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Update! Decided to see if there was something in particular with Papa Bear, so I fired up V18, Opened the library and imported a few models. Opened Eddie in shaded mode, works great. Opened the Giraffe and A:M crashes. Open the Knight, all good. Open KeeKat, and crash. I need to figure this out. Should a report be made, if so how do I get my log on enabled??

Mark, first, then I need to figure out why I can't open him in v18. I haven't finished the cp weighting on the shoulders, started low and am working my way up. Also the issue with actions and chors not jibing with the model view is a puzzler. I noticed it a few days ago and can't ascertain why the shirt is misbehaving and why he floats when placed in the action and chor windows.

Changing the settings to OpenGL from OpenGL3 was the first thing I tried. A:M doesn't crash when it first opens. It doesn't crash when I first open a model (default is wireframe mode). But the second I switch to shaded or shaded/wireframe it dies. If I open a new chor, switch to shaded all is well. Seems to only be existing models that have an issue. As a test I created a new simple model in wireframe then switched to shaded and things were honky dorey. Could someone take this model below and see if they have issues in v18?? PappaBear2008RigFinal_WithShirtV6.mdl

There are better ways (IMHO). A third party app (A:M Track 2) is a facial motion capture app for A:M. Using that, while playing the dialogue would most likely give a better result.

It would be nice to have an image like this for A:M settings. Would make so much easier to navigate the myriad amount of parameters to achieve the effect desired. Having a reference like that would be a huge help. It sort of was the Sully fur that I had had in mind when I started in with fur for Papa Bear. Don't think any of us have the kind of muscle that Pixar has to actually render it though. Although, wouldn't be a cool feather(fur/material) in A:M's hat to create the same fur effect with a substantial savings in render in time. I'd blog about that 'till the cows came home!

I noticed this with 17g and simply reverted to v16. Yesterday I jumped on the V18 bandwagon, hoping it was a transient issue, but found it aint. It seems that my laptop, which happens to be my only workstation since I am a road warrior, has an Intel HD graphics card with OpenGL (here is a sys check) Video Card Vendor: Intel Renderer: Intel® HD Graphics OpenGL Version: 2.1.0 - Build 8.15.10.2104 GLU Version: 1.2.2.0 Microsoft Corporation Current pixel format: 6 Card name: Intel® HD Graphics Manufacturer: Intel Corporation Chip type: Intel® HD Graphics (Core i3) DAC type: Internal Front what I've seen on the intel forums this version of the chip type (Code i3) doesn't support OpenGL above 2.1. Any ideas, or am I stuck on version 16?

Hey welcome to and A:M and the forums. I will add to Rodneys and Roberts statement that the best way to learn is to dive in and do. Come up with something you want to create (start simple!) and start splining. When you get stuck (you will, and no worries) simply chime in on the forums and ask. Most likely within hours you will have a bevy of answers, solutions, guides, and possibly a video tut to help you along your way. A:M is a great app. I've been using it for well over nine years and an still learning.

Roger, I've thought the same. I'm a firm believer of at the very least, knowing the process, pitfalls, etc of a task before delegating it to someone else. I don't think it is selling out when ultimately farming some of that work out to other, more capable individuals. To me, it simply would free me up to do other task.

I have them turned on...

As a break to clear my head before finishing up some outstanding projects, I decided to experiment with hair on Pappa Bear. I'm not entirely sold on the benefits of the hair material, nor whether or not I will finally use it on this character. But, that being said, I wanted to give it a fighting chance. without hair with hair one issue is trying to get the hair from penetrating his shirt. I've removed as much of the mesh as possible, but there still is work to be done. I'm sure I could simply not include the hair material to groups where the shirt is if necessary. The other is the hair is just not convincing as a bears' fur. I've seen others create fur that looks nearly spot on, but so far the results elude me.

If I would have known you were in the area I might have driven to Springfield and bought you lunch. Heck, I might have even been there on one of my visits as that is where my Mom lives. Rodney, never you worry mate, I will be in Springfield several times a month for at least the next 6 months. I am on an active contract with a client in Springfield. I will be back tentatively the night of Jan 6th through perhaps the ninth. Can't do much at lunch though, I live in conference rooms non-stop, but it would be nice to finally meet a fellow hasher!

that is a nice comic book-ey effect.

Will in my book the "story reel" and the animatic suit the same purpose. It is the timing that I had a lot of trouble with. The animatic would have gone a long way to at least get a since of the timing before actually jumping into the animation. Might just take you up on your offer there mate, and vice versa. Rich, not really disappointed, much. One of the things that really derailed the timeline was a job change, which puts me on the road quite a bit. Lugging multiple laptops through airports is not my idea of fun so while I was basking in the sun in Springfield Il, I wasn't able to work on the short. So time lost there. I did learn a lot, as I said, and the project is not dead, though I may revisit the script and flesh out the story line a bit more. Or not. I've got a lot of projects floating around in my noggin. One of the must do's right now is finishing the community project, then I have a short that I really will want to pull a team together, since it will be an intense animation project to do. But for the next few days, I'm going to experiment, play with A:M (I've been playing with hair on my Pappa Bear character), then get the community project locked down.

The daunting thing about CG is the number of things you have to have "done" before you can "start" "Getting your ducks in a row" is the mantra of the day. Every time I attempt a short makes me appreciate what the Pixars and Dreamworks fellas pull off. Really, the mundane tasks of modeling, rigging, texturing is what makes the end result successful. Without that foundation, nothing is going to come off with the quality I aspire (or expire!) to.

