rossk

K, I made an attempt at exaggerating the body's motion during the skip a bit more and adding a bit more weight... I also changed the eyes back to the side for most of the later part and edited them for blinks, showing emotion, etc. You can see the new animation here (6.8 mB) Any more critiques suggestions on the animation? In the meantime I'm going to start looking into the skylights... Thanks, --Ross

Have you thought about one of the levels taking place within a "frogger level"? You could have the area with cars driving back and forth, then the log floating thing with traps, and finally powerups at the end where the flies would normally be (set up like a game of frogger). Or I suppose if you want to keep it old western you can replace the cars with wagons Haha, anyways I'm really looking forward to seeing this as it progresses. Keep up the good work! --Ross

Yeah, I haven't changed the default light setup at all yet. I'll try using a skylight rig like you said. Is Yves's website the best place to learn how to do that? and what does "rtfm" mean? I agree that the bird does need some more detail and whatnot... however this is a realtime render, so what little detail it does have isn't showing up here. Its definately on my list of things to do though to add a bit more detail to the bird. Thanks for the suggestions. I think I should have a bit of time later tonight to make some changes. --Ross

Excellent, thank you! Good advice on the body during the skip... and thanks a ton for pointing out the eyes too... the eyes on one side of the head was one of the main stylish (or attempts at it) affects on Beany so I'm suprised that I completely forgot about it for the 2nd half of the animation Thanks again, --Ross

K, the skip still definately needs more work, but I made one slight change to improve it and also rendered out the animation at a higher resolution (6.9mB). Suggestions on anything (especially the skip though)? Otherwise I'll be moving to creating some better lighting... not really sure how to go about lighting an outdoor scene light this at all so this should be a lot of experimentation... is this one of those times that a skylight rig (like one of Yves) would be used? I really know very little about lighting... but looks like I'll learn a lot in the next few days.

I did some work on the skip. See it here (4.2 mB) Suggestions on anything would be great. Thanks, --Ross

I've been working on my short "Beany and the Giant Melon" a bit. I've run into some problems, but so far have been able to work around them decently. You can see a current render (just realtime) of the animation here. (its about 9.5 mB) Next on the checklist is to fix the "excited skip"...

Its looking really good. It would be interesting to hear what the plans are for this. Keep up the good work, --Ross

I can't really add anything new... just add to the pile of compliments-- Very very good expressive characters!

Awesome. Thanks again so much for all the help. --Ross

Hey, Thanks again for the help....but I'm still in a bit of a bind. It seems that the audio support in Jahshaka isn't very good currently and I would possibly have to install some other software to be able to access it anyways. I tried checking out Windows Movie Maker, but it doesn't allow you to import TGAs... It seems like this should be so simple... Any other ideas? Thanks, --Ross

I've gone through a few tutorials on Jahshaka, but am unable to find how to add audio... I'll continue looking though, but if anyone could help that would be great. Thanks, --Ross

Excellent, Thanks for the help Scott!

For my mini-movie entry for the contest I've been trying to add several layers of sound. One audio file is for the background ambient noise, one is for footsteps, then a few for other random noises. In the realtime playback of the scene, all of the auido is lined up perfectly, but upon render the audio gets shifted. Secondly, when I try changing the sound volume or changing whether the sound is muted or not... it seems to have absolutely no effect in the realtime or rendered version. Any help or ideas on how to add sound properly? I've heard about rendering to TGA's and then loading them into quicktime pro to add the audio in there or something... but I would like to do this all in A:M if possible. Thanks, --Ross

Haha... geeze... that didn't even occur to me... Yeah, that would work really well for this... Once this rendering is done, I think I might change Beany really quick and rerender it... Thanks, --Ross

Here is a shot of Beany is in his first movie, which will be submitted to the mini-movie contest. Unfourtunately, due to time constraints, I will be unable to render the movie out in Final quality for the contest, but I'll be sure to do that and make several other touchups (like the stripe on the tail) later. More information on the short will be given on the MiniMovie contest page when I submit my movie.

Thanks Paul for the help. So I can't have the diffuse color decal just override the areas in which it is visible (like areas in which the alpha channel tell it to be completely opaque)? All I want to add is a black stripe on the tail, but I'd have to decal the entire tail with the purple and the black stripe? Thanks again, --Ross

I'll keep that in mind. If I have enough time to spare before I start rendering my short I'll definately try that out. Thanks for the help. Right now it looks like I will be able to show a movie for the minimovie contest... its going to have to be 30 seconds exactly... and only contain the first part of the story... because with limited time to animate and render (its going to be around 40 hours rendering for 30 seconds... I'm going to work on lowering that a bit hopefully...) its going to be rather hectic around here... plus I have to remember that I'm in college and should study some too --Ross

The flip looks great to me. Nice job! Just wondering since I've been trying to learn how to animate several ways... but did you use pose to pose, straight ahead, or some sort of hybrid method on that? Again, excellent work, --Ross

Excellent, yeah, I thought so but wasn't quite sure. I'm not great at decaling though (I'll definately work on it soon) but it should be easy enough to add the tail-feathers-stripe back on. Thanks, --Ross edit: I've tried doing this.. and for some reason the decal isn't affecting the hair's color. I'm doing type-->other, property driven-->diffuse color... not sure whats wrong. For some reason a ton of different diffuse colors (and length, density, etc) show up on the dropdown menu... I've tried choosing each of the diffuse colors, but none of them are the diffuse color of the hair on the tail.

Thanks for the comments Dhar! I have some good news also... Beany has now entered the scene sucessfully. A lot of animating to do now over the next couple of days.

I've decided to give up on using the underlying materials for the bird's feather color... it seems like that should work ok, but apparently not. So I've created a work-around which in my opinion doesn't look as good, but at least it works. On the other hand, I've put together a scene for Beany... I was hoping to get a submission in to the mini-movie contest... and there is still hope, but I've run into a number of problems. First off, the willow tree in my scene seems that certain pieces of its hair randomly spring back to their old original positions after I refresh the view... Secondly, I'm getting "realtime rendering error"s like crazy at times.... it seems like this may somehow be attached to the willow tree problem since it occurs right after I attempt grooming the hair back into place. Luckily this is fixed by just reloading the project. Thirdly, some tree's "leaves" (actually hair) display when I have the trees marked as invisible. Lastly, the program crashes every single time I try adding Beany to the scene. Sorry for possibly sounding a bit irrate... I feel like I'm backed into a corner with this project and don't have a way to continue... Luckily I'm obsessive about saving... so I have 12 different versions saved along with 3 on external backup. Well, here a little taste of the scene is... I have a lot of free time over the next 3 days to work on it... so if anyone has any ideas or advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, --Ross edit: this is a bit older render of the scene before the willow tree problems.

I've been working on how to figure out this hair problem.... and still haven't figured it out, but I think I know at least whats happening now. It seems that the underlying material that is on the bird's skin is translating/rotation/whatever with the bird and the hair is translating and rotating with the bird... but the hairs are basing their colors on the material that was originally over the area they now reside in... I'm sure that didn't make sense, so here an example is. I applied a checkerboard material to a square patch and then applied a hair material. When I translate the patch to the left the material shifts and the hair shifts, but the hair's colour changes based on the old original position of the material rather than the new position. Any ideas? Thanks, --Ross hairtesttest4.mov

Here a little test is showing how the colours of the feathers are changing. I've tried a few things, but not sure what to do. The global axis thing is off and everything, so I don't really understand why the material is translating... Any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks, --Ross hairTest.mov

Here a brighter render is... Still having trouble with the hair changing colours, but I'll look into that more after classes. --Ross