mouseman

Awesome feedback, thanks! I'm just getting into it. One thing ... occasionally, when I move a bone from within a choreography action, it only moves on the ground plane. So if I try to move it up, it ends up moving very far into the background. Why is that? Is there some mode it's in that I'm not aware of?

I sadly can't find my R-B glasses.

I tried a bit of an animation test with one of Shelton's characters, rigged with the A:M 2008 rig, to get in some practice with it (the rig) before the forum project gets started into high gear. This is just what I've come up with this weekend, between other non-animation things. There is no face rig on this character, so the animation is only body mechanics. I'm only mostly done up until frame 8:03 or so. I'm rather satisfied with most of the movement for him getting up, although there are probably a couple of small things I'd clean up after fleshing out the walk off of screen (listed below). After 8:03, there is just gross body movements that approximate walking that I will be cleaning up hopefully tomorrow (Monday) night, but unfortunately it almost ruins the look of the first 8:03 by association. If you have any comments or suggestions on the first 8:03, let me have them. The things I see are: 1. 0:00 - 3:00: The left hand laying on the left leg moves slightly. I animated that before I really understood the "lock IK hand" pose slider. 2. 0:00 - 3:00: The right hand could have some movement during this time. 3. 6:08 - 7:15: The left hand doesn't make good contact with the knee. Also I might make his upper body bend more over the left arm to give more feeling of weight. astandup8.mov

Be careful, my next suggestion will cost double that, and so on. All part of my diabolical plan to get rich. Am I a genius or what?

Try hitting page up/page down and see if that makes a difference.

Neat stuff. The only thing to suggest is that if you are going for a certain level of realism, then the rate of falling is varying quite a bit. The way it should vary is by going faster the longer it falls, not slowing and then speeding up and then slowing again. The look of it however as well as some of the choices for movement of individual pieces are excellent.

Any progress on the set front?

Hey, Jason, just an idea ... Maybe you could have a non-spam-catching email address that those in the know (people who frequent the forum) could send stuff to that wouldn't go through a spam filter? And then to deter scarping, post it either in graphic format (gif/jpg/png) or in a format such as "user_support at hash dot com". Should you start getting spam at that address, then just change it and post a notice on the forum.

I sent you the info last night. Let me know if you didn't get it or it doesn't work. mouse at intranet dot org

Here's how I solved that problem on a dresser model: There is only one 3-point patch, all others are 4-point. I think this comes closes to Rodney's bottom left example.

Just coming back after being away for a while. You've come such a long ways! She's looking quite good. Still a ways to go, but you're definitely on the right track.

You always have such neat projects! I love seeing them! Well done!

I've resent the information to you in email. Please let me know if there are any problems (e.g. if I sent it to the wrong address, etc.). Email mouse at intranet dot org.

I'm catching up from being gone, and just found this. Awesome stuff! Glad you're getting lots of air time in Michigan!

This is a little closer to where the camera was in the original movie, I believe. I might have it a tad too low, though. This is from the same spot, but looking left. The only disadvantage is the Penthouse which has less visibility into it from this location, but we could probably let Nancy cheat with the camera position for that one which I think they also did in the movie; do a cut from the Jimmy Stewart character to a slightly better located camera instead of zooming in.

For anyone worried about SVN, we can provide a ZIP file of the set for download, as well.

I put the tutorial links on a new Sweeper Wiki page.

Sorry for coming late to the party. I had a similar problem to what Rodger described with the changing of the HTX folder setting on either 32 or 64-bit changing the property for both. I uninstalled both, cleared registry entries, and reinstalled (although possibly in a different order than the first time), and IIRC things are now separate. I have not tried to reproduce that behavior again (and I've been away from it for about 2 weeks due to vacation).

