fae_alba

But aint that part of the experience! I mean, little teeth knashing, head banging, hair pulling and random aaaarrrhhhhggss is all part of the ride experience! Seriously though, A:M has improved tremendously since I started on it. Kudos to the developers for that!

I think this is the main point. A lot of folks see a final piece of animation, either on the silver screen or the boob-tube (my dads term!) and think, hey I can do that, completely forgetting that a whole production company did that, from writing, to story boarding, to character art, to ... to ... to . Long story short, is, well keep it short. Start simple, work up to your goals...slowly. I started on A:M some 6 years ago, and am still working on my first short that I would feel comfortable with showing the public. Not to discourage anybody, just keep your expectations realistic. You will get much more satisfaction out of your work with A:M, and any other app on the market.

I'm going to add my two cents worth. As it has already been posted, A:M is a great tool to learn the technical aspects of animation. The tutorials provided, the help available on this forum all lend to a solid product capable of producing quality work. However, one thing I see lacking, and fear would be missed in a class that focuses on animation, are all of the other aspects of animation. Story telling, writing, producing, acting. And yes, even for middle school students, the business of movie making. If students were given a solid foundation on these pieces of the process, they would be much better off. As the parent of a fine arts graduate who is now working as a ride operator at Disney, who was never taught, even in college, the business side of art, and of a high school student who is totally involved in creating her own graphic novel, I speak to this subject a wee bit. My suggestion is, absolutely use A:M to teach your students. But also instill in them that to be a good, successful animator, you also need a strong foundation in traditional art (studio) business management (I think every one should have this!) writing, storytelling (not the same as writing), production, direction. Also that A:M is not the only application out there, and most studios want an artist with a good understanding of the above more than an expert in any one software product. My two cents worth.

Gerry, now that I read your post, I can say I ran into the exact same problem. Unfortunately I can't go back to recreate it. But I had to go in and manually clean up the illegal values. I also ran into nulls getting scaled to huge sizes and a a whole host of issues, that at the time I chalked up to user error.

Take the credit! I've found that questioning the cosmos like that can only lead to no good.

Oy mate!...that's no horse!

The saga continues...or "just when I think I'm making progress". So I was messing with Old Man Willies and the LiteFace rig. And I noticed that when I enable the Face Constraints pose, the poor guys face gets well, all messed up. Turning the pose back off does not set it back. Below is a before and after. the project for any who may wish to give the old man a face lift!

na, it's all in the Scotch! (and to bring it back to the topic of this thread, the fire in their hearts!)

oy mate! there be nothing wrong with the grrrreat heeland pipes!

I know you can groom hair, etc. But there are cases that I can foresee where I'm going to want to control the beard's movement outside of dynamics. So with the mesh I can have a dynamics pose and (hopefully) another pose to enable a null. With hair alone, I can't see where I could say drape the end of his beard over his shoulder and have it stay there.

Ok, back to a beard test, as a break from cp weighting (what a pain in the A%@!). I tried creating a beard that was nothing but hair. I didn't really like it because I couldn't control the shape. So I went back to a mesh beard with a hair material. This test was to see if the dynamics on the beard mesh, combined with the hair material would behave nicely. This quick render was 30 frames, 4 passes and took roughly 28 secs a frame.

So I am thinking ahead on my short, one scene I need a fire in a fireplace, casting lights and shadows into a room, much like if the fire were one of the only sources of light. I think I understand the process of using the tga sequence to simulate the flames, but could it also be used to generate the light and flickering effect of the fire itself?

I recall that one! Not bad! seriously?!? "Shirley" you don't mean that!

So this fire discussion dredged up an old memory. This is a video I made some 6 years ago (in A:M). Thankfully it never made the light of day, since in looking at now, it aint so great. But, I did make fire for it, using streaks. I'd think that the same idea could be used for your purposes simply by changing the streak emitters color properties.. Be kind on your thoughts, this is an old old try of mine!

