Fishman
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Posts posted by Fishman
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Hi all,
We seem to have lost some momentum here. I can (in order of preference) make the 27th, 20th, 6th and 13th in May and I can also do the 3rd of June.
Scott
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That is so cute. I can see why the orange one is stampeding, he's got a hair sticking through his eyeball, that's got to hurt!
Love those kows!
Scott
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Mark,
I'm definitely interested. The second movie really shows off the features. Is the angle of the sun relative to the camera easily adjusted? What about sun angle in the sky?
Scott
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I missed the last one and I was really bummed. When is the comic book show? Would a May meeting support your need? I am making the bold assumption that Don will host us again, but May Saturdays would probably work OK for me. May 6th and 13th work best. I might be able to do the 20th and I could also do the 29th of April (if you want to consider that a really early May Saturday!).
I'll do what I can to support the next meeting date.
Scott
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Ross,
It looks to me like his hops don't originate in his feet. I think what is lacking is a stretch pose at the point he leaves the ground. You come pretty close when he does his leap to climb the knoll. Solidify that pose and use it as an example for the slightly less powerful ones for when he is just hopping. The other thing that keeps distracting me is the intersections of the feet and the body. Makes it hard to figure out, even though he has no legs how his feet work. Even if you don't show legs, I think you want the implications that they are there.
I admire the effort you are putting in to make this work come to fruition.
Scott
PS: I assume the melon looks more rounded in a final render.
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I am assuming that you meant to post a picture. Based on what I'm imagining you are seeing, I'm thinking one of two things. Either you need to go back and make sure the rig is installed correctly or you need to investigate CP weighting. Smartskin should be used to clean up a joint not part of the basic rig. If after installing the rig you don't get reasonable motion, I would suspect either bone location, cp assignments or cp weighting. Your character is basic enough that you should be able to rig him with reasonably good looking motion without smartskin and then clean up with smart skin.
Scott
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I like the character, but have two comments. Not sure what to make of the white spots on the face. Are they important to the story? If not, there is the possibility that they will be distracting. The second is the thickness of the soles of his shoes and the size of the upper portion make him look a little unstable (which may be your intent).
Nice work! Hope you and your team are enjoying your work and that it will be successful.
Scott
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The length of rendering has little or nothing to do with the number of keyframes. The length of rendering time is a strong function of scene complexity - number of patches on model, number of models, number of fancy render features such as reflections, hair, particles, blobbies, etc. The calcualtions to determine the in betweens are simple by comparison. If you are just posing your character to learn, I wouldn't worry too much about render times.
About key framing - one method is to pose your model in the first key frame and force a key frame. When you pose your model the first time your likely to have adjusted just about every bone you need to and that will create a key frame for all the bones without over doing it. Just keep your eye out for bones that get translated only but will be rotate later. If the rotation key isn't set at from 0 then it will be set later which will give you the effect you saw beore. You can always nudge them with a rotation at frame 0 and when you force the key frame it will set you up for later rotations. When you go to the next key frame, force a key frame and then pose it again. In the second key frame any bones you don't touch will automatically get a key frame since they have a key frame at frame 0. This is basic pose to pose animation.
Hopefully this makes some sense. I have found this method quite satisfactory for preventing motions that start when I thouoght they shouldn't.
Scott
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Now that is what I call a screen grab. Your problem is very clear and easily fixed. You need to understand what you did and why it happened.
It looks like you start by creating keyframes for translation only. When you first rotate the bone it is at frame 15 and it creates a key frame at frame 15 and frame 0 for rotations. The only keys you had before were for translation that is why there is no intermediate rotation keyframe. When you nudge the bone at 0 do a rotation as well. That will enable A:M to force rotation keys when you hit the force key frame button. Another thing to try is to just have Keekat's model selected at frame 0 and hit force keyframe. I think that will key all the bones in the model. Doing so will also key both translations and rotations from the very beginning. This will create a boatload of keyframes, but will not give you the problem of creating a keyframe late in the animation that has no 0 reference. Here is a link to a tutorial that I have found very helpful.
http://www.hash.com/users/ed/tutorials/animtut.htm
Scott
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Can you do a screen grab of your timeline and post it? That will make it easier to diagnose. If you are only working on one bone, then what your saying does not make sense. If you are working on multiple bones, then when you select a new bone the timeline will show the keys for that bone. You can also select Bones and see all your bone keys. This can be very confusing if you have keyframe many bones.
Scott
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Just a quick suggestion to help you. Your splinesmanship in the face and the arms to the body are really going to give you problems when you animate. I would recommend studying some of the models on the CD to see how to tackle these areas in a more elegant way. Also, check out the Make a Face exercise in The Art of Animnation Master manual that came with the software (you won't need to be quite as complex as that, but there is a boatload to learn from the technique). Then you won't have to peak splines to try to keep things smooth.
