KBaer
-
Posts
413 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by KBaer
-
-
I came across another film festival that some of you should probably enter. This one is for playback on mobile phones. They take a variety of formats and you don't have to scale it down, it sounds like they would do that.
Here's the link:
http://www.bigdigit.com/bigdigit0.htm
There's a big push to put streaming video (and animation) on mobile phones and devices. This mean more people that could see your animation and films. I think it's a real opportunity for independent animators to bypass the tightly controlled film and video market.
Get your films out there!
(This is not an official endorsement, just what looks like an opportunity for A:M users)
-
I take it you have been there before. Any film length and content guidelines? helpful hints? Will they consider a 5 to 10 minute video? Their web site is pretty vague.
You should contact Petr with any specific questions. But, there were a couple entries last year that were around 10 minutes. If you are going to enter a longer piece, make sure you keep the viewer captivated. After watching lots of short pieces, judges start getting tired, so the payoff has to be big in a longer piece.
The judging took 5 hours last year, and it there was no air conditioning. I want to see some great stuff from all of you.
-
I encourage everyone who can to enter this film festival. Last year, the majority of the the 3D entries were made with Animation:Master. I would like to see this trend continue. Also, I will be one of the judges, so you may have a friend on the panel :-). This is one of the few festivals that actually prefers work by individuals over established studios. So, you don't have to worry about your film being pushed out by the latest Pixar and Ardman shorts. The festival is organized by Petr Sorfa, an all around great guy, so let's give him some support!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CALL FOR ENTRIES: Portland Indy Animation Festival 2004
The Portland Indy Animation Festival 2004 is now accepting competitive and
non-competitive entries. The Festival celebrates independent animators
around the world, the more independent and original, the better.
Submissions can include all aspects of animation including 3D, 2D,
machinima, stop motion, filmed puppetry (in all its forms), animated
trailers for works in progress and interpretations of the art of
animation. Format of submissions (which are final) must be provided on one
of the following: DVD, SVCD, VCD, VHS (PAL/SECAM/NTSC), miniDV, SWF
(Flash) or mpeg2. Entries need to be received by 23rd July 2004. The
Festival will take place at several venues 11th - 14th August 2004 in
Portland, Oregon, USA.
Entries submitted for the competition will be evaluated by judges and the
audience. There will be awards handed out to those present on the last day
of the festival.
Further details and entry forms for the Portland Indy Animation Festival
2004 are available at http://pdxanimation.com (there is no entry fee).
Contact Information:
Portland Indy Animation Festival 2004
PMB# 128
3527 NE 15th AVE
Portland, Oregon 97212
USA
Contact: Petr Sorfa
Email: piaf2004@pdxanimation.com
Web Address: http://www.pdxanimation.com
-
I wanted to let everyone know there is a new site using A:M and arcticPigs that really shows off the power and education possibilities of the technology.
View the thread here.
(PC Internet Explorer required to view the site)
-
I guess you'll just have to come to SIGGRAPH to see us in person!
-
NURBS became popular in the mid-90's. They are based on 16 term polynomial equations. The control points do not lie on the surface like they do with Hash splines. Another big disadvantage of NURBS is that it can only make shapes that can be defined by the polynomial equation. This really becomes a problem during animation. Certain in-between shapes aren't possible, so you see popping in animation. And back then we were all using machines in the 90Mhz range, and NURBS were pretty processor intensive, so they were kind of slow to manipulate.
We developed Hash patches before the NURBS fad really took off. Subdivision surfaces were developed to solve the problems with NURBS, but Hash patches have advantages over them as well.
Hash patches are still the best option for character animation.
We'll be posting some technical papers about them to the web site soon.
-
So when Apple get their act together, will A:M/OSX run on older machines
automatically, or will it still require a rebuild from Hash?
Since it is a difference in behavior on older machines of Apple's Quartz Extreme calls, it should be a fix on Apple's end. It would most likely be a code change in one or more of their libraries. We would only have to change our code if they conclude the combination of API calls we make to their library are not supported. But that's not the conclusion they came to when we went down there, so at this point it looks like any fix would just be on their end.
-
Never quite realized that Martin was a PhD. Is his thesis posted anywhere? There's got to be some interesting reading in there somewhere.
He wrote several papers related to A:M and arcticPigs, one of which he's presenting at a conference in Kauai after SIGGRAPH. We will be posing the PDF's soon, but we're still waiting to hear back about some of them getting published. Those of you with a technical bent will probably find them pretty interesting.
I'm planning to add a Research and Technology page linked to from the About page. That will have the papers.
