largento

I'm confused. My memory is that if you click on the on/off in the User properties, you can then right-click and choose constant. That will make the choice you set appear when you open the model. Is that what you're asking, Rodney?

That's what it is, it's just not an enhancement to the Quicktime X player. I'm guessing they figure now that if you're a pro, you'd just shell out for Final Cut Pro and Compressor. I find myself using Photoshop a lot. I open up an image sequence as a video and can do any color work in an environment I'm familiar in. Not as robust as After Effects, but also not as alien to me.

The easy way is to model a transparent dome over the cornea and adjust it's specularity. Works like a charm for me.

Thanks, Adam. Always good to have another Mac user on the forums. I generally use PNG files for everything and haven't had a problem using them as rotoscopes or layers. One thing to consider with layers is that unless you change the default settings, they are affected by the lightng of the cho. There is an option to have them "flat shaded" and I use that often. I usually use layers for the sky. This time out, I'm only using the Mac version, so it will have that distinction over the other two films.

At some point, quite a few years ago, Apple split Quicktime and abandoned Windows. I'm a little surprised to find that somebody else didn't step in with a replacement. I've viewed the OS X Quicktime mostly as just a player app and I've noticed in the last couple of OS versions, the player has limited what files it plays natively. Now it converts it to a playable format and when you go to close it, it prompts you to save it in the new format. These non-playable formats are usually old .mov files. Since I've been working with video again, I re-purchased Quicktime Pro on my computer and had to install Quicktime 7 and look for the app in the Utilities folder. It still works like it always did, but it doesn't replace the main Quicktime player. It's like a legacy app. As it happens, I haven't really made much use of Pro. I can do so much video stuff with the Adobe apps, there's little need. I almost never export video from A:M, choosing instead to render to frames. Since virtually every app now natively plays movies (browsers, mail, etc. Heck, even the Finder plays them), I would guess Apple could question the need for a stand alone app.

Oh well, due to circumstances outside of my control, the release is being pushed back a week. I would definitely have been having to cut corners by the end, so this is probably a good thing. Sorry for the tease. It's coming, I promise. :-)

I, for one, am glad I don't feel the pressure of tagging this one's success or failure on how many DVDs I (don't) sell. :-)

I've completed the first assemblage of the new Stalled Trek I'm doing! There's still stuff missing and not all of it is animated, but I'm hoping to rectify that by Friday. The assemblage is being used to score the movie, which I'm so happy to have this time out. The composer is volunteering his service, which is tremendous. I'm also not going to make a DVD this time, so no Kickstarter funding was necessary. Just me spending lots of my time. :-) I'd love to tease this, but I think anything I showed would give it away. I'll upload a ton of stuff here once it's done, though. So, consider this a place-holder.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just a change of mind. But I've noticed that holding down the shift-key while starting a new spline no longer connects it to the control point you click on. It places it in the same place, but it's not joined. This used to work. I've had to go back to the old way of doing it where I click away from the control point, then hold the shift key to add it to the control point and once I've finished the spline, I have to go back and delete the extra bit of spline.

Alas, the JPG.iio file is present and accounted for. No worries, Kev. I didn't think that. I was just pointing out that thing I've noticed. :-)

I always can tell a PC user because they put Mac in all caps like it stands for something. :-) As a matter of fact...

I'm over my head in a rushed animation project, so I don't have time to file reports, but wanted to put these down as I encounter them so that I don't forget... and some may not be issues or are already known. When I'm done and have recovered, I'll file them. 1) JPEGs don't seem to work. Can't get a JPEG file to import into the PWS. I was noticing that an old material I used wasn't doing anything and I realized that it used a jpeg support file and A:M was importing it as a blank image. Changing it to a PNG file allowed it to load normally. I usually prefer not to use JPEGs, but weird that it's not letting me import them. 2) Shaded Renders getting stuck on "CPU SSAO". I think that's what it says. The workaround seems to be to turn off all of the render options before selecting Shaded. Turning them off after selecting it, must not do the trick. I had a shaded render hold for several minutes on the first frame (I ended up having to Force Quit.) When I did the workaround, all 87 frames rendered in a single second. I couldn't believe it. They were just instantly there. I think that's all I've encountered so far. I'll add them here as I go. I'm using v18-P SSE4 for OS X.

Very interesting. Certainly a shot over the bow of ToonBoom's software.