Yes! You mean this Christmas thing is a regular occurrence?!?! Oh Happy Days! Lessons Learned from this project can be summarized like so: 1) always run a project like, well, a project. Set up requirements, expectations, timelines and the steps needed to get to completion. 2) a completed script is needed 3) story boards are needed 4) animatics are needed 5) well rigged models are needed (may seem like a silly requirement but I tried using a model I had only partially rigged, and it was a nightmare 6) honestly, even though we like to think we can do it all by ourselves, that simply is not so. Help is needed. I always hope/plan/expect that anything I do is "broadcast" ready. That is an awful high standard, but I am a perfectionist, and that often gets a lot of projects sent to the scrapheap around here because they don't measure up for me. Another lesson, perhaps the harshest one learnt so far: I am not an artist. While I can do basic animation, I cannot breath the life into a character the way I'd like to. I can come up with the stories, write the scripts, produce/pay for the production; but the work that makes the folks watching go "wow", is beyond me I fear. So for Pappa Bear Studios to do what I want it to do, I need talent, can't do it by myself. I need a plan!

I had been working on this story since before Halloween. In the beginning I felt it should be an easy one to pull off. The original concept contained no human actors, so the animation should be easy, simple sets so that should be easy, short story so no time would be required. Well, that's not really how it worked out. The first script felt too light to properly convey the story I envisioned. Characters were needed, humans. A deeper plot was needed to create a back story. No worries, I had some models built a while ago, not rigged very well, but it should do. So I soldiered on. I thought that I could jump right into the choreography, skip story boards, skip the animatic. Wrong again. Even though I knew the story, even though I was the only one working on the project, I found that it became a very real struggle in building a scene and keeping the pacing consistent from one cut to another, and in hind sight storyboards and animatics would alleviate that problem. So lesson learned. Do it right, no shortcuts, and give myself the time to do a quality project. I still want to tell this story, but I may take a break from it, clear my head on something else, then revisit the story in a month or so.

This is annoying. It just started the other day, in the chor, if I switch to the camera view I see this If I do a quick render (sometimes it takes two times) I see what I expect At first I thought it was the sky dome, but removing it makes no diff.

The tree lot .....

I monkeyed with those movements already, I might just cut them out, and use some close ups that are planned instead. With the render time improvements I'm now actually thinking this one might get done.

Once again this forum comes thru! Here is the latest. This same scene before the addition of the many suggestions, has taken the render from 17 hours to 30 minutes, for a chor that is twice as long. Quite impressive! Truck_Drive_Cut_A.mp4

I think I'm going to go with Roberts' lighting setup minus the fog, since I want that sunny day setting. The last hurdle is with getting clouds in the sky. I have putzed around with using decals on a dome, which look great in the modeling window, but when placed in a chor the decal is completely pixelated. What is the best way to getting a nice partially cloudy day? My last attempt of the sky image is below... edit: here's a quick project. sky_project.prj here's what it now does:

There shouldn't have been hair..at one time the farmer (in the truck) had hair, but I had removed it because it was uncontrollable. Shadows on the dome is something to look at, most likely it has to be corrected. Robert is close to what I'm going for. What I really want is the 3D look but without the harshness that 3D seems to bring. I want that soft, natural look and feel, and I think that is more to the lighting than anything else. I'm going to play with Master Holmens project, though the scene is in my mind a sunny day. But the render times have been getting extreme, and the 7 seconds stated is much better!

So, taking the suggestions: removed the default lighting, added a fill light for the shed, and a sun light. Darkened the ground. Added film grain post effect to the camera. Also added a partial sky dome to bring clouds and to give some depth. That ran into issues, since even thought the decal I used on the model looks perfect, when it renders in the chor it is blurred. I can't figure out why that might be. Rodney, wasn't thinking of b+w, but your input jogged my brain cells to look a little differently, so thanks. Robert, figures you'd notice the truck is driving on the wrong side of the road! Here is a test render of the tree lot:

So I'm trying like the dickens to get this Christmas short of mine done, started rendering and decided that a) the lighting sucks, and I'm not happy with the render settings. For the lighting I'm using the basic default lights from a new chor with the addition of a sun. The sun is set to have a soft yellow color, set at a 100%. I'll confess that lighting and rendering are two areas that I haven't had the chance to experiment with yet, and I'm down to the wire on this project if I'm going to get this done, so I'm looking for suggestions. I've attached the camera presets as well as a base project. Thanks for any suggestions: SampleProject.prj Preset.pre

My new job/life as an "Integration Architect" seems apprapo to the gist of what Pixar is trying to do. In my world, I work to bring multiple disparate data sources together, cleanse the data to a specific standard, then put it all together for business intelligence purposes. For Pixar, it seems that what they are trying to do is build out a solution to bring disparate data sources (pieces that when put together create a scene) and to leverage the open source community to help with that effort. Open source is a great way to generate a great deal of innovation with no cost to Pixar. What I found surprising is that they are relying on prompt based scripting to pull this together. If the goal is to offset the cost of development by open sourcing this beast, then usability should be the primary goal. Cost in these things is always measured in the number of employees required to run the system once done over the long haul. A scripted interface like this precludes that you would need a bevy of techies to maintain it.