largento

Thanks, Rodney! I appreciate your taking the time to comment! I think what you're getting hung up on is a perceived blank area because you're seeing the uncut footage. There is purposely extra frames at the end of the shot, because I wasn't sure exactly where it was going to cut into the next shot. I rendered out padding. When I did put the shot in, it actually ends just as he is making the turn to the left (which then cuts to Flemm at the window looking from right to left, seemingly following Cutthroat's run. I am going to do some promotional stuff to let people know when this is up on the site, but it'll just be an isolated thing. The only surplus benefit of all of this work will be my own growth in the process. The 3D will *never* be used in the webcomic. To be firm, as cool as I think the 3D stuff is, I could never see it replacing the great art McCrary is producing. No, it will not animate itself, so back to the grind! :-) I've got shots 5 and 6 finished and rendered. I'm hoping to finish 7 and 8 today. That'll get me to the halfway point!

Thanks, Nancy! And thanks, Rodney! You are right... time is a luxury I do not have. :-) To some of your points: 1) The snowman is the same height as Cutthroat on purpose. While watching it after it was rendered, it occurred to me that I should have had him stop for a moment in front of the snowman so that it really sold the fact that the snowman was him (the hat would actually appear to be on his head during those frames), but such is life. :-) There are many things I'd love to do, but this is all about doing the best I can while running towards the finish line. 2) The wheelbarrow does create some visual interest, but it's primarily there to help make it more identifiable when it shows up later. Having Sneeze hold up Poco would make him look like a child, fail to establish the wheelbarrow for the later scene, and just not be that interesting. 3) Not sure how much of that clip will be there, Rodney. As fun as it would be to continue the chase, the work it would require is just too great to make it conceivable. I would rather go back and animate Cutthroat's run cycle, but it'll have to stay as it is. I learned in doing Sneeze's fancy-footwork dash that I could stretch his legs in places to make his movements read better. (I'm very pleased with the cartoony effect of that little bit of animation.) Applying that to Cutthroat would have made his run cycle much less robotic. It's sobering to think that as much work as I've done, I've only finished one stanza out of four!! My hopes for finishing on the 10th are dashed. Hopefully I can make it by the 17th!

Here's the 4th shot! The original 4th shot was a gag where Flemm fogged up the window progressively each time he sang the word "snow." I did an early pass of it and finally decided that I didn't like the idea. So I abandoned it and started trying to come up with something new. I thought it might be a good idea to cut to outside and establish that Mr. Sneeze and Poco Boco are out there and give them some business to do. The original idea was that Mr. Sneeze would be lifting Poco up in the wheel barrow so that he can reach the top of a snowman to put on its hat. I thought it would be a chance to stick in one of the snowmen from last year's, but it wasn't grabbing me. After a bunch of playing around, I came up with the idea of having them making a snowman of Cutthroat Jacques. They have stolen Cutthroat's hat and he discovers them and chases them off. This gave me some fun business to play with and a way to include Cutthroat. The snowman sort of gets a cameo (I used his arms.) :-) This was definitely not taking the easy way out. :-) new4thshot.mov

Thanks! Nothing new to show today. Last night I spent some time messing with lighting for one of the earlier shots. I don't want to fall into that trap and not be able to move forward, but I'm trying to rectify having it look cold outside and warm inside. I'm hoping to be able to do 10+ shots this weekend. If I can do just that minimum, I'll be at 14 (out of 21). I leaned pretty heavy on cutting away to simple Flash stuff last year, but I don't have that "out" this time. I showed one of my co-workers what I've done so far and her comment was "You're making your snowman one look like crap." High praise. :-)

Cool stuff, Paul. It does feel like the shark is trying buck the boy off.

Thanks, Spleen! Of course, I didn't start out being able to model well at all. Just look at the first post of the Stalled Trek thread here in the Wannabe Way section of the forums. You can see an image of my first model (shudder!) and my second, better attempt (only a slight shudder.) :-) The key things that help me to make "smooth" models are the concepts I talked about in the first four Wannabe Tutorials. I sound like a broken record at times, but what made the difference for me was determining that I was really going to learn A:M and the means to that end were Barry Zundel's EXCELLENT video tutorials. When I bought them, they were on disc, but now he sells them individually as downloadable movies on lulu.com I can't recommend them enough. I can't count how many lightbulbs going on moments I experienced while watching them. If you can afford them, get them! (I don't get a penny from Barry Zundel, I should disclaim. :-) I am just a very grateful customer who was helped immensely by them.) I feel like I've come a looong way in these last three years! Your designs have a lot of character, Spleen! (I'm loving the Alice Cooper one.) The polishing comes with sticking to it and learning how to tame the spline. :-) Haha, if I ever do a book about modeling in A:M, that'll be the title! "Taming the Spline." :-)

Thanks, Martin. I haven't messed with Dynamic Constraints yet. Maybe next year's xmas card. :-) Thanks, Gerry. No plans for a pirate Santa. :-) I did look for some pirate Christmas music before I started this one, but what I found was too pirate-ey and gimmicky... or too focused on the rum. The Wannabe Pirates drink chocolate milk. :-)

Thanks, Paul & Jake! Well, I didn't make the 3 shots. I did two, but after seeing the render of the 2nd shot, I think I'm going to have to go back and mess with it some more. I'm pretty happy with shot 3, though! shot_003s.mov For this amateur, doing the turn around wasn't easy! I actually used a little video camera I bought to film me doing the move and then looked at it a bunch of times to get an idea of how the feet worked. Even though the feet aren't in the shot, I did position them as well as I could through the turn and tried to move his body weight from one to the other. Glad nobody was around to see me looking down at my feet and trying to make the move in slow motion. :-) I just didn't want to cheat and have him rotate around. I even animated his sash swinging. :-)

Thanks, Mark. I was out last night so I didn't get to do very much on it, but I'm going to try to make up for that by doing the next 3 shots (one is just a quick reaction shot) tonight! Wish me luck! I'm gonna' need it... :-)

That's looks really good! The glow is a really nice touch!

