largento

Just finished part 5. Great job, Andrew! I can only imagine what it was like doing it with how much slower computers were at the time. I loved the gag with the airbags and the crewman flying forward during the battle at the end. It's been long enough, maybe a bunch of new TNG fans will discover it on YouTube! You can check out Stalled Trek on YouTube, too. It's here.

I was watching a retrospective documentary that was an extra on the final Clone Wars release and part of it was dedicated to something I found interesting. At a certain point, Lucas realized that in order to keep on schedule, they needed to forego the storyboarding stage and go straight to pre-viz. Lucas went to his guys at ILM and a team was put together to create a piece of software called "Zviz" that would make it easy to create a pre-vis version of the episode first. The tool would not only allow you to import and animate assets, but you could create assets and most importantly, shoot and edit the material. Using Zviz on a laptop, directors could set up or change camera movements, change timing, etc. All so that they end up with a finished pre-viz that's basically the final cut of the episode in less time than it took to do it the normal route. Some seemed skeptical of the process, but they said once they got on their feet, not only did Zviz save time, but it freed the director to be more creative. They could look at doing things more cinematically, because they could move everything around and change the shots. Here's an interview Animation World Network did when it was being developed. It says that the directive from Lucas was “Directors should be able to sit on the couch watching TV while they mock up their shots.” Here's a story from 2009 that has a screenshot of it. Anyway, it's interesting to consider going this route with a project. Especially if you've written a script first. If you use simple, generic objects for your assets, you can quickly set up all the shots and render out sequences to be edited together. Find out in advance how many frames of finished animation you'll actually need to render. I know, personally, I've found it helpful to set up a cho for every storyboard I want to make. With storyboarding, unless I'm just doing some rough thumbnails for a specific sequence, I just sit there and stare at the empty frame, not sure where to start.

I did a few panels of Errol Flemm falling in The Wannabe Pirates and I liked the idea of his arms flailing as he fell. I seem to recall that to accomplish it, I would create a duplicate model, hide everything except the arms and then place multiple copies of it in the exact same place in the cho. Of course, that would be a lot of work in something that's animated, but it could be done. I may have to save up my pennies for this.

Thanks for posting, Andrew! I've only seen bits and pieces of the Sev Trek movie before now. Going to set aside some time to watch it tonight. Rodney, Sev Trek goes waaaay back before I'd even heard of Animation:Master. Although, in truth Stalled Trek pre-dates Sev Trek, since the original web comic version was put up in '96. It only took me 16 years to get around to animating it. :-)

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Gerald! Hadn't watched this in a long time, but thought I'd drag it out again: The Wannabe Pirates Christmas Greeting from 2008 (seems SO long ago!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THud4-cjy7k Merry Christmas, everybody!

Thanks for the update and the fixes! Curious about the CP renumbering. I seem to recall getting a message every once in awhile that a model shared the same CP numbers or something like that. It hasn't ever stopped me from doing something. Is this new feature something we should use as part of good practice? Does it make the model more efficient?

Hey Guys, thanks! I haven't had a chance to start on them yet, but I have all three of the winners' photos, so I'm good to go!

No one has, Rodney. I'm wondering if I should put a deadline to it.

Oops. I was looking at a FAQ page from August that had these limitations... That seems to have been replaced with total access.

So, it looks like they aren't announcing what they are going to do with Mixamo yet. From what I can read, you have a set number of times you can use certain features during this "free preview." It was apparently pay-based before, but all of that is on hold until they transition into being an Adobe product. I wonder if the Cloud service will make Mixamo free? I also wonder if you could take A:M characters into Mixamo and make use of their auto-rigging and animation libraries.

I think it's a good move. I know that I messed around last year with trying to get Flash into HTML 5 and had mixed results.

Very interesting, Rodney. I'm at a freelance job that I go to twice a week and they frequently have nothing for me to do, so I'm downloading it to play with.

Really great stuff! Love seeing these characters translated to A:M.

I bought a PS4 this week just to play Battlefront. :-) I've been busy with freelance work, so I've only been able to play it for a short amount of time, but it's really amazing. I was an addict with the original Battlefront on the original Xbox. Had a group of friends that played for hours every night. This is light years beyond the original. Not only in the look of it, but the sheer scale. I'm sure once I've played it enough to memorize the maps, they won't seem as infinite as they do now, but on first blush, it's as close to really being dropped in Star Wars as we've ever seen.

Generally, when I update my Mac version, I just pull the license file out of the folder and start up A:M. When it prompts me for the registration code, I insert it there and it generates a new license file.

Bravo!

Thanks, guys! There's still a lot I want to do with A:M, but I've decided to focus on another bucket list item and am writing a novel. I optimistically think it'll take less than a year, but we'll see. Although the idea for it has been brewing in my brain since 1986, I've imagined so many different variations on it, that I'm having to weed through them all to find the version I'm going to tell. I'll likely only write one novel in my life, so I kinda' want to do it well.

So, more than three years later, Stalled Trek gets a movie poster! :-) I decided to make a poster for this and The Wobbling Dead to hang up on my office wall. (If I ever get an office again.) I haven't started the poster for The Wobbling Dead yet. I'm glad, though. I've got a new computer, which I think is going to make rendering high res images much easier. I just did a test render (Capitan Zach from the Extras DVD) and it took 1:34 on my old Mac Pro and 0:31 on my iMac. A giant improvement.

There's a "preference file," Gerald, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to understand what is what to modify it. At the very least, you'd have to quit A:M, make the change and then reopen A:M. [EDIT] At least I've narrowed it down to being a problem only with the SSE4 versions.

Okay, someone may want to try this workaround to confirm: 1) Download and install the Intel mac version (not the SSE4 version.) 2) Make all of your settings. 3) Download and install the SSE4 version. 4) Never open the options or customize window. :-) I did this with Version M. But the problem is there on the SSE4 version, too. I'm running El Capitan. [EDIT] This should work with Version N. I installed the Intel version of N over my SSE4 M version and then installed the SSE4 N version over that and all my settings have remained and as long as I don't open those control panels, I'm good to go. It's going to be an issue with doing any lathing, but at least it works for the basics.

I can confirm this problem on the Mac. I just bought a new iMac and since the new subscription for A:M doesn't have old settings to go by, I'm unable to make changes in the options window. Going to try an earlier version and see if that works.

Guys, I'm really sad to say that a Google search revealed that Kathryn passed away in October of 2014, just after moving to San Diego. She was 73. You can read her obituary, see photos and condolences here: http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/MaineToday-CentralMaine/kathryn-may-whitaker-condolences/172779292?

Most editing apps let you set the frame rates of both the clips you import and the final project.

A great resource if you want to dive into character modeling/rigging/animating is Barry Zundel's training videos, which are now available here for free.

Hey Al! Good to see you back on the forums. I came across your B9 robot model just the other day ...and of course, you were kind enough to post a lot of Star Trek reference blueprints I made use of on Stalled Trek, for which I thank you! I'm sure the technical folks will be able to answer your questions better than I. I do believe the lip sync still works and we have a newer plug-in that you can set to trigger a pose slider via a sound file. I've used it with my puppet characters to some success.