my eyes to the potential horrors of working with people who have a say on your work but don't seem to have much by the way of thought. I have to go catch up with some sleep but, have you heard of a book called "Exercises in Style" by the French writer Raymond Queneau ? It tells the same simple story in 99 different ways. It may be of interest ? A lot of people far more literate than I seem to rate it highly. regards Simon PS Some years ago The Daily Telegraph here in the UK ran a literary competition called " Mini Saga's". Writers had to supply a story with a beginning, middle and end in not more, or less, than 50 words. They were allowed extra words for the title but 50 was it for the story. They ran the competition for a number of years and it attracted a lot of entries from amateurs of all ages to serious literary authors such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes ...

A true camera in the Chor should always revert to a full view of whatever its frame has been pointed at when you return to it, unlike the default front/top/side views which "remembers" the zoom setting you last used it at. Rob Just found you can set the field of view parameters with the orthogonal camera and, as you say, that has fixed the problem. Phew ! regards simon

Rob Thank you for that tip. I was unaware that was a possibility. Have just corrected it, having been working with the perspective option this afternoon. regards simon One irritation is that the scale of the view shifts as you switch back and forth between cameras so you have to readjust each time. .. Don't know if thats a Mac glitch or more common ?

Following on from Mark's suggestion about the cameras. For anyone else interested in the technique (?) I've setup a camera pointed at the front of the figure and constrained to it with an 'Orient like, and 'Translate to' constraints. added another camera with the same constraints, pointed at the side view. Will try to animate with it tomorrow. regards simon

But what can also help are "temporary" cameras that are constrained to aim at and move with the model so that you can always have a perfect side, back or front view if/when you need them. Mark Thank you very much for the tip about the camera's and the link to rob's vid. I shall link up the cameras tonight. regards Simon

Steve Thank you for your reply. In the past I've used Nulls to get the feet positions and checked on the direction in the top view as I was going along. The difficulty with that is keeping track of the position of the bones as the figure moves across x/z space. ( hope I got that right ! ) It's fairly straightforward when the figure and bones are flat on to the view but, if the figure and joints are moving across the view at an angle to it then, for me at least, it becomes more difficult to get the correct position. I wondered if other people might have a more developed system than me to deal with it ? regards simon

I have a figure that needs to enter a room and walk across it diagonally to a lounger. I have used walk cycles and paths before but wanted to try it 'free form'. It is straightforward enough when the direction is perpendicular to the views but how do other people do it when it curves across those axis's ? Using the 2008 rig, would it be a good idea to constrain the body Null to a path and animate the limbs around that or animate it directly, without a path, using the birds eye view option to keep track of the positional and limb placements ? regards simon

Nancy Thank you. The bump maps used were the ones that made up the negative render. It was a straight render, no toon lines. It may be a result of the post effect (?) or possibly a result of the shadow/ highlight as was before the negative effect ? I'll try to refine it a bit more when it comes to the real thing in a couple of weeks. I was thinking of using wall paper rather than plaster but, musn't allow myself to get too diverted... regards simon

Nancy Without wishing to be irreligious, You saviour ! I've been virtually pulling my hair out trying to find whats wrong. I tried it on the old PC and it imported but still didn't fully co operate. I came back into to see your message and you were spot on. This was the result Tonal_walk.mov The effect I was trying for was this, Wall_walk.mov I wanted to make it look as though the figure was walking behind the plaster, inside the wall itself. It will need some tweeking but it seems to work ? Thank you very much indeed for your help. simon Ps It was a mild diversion while I thought about how to do something else ( mild ! )

I'm beginning to feel that the problems I'm having are not just me, but may be down to some kind of problem with the computer itself. Trying to follow Rob's tutorial video and the results are very inconsistent right from the start. First of all the Tone walk .move imports in two ways ( !!! ) First with a black background or with a white background Neither has the image of the walking figure. If I try to scroll through the black import. the first frame goes Blue, the second Turquoise, the third white, then stays white , but still no figure. More Bizarrely, If I click on the file image in the PWS the figure appears in the section were the properties panel is, but not in the viewing area !!! I'm going to go and try it on an old PC and see if I can get the desired result rather than more grey hairs. regards simon

Rob I posted my last message before I saw your excellent explanation, apologies. I am just about to try to implement it and will post the result later. At times I feel a bit like the viewer at the end of the old TV series " Soap" when they said " confused ? you won't be after the next episode of... " But I'm getting there slowly. Thanks for your help. simon

If you are getting that .MOV sequence from the sequence you captured a frame from then something is off. The color (blue in your case) can't suddenly come back into an image sequence as is showing in your .MOV where that color was not rendered in the first place. Perhaps I'm just reading your post wrong. Rodney My explanation may not have been as clear as required, apologies. I imported Tint and set the parameters as Rob suggested to get the negative effect. I put that on the camera in the chor. When I did a quick render, it got the desired negative look. When that was rendered as mov file it gave the result of that posted. There was no further work on that file, it was posted as rendered to desktop. Perhaps that was the hitch ? When I had watched it going through, some came out tonal, most did not. Non of the monochrome frames showed in the end file. Thinking it might be a QT glitch. They were then rendered as a sequence of Jpg's. Watching the render as it progressed, they all appeared to be rendered as monochrome, A composite window opened as the render completed, which is where my knowledge stopped. The jpg sequence was imported into the PWS and, when saved as a mov file, the colour was there Even though it had appeared Monochrome during the sequence render and the quick render to screen. >> I do note that in your second screen capture it appears that the image sequence was rendered in negative (with a white background and dark character). Perhaps you didn't open that particular sequence but and instead opened another? Only one sequence was rendered. I'll try again later to see if a different result is reached. Proceedure may have been at fault. >>(Going against my own advice to refrain from exploring Composite I'll suggest that there is a Tech Talk on using A:M Composite. ... Perhaps we can start a new dedicated topic where we delve the depths of A:M Composite. I would be very interested in that. The next planned short was going to try and use the multiplane option of earlier versions but,apparently, that is no longer available so I wondered if Composite might do it ? Thank you for your help. regards simon

