JHV
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Posts posted by JHV
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I'll go back and redo them as avi files. I just tried to see them myself and noticed that there is something amiss! The work fine locally, but not from the website. Typical of the evil computer on my desk <G>
Thank you for the kind words. I'm trying!
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I have to agree, the tutorial was excellent!
I watched it twice and learned some very useful tricks to add to my modeling skills.
Here are some short clips based on the tutorial. Great Job John! Now if I can become proficient with Skycast, I'll really be on to something!
Initial render
http://hre.com/jhvdigital/videoclips/spacepod.avi
Alternate Clip
http://hre.com/jhvdigital/videoclips/spacepod6.avi
Blue Screen render
http://hre.com/jhvdigital/videoclips/spacepod3.avi
Starfield background
(I've deleted this one as it was too large for a reasonable download.)
I need to fix some glitches and do some tweaking, but the general idea is valid and the ease of achieving the end result is nothing short of amazing.
All the above files and several intermediate files were all created and rendered in one afternoon. That INCLUDES the real bombs that I created as well!
I have changed the mpg files above to avi files so they should work properly now.
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Rodney:
The intermediaries are the Lawyers. You know, the people who say "NO".
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Oh Thanks a lot! There I am clicking like a fool trying to buy the books! LOL! I LOVE the concept! Great work (Just get Williamson to finish the doggone stories!)
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I have been experiencing the exact same phenomenon as Shadowmaster. Out of the blue, I'm back to my desktop. All drivers are current and I certainly have enough processing power. I am leaning towrds the problem being a memory issue. even with a gig of ram, I think you can easily get to the point where you can overwhelm your memory and then the whole system just dumps. Now as to wheter it is a problem with the program or the computer, needs to be sorted out. I will say that I haven't had the problem with other memory intensive programs. Of course, you need to have nothing else running when you are working, but that goes for any program as far as I'm concerned.
Frequent saves are certainly the order of the day, but I am experiencing some rather frequent instability. I'm not that experienced with the program, and am not using it for anything of any real importance (just learning the ropes) but I can see that being very frustrating to anyone it happens to..
I'm off to the FAQ to see if I need to change some settings. If I have any luck, I'll report back.
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Jim,
Do you have any thoughts on why it took a reviewer of this kind of software so long to find AM? What I mean by that is AM has been around for 11 versions and name recognition still seems to be an area where AM has struggled. I don't mean anything critical by this. It's early, so my wording might be... curt
.I get between 15 and 20 trade publications per month. Additionally, I get another half dozen software packages or books to look over as well. It was just a co-incidence that I happened on a mention of A:M in Millimeter magazine. I was intrigued and with a little digging, I got in contact with Ken Baer who was a super fellow to speak with. We discussed the program at length and I asked him to let me review the software (That in itself is a first for me, that's how intrigued I was with what I was reading about it).
Without a doubt, A:M has a name recognition problem. That's why I wanted to write the review for CreativeCow. Their forums are populated by a lot of industry professionals who were unaware (as I was) of A:M. Why? Well, I would wager that A company such as Alias spends more per month on trade advertising than HASH generates in income (I'm taking a wild leap here and no offense meant, but do you know how much a 2 page ad costs in a magazine? Now multiply that by almost every trade magazine in the industry and you'll get an idea of what real money looks like.) Companies like that don't do their ads in house, they hire agencies to work up the campaign, that too takes a chunk of change.
By saturating the market with their product and through a very tight advertising campaign they have got people convinced that unless they use their product, they aren't really "Professional".
This is the "Snob factor" as I call it. You can see this in a lot of software. AVID for the longest time was THE application to use if you wanted to be taken seriously as a video editor. If it wasn't cut on an AVID, it wasn't worth looking at. Well, that is just so much hooey!. But try to convince a studio that has invested literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that you can produce the same quality work at a fraction of the cost. That is what Adobe ran up against with Premier (although After Effects is a very well regarded program in the editing/compositing world, but even there, you'll find the "snobs" who look down on you if you're not using Flame.)
FCP for the Mac got a huge boost when Murch cut his film on it. The Apple users were even MORE annoying than usual after those articles came out (no flames! Just needling the Mac users <G>). Sony took over Sonic foundry's Vegas and poured a TON of money into promoting it as a truly "Professional" NLE (and it is, with possibly the BEST color correction tools available) but they are still considered by some "snobs" as a hobbiest package.
