RS3D

I enjoyed that. I liked the sound effects, they added a little humor on their own.

I did a VERY rough action cutaway of Eddie dangling from the horse's reins. I do not know if it adds anything to the project or not. In any case, I do not want to spend a lot of time on it if it won't be used. Does anyone have any opinions? scene3_4_W_closeup1.mov

Thanks again for the suggestions Rodney. It is not me in the picture. I lost the name of the person who posted the mountain pictures on the internet, so I left the person's image on the background until I am done making changes. In your previous suggestion you said: The camera could be pulled in closer at the beginning and zoom out even as the horse is galloping off the cliff. I am thinking of trying a cut away during the middle of the scene3 where the horse and Eddie fly off the cliff. It would be very brief and just focus on Eddie dangling from the horse's reins as seen from above and show a look of terror on his face. This is the kind of thing people would associate with cartoons. This will be tricky to do while maintaining the sound effects, but it may (or may not) add to the effect of the action.

I completed all the preliminary work on the backgrounds, sound effects, camera angles, textures and basic layouts for scenes 1, 2, 2a, 3 and 4. See attached file for the .mov. I will probably add a scene 5, where the horse leaves Eddie in the dirt and gallops off into the distance. If anyone sees anything weird about anything related to the backgrounds, etc. so far, please let me know. Once It looks like everything is ok, I will start tweaking or redoing the individual scene's character actions and action objects to include some of the suggestions people have previously made. horse1_4FinalFirstPass.mov

I refined scene 1 and added scene 2 and combined these in the attached file. I added a horse gallop sound effect and happy background music. I think I will need a scene 2a to help set up the sharp turn action in scene 3. I am still not refining any actions just yet, just getting all the pieces in place. I downloaded the free Audacity sound editor. It looks to be pretty sophisticated, so I will have to spend some time learning it. horse1b_2b.mov

Thanks again for the input Robcat. At this point, I am more interested in getting the camera shots and scene layouts consistent than in refining the animation. There are two reasons why I want to delay the final animation adjustments until the very end. First, I seem to have a lot of problems with adjusting animations and characters in the choreography windows, where it is sometimes difficult to know where stray erroneous key frames have been built while testing alternatives. Once I am done making changes in everything else, I will try to finalize the actions. The second reason for delay is that I am trying to explore "cartoon physics" not necessarily scientific physics. If I am trying to get the viewer to accept the unrealistic actions in scene 3, I would like to try to get as humorous as possible in scene 4 and go for more unrealistic actions to follow scene 3. Attached is another update combining current state of scene 3 and scene 4. I still have work to do for consistency on the sound effects, backgrounds and lighting, but I hope it shows progress. horse3b4b_2.mov

Here is an update to Scene4. I changed the viewing angle to better match Scene3, I added some sound effects and refined the animation a little bit, but it still needs work. It is still a process of roughing things in, but I now have a pretty good list of things to do (thanks to people who have made suggestions) to put the whole thing together. I located some good mountainous images on the internet that hopefully will give the various scenes a consistent look and I am still looking for a sound editor that will be necessary toward the end of the project. I'm always grateful for any input people may have about the current status of the project. horse4b_1.mov

To Robcat2075, thanks for the excellent suggestions. As usual, you have identified the things that need to be done to raise this scene to the next level. Hopefully I can complete them all in my lifetime. I have been most concerned about scene #3 because the extreme action poses are what will make this into a cartoon action sequence. Attached is an update to scene 3 with some changes to smooth out the actions. I also added some sound effects to ramp up the actions. I am going to have to look into a sound editing program in order to make these effects work correctly. Can anyone recommend a sound editing program? Once again, like in scene 4, the white puffs are just action object place holders, in this case they will probably be rocks falling off the side of the cliff as I get closer to the final rendering stage. Scene3_1_withSound.mov

Attached is another update to the project. This one is a roughed in animation of scene #4 where the angry horse throws Eddie off his back after the close call in scene #3. The white puffy spots are markers for action objects showing where dirt will be kicked up by the horse's hooves in the final animation. horse7a.mov

Thanks to Rodney and steve392 for your input. Attached is an update for the the 3rd scene on the cliff. I hope this gives a little better idea of what I want to accomplish. There will be a lot of work to go through all the alignments of Eddie, the horse's reins and the horse, and secondary animations for Eddie's hat and body positions. If anyone sees opportunities for improvement, please let me know. horse6b.mov

