fae_alba

just sent an archive off to you...enjoy!

Wonder if I could make the Awesome Con....it's on my b'day so I'm sensing a happy birthday present to me (I'll disguise it in a cultural trip, see the sights sort of thing. The wife will never know!)

Yeah, the buildings are just a backdrop. How about this one? Each object is a separate model and I can send you an archive with everything in it.

When I was typing I envisioned a short sequence that includes a backgrond, foreground and middle ground with the various elements involved (all the objects/models) there. This could be a scene that doesn't have any characters in it such as the opening scene. It could also be something that won't appear in the short itself (think of the various film credits that take the audience back through scenes from the film but in a different style than the film itself such as a 3D animated film that has hand drawn scenes recreated for the credits. Barring that the simplest thing would be a model... any type will do to test out the possibilities. how's this...

Rodney, Papa Bear is always willing to be a guinea pig! Do you want a still, a model, or what?

Then that leaves the bit around the eye. But then I'd have to ask what's the advantage? Is it more a means to have a character that is part 2D and part 3D?

the eyeball is 3d.

Timing has been the bane of my existence. I've taken to using a stop watch on my phone, and doing the action to get it straight. I suppose part of the problem is when working in a chor, getting a character to walk up a set of stairs and you look at the timeline, you see all of these keyframes for say two seconds, my brain says, "that's a lot of work, so 2 seconds MUST be long enough!" Ok, back to the topic of the thread....

I know working with A:M can be frustrating, trust me. But to echo both Rodney and Gerald, everyone here is here to help others, and to get help themselves. Otherwise, why be out here at all? Now, I'm a software engineer by trade and training, been on everyside of the fence from design to code, to QA to helpdesk. And I'm here to tell you, if you see behaviour that others don't when doing the same tasks (constraining a model to a path), then any help desk professional is going to first suspect the user. It's a fact of life. The purpose of the questions being asked is to dig into the issue you are experiencing in order to eliminate possibilities, that's how it gets done. If at the end of the Q&A session all of the potential user generated issues are eliminated, then we can look to the software for the problem. You have had some of the best individuals on this forum offering to take time to look at your project and find, and most likely fix, the issue for you. Take Them Up On Their Offer!!!!

I will confess that using A:M and proxies for creating storyboards is not mine. The proxies I'm using for Papa Bear were created by Mark Largent , and what was his idea to use A:M, I'm just carrying on his fine tradition. But, yes, each scene/camera cut is set up in a chor and then a single frame is rendered off. And before you think, "gee that sounds like a lot of work", consider that if you are diligent in saving each individual chor, named for the scene, when you decide that something needs to be altered (you most certainly will) then it is a simple job to open that chor up, make the adjustment, and rerender.

Animatics is an animated storyboard, used to get basic timing down. My personal opinion is that while it can be done in A:M, I wouldn't. My main reason is that you would most likely wind up with one chor for the entire animation, and that gets tougher to manage than necessary. Ideally, your script is broken up into scenes, then the storyboard further breaks down the scenes into the camera movements/framing, then the animatic is simply the storyboard put together in a movie with a simple soundtrack. In A:M, each scene, camera cut is animated in a separate chor. I use celtx for my script writing, story boarding, and animatics. I do use A:M to help with the storyboards, using proxies, simply because I can't draw worth a tinkers damn!

Learning to walk is scary. Our lowly flour sack tries to take his first step. first_try.mp4

No kidding. I just realized I needed to add more back bones in order to get the range of motion I wanted.

The modeling was definitely more of a struggle than I thought it would be. Started out with the mentality of "it's a sack, how hard can it be?" Did one model, rigged it, and then started a walk cycle and realized that there just wasn't enough there to convey life. So back to the modeling window i went. I think the current rig still may need some work, but I'm going to attempt some basic poses and a simple walk cycle to see if that is true or not. Only time will tell.

Starting to get back into the swing of things, after a busy summer (wish it weren't over though!), new granddaughter, and tons of work around the house. Before I jumped into trying to animate Papa Bear, I figured I'd have a go at the ol' flour sack exercise. Here's the model with a first pass of rigging. I'll start some test posing tomorrow.

Mark, I looked at that product and came away wondering just what it was that made it different from any of the other possibilities out there. Thier claim is that they utilize "technology" that can't be matched. I wonder how what they are doing can be different than taking a sheet of thin plexi and cutting what ever size you want. The only thing different is perhaps instead of four seams theirs has only one?

A lesson that I have to re-learn at least once a quarter!

I'm signed up.

You wouldn't happen to have those assets still do you? I'm (slowly) getting back to this script, and want to continue with your process.

Rodney, word on the street is I've got five more months on this project, so there will be more trips to Springfield. I'll reach out to you when they get scheduled.

I thought I'd poke my head in to say hey and "Merry Christmas". I had every intention of getting Papa Bear set up to work with my new mo cap suit. Did make a start, but then work took over. A 70 hour work week feels like a vacation to me now! Hopefully the project I'm on will quite down in a few weeks and I can get back to workin in A:M. Man I miss it!

Well I'm in. I used to play that game, loved it!

Well I've been putzing around with the bvh files from the perception neuron setup. Ran into a couple of challenges. The biggest one is the scaling of the skeleton from the bvh file to my model. Papa Bear has a long torso, and short stubby legs. The bvh file skeleton in no way comes close to matching Papa Bears. I've experimented with just constraining (translate to and orient like) and seeing if the offsets will do a sufficient job of matching things up. It doesn't. Also, the test bvh file I created starts with a sit down pose, stand up, walk a few paces turn around and sit down again. I presume that I need to pose Pappa Bear up starting in a sit down pose, but not sure. I'll try and post something, but what I have now is pretty ugly, so I'll refrain on posting that just yet.

I would group the table and bowl separately. Then hide the table group, and apply the glass material to the bowl group. That should keep do the trick.

Nope, you have to take the money! It's the rules, ya know! Damn the rules, full speed ahead! All right, I'll take the pot 'O gold...twist my arm.