So this fire discussion dredged up an old memory. This is a video I made some 6 years ago (in A:M). Thankfully it never made the light of day, since in looking at now, it aint so great. But, I did make fire for it, using streaks. Be kind on your thoughts, this is an old old try of mine! nuts..wrong thread!

Is it possible for a computer to have more than one IP address? If it had more than one network adapter? yes it is possible...it is called dual hosting. I used to do it on a web server i had set up (many many moons ago). It can be a real pain to get it up and running, but it is possible. However, I don't see how you could get each network adapter to be assigned to an individual cpu within a multi cpu machine. To me it would be a bit better/easier to have a rack set up with a couple of blade servers (single cpu) and use netrender as it was designed for...Just think of all the sci-fi'ish blinky lights!

Old Man Willies is a Franken model if there ever was one. The eyes from one place...template for the body another...head from Sir Nigel. I did hack and slash, re-spline etc. So I can't take all of the credit. We'll see how much I've learned as I finish up the rigging and texturing, then move on to the other characters (an old hound doq, some birds, squirrels, rabbits and other sundry denizens of the woods.

So I'm slowly making headway with the main character model, Old Man Willies for the short that I hope to finish for a film festival next year. I'm taking baby steps, pushing my knowledge limits and trying to do things right with the models before even attempting to start on the animation. This is a blink test, really intended to see how the hair emitter behaved for the eyelashes. Seems ok. I still have to add hair to the lower eyelash, mustache and beard, then on to face textures and, and and.....

So the saga continues with Old Man Willies and the Lite Rig. I've gotten the Lite Face rig installed, added cp weighting etc. I decided to take it for a test run and check how the control nulls behaved, so I created a new action and played with the eye lid master. I noticed that the eyelid master is not moving the inner and outer upper eyelids at the same rate, with the outer bone moving much more than the inner. Is there a way to adjust how much the inner bone moves with the null??

I debated on whether or not I should comment on this shot. It is truly an incredible piece of work, one that I doubt I'll ever come close to duplicate. That said, the one thing that always comes to mind when I see renders like this one, is that it reminds me of a model. I almost expect to see a hand come down with a pair of tweezers and another tree to "plant". I guess it looks almost too perfect for me. My mind keeps wanting to see the film grain. Again this is not a criticism, since my limited skills puts me in no position to offer any. Just a comment. Great job at any rate.

I've noticed that when the eyelashes are groomed in the modeling window, they don't start out exactly the same in an action. I'll set it up in an on/off pose as suggested and give it a go this evening..thanks for the tip.

Thanks Nancy, love the fast reply. It looks like a refresh issue...me thinks I'll have to set up a test render of a blink and see it things go.

So Old Man Willies is coming along. LiteFace is up and running (major victory). I've been experimenting with using hair for his eyelashes. Had it looking good in the modeling window, but when I tested how it behaves in an action I found that it doesn't fair so well. I looks like the base of the eyelash moves with the patch, but the hair tip stays put. So the question is, how do you set up a hair patch so that it will move properly when animated. this is the eyelash in the modeling window this is the action I want the hair look, tried a eyelash decal and wasn't happy, especially on closeups. So how to create the a hair system that will animate properly??

If you were aiming for a Disney-esque style story, then I'd agree that a warm and fuzzy beginning would be necessary. But, I think this story stands on its own, with the imagery in the storyboards, an outstanding soundtrack, and solid directing this short would be top notch. Will, I would offer a word of caution though; one of the banes of writing scripts, is that once a director takes it on, he/she gets to add their own ideas to the piece. So if you hand it over to someone else, get their agreement that the story remains untouched (if that is what you wish). I'd love to work on this project. Sadly, with my own short forcing me to admit that my modeling skills are far behind the quality I expect, I'd not be comfortable with doing that part of it. My strengths, I am realizing, is in the production/story telling side of things (sort of falls in line with 20 plus years in project management I suppose).

I do have to say I'd love to see this short done.