zandoriastudios

As part of the 2015 Open Studio plan, I thought that I better throw my sketchbook up here with some concept sketches of some of the locations, props, characters, etc of things upcoming... One of the main locations is a bar called "The Waterhole" at the Oasis of Lund. There will be a lot of buildings, and set pieces that will be good beginner projects for apprentices to work on (Details to come...).

I have been a little distracted...I have been focusing on generating some freelance business to keep the lights on. I've been a little depressed too, struggling with the whole "meaning of life, why am i here?" existential angst that all artists go through...[its not just me, right?] I will get the bootcamp set up in the next week or so--I promise! This will launch an exciting time that I hope will revitalize the Animation:Master community

Douglas, I will be happy to mentor you or any of your friends who want to work on the TAR of Zandoria project!

http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d Torque 3D cookbook These resources might be helpful

Well said, Rodney. I completely agree--A:M is not lacking in features. But A:M does need more users. That's why I keep coming back to the open studio--because people need to see that path as a way to bring their dreams to life.

Can you give us a comparison rig-wise between the Bishop rig and TSM, Squetch, or Saucy? What is easier about it, or what is not as good as some of the rigs we have?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5WT7_F5wsQk Saw this video from Animation Mentor about an upgraded version of their "Bishop" character. It has a bunch of switches and controls to allow it to change the character (al la Poser) into a multitude of characters. It occurs to me that we could possibly make a similar character in A:M using the examples of Mechadelphias "Saucy" Rig and the pose based action objects shown by Shelton and Mouseman.... Thom 2.0?

So..channel is deleted. Having to rebuild it. First episode of TAR of Zandoria is back online. Will have to find all of those Siggraph videos are rebuild the tutorial playlists...

Holy Crap!!!! I must have deleted it when trying to reconcile the different Google+ accounts!

I think 7 months might be more realistic (for a short)...I don't think you could write a (decent) story in 7 days!

Muscle-mode animation is good for fixing cloth simulations, adding jiggle, and other finishing touches I think you have to think of it as one layer building on the other, like a house is built on a foundation...So, if you decide to change the bone assignments and weighting, then of course your smartskins are going to be destroyed. Just like if you decide to remodel the mesh, you will lose textures,weighting,smartskin...One thing builds on top of the last thing... I try to add fan bones to the hips and shoulders when rigging, to orient like but NOT roll like, to spread the "twist" away from the joint--that seems to be a common joint problem--because though your humerous (upper arm bone) rolls, the flesh at the shoulder doesnt roll as much. So sometimes you could have an intermediate bone for each spline ring coming away from the joint (like at the upper arm) and they all orient exactly like the upper arm bone, but they will each roll at an increasing percentage as they are away from the joint: 0% at the shoulder, 25% next ring, 50% next, 75% last, the next ring is assigned 100% to the upper arm bone. So that is also weighting the joint (though not at this point using CP weighting)... I have also used ONLY CP weighting, with no fan bones, and let the Mesh pinch when the the bone rolls--then switch to Relationship mode, and add a smartskin reshaping the shoulder at the extreme roll position and at a half-roll position (that creates a pretty smooth smartskin)

Im looking forward to exploring this! Thanks for all your work, Mack!

David, I will do that (I already have you written down)! What Im planning is smaller scale than TWO, built around each short, so that it's not such a big commitment. Someone might sign-up on one short and then pass on another without disrupting anything. I am working on the pitch bible right now (to put it into a form that communicates to everyone else what has been rolling around in my head...), then I will post the storyboard for episode 2 and 3. Steve, it looks like I had multiple Google+ accounts...I think I have it consolidated. I added Chris so I should get the next invite... There is an experiment that I want to do, using his Action objects technique: See if I can build a Newton system (like a chain) on a model using that technique, so that I can simulate it at any time instead of only building it in the choreography....

I agree with Robcat. Weight the joint first, then smartskin--use that to fine-tune the joint. There is a series of video tutorials here that are in depth (if tedius to watch--as if rigging isnt already tedius!).... http://youtu.be/H0kRXN1XU7g?list=PL0BF44797CD8BC2A3

Awesome--send me the connection info. I think that my Google+ is under zandoria@gmail.com

Steve, that would be great! I love what you guys did with action objects in a pose to create sets--that was brilliant!