Word of mouth one way to expose a fair number of people to a product, but think about it, how many people do YOU know personally, who are involved in the field? So if you tell 10 people about A:M, maybe 1 or 2 will actually buy it. That's hardly a way to generate sales. You really NEED advertising, and although I see a very solid community of A:M users, there is still that lack of 'In your face" promotion of the program. Some of the people that I spoke to who WERE aware of A:M had the impression that it was not a "professional" program. Again, the "Snob factor" raises its ugly head. "How can I do professional work if it only costs $299.00?" My review was aimed at trying to help change that perception.
I know personally of 3 people who picked up the package at the DV Expo in Manhattan at my urging. Within 2 weeks I got a call from them thanking me for turning them on to A:M. Now here's the funny thing, NONE of them wanted me to tell anyone that they were using it! AHA! Secret weapon stuff! Sure, if I can create the kinds of animation, and 3D models that are easily possible with A:M, why would I tell ANYONE? (If I'm competing in the marketplace).
That is a strange attitude, but not really. Anything that I can use that gives me an advantage over my competitors is something that I'm going to keep close to the vest.
The HUGE power of A:M is in the fact that the learning curve is so enticing. In literally minutes of opening the package, you can be producing something. Try that with some of the High End stuff. Three weeks of reading the manual before you can find the primitives tool. What A:M does, however, is deliver a package that is just as complex as ANY of the high end packages, yet it tricks you into being swept along in the learning process.
I try to learn one new thing a day about A:M. I can stretch myself by trying things that I'm certainly not ready for, and if all goes well, great, if not, start over a little closer to page 1 (I've since picked up Davis Rogers book and am in the process of weeding out the points that will help me understand the program a bit more thoroughly.
So once again, a long winded post. But I am confident that A:M will eventually be one of those "Best Kept Secrets" that will get exposed for the rest of the world to be dumbstruck by.
I know I am.
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I'm glad to see that you found my review enjoyable. As for my choice of the can-can animation for the review, several things influenced my decision. First was the amount of time that I had to put together the review and submit it. (about 2 1/2 weeks). coming in cold from a program that I had never laid eyes on, digging through the package, actually getting something accomplished that people could get a good sense of what A:M was about pretty much locked me into something simple yet impressive. (In hindsight, a walk cycle might have been more impressive, especially if I had used the "HER" model!). Bandwidth was another consideration, It had to be under 500K or thereabouts.
I initially had some problems with the documentation (or my perceived lack of it), and Ken Baer was good enough to point me in the right direction. I still feel that the search function is a bit flaky, but the info IS there. It's just a little bit of a dig to extract it.
Now that I have used the program for about a month, I am finding it to be even more powerful than I had first assumed (and I assumed that it was pretty powerful to begin with, especially after watching the demo at the DV Expo in Manhattan).
What is also impressive to me is the fact that the program can be used to simply model 3D objects quickly and texture them professionally and ready for camera or the printer. This is extremely important to a lot of people who will never want to animate anything. The use of splines and the ability to manipulate them so rapidly to conform any shape that you might want lends an additional functionality to the package that simply cannot be competed with by any other program.
As for the forums, I am more than impressed with the knowledge and willingness to share it with anyone who asks. (as I stated in my review).
I'm a little surprised that some of the sites are "lagging" in terms of new tutorials. That's not a knock, just an observation. There is certainly enough tutorial material out there that will keep a new user busy for quite some time. I was disappointed to find a lot of expired or broken links on some of the tutorial sites. Regardless, this is one of the top 5 software packages that I've come across. It interfaces perfectly with Any NLE that I have used, and with the font/text function, along with the shading and material plug-ins that can be applied, even doubles (triples?) as an excellent 3D text generator for specialty film and corporate video work.
Sorry for the lengthy post, I guess I just wrote ANOTHER review!
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There are a good selection of tutorials on AE at www.creativecow.net. Go to the After Effects Forum and then click on Tutorials. They range from beginner to quite complex. but you will be able to get a good start there.
building the Osprey Cockpit
in (2003-2004)
Posted
Thank you John!
That might be a nice tutorial as well! (Using A:M as a compositor)