This is my second attempt at doing one of these types of animations. The first one got so corrupted I gave up. In this one, there will be 4 scenes: 1) Eddie rides horse in a open elevated / mountain area. see horse5a for a very rough preliminary animation. horse5a.mov 2) Eddie rides horse descending into a narrow rocky trail where he should slow down. 3) Of course, he will not slow down and shoots off the trail which triggers a cartoon-type response by the horse to get back on the trail and avoid disaster. see horse6 for a very rough preliminary animation. 4) A final humorous scene, where the angry horse bucks Eddie off his back and kicks sand in his face, etc I hope I can get some feedback for the following: Is the horse gallop in horse5 animation believable? Does the scene in horse6 animation convey the dangerous situation and allow for playing with the horse gallop action to become a 'road runner' or other cartoon character's type actions to get back on the trail? Would a different angle be better? horse6.mov

Very nice timing and execution. Good to see content on the forum.

I did some digging about this problem and there seems to be an issue when program development is done in Windows10 and then distributed to users with previous versions of Windows. I do not know if that is the case here, but I downloaded the patches that were supposed to fix that problem and the AM system seems to be working now.

Thanks Rodney. It is my understanding that it is the Master0.lic file that is necessary to enable the subscription extension. If I get a hold of a new Master0.lic file, I can copy it into the current folders and continue to use the software as is. I can find the old one in both my 32-bit and 64-bit AM program folders. I do not see that file in the newly installed AM19-64 bit folder nor in the AM19-32 bit folder. Do you have any ideas about where else it may be located?

Thanks for the reply. I did not see any check boxes. The 64-bit version extracts and completes the installation. The problem error message occurs when I try to run the installed program. Does anyone know if it Is possible to continue to use the AM vers 18 programs after a subscription renewal?

My annual subscription came due. I have been using both AM18 -32 bit and AM -64 bit systems with no problems. I downloaded the new subscription for AM19 and got an error: The program can't start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime (some symbol here)1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem. I then tried to download AM19 32-bit to see if that was the problem. I ran the extract mode again, but it never completed and just hung the system. I tried to contact support@hash.com I got this message: >>> suppor@hash.com (reading BANNER): 554 p3plibsmtp02-10.prod.phx3.secureserver.net bizsmtp 205.219.233.9 has been blocked for the day, for attempting to mail too many invalid recipients. IB113 http://x.co/rlbounce> I am using 64-bit Intel processor with Windows 7 operating system. Does anyone have any ideas about what I should do next?

I'm looking forward to seeing him in action once you get the rigging done.

That is a very good reference. Thanks for posting it.

I liked that little subtle eye movements that you put in some of the talking segments. It adds a lot to the project.

Thank you RobCat for the most excellent analysis of the back flip. I can see that the two key pivot points are the pelvis and the head. As you point out, everything should revolve around those two points and then adjust for correct lags for the other body parts. I will work on that as I get closer to a final version. I have been mostly trying to figure out how to show the effort by his sister in helping to execute the back flip. Since this is about cartoon physics, I have actually been working toward a double rather than a single back flip. This would be very hard to do in real life, but if I can show added effort by something outside of the Eddie character, it would hopefully make it seem a little less impossible. One of the things that does not seem to be working is the motion blur on my system. I don't know why yet, but it will probably be necessary when I get to the double flip which will have to be extremely fast.

Here is an update that addresses the concerns from my previous post. Hopefully I have the sound close to the right spots in the animation.. The next phase is to come up with some additional actions with a basketball and try for a humorous ending. eddieFirst_and_second_PartsB.mov

I managed to integrate the back flip action into the starting choreography. At this point, I think I need to do 5 things: 1) Eddie should take a step back to gain some momentum before starting to run forward 2) I need to extend the drum roll sound track so that the cymbal crash happens when he lands after the flip 3) I need to add a cymbal and get one of the characters to hit it at the correct point in the animation 4) Extend the camera blinking light animation to the end 5) Smooth out the father hand action as he returns the hand to the camera Does anyone see anything else that bothers you? eddieFirst_and_second_PartsA.mov

I worked on animating an opening scene for the project. It shows a father character video taping the trick and a brother character doing a drum roll. I think this perspective will be good enough to cover the basketball trick and the back flip trick that come later on. eddieFirstParAt.mov

I am experimenting with some of my old animation projects in order to see if adding cartoon-type physics improves them. The attached video is one of several tricks from a project where Eddie and his "family" perform a series of stunts with a basketball. The back flip in real life would be quicker than what I am using here, but I added a little delay where he hangs in the air. Hopefully it adds a little entertainment value to the animation. I would appreciate it if someone would take a look at it and let me know if you see problems with the timing and weight of the characters during the action. eddieSecondPart_reduced.mov

The sound editing was very good and added a lot to the feel of the animation.