-
We've just posted a couple new pages on the Hash web site. We thought the site needed a brief introduction and philosophy statement about the company, and also short bios of all the members of the Hash team. The permanent link in the left-hand frame under "bulletins".
Here's the link.
Enjoy.
-
We are currently working on v11.5 for MacOS X, and it's quite far along. We are incorporating Randy's changes for OS X, and working to make the library we used for the new v11 interface features to work in OS X in an Aqua-like way. We are doing this work in v11.5 so that these changes do not introduce new problems in the v11 release, which is very stable. We want to keep it that way, so v11.5 for OS X will go through the Alpha and Beta cycles with the PC version, simultaneously.
As far as a specific timeframe, Hash's policy is to not pre-announce products before they are shipping. Back in the Amiga days, there were certain companies that pre-announced products so early, that they didn't actually ship up to as long as three years later. We vowed at that time, never to be guilty of that. Am I saying it will be three years? Heck no! I'm just saying you'll know when we know, but not before we know. We're still perfecting our time machine. When we get it working, we will travel to the future, find out the exact ship date of v11.5 for PC and OS X, come back and tell you. We have not announced the completion date of our time machine, due to our policy, however. :-)
For now, let's all bask in the glow of the shiny new v10.5r for OS X.
Ahhhhhh.
-
Regarding OS 9, we will probably keep the installer for A:M v10.5r for OS 9 around for a while, for users who still haven't upgraded to OS X. But, we are not releasing any new versions for it. If you want a solid version of A:M for OS 9, you've got it. But, if you want to keep up with the new features of A:M, then it's time to get OS X.
OS X has come a really long way since 10.0 and 10.1. They've now gone beyond just building the foundation, and have spent the last couple years building things on that foundation that couldn't have been done under OS 9. It will be interesting to see what Jobs unveils about "Tiger" at the Apple developers conference in a couple weeks.
Jeez, now I sound like an ad for Apple. How did that happen?!?
-
The big day has finally come. Animation:Master is now out of Beta and in general release for the MacOS X operating system.
A:M v10.5r for OS X will work with either the Hash2003 CD (Perk) or with the new Hash2004 CD (Orangutan). There is no upgrade cost for 2003 and 2004 users, and you can download it at the Hash web site on the Software Updates page.
As always, the current year's release (2004) will allow you to use all of the releases we do this year, so you will need to upgrade to the AM2004 CD for $99 if you want to use any Alphas, Betas or Releases that we do in the coming months.
While working on the OS X port, we split off the code base so that changes made in A:M would not affect the Release PC version of the software and that might affect stability. We are currently merging the code changes made for the OS X version with the latest code for v11.5, which is not yet in Alpha. That way we can go back to one code base and simultaneous PC and Mac releases, but not have any adverse effects on our release code. Therefore, we are not planning a v11.0 release for OS X, but all of those features will be available in the v11.5 Alpha when it is available. The merge is going very well, and is much less involved than getting the initial OS X version out.
The OS X version uses many of Apple's newer APIs rather than the tired old 1984-era Toolbox calls that "Carbonized" applications are usually built on. For this reason, we recommend using it with the Panther (10.3) of OS X. We also recommend using a modern video card like an ATI Radion or later, or NVidea GForce 2 or later. We have been working with Apple (we went down there last week) to fix a problem in their Quartz Extreme functions that have drawing problems on older video cards. Apple is currently working on the problem, which will hopefully be fixed in a future OS X update. Keep in mind that since Jaguar, all drawing in OS X goes through OpenGL, and if you have one of the newer video cards, everything will benefit from hardware graphics acceleration. You won't see those benefits with older cards.
And, like always, if you encounter any problems with our software, please send us a bug report to support@hash.com. We will look at it, fix it, and get a revision out ASAP.
Everyone thank Randy, this is his baby!
-
Every year at SIGGRAPH we have a group of experienced users do tutorial demonstrations, that we record and sell as a tutorial set. One of the demonstrators we had signed up for this year won't be able to make it, so we have an opening for one or two more people. If you are going to SIGGRAPH, and are interested in presenting a tutorial for an hour each day of the show, contact me.
We have a good group this year.
-
If I had to use that application to animate I think I would go insane...
Just kidding really.
It is absolutely amazing to me what we had to go through to create things on the computer back in those days! And we didn't even really care, because it was all we had.
I didn't notice any glaring looks. You must have covered pretty well. The text over the animation isn't really that bad. You kind of expect that kind of thing. He was the host, so of course his name would be big.
At least you didn't have a mullet. The host had some kind of weird comb over action going on though.
