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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

KBaer

*A:M User*
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Posts posted by KBaer

  1. If the you're using IK arms, you might change them to FK. There's some funny elbow bending when he stretches this arms out to hug Nimmie. On the hug....he looks up at the same time as putting his arms out. He should look up first to know what to do with his arms.

    I like Nimmies skipping toward him.

     

    The arm on Nick are just roughed out at this point. I'm still not sure if he's supposed to see her before she comes in frame, or before. Before seemed to make more sense.

     

    I actually animated her legs with a bouncy stride, even though you can't see her legs. I figure when the cloth is simulated, they will have some kind of effect.

  2. I've only just started this shot since I was on vacation for the first part of this week.

    I've really only spent time on Nick, and mainly on brushing himself off. I did a little work on eye and head motion, and a half step into the embrace. This is a very challenging shot. Don't expect a Final Fantasy style kiss :-).

     

    I'm going to work on this shot more next week before leaving for London (MacExpo).

    1_04_17b_take.mov

  3. Well, here's my first pass. I'm still not happy with the arms. I spent the first day just getting data on my drive, so I've only spent 4 hours on this. I haven't animated on something real for more time than I'm willing to admit. But, I'm having fun. It's nice seeing A:M from a user's point of view. It's pretty cool! :-)

    1_03_42_take.mov

  4. Stephen, we're all blown away here at Hash. You've topped yourself again, by a factor or 10 at least!

     

    I've booked a flight to London so that I may shake you by the hand sir!

    I was going to go to work the booth at MacExpo, but after seeing the new animation, that's just secondary to meeting you again. :-)

     

    We would very much like to show this in our booth at our upcoming trade shows. We will make sure everyone knows you are the talent behind this. A:M was the conduit.

     

    You know, I'm going to stop typing and watch it again!

  5. I've noticed some of you have had some problems saving settings in A::M v13 for the Mac. There's been an ongoing issue with saving to the Preferences file from A:M on the Mac, and after many attempts, I think I have a solution that works to put it behind us. However, since I'm off to MacWorld for a week, I only had time to put it in v12 so far. But, there is a workaround on v13, and it's actually quite simple.

     

    The problem occurred after you've run master at least once, and you are using the Options dialog, or setting you Community or SVN username and passwords. The way to fix this is to delete the Preferences file, run A:M and make your changes in the Options dialog AND the Community and SVN before quitting A:M. Then you should be able to make any changes later without a problem.

     

    So, here are the steps:

     

    1) Run A:M and pick Help:Reset Settings.

     

    2) Run A:M again (fill out the registration page).

     

    3) Now open Tools:Options and make any changes you want, like enabling SVN.

     

    4) Log into Community and to SVN.

     

    5) Quit A:M.

     

    This should save all you settings, and allow you to make future changes without a problem.

     

    The next revision of v13 for the Mac should solve this problem without these steps.

  6. Great work Chris!

     

    Thanks to you, I have something I can brag about when I go to my fencing club. I haven't been faring so well in the local competitions, so thank goodness I can whip the latest issue of American Fencer, and show off the great Leon Paul ads. I also would have sworn that mask was a photo. Amazing work!

  7. IGN just posted their annual game awards, and Tak2:The Staff of Dreams, created by Avalanche Software won the Best Platform Game award! Our congratulations to the hard working folks at Avalanche. Animation:Master was used extensively in the development of Tak2. But don't take my word for it, here's a quote from Avalanche's Jeff Bunker.

     

    "Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams is a very character centric game, so we care a great deal about the look of our models and the personality that they convey through their animations. Based on its powerful animation features, Animation Master was an essential tool for the creation of Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams. All character modeling, animation and rendering was done in A.M. We could choose from any of the major 3D packages but for Tak2, Animation Master was a natural fit."

     

    Here's the link.

  8. Hey Ken - any idea what the specs are of the machine it was made with?

    Yeah,

     

    There wasn't much choice at the time. It had to be an Amiga 1000, running at 7Mhz with probably somewhere between 512k or 2Megs of RAM. Also, all of the animation sequences are playing back in realtime off the Amiga, and then were genlocked over an image and recorded to tape at a cable TV facility. There was no single frame recording involved.

     

    The film was made by one guy, Todd Kesterson, who was in college at U of Oregon at the time. He later worked for Hash full-time for a few years. He's now teaching animation at U of O, and one of his students recently had a film up on A:M Films.

     

    We sold a Christmas models disk that had the models and characters from the film, including reusable action. I think it was $15. Unfortunately, the are incompatible with A:M, different technology.

  9. I just wanted to mention that I put up the film "Christmas Chaos" by Todd Kesterson on the front page of A:M Films. I thought it would be an appropriate time of year to feature this film. And, I wanted people to know a little of the background as well.

     

    This film was made with Hash's first product, Animation:Apprentice in 1987. At this time, it was one of first 3D character animation films made on a personal computer. This is the first complete film that we know of to be made in our software, and I think it still hold up after all these years. I hope you all enjoy it!

     

    See it here.

  10. Great job guys!!

     

    We'd love to see you post some of your amazing work up on A:M Films. I know that some of your clients won't let you, but we should put the rest up. We've been getting a LOT more activity on A:M Films lately, and every film you post will have a link back to your site. Last week we got 43,000 unique hits in a single day!! As more blogs link to us, we're going to see more days like that. It would give you guys a lot more exposure.

     

    You guys totally rock!

     

    -Ken Baer.

    Hash, Inc.

  11. There are some cool new films posted on A:M Films. Make sure to catch 'Masterpiece' by Luis Medrano. Those of you that like your animation dark, this one's for you. I have also resurrected a couple of cool character tests from 1997 by Rick May.

     

    Don't forget about the E-Mail a Friend feature in A:M Films. Help spread the word about all these cool films, and make sure all your friends get to see them!

  12. We got a phone call from a reporter from the New York post the other day (Tuesday) asking for more information about Animation:Master and Hash, Inc. He had seen our booth at the TechX trade show in New York, and wanted to write a sidebar about our product, which he liked. I'm not sure when it was going to print, but it was an article about the show, and he said he was racing a deadline. So, it could have been in Wedneday's or Thursday's paper.

     

    Do any of you get the New York Post, and if so, can you look for that article? We'd like to see what he wrote about us. While I was on the phone with him, I did my best to get www.hash.com and http://amfilms.hash.com mentioned in the article.

     

    Thanks.

  13. Don't get ahead of yourself here. It was stated earlier that Shade does NOT export polygon models to A:M. And if their sketch tool is like the others on the market, it is polygon based and generates very dense meshes. It's a cool idea, but you are paying for it down the road with models that are harder to animate and render.

  14. I talked with the Japanese General Manager for Shade a couple weeks ago at SIGGRAPH. He, personally, is a big fan of A:M, and has the current version. He made a big point of telling me how much they admire A:M and like our solutions for 3D modeling and animation. The A:M export feature they have still exports .SEG files. This is from the Journeyman through A:M v4 era. That means no bones (SEG files were used for body parts like a forearm, torso, or thigh). This also predates 5-point patches and Hooks. I think they reverse engineered out .SEG files and figured out how to save the control points. I tip my hat to them, but I doubt they've done anything more with that code in the last several years.

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