Post Pitch Bible with character descriptions and art, to communicate the characters and setting for the benefit of A:M users who are interested in working on the next short. Post storyboards for episode 2, episode 3 (more?) Create an animator bootcamp thread, similar to what was done on TWO--Ninja Training Camp. Upload the Ninja Pass assets for interested participants to use. Recruit crew for episode 2. Crew will have access to all of the TAR of Zandoria assets (I would like to get Hash's help to use the SVN system developed for TWO). I will work out the details of open license that I have discussed previously...We will start with just this crew, building a 2-3 minute short. Participants will have a percentage stake in the rights of the film, and I will disburse any revenue with them. I have been working full-time on this and freelancing for the past year--I quit my day job at the end of 2013. It has been scary, humbling, exhilerating, depressing, gratifying...I've been all over the map, emotionally. While I was able to create the first short by myself, I also realized that it would have gone faster working with other artists, and it probably would have been better. I realized that I really have NO CLUE when it comes to distribution, or pitching, or fund raising--or just getting people to watch it for FREE on YouTube! Yet I look at my poster of TAR on the wall, and I know that I can't give up...I've toyed with the idea of trying to do it as a graphic novel, or something easier for a solo artist to pull off, but I think that is just the old fear (of failing...). I've proven that I can create an animation! True, it isn't as polished as it could be, and I had to cut some corners, But, I did it... I have been in a kind of creative drift since uploading "Marked for Death"... I guess that I just thought that if I finished it, that people would see it and then somehow I would be successful/validated/loved? I dont know..It's kind of crazy. The afterbirthing of a huge project seems to take as long as the delivery! Now I'm ready to continue, to take it up a notch, to bring my (our) dreams to life. I believe that an open project like TAR of Zandoria is the hope and future for this community of artists and animators. It isnt about just software.. an Open Studio creates the ecosystem for the artists to collaborate, for newbies to aspire to learn, for mentors to coach, for the software to gain subscriptions, There is something in it for YOU, whether you are a modeler, rigger, animator, programmer, or cheerleader!

I didn't know that Bob animated Fritz the Cat! I was reading the news on AWN, and was amazed by Bob's career. I wish I had spent more time picking his brain about animation.... http://www.awn.com/news/fritz-cat-animator-robert-taylor-dies-70

Sad to hear.....

I think that the real survival and growth of this community is not in attracting new users to the software, or in trying to add more features. What will draw users (subscribers) is the need to learn the tools to be able to work with the software on a group project. I think that Martin saw the "dead end" that animation software was as a business--and the alternative model of creating and owning an intellectual property, of becoming a studio! The TWO project was initiated to "shake-down" the software on an animated feature. It accomplished that, but also shook apart the community... Now that enough time has passed, I see that that shake up was inevitable, but also that it was necessary. The road-tested version of A:M must become the in-house software for a distributed animation studio(s). As new animators come onboard of projects, they will pick-up and learn the software. Their subscriptions will be paid for by those studios in a commercial project, or by the animators themselves in a group collaboration (where those artists share the copyright to the intellectual property that they create). The old model was/is a dead end. Subscriptions will sustain a small stream of revenue, but dwindling population of users.... The studio model is the only future. Whether movies, animated series, or games--creating the intellectual property is where the money is. Martin saw that--at the same time he chafed under the feature requests of his studio users, saying that they treated programmers as garage mechanics--He saw that creating a studio (AM Films) was the way forward.... My question is this: What did we learn from that painful experience, that will help guide us forward? Because we MUST move forward.

Thanks Everyone!!! I had a good birthday with lots of cookies & cake.

that looks very good!

A big part of the look of water is going to be the environment that it reflects and refracts. Rather than coloring the surface, try puting a skydome around it.

For the waterfall, you might have an easier time achieving what you want with Sprites. I know that they were used for the extended edition of the Phantom Menace ( they show how it was setup in the behind the scenes), and also in the Dam bursting scene in LOTR: The Two Towers... Another option would be a video layer(s) of a real waterfall, combined with particles.

On TAR's cloak, I remember tweaking as massaging the simulation, tweaking the mesh by hand, re simulating from a fixed frame, over and over again...by the end I was getting pretty comfortable with cloth (and vowing to lose the cape--LOL)