largento

Which feature are you referring to? Ambiance maps with glow should get the desired effect. The Lens Flares is one of several alternatives. Don't tell me Robert is going to have to break out a new series of "It can't be Done!": videos. (I'm all for that!) Erm... the one that this whole thread is about. :-)

Obviously, there are workarounds, but if there's a way to implement this feature, I'm certain I'd make use of it.

If your entry can't get passed that morality clause, you're probably not getting the point of the contest. :-) They are looking for *female-friendly* female models to encourage young girls to consider the CGI/gaming industry ...not over-sexualized pinups.

What about a kind of (mini) volume discount? If you buy one license at full price, you can buy a second for half-price or something? I pretty much stick to my desktop and don't have a laptop (at least a working one), but I can see how this would be good for people who do go back and forth. Sure, it's not getting the second one free, but you're not having to pay full price for the second one. I would think that would just be something that could setup with the Hash store.

It was Abbott & Costello Go to Mars, but they don't actually go to Mars, they go to Venus. I loved the Abbott & Costello monster movies when I was young.

Strange played the bartender on Gunsmoke for 12 years.

I try to keep my models simple and stylized ...just to make rigging easier. Still, I think a simple, spell-it-out guide to rigging would be a great thing for new users to have access to.

Dan, we were discussing rigging yesterday during the Live Answer Time discussion. Robert suggested that rigging was one of the biggest obstacles to new users and I very much agreed. I definitely feel more confident about it (after 11 years!), but even I don't think I have a high level of proficiency with it.

The villain of the piece! Butch Cavendish was played on the TV series by Glenn Strange who also played the Frankenstein monster in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

In case you haven't already found it...

Got these links in my email today: You can download a bunch of different LUTs here for free: 35 free LUTs And this page on using LUTs and color grading: Color Grading 101

Thanks, guys! Matt, not sure what you mean by feet-to-the-floor binding system, but there is a sample model in the install folder that you can test out to see if you like it. I don't think there's a setting to stick the feet to the floor, but they are set not to pass below 0 on the y-axis, so the knees will bend if you try to push the model downward. My Wannabe Pirates models were rigged with the 2008 rig, so it's familiar to me.

I've had more freelance work than normal for the last few weeks, which has curtailed some of my movie energy, but last night, I decided to tackle installing the 2008 rig into the LR model. When I first seriously began working with A:M in 2007, by far the biggest obstacle for me was rigging. It scared the pants off of me. I struggled with it greatly and the install rigs seemed far too daunting to even attempt. I made a deal with Mark S. to rig my Wannabe Pirates characters and he did a terrific job of it. Since then, I've largely gotten by with simple rigging, but the cumulative effect of all those attempts is I now looked at the installation of the 2008 rig as something not so scary and indeed, I actually felt confident while I was doing it. So, if you're in the place I was and rigging is an obstacle to you, don't worry, with perseverance, you'll get it. It took me around 3 hours, but I wasn't in a hurry and I gotta' say, it's nice having a full rig at my disposal again.

I just installed it and it worked fine for me. First time I'd ever done it. I'm using v 19.D.

Jay Silverheels actually was Canadian. He got the nickname when he was a Lacrosse player. They called him Silverheels Smith.

Thanks, Rodney. Didn't think it would be mysterious... Tonto=Stubtoe :-)

I had read somewhere before that the MGM lion's roar had been digitized to create something they could trademark. I find it curious that the examples for the Lone Ranger are both voiced by William Conrad who only voiced the character for the Filmation TV series in the early '80s.

A bit of an update. Working on "Stubtoe." Finally found the hook I wanted for the script and am writing it.

Just playing around to see what I could do via A:M and Photoshop. Here's one of your images. I took it into Photoshop and did a few things. The great thing is that you can bring in an image sequence in Photoshop and apply these changes (non permanently) to the whole video rather than having to do a frame at a time. There are lots of LUTs out there that you can use to achieve different looks. I bought a bunch during a sale at Film Riot and they are named for the various movies they try to emulate. Here's another test. I created a material from that concrete image you mentioned and used it to color the mini-figure. I also attached an environment map texture (the model doesn't have any specularity settings.) The top is how I rendered it and the bottom after I played with it to try to make it look like it was on film. Bear in mind, I think everything should look like it was filmed in 1966, so that influences what I do. :-) You can experiment endlessly with what you're doing in Photoshop to get the look you like. I'm just offering up that post-effects may help you to achieve what you're looking for.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is frequently used for two different things I've noticed: HDR photos are composite photos that make use of different images. If you have a figure standing in front of a window, you take multiple exposures so that you have some where the outside appears correctly and some where the figure appears correctly. When composited, you get the appearance that you would expect your eye to have. In truth, they always look far more saturated with color than what you're used to. They are beautiful images, but they are a trick, as they are don't add any color levels to your device. HDR is also used for the color levels and contrast ratios that a screen can display. It's not about your monitor recreating the light levels of the sun, but how well it can handle darks and lights and the gamut of colors. HDR makes for a much more beautiful and realistic image, but it's limited by hardware. There's no trickery here. The image looks better because you have more color and light information being displayed. BTB, a CRT allows for a maximum luminance of 100cd/m-squared. An LCD monitor ranges between 250 to 350 cd/m-squared, so there really is a difference. :-)

Some more progress...

Beautiful!

There's a free app out there called Hitfilm Express. I've not used it, but it seems to do a lot of AE-type things.

Looking back at the thread, it was an empty rotocontainer tag. I assume on Windows you can do the same, but I searched my drive for files that contained that string. This gave me a list of files to delete the empty container from. Tedious, but it solved the problem. Nancy also describes how it happens, so you can avoid doing that.