largento

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... :-)

Or, to do it quickly, simply hold down command-shift-3 and you'll hear a camera noise and a png file will appear on your desktop. If you hold down command-shift-4, you can drag a marquee around what you want to capture, or press the shift bar and you can select which window to capture.

1st_clip_s.mov Got back from my trip yesterday and have stayed up waaay too late working on the Christmas greeting. This is the first shot. This is just a 1-pass shaded render. I've still got to add some accumulated snow onto the shutters and window box, but thought I'd show my progress. Doing the titles and falling snow in AE.

Thanks, guys! Rodney, you saved me having to do a search for that thread! Obviously this was just a "rough sketch". There are going to be several technical challenges with this that I'm looking forward to tackling. At 79 seconds, this one is shorter than last year's, but much more ambitious. My goal is to have it finished and up on the site by the 10th. That's still a great deal more time than I had last year! Unfortunately, I'm going to lose some time this weekend, though. I'm going to speak at a tree-planting memorial for my old college journalism professor who passed away this year. I'm leaving on Saturday and won't be back until late Tuesday. It's uncool that I'll have to break my stride, but I'm sure I'll be itching to getting back into it.

Here's the Leica Reel! It's still pretty rough without any of the real backgrounds and temp props, but I like that I can build it this way and then add finished things as I get to them. I've tacked on the beginning and ending of last year's as place holders. Not sure if all of the gags play this way, but it's getting there! They should come across clearer in the animation.

I concur! Matt, that is Certified Coolness! And a great idea about the invisible containers.