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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

mediaho

*A:M User*
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Posts posted by mediaho

  1. I have a background in Video production and have messed with lightwave 3d some.

    But from what I gather AM is much easier to use!!

    You may also be interested to know that there is also SynthEyes which does quite a bit if you work in video. It's $350 and supports A:M. They have a sample project for download at http://www.ssontech.com/pub/flybys.prj (right click, save as...)

     

    It's by no means mandatory. I wrote a tutorial on Combining CG Characters with Live Action in A:M for version 8, but a lot of the concepts still apply. Raf also wrote a tut around the same time -- Tips for Compositing Animation:Master 2000 3D Animation with Video.

     

    Good luck!

  2. Nice! This is very similar to something Thom Falter set up for Mick Mallard in Boids using smartskin. That was right after v7 came out, I think (early 99). I thought I had a copy of the model around here someplace to post a screenshot but I can't find it right now. Thom? Gary? You guys still have that laying around somewhere?

     

    I don't think we ended up using it but I can't remember why. It was really cool. Maybe smartskin was kinda flaky at the time - it may have been a brand new feature.

  3. In bones mode, select the name of the model from the PWS. You'll see a black (default) bone. This is the main parent of your bone hierarchy and its center (origin) is your model's center. You can just move it closer to your model independently from the rest of the bones.

     

    Alternately, you can select the next bone in the hierarchy (the highest one in the chain that you, not the software, made) go into move mode (key "n") and hold Ctrl while you move it closer to the origin. This will move the bone, its children and the mesh. This works for scale and rotate too, FWIW.

  4. Another soundbyte:

     

    A:M has the easiest, most intuitive animation tools I've seen in any software at any price. It's nice to know that when I sit down to work, my time will be spent animating, not wrestling with the software. The workflow is geared to the artistic mind instead of technical and yet professional features and quality means you'll never have to compromise your artistic vision.

     

    Ed Lynch

    Animator, Firaxis Games

  5. I'm really hoping we see a new version soon. What an awesome piece of technology. I'm drooling over the prospect of using it with new expressions and relationships.

     

    Niels!! What's going on? Can we get an official update from you as to when we can expect a new version?

  6. When I started in 3-D, I quickly learned that some of the great work I saw created with other software would have been impossible without very expensive, 3rd-party plugins which can cost between $500 and $5,000. When your dreams are bigger than your wallet, an all-in-one production solution for under $300 can be the difference between an abandoned dream and a finished project you can be proud of.

     

    Ed Lynch

    Animator, Firaxis Games

  7. Huh? Can you translate that for those of us who went to American public school?

     

    Just kidding, but I do hope there are visible widgets/gizmos/modifiers so I don't have to think about that stuff.

     

    My brain puts its fingers in its ears and loudly sings "la la la" when it sees anything resembling an equasion.

  8. HOW, did u do this?

     

    Check out William Sutton's motion capture tutorial.

     

    Very cool Ed, I'm not big on mocap but for certain productions it'd work a treat.

     

    I'm not a big mocap fan myself either. I think it's great for sports/fighting games and crowd scenes, and the hybrid mocap/keyframe technique used on Gollum was amazing but for the most part, I'm a "give me keyframes or give me death" kinda guy.

     

    But as I mentioned earlier, the files are very educational. It's like holographic reference and you can examine the motion curves in minute detail.

  9. The trailer is the finished product. There was some interest from a couple sources who wanted to do more with the idea but the characters aren't mine. I referred them to Suzan and don't know what happened after that.

     

    If Suzan or Glen Crowell are on, maybe one of them can chime in.

  10. The mocap files I use come from all over. Sometimes mocap studios will provide free samples, some from stock collections at work, lots of other random sources of the years.

     

    They're great to just analyze. It's like video reference you can view from any angle in real-time or frame-by-frame. Examining the curves can be really insightful too.

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