renderspud

Hey Martin, just got to say a big 'Thank You'! As someone who has played a small planet wildly orbiting the blazing sun of your brilliance for almost 30 years (and I mean that) I am very thankful for you and the little program that you birthed so long ago. A large part of my career can be directly attributed to your little program that could. It's made me a 'butt'load of money through the years. Even with big dollar programs and cutting edge tools at my disposal, I still find myself jumping back to the little program that's hung with me all this time...warts and all. Pre-Avalanche was a new startup called Sculptured Software...aka George Metos, Hal Rushton, and crew in the days of Atari, Gameboy and the beginning of the Nintendo NES. I somehow found your program way back then and used it to animate the base loops for sprite based character animation. It was the beginning of a long journey. I was a freelancer and HASH was the largest tool in my toolkit (right alongside DPaint and DPaint Animator. :-) As the years have rolled by I've been privy to some of the yuck that you described in the short history that started this thread. I was a contractor and did stints with Avalanche and many other studios back in the day. I even used custom tools (obviously AM spinoffs) used by Disney/Avalanche in SLC. As a contractor, I didn't know any of the backstory but was jazzed that the tools were based on AM because they were familiar to me. Of course, Jeff B. was mum about it all. I'll leave things there...like water long ago swept under the proverbial bridge, and just end by saying what I feel. Thanks for your brilliance, for your fortitude, and for unknowingly helping me set the course of my career in the world of visual imagery. It's been a great ride! It still is.

I'm having the same issues in V.17f on two different PC's. One with an Nvidia card and one with an ATI... Same project renders fine on co-workers Mac. No options available except an OpenGL tab. Let me know if you find anything out. I just keep pestering my co-worker. I get the following error message: Failed InitBoundRenderInfo

Yep, Kinda weird huh? I created these characters for a different short but did this one to test their control rigs. Never did finish the other one.... hmmmm. There could be some deep psychological meaning behind all this. Thanks,

well, i wish i had a really good answer. looking back i think i should have used cuts instead of crossfades during the dancing sections to add more energy. i used the crossfades in the establishing shots to add to the lazy slow paced environment. in hindsite, this could have crescendo'd better using faster cuts as the music ramped up. oh well, live and learn.

I was cleaning off some hardrive space and found an old short that we did called Afterhours. I think this was made in 8.5 but was fun nevertheless. I posted a version of this way back using an obscure codec. Hopefully there's a few who might have seen it? Anyway, here it is: Afterhours clip

Hey! Great model! One small thought on the boots: The size seems a little large for the rest of the body type. I really like the pre-school feel you have going and the boots might be taking away from that. Maybe if you made them a little bit "too" small it would lend itself more towards a childlike feel. Feet on little kids are usually pretty small in proportion to their bodies. Once they start hitting puberty they start blasting out the other way. Anyway, just a thought. Really nice though!!!! Mike

We're designing for a video/DVD relaese. The current script has the video at right around the 1 hour mark. We are looking at ways to cut 15 minutes so that we could fit nicely in a TV broadcast venue. We also have a second script in the works as we try to develop a brand of videos each taking a romp through a dreamscape dealing with biblical events. The second script follows the dream of the girl's (CNTZ main character) twin brother. The brand's working title is GSBA (Good Sam's Bible Adventures) The twins' names are Sammantha and Samuel. That's correct, although a pretty loose one

Actually, it's been a year and a half. It started out as a realtime 3D gaming product with a lot of pre-rendered musicals, Now it's totally an animated video release. (screen shot of the dead PC game attached below). . I think he's talking about the storyboards that finish out the Animal Song video. Thanks!

WOW! I didn't expect so much activity. Or the dinosaur debate. Good stuff though. Let me see if a little more info will help: This story takes place within the overactive dream of a young girl who was wondering about Noah and the flood. While the dream story is fairly whacked, it provides some really thought provoking questions about this biblical account. It also explains a few things in a non threatening, non preachy way. These models and animations were actually created for proof of concept and are extremely preliminary.... same with the lighting and camera movements. Yes and yes, we have started character voice auditions locally. There are also some character bios on the same site if you dig around. Thanks! This first video has 5 unique songs with similar comedic value. Heh Heh, glad you picked up on that one. If you listen close, we aren't saying there were or weren't prehistoric anything. We are actually asking the question. This is a hot button that we are deliberately trying to push. It's a good question and an important one to ask yourself... To every man an answer. I'll spare the list my convictions, but I do have a strong opinion on this one. Glad it raised the question though Yep, I can see why the titanic style boat throws you. As mentioned above, this is a story that takes place in a young girls dream. Prior to falling asleep, the young girl is pretending that a titanic tub toy is the ark as she re-enacts the flood story. She just didn't have anything better to be the ark. Later that night when she falls asleep, the dream ark is now a giant version of the toy she was playing with. The opening scene actually shows a historical looking ark being tossed about in the waves. There is a narrator who is recounting the story. Slowly the scene fades to the toy boat being sloshed around in the tub by the young girl who is pretending. The narrator's voice also fades into the young girls voice and takes on a more childlike twist. Her twin brother is also there adding some wild elements like a giant mutant frog and then sinking the boat. These things also find there way into her dream. (they aren't in the tub together, they are outside the tub playing....) It's a hoot. Thanks for the animation help on the Rap SURGE. Good to see that you are still out there! Thanks guys. I appreciate your comments.

We recently posted some animations to help voice talent get a feel for the characters we were holding auditions for. They are kind of fun, but pretty rough. Comments welcome, Mike CNTZ test renders

Thanks for the comments. It's semi-shameful to only have a fish to show... The textures are scanned and hand painted and the fishing line in the "rigging" toot was a spline set to render as a line. The line definately was the trickiest. Thanks again for the comments. Mike

Hey guys, I just remembered a couple of animations I did for a fishing web site. They needed a really quick talking Stryper and an animated example of how too hook up a spedial rig using anchovies.... hmmmm. http://www.powellstripers.com/default.cfm It took about 3 days to do both anims. The lip synch could have been more robust, but for online content I guess it's OK. Comments welcome. Cheers. MU PS. I also did a talking flash card for this site somewhere.... I believe you have to click on the "maps" button and look for "Chip Powell".