Additionally, your body is such a simple shape that you could eliminate quite a few of the longitudinal splines with losing anything.
In the future it is usually easier to rig your models hands if they are in the horizontal position with the thumbs facing forward. Most premade rigs are set up this way and will make it easier to adapt the rig. You can then pose it to hold other objects.
Good first effort!
Scott
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For your hair you need to turn on dynamics. It is an option in the hair material.
Scott
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He's cute. Are the sword and shield separate models that you've incorporated for the render or were they modeled along with him? Have you looked into rigging him yet?
Nice effort.
Scott
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Go into A:M, import your targa sequence and then right click on the image holder and Save Animation - this will allow you to save your targas out as a avi or mov file and then your off.
Scott
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If you bought the software new, it should have come with the book. If you bought it used, then you may want to contact the seller. If you cannot find it, look here for a downloadable version of The Art of A:M - ftp://ftp.hashmirror.com/pub/updates/windows/ - pick the folder with your year and download the manual.
What version of the software are you using? How familiar are you with 3D modeling software?
1) If you right click in the modeling window, you can select View and then the direction you want to view from. Also, on your key board, using the number pad, you can change the view.
2 = Front View
5 = Top View
8 = Back View
6 = Right View
4 = Left View
7 = Bird's eye view
You can also zoom in and out and turn you model. I recommend the video tutorials to get the feel for the interface.
2) You will assign Cp's fromo the mesh to the bones. This is covered in one of the Art of Animation Master lessons (Show Some Backbone)
Scott
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When you are ready to render to file, where it says format, click on the file type and change it to jpeg or tga or bmp or whatever still type you want.
Scott
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You've pretty much got it. If you have not done any animation, just a still that you've set up with all the lighting, then just change the frame range to start at 0:00:00 and end at 0:00:00 and it will rneder frame 0. If you've done an animation and you want to render a still from the middle of it, say frame 68, then set the frame range from 68 to 68, depending on your frames per second it will result in different looks. If you are rendering at 30 frames per second(fps), then it will read 0:02:08. You get the idea!
Have fun,
Scott
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Ross,
Typically in video editors to add audio to video you add another track. If you've brought in your video as one track, then you add your audio as another track. The you position the audio where you want it. I work in Sony Movie Studio, but most of them are the same. If you really get in a bind, do it in Windows Movie Maker! If you're on a Mac then use iMovie. Both are very similar and should be able to do all you want - add audio, ttitles, do fades. Even though WMM will only create a WMV file, I think that would still be acceptable form your submission.
Good Luck,
Scott
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I would recommend rendering out to targas and then doing the sound in another program to create your final work. I think the TWO movie forum lists the free software that Martin had found. I know that Audacity would allow yoou to mix your sound files with varyiing levels of volume,echo effects, what ever you wanted. I think he also had found a freeware video editor. This will give you excellent control over matching your sounds to your action. It should also let you add titles, etc.
Unless you have some pressing reason to do it all in A:M, do it in whatever is the easiest (especially if you are pressed for time!).
Looking forward to your movie entry!
Scott
PS: Here's the forum topic with the free software link. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14452
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Good Luck!
Scott
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There should be a folder with primitives in it. These are not parametric objects like in a polygon program. If you are making a cube with a certain size for the reason of using it as a cube, I would suggest taking the primative and scaling it. If you are using a cube as a starting point for modeling (a la a polygon program), then you probably need to go back over the modeling exercizes to get a better feel for spline modeling. Spline modeling is more like edge extrusion rather than face manipulation.
Welcome to the world of A:M!
Scott
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You are not having computer problems. Jon's tutorial does not have any sound. It also assumes a certain amount of basic A:M skills. At one point he hovers over the Show More Than Drivers symbol on the model. This allows you to animate the rate of emmission.
Did you down load Shaun's tutorial or are you trying to watch it streaming? I would recommend downloading it and then watching it. If you have downloaded it and it freezes, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Good Luck,
Scott
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Patter,
".mat" files are procedural materials which cannot be created in Photoshop. What you have created in Photoshop is more accurately called a texture. These are applied as decals (they can aslo be used as bump and displacemnet maps, etc). See either the Fighter modeling exercise or the Giraffe modeling exercise in The Art of Animation Master. Texture files are typically stored in folders and added to the project under Images (Right Click > Add New Image)
Have fun!
Scott
MAAM User Group meeting
in A:M Users Groups
Posted
Don et al,
Works for me. As always many thanks for organizing/hosting. What can I bring?
Scott