gschumsky
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Posts posted by gschumsky
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New work I've just finished - wasn't really sure if I considered the render a "Finished" image so I'm posting here to get a little feed back
The video is a simple little dance-ish animation to test the deformation in her shoulders, I think it turned out well.
Now to decide what to do with her
Comments most welcome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkDoocWAo28
* Never used YouTube before... not exactly sure why the dimensions of the video are thrown off. Does anyone have an idea of how to fix this?
Nice model. As far as youtube, did you render your animation in a 4:3 aspect ratio (like you would for TV)? Either 640x480, 460x320 or 320x240? If you rendered the animation like the pic, she's gonna get squished into that aspect.
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Greg- you should also specify if you want the characters weighted once rigged...an additional step, but one well worth it. I recently used a model off the Hash Xtra DVD that was smartskinned...removed the SS and balanced some weights...Wow! You want that!
Thanks John for the tip. I guess that's a yes then. Anything that helps me get the animation done for the demo as quickly (and painlessly) as possible.
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The squetch rig is the one they've been using for the TWO movie. Though from doing some reading in the rigging forums, it looks like they migh be using the Hand gizmo as well. I don't think it's a plug-in. You need to get it from the TWO area as far as I know.
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Hey gang,
Been away for a while working on some projects that involved AM to some point, but haven't had much of a chance to come hang around the boards in a long time. Anyway, I have the opportunity to provide some proof of concept animation for the Bibleman stuff I had done for our video game, but for television. The models I have are rigged, but really need to have the Squetch rig installed. I have 4 biped models that need it, and this is for pay. So I'm taking bids from anyone who needs the work, knows what they're doing, and isn't looking to get rich quick off of this. I would need the models done sooner than later if possible.
You can email me at goodgames@cox.net
Thanks!
Greg
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Been spending time playing with A:M trying to find a render stlye for my comic.....
This is one of the ones I like...
tell me what you think..
Wow! That looks pretty cool. What were the settings you used to get that? Is that all AM, or anything done after in a paint program?
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Well, looks like Torque finally released the Constructor, which is for making buildings and environments without using QUarK.
Best part, it's FREE!
I hope to have some time soon (as do all of us) to get this thing rolling again.
Greg
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Thanks Ken. Yeah, the shot is basically straight on with him in his throne. Thus the questions.
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So I'm going to be animating King Bal, looking at the group. Questions: How big is he? Bigger than them, smaller than them? He's sitting on his throne. How high above them is he, or is he eye level with our wanderers?
One more question technically. Been a bit since I used svn. I have all the files downloaded from before using svnx, and used the "svn export" button to get new files. But isn't there something in there, or AM that's supposed to update or syncronize files? I tried that and it said the folder I wanted to update was locked, and run 'svn cleanup' to unlock the folder.
I'm on a Mac if that helps.
edit: pointed svn in AM to point to the correct folder, then ran update. Good for now til I have to upload or commit.
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Sure. What can you do, or rather, what would you like to do?
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do i use a:m to make games?
Basically, yes and no.
Yes, in that you use AM to make the artwork and animated sequences, whether that stays 3D and is imported into an engine like Torque or A6, or rendered as 2D sprites and brought into Torque Game Maker, Sprite Studio, Isoworld, or any other 2D engine.
Even other 3D apps are used to make the art which is then brought into a game engine.
No, as in you can't make a game from start to finish using only AM.
Not yet at least. But HA:MR looks promising.
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Thanks for the update Ken. Always nice to hear the news/review from someone we know.
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Well, looked back at the chor and there were a ton of keyframes I don't remember being there. So I deleted Woot proxy, added it back in, turned down poly's, and not it's pretty darn smooth for now.
I'm off to animate!!
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Umm. Well, let's say I move to frame 12 to do my first animated move. So, everything between frame 0 and 12 has no keyframes. I grab the arm of woot (everything- other characters, set, hair, is turned off). Click and hold on Woot's forearm bone...wait 10 seconds while the beachball spins. Then move the mouse down...wait another 10 seconds for the beachball, then Woot's arm jumps kind of near the mouse arrow.
That turns doing animation from something fun (like the Tin Man I did), to something not even worth doing. I am going to try the turning the polygon count down and see if that helps some. And I really want to just animate.
Greg
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It would be nice if there was a "key visible bones only" option, on the "Force Keyframe" pop-up, so that just the control bones could be keyed at any frame.
The "don't give me all these silly options - what's wrong with you people - just key the stuff that needs to be keyed" button?
Wasn't that supposed to be implemented with the "make dragon" button?
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Have you forced "key model"? I'm noticing that this is keying all bones in the body whether it was keyed before or not. Check your bones folder in the action....if you have loads of bones listed (even the hidden ones) then that's the problem. You'll have to delete the bones you don't need.
