fae_alba

First, let me say it was a pleasure spending (several) hours with Rodney. We covered just about every topic even loosely related to A:M. It made my week in Springfield just a little bit more tolerable. As an aside, anybody else who might be in that particular area is welcome to join us the next time around (I'm scheduled to be back the week of August 18th). Now to the subject of grants: Over the years I have looked into grants for the arts, and at least in the U.S. are incredibly tough to come by. Primarily because most are funded throught the national endowment for the art (http://arts.gov/grants/apply-grant/grants-individuals) . At looking at the site, grants for individuals (non matcing) is $25,000, and is limited to literature. If you are an organization, then funding for film projects is possible. In searching the site (NEA) of funded film projects since 2000, I find that most were for film festivals, museums, etc. It doesn't look, from this grant avenue at least, it is likely to get a film project such as we would put together, doesn't have much of a chance of gaining funding.

I guess I'm too set in my ways. Looking at that thing makes me head hurt! There's no way I could get used to working with a device like that since it is so in grained in me to simply mouse to a command button, click. I have a hard time remembering keyboard shortcuts let alone shortcuts from another device..

All I've got to say, you got it done. The next episode will be better (in your eyes), and the next one after that even better. Like Mark, you sir have raised the bar for the rest of us A:Mers. I'm not one to offer critique, since my animation talents are not up to snuff in my own opinion, so whatever I said just simply wouldn't hold water. As for other's opinions let me shre the advice that I always gave my daughters as they were growing up: "Don't respect the advice of those you don't respect." If you value the individual offering up a critique, well then listen to them and learn. If not, take it with a grain of salt and move on. As a famous meerkat and warthog once said, "Hakuna matata"! Bask in the glory of a job well done, and be God get busy on the next one!

Will, my daughter does a decent job at generating soundtracks digitally...If you have the need still I can put it to here.

I like robcats idea, even if it is an honorable mention and a pat on the back. Actually it would be cool to hear how every image fared a comic con, not just the top three.

the mesh free approach is what I have now. The issue comes when perhaps your character decides to wear a sleeves shirt... What I need to decide is if I can for see Papa Bear needing this flexibility or not.if not then I can change shirts by simply changing materials. Certainly an easier method to manage.

Or...Which Approach is Best for Wardrobe changes. When i started the first iteration of Papa Bear I knew he was gonna be cloths wearing bear favoring this wonderful, quiche tropical print shirts (his tastes favor mine, surprisingly). So I modeled him wearing a shirt, still uncertain how to go about changing the decaling on the fly. In rigging I discovered that it was a real pain in the neck trying to get the setup right to prevent the arm mesh from overlapping the sleeve. The solution at the time was to simply remove the mesh from the arm where the sleeves were. Fast forward to the latest contest where I wanted Papa Bear to wear a vest, instead of a shirt. Go figure that presented problems since he hasn't got any arms! Again a quick fix was to leave the shirt on, reduce it's mesh down to be close to the body, color it the same as the body, then add the vest. It worked because I was only interested in a still, I'm sure if I were to try and animate it all sorts of problems would present themselves. I did learn that applying the vest as an action object worked nicely. But again as a still that's fine, but I'm still unclear who to set up a rig so that when animated each article of clothing performs as expected. I'm toying with the idea of backing up a step or two, replaceing the mesh on Papa Bear's arms, rigging without clothes at all, and perhaps adding a series of bones in the shirts and body that can be constrained so that when the action is applied, like magic all works well. Gonna take some serious experimenting, and if anyone has any wild suggestions, let me know. Chow for now from Bear Land!

I hadn't planned to be in Springfield but... if you are going to be there I might just make the trip. Will you be there and free any time on Wednesday (earlier preferred) or more optimally Thursday (anytime)? Tuesday (anytime) might also work well. The important thing would be to get together if even only for a short visit. You might then say, "Good grief, I never want to see THAT guy again!" Rodney, I will be in lovely Springfield from Monday afternoon through 4 am Friday morning! Lucky me. I'm usually out of the clients office by 5 each night, but might be able to duck out a tad earlier unless there are meetings that get scheduled (they tend to pop up like weeds in your yard). I'm sure we can find a time that works.

that makes it 4 am my time....which is when I will be stumbling out of the rack to catch my first flight of the week. Anyone gonna be near Springfield Illinois this week?? First rounds on me!

Good luck, Paul! Oh I'm sure there is much better talent out there than mine, but it's still a good excersise to put it together. Actually learned a bit on the way too, so I already won!

Well just spent the last several hours working this, re-working it, second guessing myself, then finally saying "f-it" and sending it in as is. Sooner or later ya just gotta bite the bullet and do it, ya know?

John, this one's on me. I was putting this together when life in general took me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me sideways (job change, grand kids, etc). I had/have in mind what I want to do, but am lacking bandwidth to get it down. You had volunteered, if you are still willing, I have the files and will be glad to hand part or all of it to you. Or, we can work together and get this one finally put in the can.

I've been (slowly) writing my own in .net. Largely since I'm a cheep bastoid and refuse to pay anyone for something that I can create myself. Only downside is that the project often takes a back seat to realy paying work.