I finally made it there and back, albeit a day late due to aircraft maintenance delays. That happened both going out and coming back; bad luck. I missed a day of work and a little bit of vacation time, but least I am safe and sound back home. Minor correction on the last name: Dailey. I only saw one missing action, and I've now added it. Let me know what it complains about if you find anything else. The version in SVN should already have this change. It does not yet have anything for hiding the front of the buildings, which Paul had mentioned would probably help animators. (Robcat2075, I sent you a login with write permission in email, feel free to jump in.) For the instructions / rules ... Here are my comments/suggestions/questions in {bold within braces}, additions in just bold, deletions in strikeout. To save space, I just copied the ones with changes and the ones without changes that still need blanks filled in.

He looks awesome. Great job!

After playing with the set and watching clips from the movie, here are a few changes I'd like to see: 1. There are a lot of normals flipped. When turning off back-facing polygons to improve modeling time, things look weird. 2. It would be nice to hide various parts of the set so animating will be faster for people with slower machines. However, with the buildings as one big set, it's difficult to do. 3. With one big project, saving is very slow. While having one big file is nicer for distribution, having the models separated out would be better for animating, when periodic saves are needed. 4. Given that we're adding the use of windows on the left side apartment, I do think it would be good to move the default camera position to be more to the right and closer. I believe that is the location in the original movie, with a nearly straight in view into the left window with the fire escape. If we go ahead with changing the camera position, that will need to be done sooner rather than later, because we've found that the effective placement of set elements inside of rooms depends highly on the placement of the camera. I've created a copy of the set that addresses problems #1 (normals are now all outward facing), #2 (separated each building into its own model), and #3 (moved models into separate files), and #4 (created a copy of the original camera, but put it in a new location). I've put all of these into an SVN repository, which I could make available to everyone working on the project if these changes are the ones we want to go with. Paul, I'll send you info on the SVN repository. Let us know what the decision is.

I have been working on submitting Scarecrow to festivals the last few days, and Steve has been out of town, so we'll be a couple more days before we can give you something to try out.

Can we move the camera position? How will you line up the camera, and what do we need to do to make sure you can align the camera with our shots? I imagine you might need things like exact position, direction, zoom level, etc., at both the beginning and end of our shots; also, if there is any camera movement going into or out of our shots. Are lighting settings important? If one person tries to do a night shot and the other an afternoon shot, that could be problematic. There's also other things such as AO, Fast-AO, ambient settings, etc., and probably tons of other things that could affect how the scenes would fit (or not fit) into the whole. What is the frame rate and resolution? (I think it might have already been mentioned, but it would be good to have all instructions together in one place.) I think it would be better to explicitly give some boundaries to fit in as opposed to "whatever" or "whatever we did on Bus Stop", since not everyone will remember what they were for Bus Stop. The important thing is to have enough rules so the people creating the individual pieces don't make things any harder for the final assembly process than necessary.

The best phrase I can come up with does not compare with how good this is. The best I have is: Masterful.

First question: How many hours per week are you working now? If it's more than 40, do what you have to do to change that. (If you are a manager, DELEGATE. Make other people responsible for things.) Second question: How much time are you willing and able to dedicate to this hobby (before it's a full time job)? In other words, how much responsibility (e.g. family and chores, etc.) do you have outside of work? How much of that time can you dedicate? Third question: Who are you working with? I believe working on your own is the wrong approach to get anything of significance done. Fourth question: Do you have a good workflow and pipeline that you can produce consistently? I'd say don't take the plunge until you are already working a reasonable number of hours per week at your day job, you have a reasonable percentage of your non-work hours to dedicate to animation, and you are working with other people on animation, and have proven you can make regular progress on your animation projects. If you take the leap without having proven your abilities to produce to yourself, you might find yourself wasting time and not getting any closer to your goals. I think there are many benefits to working with other people (quick summary: meeting regularly makes you feel obligated to have something to show; you help each other get through hard spots; you come up with better ideas; you can do more; you don't have to be the guy that knows everything). I agree about the getting older stuff. I'm almost 43. I don't yet (and may never) have the skills that you or Robcat or John Bigboote (and a number of others) have, but I really understand your desire. I suggest getting these four areas together and proven as quickly as possible. Take a small leap and prove the model. Find and work with other people that are really good; don't just have everyone do their own part, but actually collaborate. Do at least one short together. Then decide to make the final jump.