Yeah, at the time we were so excited that we could make anything, that it was worth it to do all that work to get it to screen. I'm hoping that by showing the old videos, we can impart on the new folks how great they have it now. Back then, we used to dream about super fast machines and realtime 3D. But even our dream machine conversations were like "can you imagine? 500Mhz? Now that would ROCK!" "Yeah, but who's going to pay 10 Grand for a machine that fast?" :-)
One other note. I worked with Gary for a few months before I started working for Hash. We were doing some consulting for a guy at a management training company that wanted to make an interactive video on the Amiga. Looking back, they would have been better off doing it on Laserdisc, since the Amiga wasn't quite ready for what he wanted (memory and speed-wise). Of course, now it could all be done on a web site with QuickTime and Flash :-). Anyway, what's funny is that the Northwest Amiga Group is actually still around. I just saw a current newsletter at the bookstore. Now THAT's dedication! We stopped supporting the Amiga around 1993.
-
Thanks. That character is one of the very few I've made that ever saw the light of day. I animated the walk-in and the fall-down shots too. I also did the sound effects. You can see the real, unobscured animation at:
-
OK folks, I posted those old videos of Martin recently, so I thought I'd dig up one with me. This is an interview I did on NAG-TV, a local cable show made by the Northwest Amiga Group. We had just completed 'QWERTY Dancing' as a new opening for the show, and I premiered it on this episode.
If it looks like I'm glaring at the host at the beginning, it's because I had just watched them genlock big, fat titles on top of, and obscuring the animation I had been working on for the last 7 months. I was pissed. And right before the show stared, I told him that the one thing I couldn't show was how to make a model from scratch, because it took too long for the 1/2 hour show. Sure enough, he asked me to do that during the show. See how I restrain myself from strangling him on the air :-).
One more thing, this was taped in 1989, when I was 24 years old. If I could go back and show my younger self what our software looks like today and what's being done with it, my younger self would have wet himself with excitement. :-) This video is about the only example of a videotaped demo of Apprentice outside the training tapes. It mainly shows the modeler (Sculpt) and the choreographer (Director). Those of you around during the Playmation and Master v2 days will recognize the module names. Due to the time limitation I didn't show the Action module. You'll see that I'm using floppy disks running on a 7 Mhz Amiga 1000. Ah, those were the days. The Apprentice looks really primitive and ungainly now, but most of our competition didn't have any interface, and modeling and animation was done with text scripts, so this was high-tech stuff.
I hope you guys enjoy this. Here it is.
-
Happy Birthday Vong, and thanks for the kind words. It reminds us why we put so much work into A:M. Good luck on your film!
-
Bruce Monahan, creator of 'Them Cows is Stupid', has just sent us several of his hilarious films. I will be adding them to A:M Films one a day. The first one is up now, "Everything's Just Beachy!". This is great stuff!
-
That was really create clip and it's nice to know something about the man who created animation:master. Is it possible to do new interview. In interview he would talk future features of program and so on.....
It's been a while since Martin has been interviewed. The last ones I remember were in Wired in 1996, and a couple in local newspapers just after that. I'm sure Martin would be open to someone that wants to publish a new interview. Any inquiries can go through me.
-
Just wondering - does Martin still write code for A:M, or does he take a more "behind-the-scenes" role these days?
He mostly works on the renderer, but he does still write code. Of course, in the beginning, he wrote ALL the code. He turned out code at an incredible rate. He even used to write out code in a paper notebook while in the bathtub. We called this "tub-time". He would say things like "that feature's going to take some serious tub-time!"
For the record, I never actually witnessed "tub-time". I just saw the results the next day. :-)
-
Check out this great new film that was just submitted to A:M Films!
It was posted by Jose M. Ruiz from Spain. Recognize the background?
This film is very well animated. Check it out!
-
Oh... and I've gotta mention one more thing!
...again someone mentions the newsletters... This time Martin himself.
Please... Somebody scan in one of these newsletters so we all can see!
OK. I've got several of them. They were somewhat technical, and very specific to Apprentice. They had things like Apprentice file formats, and info about utilities like ConvertANIM (which I wrote), and new Library disks. I'll try to scan some this weekend.
I'm glad I kept all this stuff. I knew we'd want to see it someday.
-
Greg,
Amen, brother.
Welcome to our church. :-)
Hash, Inc. Headquarters
Vancouver, WA
-
What kind of accent is that anyway?
Adrenaline!
New films on A:M Films
in (2003-2004)
Posted
Now that I'm back from WWDC, I caught up on the backlog of submitted films. There are a number of great films in this batch.
Go to the new films here!
Don't miss "Something to Remember" and "Hamlet Act 1".