Hey Rodney, the next modeling task for Papa Bear (after the sci-fi contest!) is to begin a list of props and sets I need for the first script. The vision I had was a setup much like Disney used in Bambi (the multi-plane camera) and rely a lot on background paintings to achieve that look. This of course will depend largely on my ability to understand lighting, rotoscoping etc that I haven't had a chance to play with yet. But your set does fit the bill for the foreground and the props that Papa Bear will need to interact with. A large tree with replete with a family of birds plays a big part!

the key is the settings...the search string boxes were all lower case and not Camel Case...fixed that and viola! she woiked.

Goog God, how the hell did I miss the bone naming screw up! Well slap me upside the head and color me stupid! I'll work this out and let you all know!

How about RonCo pricing.... $4998.99?

I've been cooking Papa Bear's rig low and slow for quite some time, adding cp weights, a face rig etc. Finally I got to a stage where I felt it was time to finalize things and executed the mirror bones plug in (2008 rig btw). Once I did this per the instructions, I noticed right away that the eye, ear, lip bones I added did not mirror. Upon further investigation I also noticed that the fan bones for the arms and legs, as well as the shoulder bone didn't mirror either. Well, as another bear once muttered, "Oh bother!" If anyone might give a look and offer up some hints I'd appreciate it. PappaBear2008RigFinal_7_2008_PostInstallRigV22pre_mirrorbones.mdl

Thanks Gents. Spent the day (starting at 4am EST) traveling to IL for work. Connecting flight in Chicagoland was delayed three hours, 2 of which were spent on the airplane because of mechanical issues....tiring.

I am working on Papa Bear's face rig. Today's task is to work on the eyelids. Up till now I've always controlled eyelids with a pose slider and manipulating cp's in muscle mode, but that created a lot of keyframes and made it nearly impossible to have the right and left eyelid work the same. So this time I wanted to try using bones. To facilitate this I added more eye rings as well as changed the sape of the eyeball from an oblong to a normal sphere. So far I have three bones for the eyelid, one controlling the center of the eyelid, and one on the inner side and outer side of the eyelid. The inner and outer bones of an orient like constraint to the center bone. So far the only cp assignments are to a single cp on the leading edge of the eyelid. This set up works great until you get half way through the blink, then the eyelid begins to penetrate the eyeball. The rig needs to control the next spline ring and possibly the one outside of the second ring as well. My thought is to add a second set of bones (and possibly a third) arranged the same as the first, and constrained to follow the first with some sort of lag. I just can't figure out how to build a constraint so that the second (and maybe third, don't forget that third one!) so that it only follows when it needs to to prevent the eyelid from penetrating the eyeball).

Excellent point. A:M has all the tools needed to make a facial rig to the same level as those shown above. The trick (for me at least) is building a model with the right balance of mesh density that would lends itself to a fine tuned rig. For me the rigging has always been a challenge' I've been messing with my Papa Bear rig for months now, and for the past month been on the face alone. Since I don't intend on the character to speak, his facial acting needs to be even more expressive. I've always gravitated to pose sliders controlling cp's in muscle mode, but this time around I'm trying to build Papa Bear's face rig with bones. So far it's looking good, but I haven't really tried to stress test it either. A:M has the tools needed to build a great face rig, what I think is lacking is the knowledge base to fully take advantage of these tools.

Just got back from the magic (and HOT!) place in Orlando. Thought I'd share a quick clip of the float in action. maleficent_float.mov

Ah the memories... as a young whipper snapper of the 70's I dug up my dad's super 8 and old movies that he made in Okinawa right after WWII. One of these was of an anit-aircraft drill, where they (attempt) to shoot a target being towed by an aircraft. I had a balsa wood model airplane i built, so being the budding film maker, I put a firecracker in it's tail, lit it and sent the plan a-flying, all with the camera rolling. Plan was to splice the two clips together. While I still have a bunch of my pop's movies, I can't seem to find that footage now.

Let me chime in here: I've been having consistent problems since v17. I've noticed that if i open a model with a decal, once I go into shaded mode A:M crashes. Since I am an older win7 laptop (going on 5 years old) I attributed my problems to a hardware issue I simply stayed on v16 which works like a champ. Here's a post where I first related my issues.... Display Issue

Ya know, I spend a lot of time on the road with long nights stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do. Not practical to lug my animation laptop along with my work laptop, so I can't work on my A:M projects. But i can (and do) a lot of coding. I just might take a crack at renderman, just so we can say that A:M plays nice with Pixar. Here's the caveat, if I am spending a lot of time taking the deep dive into renderman, I may need to ask assistance with my A:M projects to keep them on track. Does that sound a tad bit self-serving? You bet! Since renderman is largely written in C, it shouldn't a huge-ish learning curve, building an interface between A:M and renderman that can be easily maintained and kept up to date with renderman is another matter. It might be a good plan to build an interface between the two and release it as public domain, in keeping with Pixar's stance with renderman. This has the added advantage of visibility to A:M. This will take time, and I really, really, really want to see Papa Bear come to life, so if I do this, I may be asking for some help with my animation projects. That being said, I'm on vacation for the next week so I will be somewhat out of touch as I cavort with the Mouse in Orlando.