largento

Completely different animal, Rodney. This will be 2D. I'm still patiently waiting for my code so I can do anything in 3D. :-)

Luckily all three are new to getting a Largent caricature. Don't fret so much over the photos you send. I'll make you look good. :-)

Just thought I'd remind the three caricature winners to send in their photos! I have an open window right now since my A:M subscription is in limbo while I wait for my activation code.

Apple has nothing to do with the fact that MPEG2 LA, LLC. requires you to pay a royalty for using their tech in a commercial product. :-) From what I can figure out from all the lawyer talk on their legal docs, if you manufacture something that uses their video technology (which they have a patent for), you have to pay them a royalty. Included in the list of such things you might manufacture is DVD Video Discs. This is a moot point if you use a licensed replicator (manufacturer) like I did with my two DVDs. [EDIT: For clarity, you have to pay MPEG2 LA, LLC. not Apple. And the cost is something like 3 cents per disc, so it's not very steep.]

Awesome job, Rob! The suspense! The thrills! The glamour of old Hollywood! :-) A big congratulations to everyone and now I've got three caricatures to do...

Really great job! Love seeing everyone's work.

Bravo!!

They did a lousy job at that but you can't curve the "2001" image onto a Cinerama screen because the camera did not shoot a wide angle of view comparable to what a Cinerama screen presents to a viewer. Here's a link to the guy's math, Robert. You can check it to see the quality of his job. :-)

That would be an interesting solution, Rodney. If it were possible, you would end up with a panoramic image, which is desirable. My original question, though, was how to (if possible) set up a Cinerama camera in A:M with the correct camera settings. I'm okay with it having any of the problems that were inherent with Cinerama.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, we visited Disney World several times and they had a "circle vision 360" attraction. You stood in a circular room with nine screens encircling you and they had hand rails for you to hold on, even though the room itself did not move. I remember they showed "America the Beautiful." It was a flying over the USA movie and I remember holding onto that hand rail because it really seemed like we were flying.

And yet, 2001 *was* presented that way. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was, too. No one is saying that smilebox recreates the experience, but it does come closer and it is definitely a different experience than watching a 70mm film. All the setups I've seen online do not show the Cinerama screen anywhere but in front of the audience. The impression that it curves around you has to do with the size and curve of the screen and the fact that you are seeing a panoramic image. Astonishingly, because of the louvred panels, you can project a smilebox formatted film from one projector onto a Cinerama screen accurately, removing the need for three projectors ...and five people running them.

So you're saying undistort it and then re-distort it with the smilebox? The issue is that you are still starting with a flat view, so I do think you lose some of the actual sense of depth. Here's an image where someone simulated what 2001 would look like on a Cinerama screen. You don't really get the sense that you are seeing to the sides and look how flat the figure on the extreme left looks. Compare that to this image: Still, though. Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about making it exactly right. If I use three cameras basically placed in the configuration and line up their cones, I should get three workable frames that I can assemble in Photoshop. Photomerge might even be something that I could use. I'll have to play with it. It might be fun to revisit The Wannabe Pirates for a quicky short that uses this.

I'm not entirely convinced of the one lense process, since essentially, that was what cinescope and the like were. The distortion on the edges should only happen once the image was smileboxed, since there was no such distortion in the original image. Here's what I mean: Taking a wide shot and distorting it wouldn't be the same effect.

I'm jealous. I can only imagine what it was like for people back in the 1950s when it was new. Smilebox, of course, can't give that true wraparound feel, but there's something thrilling about seeing the sides of your vision go by. It was supposedly a nightmare to shoot with. If you wanted to have somebody on the left side of the screen talking to somebody on the right side, they had to stand on either side of the camera looking away from the camera ...and the person they were supposedly looking at. Technical wise, I think it's still kind of shrouded in mystery. Everywhere I go, I seem to find slightly different information about the settings:

Several years ago, I bought the blu-ray of "How The West Was Won," one of the few movies shot in true Cinerama, using a camera with three lenses and magazines, able to record a 146° viewing area. These three strips of film were then projected by three projectors onto an enormous curved screen. The results were supposed to be spectacular. I've never seen Cinerama in person, but to simulate the effect, they mapped the movie onto a 3D curved screen and presented it on the blu-ray in what they called "Smilebox." The effect is pretty spectacular. Got me to wondering if a Cinerama Camera and screen could be simulated in A:M, so that you could end up with a Smilebox movie. Not being very familiar with real world camera settings and how to translate them to A:M, I have read that they used 35mm film for each strip with 27mm lenses. Attempting to simulate what they human eyes see. The cameras were at 48° angles from each other, but they obviously had to be offset, since the three lenses couldn't exist in the same spot. The resultant image was 2.59:1 aspect ratio (although there's an optimum ratio of 2.65:1.) Obviously, it would require three renders, but if they could be made seamless, then they could be assembled and mapped to a curved screen and rendered again as Smilebox. The real Cinerama screens had the outer thirds of the screen made up of 1100 louvered strips that were rotated to face the audience. This was because of light spillage from the curve of the screen and the three projectors. I don't think this would be an issue if the final render didn't include shadows or any additional lighting. The final film was projected at 26fps and there was some sort of interlacing that alternately overlapped the seams to make them less noticeable. Again, I think this wouldn't be necessary with A:M. I think it could be neat to do a short in Smilebox, but I'm realizing I don't know enough about the camera settings to recreate it on my own. Anybody got any thoughts/ideas on how to accomplish it?

Hey Jason, good luck with this!

Interesting. I just recently discovered that Adobe includes Cinema4D Lite with After Effects now.

And, of course, make sure you don't have that pesky mirror mode on when you make your selections. I am forever bedeviled by that. :-)

Sounds like a great idea for the sequel they make when they are teenagers and Uncle Mark is retired. :-)

Thanks, all! Robert, I'll probably have to adjust things when I rig him. Right now, I'm not planning to do any heavy animation for this. I'm hoping to convince them that Cow Wars should mostly be a space battle.

I've already shared this on Facebook, but thought I'd add it here. My nephews (ages 7 and 9) have asked me to help them make a movie over the summer break. It's called "Cow Wars" because I guess to 7 and 9 year olds, cows are funny. :-) I've no doubt it's going to be a struggle to get them to focus on doing anything on their side, so I decided to be pro-active and modeled this Cowtrooper. If I can wrangle them and their expectations, I think it'll be fun to shoot the kids and their friends on green screen and insert them into the movie.

My memory (such that it is) was that work had already begun on *another* Mickey Mouse short when the decision to go with sound was made. Steamboat Willie was then pushed up to the front to be the first Mickey Mouse short released. I also seem to recall that the innovation that allowed them to record the sound (which I believe was done in New York) had something to do with being able to visually indicate the time while recording, like a metronome. My memory is fuzzy on it and I read that Disney book that it was in too many years ago. :-) I'll see if I can dig up some info.

Hey, I must've missed the story, but didn't they try to take that client away from you? I remember awhile back you being in a quandry about giving them your files. How did all that shake out?

This is terrific news for anyone who wants to create with Animation:Master! I've always been indebted to them. These tutorials took me from frustration and failure to understanding and accomplishment.

I haven't been using A:M recently, either, but just I just tried to open Tar and should point out that Dark Tree textures don't work on the Mac version. The plug-in stopped working awhile back. So trying to load those materials might cause the Mac version to crash. I do plan to get back on the train at some point in the near future, so hopefully the issues can be resolved.