higginsdj

Make a skin group and just apply SSS to the skin group.

I didn't work in the birds rig yet... maybe they haven´t rig anyway .. just poses Sorry - I didn't mean the rig. The birds appear to have full legs rather than just feet and knees. Cheers

The knees are 'snapping' at the start of the cycle.

Are the birds going to have the same leg/knee arrangement as the other characters?

My 2 are done and ftp'd to the hash web site. They aren't great but considering its been 2+ years since I last did any anmiation/CG work - they'll do.... By the way - my second one doesn't qualify for the competition - it's longer than 1 minute (I did get a little carried away) - I just did it for the exercise Cheers

Wow - this is a great project to watch. My only comment is that the neck/head arrangement of the main character seems to give the indication that his head is kinked forward all the time.

Run out of time to fix and re-render a few issues so uploading the 'final version' now (all 64mb Sorensen 3) to the Hash site. Cheers

Ahhhhhhhh..... lighting.... I have 1 rather complex scene that has been proving problematic to light. Character starts in the hold of the ship, partially light by a spot light (sun as it streams down the hatch) She then runs up the stairs through the hatchway and into the sunlight (camera moving with her in 1 continuous shot). I think I have rendered this one out 5 times now (at 30 minutes per frame) all to no avail! Thank goodness for light lists and animating light intensity over time - I think I might have finally nailed it..... 4 more hours and I might be done rendering. Now just to work on the sound track and try to piece something together...

I think you took off on the wrong foot. What the scene lacks is direction/purpose. At present he looks like he is just saying the words and you are now trying to animate the head to try to make the scene look interesting. Is he commenting on something that has happened, commenting on something that he is looking at, is he talking to himself or someone else. Is he actually being sarcastic or just feining interest. Attitude/emotion starts with the body and ends with the head. Adjust the lighting so you only see a black silouette - how does the animation read without the facial expressions? You need to define his 'attitude' poses so block those in first - worry about the facials last. The pose looks stiff because it completely lacks arcs. If you want him to look 'stiff' and pompus then push out his chest and arc that head and back and turn him away from the camera. How did you intend to end it? Remember the sound of the report tablet hitting the table as he drops it (original). Look for something new and interesting. You could have him looking up from his report and out through a large viewport just as a meteroid hits it and causes a crack.... (ie something that wasn't in his report!) Cheers

Anyone using AM on Windows 8? I installed it on my crappy little Acer i5 2.1ghz with 4gb RAM and it is rendering 3 time faster than my Windows 7 Toshiba Qosmio i7 1.8ghz with 8gb RAM. I wouldn't have thought that the extra 0.3ghz processor speed would have made that much difference..... Cheers

David If you get a subscription to V17 there is a feature called Multi Master that Mark W pointed out to me which allows you to run several versions of AM at the same time which might be of use to you ? Mark has also written a PDF file on how to use the net render option on a Mac although it is also applicable to PC's. regards simon Yeah, but I can't run anything else when using all 8 cores (out of 8) to render.....

Its a work practise. If you embed, you have one copy that only you can work with of any element used in that project - and only one version - that projects version. So if you want versions of ANYTHING then your have to create versions of EVERYTHING - ie the project. Not a very efficient way of doing things and how on earth do you keep track of versions of individual elements within the project? What is your resource pool? What tool do you use? What is your file system/method? What are your naming standards/file structures etc? If your library/pool is properly structured I can't see how it could get messed up - especially if you are using the right tools. It's a bit like software libraries. You check stuff in and out of the library and those tools typically control your versioning. This is how it worked in TWO and SO and I dare say these libraries may be somewhat bigger that yours and they were managed across a lot of users over the internet! (My copy of the TWO data pool is 10Gb while my copy of part of the SO data Pool - just the parts I worked on - is 5.5Gb) Cheers

I was introduced to the concept in TWO. In Projects you tend to store everything in the Prj - its the default. By playing with Chors, everything has to be saved out as it's own element. In the world of reuse/libraries etc, using chors forces you to save out each element. If you don't - you lose it/them. Of course you can still use Projects as a container of individually saved elements - nothing wrong with that - but in the end, it is the animation that is the 'master' and that is the chor. Cheers

Rendering, rendering, rendering.......... Each VGA resolution frame is taking 12-30minutes to render........ 90 sec x 24 frame/sec x avg 20 min/frame = 43,200 minutes of rendering (~30 days). Now putting all 8 cores on my laptop to the task (no cores spare to do anything else). It's going to be tight! With the laptop busy rendering I am contemplating whether I should buy another subscription so I can still 'play' with A:M but haven't decided what platform to put it on (my iMac or another laptop) I do love my iMac's but I know the last time I subscribed (v14/15) the iMac version of A:M was somewhat 'flakey' (but the 27" screen made it so much more pleasurable to do things in)

I did that but it still didn't work - turns out there is a Y direction dynamic force in the Choreography set to -100% by default. Setting this to 1 or 0 did the trick. (Streak smoke doesn't have a gravitational setting) Although my wispy smoke looks great against a black background it is not visible when rendered on an alpha and composited onto the original frame (well only the emitter is bright enough to be visible and it does look a little weird) I think I will go back to sprites and try a version of that. Cheers

Robert, in your cigarette smoke example (using sprites) how did you keep the smoke going up? Cheers

Not depth of field? I am doing the iris as a separate layer that I will composite over the original frames in post.

Hi all, Remember those toons where the fade to black was an iris? How would you recommend achieving that in AM? My only idea is to use an unlit black flat piece of geometry with a circle in it and I move and scale the circle to suit. Cheers

As is usual for these things, there is a lot of talk but no much action (no disrespect intended to anyone). This forum allows for those with Projects in mind to create a topic and run with it. However, one thing that is lacking is a 'Roster' of 'talent' outlining who would consider participating, when they might be willing to participate and what they can contribute (leave it to the project owner to decide the talents level of ability). Not sure how this could be set up/managed in this forum though. OK, so if you have a project in mind, create a new topic. Call it "Kickstarter - Your Project name" and outline your project. When your project is ready and has the required participants then you can kick off into a new topic (your Project name) and the kickstarter topic can be archived. This way be have visibility on projects that are brewing and projects that are underway. Cheers

Now this is a great example of a kickstarter - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/624061...art-this-sucker - and they aren't even funding the movie - just the storyreel......

Personally I do not like pre-configured poises as they are notoriously difficult to add on top of (ie to create variations - a wry smile whilst speaking etc) You will also run into issues with fast speech and have to pick a mouth shap that is inbetween 2 ore more shapes of just skip them altogether.... I like the FACE setup we had on TWO and SO. If necessary you can create Phenomic poses using those controls but it does become very quick and simple to create the mouth shapes you need on the fly... Cheers

"Solved" it myself

OK, I have a path (a spline with 3 CP's) I have constrained my Camera to the path (Path Constraint) and I have also contrained the camera to aim at a null. Camera jumps to the path and travels along it BUT only travels 1/2 between the first and second CP (100% enforcement at chor end) BUT it also behaves like it is pointing at the null as if it has travelled the full length of the path. Obviously I am missing something here... Partially solved. Chor length was set too long. Edit - Fixed by deleting the path and camera constraints then doing it again.... Not sure what went wrong but it's working now.... Cheers

Thanks John

It wasn't until my wife bought and watched the first 2 series (we had to buy the DVD's - thats all thats available in Oz at present) that I get this thread. Theres just so much wrong with the real 'walking dead' that you can have a field day with parody (an I now get some of the jokes in 'Big Bang')