Aminator
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Posts posted by Aminator
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I noticed this too - not sure if the manipulation keys are supposed to work in light view, although it would be nice. I think the next best thing is to split the display into two windows, a light view and a side view, then manipulate the light in the side view while watching in the light view.
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The patch count is mostly in the leaves [...]and their stems.
What about a single-patch leaf with a cookie-cut decal, and a render-as-line single-spline stem?
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As the tools-->customize-->keyboard help message says, "x" turns on shaded mode *for the selected model* (only), a shortcut for changing the object render mode (the wireframe box) in the PWS (in chor mode). ("w" goes back to wireframe object render mode). "0" (zero) sets the *entire window* to shaded+wireframe render mode (vs. 7=default, 8=wireframe, 9=shaded), a shortcut to the popup View->Render Mode menu.
"X" no longer worksOn what configuration? Works for me (10.5r, Win98SE, either OpenGL or Direct3D, chor mode).
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In case you didn't already know this... you can use the comma key to extend a selection to the complete spline. This can be handy when you're trying to figure out why something is or isn't a valid patch (or why something is creasing or otherwise not behaving as expected).
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Very nice! A little fog might make it more realistic. (Note that fog in A:M 10.5 is a bit tricky, check recent list archives if you have trouble).
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I thought I'd share an interesting trick to solve a problem that I think others have run into as well. I can post pictures if there's interest and my description isn't clear enough.
The problem was that the inside of a character's mouth was appearing much brighter than expected. The cause was a key light with Z-buffered soft shadows (verified by tests using ray-traced shadows, or 0% softness).
My first thought was to darken the model patches inside the mouth, but this produces ugly sharp edges along the splines. Possibly a decal could be mapped onto the region, with some effort. But since the problem was with the lighting, I thought I'd use lighting to fix it. So, I put a light inside the mouth with negative intensity. A simple "Translate To" constraint keeps it in the right place; falloff was adjusted to keep its effect localized to the mouth area, and a light list was used to prevent the darkness from spilling onto any other objects.
I started with a Bulb-type lamp, with ray-traced shadows to keep the dark-light contained inside the mouth. This had a significant hit on render time, though, so I replaced it with a wide-coned spotlight with Z-buffered shadows at zero softness. It takes more care to keep it positioned right (including an "Orient Like" constraint), but it does the job with minimal render-time impact. The light also looks a little funny in the chor, like the character has a baby bottle in its mouth, but turning the dark-light's object render mode off takes care of that
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Movie film, and thus traditional animation, is shot at 24 frames per second. Hand-drawn animation is often done "on twos", or 12 fps, to save time.
Video is generally 30fps or something close. Computer video can be pretty much whatever you want. Lower frame rates can save some render time, but higher frame rates can produce smoother motion.
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Hmm, where'd that image go!
Okay, attachment's not working for me, go here instead...
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Why not just this?
You might want to break the spline across the lower-left edge of the opening so that the new spline continues the one going down along the ridge. And adjust the CP at the upper end of the new spline so that the patch edges are more square.
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I think you'll need to post a picture, to explain why you don't just want to run a spline across two opposite points of the six to get two normal 4-point patches.
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I'm looking for a method to use one piece of geometry to cut one other piece, but to leave a third piece intact.
Make piece one a boolean-cutter-bone-attached group of piece two. Make piece three a separate model, and it will do just what you wish.
If piece three is an instance of the same model, though, the cutter will cut it as well. I don't think it's supposed to, but it does. And just renaming that instance in the chor (e.g. from "Shortcut to Model1(2)" to "NewThing") doesn't seem to help.
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Carefully-placed lens flares are also good for special lighting effects.Maybe I should try the bloom post effect!Does this key framing within a frame actually effect the entire frame?In Real Life, time is continuous, and the world doesn't freeze while a camera captures an image - motion blur being the prime example. Having keys within a frame time describes things changing on shorter time scales. The multipass renderer "samples" (interpolates) the scene at multiple points in time within the frame duration. The famous "spinning lights" skylight trick uses the same concept.
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how exactly do you animate a light in one frame?
Actually, with 100% blur, it should be sufficient to set keys at frame zero and one.
It may be hard to get an appropriately subtle transition this way, though. I think your best bet might be to model some mostly-transparent geometry for the volumetric effect instead.
Anyway, I don't quite understand the physical principle behind a light changing color across the width of a room. Maybe some radiosity illumination mixed with the white volumetric sunlight would make more sense.
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Looking good. Maybe the nose could use more distinctiveness?
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Oh, if you're camera's not moving, the background only needs to be rendered as a single frame.
You can even take that image back into a rotoscope in your original chor, with the house objects inactive, while you render the foreground. Then you don't need to do a compositing step. But a separate compositing pass may be faster, and it's certainly more flexible (e.g. if you want to blur the background a little, fade it, etc.)
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Is it possible to render the cars in one take. Then in the next take, render the houses.
Sure. To make this easier, add folders to your chor. Put all the cars into one folder, and the houses in another.
For your first pass, right click on the "houses" folder, and select all children. Go to frame zero, or turn off animate mode, and set the first house to not active. That should turn them all off. Any other "background" objects should be inactive also.
Render with alpha buffer to a "foreground" sequence of images.