I rendered out a walk sequence as a series of jpg's, applying Tint as post effect As it went through this was the result I imported the sequence into the PWS and "saved animation as " with this result Tonal_walk.mov I 'm not at all conversant with the compositing function, so clearly missing something here. A composite window opened up and a composite showed in the images section but don't know what to do next? Things have plainly changed since the last time I used Tint as a Post Effect. Is there a guide available as to how to proceed? regards simon

Nancy Thank you for the info and the update on the possible fix. I'd wondered about the softening effect and, it makes sense that the lights would jitter slightly to get that result. When I first started with 3D CG i used to like the film noir approach of hard strong shadows, and its still a look I love but, as my knowledge has slowly improved, I like more variety now. Theres a thread elsewhere about 64bit for Macs, that sounds like something I would like to use... reg Thanks for your help regards simon

Thank you. I shall try it this evening. regards simon

Changed the timing on the sun ray type lamp and the walk sequence of the figure. Scene_Four_B.mov I had a recurrence of the darkening problem this morning when trying it out. I changed the bulb light for a rim light, in the same position with the same settings. It suffered from the same problem with the position changing when it came to render . Also the light was initially very large and difficult to set correctly. In the end I deleted it and replaced with a new one. That came in at the standard size. It made me wonder if my initial error with the scale of the bulb light ( it was set too large ), was a contributory factor in the changing position problem ? regards simon

I'm still working on a stormy night but, thinking through ideas for the next one. So... I seem to remember that a few years ago there was an option to render as a negative of the standard render ? Is that still available and, if so, is it possible to combine it with a black and White/greyscale render ? I'm presently working in 15J on OSX 10:68, although hope to move up to V17 in a few weeks time. regards simon

Your animation is coming along, and we now see why you may have wanted it to be dimly lit at first. Did you mean for the new light to come on that slow? That's a little odd, but perhaps you have a reason? EDIT: Submitted bug report Nancy Thank you very much for your post. I wonder sometimes whether it is my lack of knowledge that causes such things so, your confirmation is a relief that I'm not going quite as doolally as feared. I think its time to move up to V17 64 bit, I need to get some other things out the way first. The slow light is supposed to be a sunray type light. Its been awhile since I've seen or used one but, my memory of them is that they come on, then warm up to operating temperature and thats the effect I was going for. I was a bit bothered by the artefact that appeared at 05:05 and lasted a few frames but, I can touch those out later on. regards simon

With big thank you's to Rob for the movie and Nancy for her help, I redid the lighting with the following result. The reboot and relaunch of the program seemed to work ( without a fresh install ) and the movie helped greatly with the understanding. Going to work on the walk this weekend.I realised as I was about to go to sleep what was needed. .. in theory anyway! regards simon Scene_Four.mov

Rob, Mark Nancy. Thank you very much for your comments and especially the mov file ( I'm just about to watch it ). I will try the reboot restart suggestions.I don't know if its relevant but, there have been a lot of the Mac freezeouts the past couple of days. Very noticeable yesterday when I posted the sample files in the morning . I had originally done them as tga files then remembered the jpg convention for the forum so started to redo them. It seemed like every other render was balked by the freeze ( the one where you have to hide then reopen AM ). Normally it only happens once a day or so... Thank you all for your help. regards simon

Trying to modify the lighting to get rid of the gloom I've hit something that has me completely flummoxed. I modified the overhead light position as in this screenshot Went to camera view to do a test render and got almost complete gloom. So went back to check position in top view, to find this The apparent position had changed completely, going by the highlighted section in the window BUT, the position numbers in the properties section show no change ? I thought I'd made a mistake so tried to correct it, several times. Each time the place changed without me doing so and each time it went to different position, Top left, Bottom left, Bottom right... Am I missing something obvious here ? I should add that, each time I go to correct the changed position. I click to move it and, the slightest change makes it appear in the correct place, even though the pointer has only moved maybe 1 cm or less. Tested that position in the camera view, only to get another, different, change ! Should I go for a fresh install from the CD ? V15J OSX 10.68 regards simon Here is the project file with all except the wave sequence included. Wet_Day_02.prj

Thank you. I've had a lot of, much needed, help. I thought it would only take a week to get the whole thing done. The final scene is yet to come. A lot has been learnt in the process though so, perhaps the next one will take less. Heres hoping. regards simon

Rob Thank you for your message. I did a quick pasteup of some screen grabs and a render from yesterday. Using PNG format, at Nancy and Rodney's suggestion. I've put captions under to explain but, Top left is a screen grab with single pass. Top right is render in TGa at 16 pass Bottom left is screen grab at five pass Bottom right is screen grab at 16 pass The screen grab @16 appears darker than the render @16, to me anyway, even though the light settings are the same ? My preference would be for it to be quite dark but, as you suggest, not as dark as that. I am experimenting this afternoon with varying the intensity of the fill light that provides most of the illumination. Regards Simon

Rodney Thank you very much for that comprehensive explanation I shall try to implement it over the weekend with the next sequence to be rendered. regards simon