Thanks, Martin!

You've caught me, Rodney! I've placed an intricate code into the jpeg in my sig file that targets only your computer... :-) Jake/Mark, can you see this one? shots_1n2.mov

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about Rodney. My banner ads are served through Project Wonderful and I've never noticed any of them to have audio or be offering a free Wii. The one I've seen the most recently is selling teas. Jake/Mark, I'll try to save it out again so you can see it.

The big downside to doing it the green screen way, is that you've got to keep the angle flat. If you move the camera, the TV image won't match the angle... and that will really show up if you you are moving the camera during the shot. For the shot I was needing this for (fire in a fireplace), I was using depth of field so that the background was out of focus and then in focus. Attempting to blur the insert video (and then animate the blur to match the dof change) to match the footage wouldn't have been an easy thing to do.

So, after what seems an insane amount of work, I've added 3 whole seconds to my Christmas Greeting! :-) In fairness, most of that time was spent modeling the set pieces and figuring out the technical issue with the fire ...so the next few shots should go much quicker. Sequence_01_14.mov Last year's was a big learning experience, and this one is no different.

I just did this the for the first time over the weekend. (I'm using it to do the fire in a fireplace.) I may be covering stuff you know, but I had to dig to find out some of this stuff. :-) 1) I brought in my movie as an image sequence. 2) I made a 1-patch model and applied the movie as a decal. 3) I then right-clicked on the model and selected New->Pose->Percentage. This opened up a new relationship window. 4)I set it to 0%. 5) In the Project Workspace, I found the decal folder for the model, opened it all the way down to the movie in the image folder. In the properties, I set the frame to the first frame. 6) I then went to 100% 7) ...and set the frame of the movie to the last frame. 8) I then named the pose ("movie control" is what I think I used, it can be what you like.) 9) Then I brought it into my choreography and used the pose slider to set keys for the pose slider. 0% at the beginning, 100% at the end. 10) I rendered the movie and the frames of the embedded movie played out between the key frames. I may not have explained this very well. The part that I was missing was setting up the pose slider.

It's a fairly short shot (less than 3 seconds), so either way of faking it should work for me. I'm using it as a story-telling device, not as a means to capture any perceived reality. :-) Thanks for the input, guys!

I hadn't intended to actually model the sets for this Christmas greeting, figuring I would just do 2D backdrops, but with the simplicity of the sets necessary, it became clear that modeling them would be easier. As simple as they are, though, I've been doing a little bit of set decorating to keep them from being completely bare. One of the things I wanted to do was put in a "painting" of Henrietta's brother, Waldo. Waldo appears in the strip, but since he's only connected to the Henry Morgan's Treasure story, he's not one of the characters we're bringing to 3D (at least not yet.) Still, this is Henrietta's house, so it would make sense that she would have a painting of him. I wanted to do a painting that would look kinda' like the old Carl Barks' duck paintings (or my memory of what those looked like). The result was pretty darn close, I think! I finally got some use out of my Cintiq! :-) Not sure that we'll see much of it in the finished animation, but I got a kick doing it!

I'll see how it goes with doing it single pass. If the quality doesn't match up, I'll render the scene out twice with the foreground and background separated and animate the blur in AE.

Thanks, Photoman. 16 passes does seem to render the focus a little softer, but I'm still not getting the dramatic out of focus that no multipass is giving me. Rodney, maybe that's what I'm after. How do you adjust the blur?

Okay, I'm wandering into new territory again and need some help. :-) I'm working on a shot for the Christmas greeting I'm doing and I want to do a focus switch ...to transition from one character to another. So, I've turned on Depth of Field in the camera and set it up. When I do a preview render with no multipass, I get exactly what I would like. Foreground character is in focus, and background character and set are nicely out of focus. But when I do a multipass render, not so good... With more passes (say 9), there's almost no blurring at all. Is there a trick to this?

LOL! I thought the same thing! :-)

Thanks, Mark! Yeah, that's a limitation of doing the snow this way, but I'm hoping they'll be distracted by the opening titles and not pay too much attention to the fact that the snow is tracking with the camera ...and that all of those trees are exactly alike. :-)

Added the snow to the window treatments and rendered out the first shot yesterday! First Shot I'm having to work today, but will get back to it when I get home. Most of the other shots are going to be much shorter, so hopefully they'll go quickly. I'm trying to keep the modeling of the props and sets simple, but this is also a good opportunity to continue learning stuff, so I'm going to have to search the forums for a tutorial on how to use Stefan's "E Rebuild" plug-in and Newton Physics. That way I can give Flemm something to bump into and break during the "the lights are turned way down low" bit. The plug-in seems fairly straight forward, but I'm not sure how to actually implement "breaking" the model in the choreography. If it all comes out okay, I'm thinking about sending out some DVDs of it as actual Christmas cards. (Which is mostly just an excuse to get to mess with Adobe Encore now that I have it!) :-)

Oops! Good catch, Gerry! I had way too little sleep the night before... :-)