Good point, Ken. Looking at one of Robert Holmen's screen shots, I noticed that he had keyframes out the waszu - probably from having "Key All" turned on. Maybe, sometime in the past, that was a good idea (I'd have to be convinced) but not now. I was for getting rid of the "Key All" option entirely but after a discussion in the office, we decided to put in a warning dialog instead, that says something like "10 million keyframes will be added - are you sure you want to do this?" Apparently, some people are?!
Yeah, I've been forcing keyframes every now and then and have it set to the whole model. Though, even on the first frame I'm animating on (say 12..), it's real slow before I've forced a keyframe later.
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I may have missed that you did this already. Apologies if you did.
For many of the sets (even proxies) you may want to set the background to Inactive while you animate.
I was even going so far as setting other characters to Inactive in the scene I was working on.
Using this method I was able to even animate with the final actors in a few cases which I found I preferred.
Did those.
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I'm on PC and I still had some trouble with the foundry scene. My solution was to keep everything in wireframe, turn off hair, turn Poly per Patch to 1, and only the model I'm working on is Shaded. I sometimes make the other actors inactive.
That helped but real time was still choppy.
That's pretty much what I did, other actors inactive but hit "9" for shaded mode...since I figured everything else was inactive. Didn't try the poly per patch count yet. I also find when I hit the sound that was added to the chor for dialog (which I should take the action out for now), that caused an even BIGGER slowdown...
And I want an Intel Mac...just can't justify it yet.
So I reported it to AM Reports.
Tired and head aches.
Will try again tomorrow and see if I can't get this baby knocked out. It's a fun one, getting Woot to shiver (not a cold shiver, but more of a freaked out shiver up the spine).
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Hey gang,
I need some advice or help on a sequence I've been trying to get done, but is becoming a real pain in the butt, due to my Mac not being speedy enough to do the scene. First off, I'm on a G5, dual 2.7, 3 gigs of RAM, standard ATI Radeon 9650 video card (256 megs RAM).
When I did the animation for the Tinman scene, feedback and controls all worked in real time. I could grab an arm, or any controller and move him, and poses happened in real time as I made changes. Grab something, move it, go to my next keyframe, etc. No waiting, nothing. So now I'm on a scene in the foundry, with Tin, Scarecrow and Woot. They're all proxy models, yet when I try to animate I get the beachball for about 5-10 seconds, and if I move my mouse, I then get another beachball, then the part moves, but not how or where I want it. So I turned off hair and particles, and made sure all the characters in their own windows were wireframe. I'm animating in the chor (which I did before, since the characters are supposed to interact) in shaded mode, and made everything inactive that I'm not working on.
So, I'm animating Woot, and there's still this long pause between select, wait, move, wait, and so forth. I tried animating in wireframe, but it's hard to see the features, since the characters are looking off to the right of the camera. Even if I go to a view where I'm looking at a character straight on, I can't get a good feel for the facial expressions. Not to mention in wireframe there is still a little delay.
So, anyone have any suggestions to speed things up, i.e. feedback? I decided to focus on Woot's dialog, so I went into the action already set up so I can do the lipsync (does AM have an automatic lipsync feature anymore, or do we do it by hand?), and as I scrub back and forth over the sound, the playback head doesn't move smoothly, but tends to jump spot to spot.
There has to be something the rest of you are doing, esp. Mac users to get better performance.
Greg
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Hi i was just wondering when this game would be finished? And if i could like download a sneak peak. Also has there been any other games been created in the past with animation master?
Well, we're planning on having something around the same time the movie comes out, since the game relies on models as well as rendered scenes from the movie. When that is I don't know as of yet.
And as far as games coming out made from AM, for non-commercial I know there is Froggy Boxing, plus others I can't think of (see the game development area). For commercial there are all of the "Tak" series of games, as well as our Bibleman game, which was modeled and animated in AM, then brought into a 2D isometric engine.
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nice improvements Greg!
-Ethan
Thanks Ethan. My wife and I were discussing how he looks a lot like one of our neighbors when he looks up and squints.
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Looks good but why was this a 5mb download? You could have got it under 1mb with little or no loss of quality (particularly with no sound)!
Cheers
Hmm, noticed that. Thought QT did it's job (or I did). New compressed version...1.9 (okay, it's not under 1, but I hate artifacts) is up there in that post.
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Good to know. Thanks David.
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Thanks gang!
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Hey gang,
I'm just kinda playing around with one of the models (Hypogyraf) for fun, and wondering how the heck I turn off all the letters and words that are in the model (I'm guessing they're target areas)?
Greg
Spaceman needs a name
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Jet Masters sounds kinda action hero-ish,
or even Blaze Thunder.