robcat2075

Project independent, yes, although the time keeping is more exact than frames. from a previous discussion... A:M files writes those time values as Seconds plus 30ths of a second to 4 decimal places An action you made at 24fps and import into a 30fps PRJ will not place its keyframes at 30 fps intervals. It will preserve the actual time relationship between then.

That's a wonderful looking idea! I'm disappointed you didn't get to finish it for the contest.

I like that! He's kind of like those tree people in LOTR.

Eureka! I've figured out a solution to the problem that was holding me up. Somebody bring me my time machine!

I've never known enough about graphics cards to know what they really do for a program like A:M. Is there a complete copy of the 3D model in the graphics card RAM? Does it have to get rebuilt from scratch for every frame?

I'll still look at your project if you want. It's probably some small thing.

I'm afraid I had too many details undone to submit mine but I look forward to seeing the entries.

I believe that is mostly a matter of CPU speed. I don't know what the ideal graphics card RAM is for A:M, however.

I'd have to see you do it to get a sense of what's wrong. If you want to post the PRJ, I could try to look at it.

Ease... I keep saying "ease path" but I mean to say "ease parameter" clip4035EaseParameter.mov

I recall the path constraint has an "ease" property that you can keyframe to put the object at any point of the path at any time. In my tuts look for "ease" which is discussed in regards to Actions

I believe the "Take a Walk " tutorial shows how to put an object on an action.

I believe it is possible to animate the ON/OFF status of rotoscopes in the camera; storyboard drawings could be displayed that way. Also... If they were in a numbered image sequence, they could be imported that way and the "frame" parameter animated to advance them when needed.

It is possible to box select a spline and then SHIFT-select one CP on it and do a lathe, however, this lathe will be around the pivot point of the selected group. That is useful because, prior to the Lathe, you can move and rotate the pivot point of the group to get a Lathe that is not around the default Y axis.

It looks cool! I'm way behind on LEGO lore. You should add "A:M" "Hash" and "Animation:Master" tags to these videos so they might come up in searches.

Another solution is to lathe the ball with twice as many Lathe cross sections. Tools>Options>Modeling has that parameter.

You will need alternating groups. A Group is really a selection of splines and CPs rather than a selection of patches so you will need to have an unselected spline between the selected ones. Alternatively, you can make a stripe pattern like that with materials and then it can be completely independent of the mesh.

I like to think that Lathe requiring that the last thing you did was select one CP is a bit of a safety measure.

And he was a TD at Pixar so there's wise insight to be found there.

Oh geez... about 20 years ago... when I worked at Nortel they they set up a group to do "VR" and they bought an $80,000 SGI thing to run $30,000 Alias Power Animator, the predecessor to "maya" Just to make simple low-poly models of phones and offices for a VR engine that Superscape had sold them for $1,000,000 After the dust settled from that debacle, a year later maybe, I went over to give Alias Power Animator a try. "What does this do that my $299 A:M v5 on a $2000 Power Mac doesn't do?" I asked myself. Nothing! There's no way that was worth the money it cost but people around the industry were lining up to get soaked and eager to boast how much money it cost them.

My advice is do a bouncing ball with no squetch the first time out. There are essential issues of gravity and curve editing that can be learned there. But, yes, bone scaling is a typical way of doing squetch for bouncing ball exercises.

If you wanted to bring a bouncing ball animation to Live Answer Time that would be a discussable thing.

It is overwhelming. Pick something small as an early project and do that to completion. I guess you've already done the TAoA:M tutorials to get your feet wet.

-A lot of thin splining happens with experimenting while I'm modeling. I don't necessarily know at the beginning where every one is going to be. -After you copy-flip-attach that nose you'll probably feel you can lose the first spline to the side of the center spline. Without the CFA, it rounds out the shape but once the other side is attached, the shape is round without it.