mouseman

Stunning. It significantly exceeds my school bus in both quality and speed of creation. Very professional, and so well done, I love looking at it. Very inspirational. Another model you can be proud of!

I remember a discussion recently about using bias handles; I think this post (Straighten a spline ring) was part of what I was thinking, but I vaguely remember there being more discussion on bias handles recently. Anyways, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that if I'm making a lot of bias handle changes, especially involving increase of the magnitude, the real problem is that I don't have enough geometry (splines and CPs) to support the structure that the model needs. For example, if I have rings of 4-CPs on the arms and am changing the bias handles to make them the right shape, I probably need 6- or 8-CP spline rings for the arm. Would you agree or disagree with that?

Really nice work! Thanks for sharing with us! You guys are awesome!

I don't think the rotos are bad. I really like how you have the rotoscopes boxed into your picture! That's a great idea! Brilliant! I can't quite tell from the pics you have whether you are already doing this, but here's a suggestion. This is a big mistake I made on the school bus I made. Don't make it unibody. Keep all of the pieces separate, somewhat true to the actual panels on the real car. Do not share any CPs between groups/panels. It is so much easier to select a CP or patch and then click "/" and just get the panel/piece you want to get. Keep it up!

Thanks for your replies, Robcat and Vertexspline! In addition to Sound/Animating, if a pair/group is creating new models, that can be split by model (each person takes on different models) or by splining, rigging, and texturing. When working to the end of a deadline, the end-of-project is where the sharing of rendering can really help! I remember during Bus Stop being really nervous about being able to get things rendered (NetRender on v16 Beta helped a lot). If anyone is interested, I am in the US/Canada MST timezone. I have time on Saturday and Sunday during the days, and on Tuesday and Thursday evenings (and sometimes Monday evenings). I'd like to spend minimally 2 hrs twice per week working together over Skype. I'm sure there will be times where we work together for a while and then split. If you are interested, send email to mouse at intranet dot org.

Over in this response, I discussed the possibility of people collaborating in pairs on the Rear Window project. Reply here if you have any ideas about what it would take to be able to successfully collaborate with someone, and if you would be interested in collaborating with another A:M user on a Rear Window short. (That would not prevent you from doing one separately if you so desired.) Remember that there are some collaboration tools like Skype for video chat and desktop sharing, SVN and GIT and Mercurial for sharing revisions. You could also share a WIP forum post to coordinate. Are there any other tools that would help?

Over the past few years local User's Groups have died off a bit... everyone is busy and it takes time to get together. Those are always great events to share ideas and workflows. We are always looking for good excuses to promote users Groups here in the forum so if anyone is interested in that angle just say the word. I've so wished I could find a local collaborator where we could work on things in the same physical space. I bought a couple of copies/subscriptions for people without a lot of success (at least towards that goal; one of them ended up taking those skills and moving to Second Life and creating/selling models there). I've had a few really good experiences with pair programming, and I'm sure that there is the possibility for similar benefits with animation. From the observer's point of view, TheSpleene and MJL collaborations have been a huge success, though I have no idea what their process is. What can be done with technologies like Skype and repositories (SVN, GIT, etc)? I meet with a lot of resistance in general when I suggest trying out Skype with people, but I think that some day we'll use those kinds of tools more for collaboration. Things as simple as what timezones people are in and what days/evenings they have available become important. It would be fun to find a collaborator to work on the Rear Window project. I'm going to start a thread over at the Community Projects forum asking who would be interested in doing so. Edit: The post is here.

I was hoping someone would remember what the trick was. I think the relevant thread might be here. But I repeat, what you did looks really good, too. I personally can't tell one method from the other.

Full of awesome so far! Thanks for sharing the updates with us!

I'll have to remember those quotes should I ever need a pick-up line. Uh, for a 3D character, not for myself! Darkwing, I'm enjoying watching your progress. Looking good!

I miss having him around. If you come by to see this, I just wanted to say that you're welcome here any time! I hope you're doing cool stuff and having a great time!

I love you guys' stuff! Thanks so much for sharing it! I didn't know there was a pill for that! They have a pill for everything.

Looking awesome! A few tweak suggestions ... I think the head is still bobbing a bit much. Maybe try to move his head a little more from the neck, and not tilt up and down as much. Maybe tilt left and right a little bit, but not up and down. His face would probably always aim towards where he's walking, the only variable is whether he is focusing on the path near in front of him or on the destination farther ahead. The other thing is using the club as a walking stick. I've seen people use them in different ways. One is while walking; I found myself planting the stick for a little over 2 steps and bringing it forward for the 3rd step; in this case, you might need an entirely different walk cycle. The second way is in aiding an injured leg, which is more similar to what you've done here; in this case, you might want to exaggerate the dependency on the other leg. Regardless, looking really good. It's really nice seeing Tar moving. The cloak effect is really good.

Aha, I thought you might have used the lightning tricks people have talked about on the forums in the past (some combination of glow and maybe toon render and some other effect I can't remember). But it still looks good ... whatever gets you results!

Agreed! Amazing! One thing I am curious about (and this is probably also on the original) ... since part of the fender is on part of the front door, what happens when the door opens?

True, true! This is a learning environment. We're all really here to help each other get where we want to be. And everyone tries to be respectful of those making the effort to learn and improve.

Glad I'm not a gecko.

I liked how the ears and nose appeared on screen! Nice effects with that transition and the energy coming from her hands!

One can make the numbers say almost anything. Statistics are evil.

Fun stuff! You created a very nice looking and neat world for the song! I think this forum was fine to post completed works in, another good one is the WIP (work in progress) forum.

Neat stuff. Is it yours? Is it made in A:M? Is it cloth?

I haven't done modeling from the side or done general smoothing/sculpting on it yet, so I hope that will be one of the next things to work on either Sunday or Monday. But now date night. We're watching "How to Train Your Dragon". EDIT: After using the side-rotoscope:

1348 patches, 62 5Point patches Added arms and legs. The legs have only been done from the front and not the side, so they don't attach properly at the waist (see the shadow). Still looking too old. I'll finish the main geometry and then work on de-aging him. Animated progression: And the model and wireframe:

It's really convincing, especially within the set.

It might be neat to see rendered with Ambient Occlusion, but your render times would go way up. (There's also a "Fast AO" plugin ... I think there is a free version and a pay for version, but I've never used it. A lot of people on the forum rave about it.)