For the next pass, select all houses, set them active, and in the same manner set all the cars inactive. Render this as the "background" sequence (no alpha).
Now composite them using the alpha channel (in AE, or just do it inside AM using multiple rotoscopes).
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We've been discussing this issue in another thread, "Action blending, baking, and shaking."
The best solution I've seen so far is to create a new action just for the transition. Copy the last keyframe of your backflip action (be sure to "key model" and turn on all the appropriate filters) to the start of this transition action. Copy the first keyframe of your running action to the end of the transition action. Then add keys in the middle of the transition action as desired.
Drop the transition action inbetween the other two on your chor. You can try doing a short auto transition between them, or not. Be sure the "hold last position" is turned off on all actions.
Let us know how it goes!
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one has to move the bone (if beyond frame 0) , to create channels for that bone, then delete the keyframe at the current frame, then hit force keyframe to get the keyframe you want.
You can use Shift-Force Keyframe (like the help message says), to have the option to set keys for all channels associated with active keyframe filters.
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Here's a quick test, using Thom and the "jump" and "punch" actions on the CD-ROM.
First, using an auto blend: http://www.digins.com/jack/blend.mov
There's a pop at the start of the blend, but also the transition is a computery interpolation.
Next, using a transition action: http://www.digins.com/jack/trans.mov
Still not perfect - for some reason, copying keys between actions *doesn't* completely work - even though I have "Key Model" and ALL of the keyframe filters enabled
I also had to manually set User Properties (IK Arms Setup) in the transition action to match the other actions.
But at least the transition motion (just a quick bit of animation) is more meaningful.
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Yeah, but... as I said I don't like the auto blend results.you should set to blend on 2 actionI've been creating yet another action to make the transition.Make a copy of your first action, delete all the keys in it except for the end, then slide those to the beginning of this new transition action. Then copy the first key from your second action to the end of the transition action
I think this is a good approach (actually, just create a new action, copy the end of action 1 as the first key and the start of action 2 as the last key). I didn't realize that I could copy keyframes from one action to another, but in fact that works fine.
Following up to my original issue with "baking" the actions, when I reloaded the project the shaking was gone and the baked results reasonable. And I guess baking takes a while because it calculates new interpolations for all the motion (potentially mixing overlapping actions) and creates keys as needed. The result is a bit messy for tweaking, though - for example, a rotation may have the X key at frame 10 and the Y key at frame 12.
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I know this comes up a lot, but I still don't seem to be able to get it right. I have two actions in sequence on a model in a chor (affecting the same bones). I'm not satisfied with the automatic transition option - it kind of bounces and floats and just doesn't do what I want. I don't see a way to add keys in the chor action just in the transition without messing up the other actions, even if I move the chor action above the others in the PWS. I also tried saving the chor action as an action file and loading it back into
the chor.
Finally, I decided that "baking all actions" sounded like the way to go. Unfortunately, the baked action suffers from nervous twitches that the original animation didn't have. (It also took an awfully long time to build, longer than it takes to render the sequence). Here's a short section (where just the second action was active) to show what I mean about twitching:
before: http://www.digins.com/jack/orig.mov
after: http://www.digins.com/jack/baked.mov
So, experts... how *do* you animate controlled transitions between actions? And how do you bake without the shake?
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Booleans are a little problematic. I tried to do a quick test, and this is how far I got:
http://www.digins.com/jack/split.mpg
- Boolean cutters don't seem to affect shadowing, so you'll see two full shadows instead of two half-shadows.
- I had two models of Thom+cutter in the chor; Thom B's cutter would cut away Thom A, which it shouldn't. I guess I'd have to make a duplicate of the model and rename it.
- So I rendered in two passes, which lost Thom A's shadow and prevented a cool reflection of Thom A/2 in the cut side of Thom B/2 (I made the cutter material reflective).
- To do an accurate cutting of an animated object, the cutter geometry needs to have enough detail to bend with the model and needs to be constrained with several bones to bend the same way. Here, I used a simple cube, and bits of the cut-away hands and feet sometimes peek thru.
I think you're better off making a splittable model - "just" copy/paste half of it, copy/paste the other half, throw away the original, and spline across the cuts.
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It should. Use a high blur setting (75 to 100%) of course.would rendering it out with a low multipass setting (like 4) help?And don't be fooled by the image in the rendering window, it doesn't seem to always show the final blend (when I tried 5 passes, the output window showed an image with two strobed copies, but the actual TGA file was correct).
(don't want to composite if possible. Would like to stay in AM).Don't forget you can composite inside AM (by stacking up rotoscopes in an otherwise-empty chor)!
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There's an excellent tutorial from Keith Lango:
http://www.keithlango.com/lipSync.html
For more depth, Jason Osipa's "Stop Staring" book is outstanding.
IK - FK ? ? ?
in (2003-2004)
Posted
I may be missing the problem, but you should be able to rotate the whole character with the model bone; if it flips undesirably you may need to change the model bone's Roll Method. Or if you want to use a Null, consider just constraining the model bone to the null rather than reparenting anything.
For switching IK on and off for a typical chain, all you need to do is turn on or off the Kinematic constraint that locks the last bone (e.g. calf) to the target. You can do that in a pose or manually, just change the Enforcement property.