Oh, and since this is the A:M forum, here's a wireframe of my "self portrait" I made for the article. I haven't modeled anything in A:M in awhile. Luckily I wasn't too rusty. :-)

I was very honored to have "Stalled Trek: Amutt Time" selected for this and really appreciated the positive review. "Hilarious! Brilliant! A perfect parody of one of the most classic fan-favorite TOS Star Trek episodes" would be a great quote for a new back cover. One interesting thing I discovered is that Amutt Time may have been the first successful Kickstarter for a Star Trek fan film. There were a couple of unsuccessful ones before mine, but the one that is given credit for being the first ran between September and November of 2012, whereas Amutt Time ran between March and April of 2012. Of course, mine didn't raise nearly as much money or attention. :-) I'm hoping this gets the movie in front of more Star Trek fans who might appreciate it. I think it's telling that the blog writer's first impression (before actually watching it) was that it looked "silly." That's probably representative of fans who dismissed it without giving it a chance.

Went yesterday morning and really enjoyed it. Fantastic work from everyone involved. Story works well, characters have surprising depth and the environment is astonishing. Waay too much to see in a single viewing. Lots of gags, but also some unexpected serious notes. My sister took my nephews to a screening last Monday and they were frightened by one sequence. They are at an age where scary music scares them. :-) Animation is great and all the technical stuff is jaw-dropping. I chose to see it in 3D and had a great time watching it. If you go to the Zootopia website, there's some animation on the screen of the two main characters trying to mug for a selfie. I was astonished by just how good it is. Watch as the fox, Nick Wilde, pushes down on Judy Hopps' head. Not only does the skin and fur react perfectly, but you really believe the weight of the push and the resistance. http://movies.disney.com/zootopia

I was greatly impressed by the level of detail in the scan. Especially since it seemed they were using an Xbox Connect as the scanner.

That was the only one. My friend (the girl's mom) had asked me to do that one because there weren't any available at the time. As your link shows, there are plenty of resources out there. At the time she was asking, I don't even think any toys had been released. I was lucky to find those promotional images that I used.

Awesome! Laughed out loud when the cannonball bounced off the enemy tank. Great job!

Not suggesting it's for everybody, Rodney. Just throwing it out there. Nothing says everything in the setup has to be 3D, either. You want to draw an energy blast and bring it in, bring it in. You want to draw a picture of a chair, bring it in. Whatever it takes to get the ball in motion. The process itself is not more important than the end result. You can draw a thousand storyboards, but if you don't get the film done, there's no satisfaction in saying that you followed the rules. :-) To me, the reason why we have storyboards is because the technology didn't exist to do what we can do now.

I'm surprised, too, but I just can't do it. I stare at the paper, unable to do anything that I don't immediately hate and I just get frustrated and the project comes to a screeching halt. That's what interested me in this idea when I saw it.

Sure. I'll email 'em to you.

That's what I'm talking about. Look how quickly you're already making a movie!

And yet, at some point, you're going to have to work out every shot and beat. I did mention that this was especially applicable if you had a script. But even a script is only a beginning. You have to be open to whatever is best for the story. And you aren't telling the story to the audience with a script or storyboard. You're telling it with the film. Why not concentrate on it? Let yourself explore the possibilities. There are happy accidents where you can discover solutions that make your story telling better. I can still see the use of doing quick thumbnails to work out the shots in a sequence, but I view that more as scribbling a grocery list on the back of an envelope. Believe me, if I could create wonderful storyboards, I'd be showing up on the door of every studio and advertising agency in the country and be living the good life. I can't be the only one who gets "stuck" at that point of the process. I'm pointing out that you don't have to.

With it being easy to construct basic models in A:M, you don't have to go to the level of using rudimentary shapes to represent things. For instance, I tried to do storyboards for Paul's bear cartoon (turns out I have a mental block trying to do storyboarding. And don't say, "You can do it!" I can do a lot of things ...but not everything. This is one of the things I can't do.) So, in an attempt to try to find another way, I quickly mocked up a substitute model for the bear that could be easily rigged and posed and creating simple background elements is also fairly easy in A:M. So, without an inordinate amount of work, I was able to create models and setups like these: So, imagine you go straight into pre-viz, putting in camera moves and figuring out timing. Do very quick renders that give you the files to bring into your editing software. You can work out what shots you need and the timing of each one. If you can and want to do storyboards, that's fine for you, but if, like me, they cause you all kinds of stress and frustration, then it is possible to skip that step. Of course, I'm talking about for our do-it-ourselves projects, but even in a team, the director can get people to provide the models for each setup.