robcat2075

That's a very convincing-looking result! Are we sure that the numbered frames you have stored do not do that? Does your original frame 260 have that wrong image in it, by any chance? Can you edit out that glitch? I'd have to know more to know more.

If you can post a represenative frame i might be able to experiment with extracting a matte out of it.

Have you tried acting this out to a camera and watching that for reference? That would probably tell you a lot about the timing and size of motions. The initial gesture with the wand toward the book i find confusing because It's not clear which of the strokes is the magic one. There is a great Keith Lango tut on "snap"... gesturing with an arm... that would serve you well on her left-hand gesture with the open palm. Right now you have just the hand rotating on the end of the arm but it can be made much more effective if the whole arm contributed to the motion.

If you have imported the polygon as an actual A:M model you can go into bones mode and move the model bone origin to make the pivot anywhere. If you know the coordinates of the pivot in the polygon program you could write those down and plug them into the model bone's properties in A:M Props have a similar model bone property but it appears not to be editable. Perhaps there is a work-around in constraining them to another bone that woudl serv as your pivot.

If anything comes of that be sure to show us the quilt!

Can you show us the vector version you got out of this?

As a side note... One can do a lot of relighting "in post" by first rendering to OpenEXL format with lights to separate buffers. That may be similar to what you are wanting to do here.

The diagonal artifact is weird. I don't recall that.

He should have a mic!

Super work, Mark!

Hooray!

If I were going to do that over, I would not use the hooks, I'd continue the splines all the way around. I was being lazy.

Now with more rectangular specular reflections... Heart08.prj

I guess A:M does have some "expert mode" circumstances, like "show advanced properties" which is not on by default.

Here's my entry in the smooth-heart derby. To get a closer result I'd need to see more angles on the reference shape, but I think this is "smooth". Heart07.prj

Try this... leave flat shaded off and set the "falloff" parameter of your shadow catcher plane to zero I'm just going by memory here so come back if that doesn't work.

My "It Can't Be Done" series from last February has a pretty through explanation of how to get started with text-editing.

So, problem solved, John?

If it is too late to organize, my next thought is text editing. You could open the file in a text editor and fix the non-working paths to be working ones. That would be a daunting task for 70 decals but it is likely that many of them have some common element that can be fixed with one search and replace command.

If there IS no alpha channel in the image you can set a "Key color" for the image. Expand it's listing inthe Images Folder to see that parameter. Unlike alpha channel transparency, it clears out only the exact RGB color value you set as a key so it will typically give you a jaggy result.

Interesting idea. Maybe there could just be a siren that goes off every time you cross more than two splines.

The most significant "animator" problem I see is that you have lots of "isolated motion" Her arms are moving independently while her torso remains locked in space. It's just about impossible to move one's arms without some effect on the torso and typically one would turn the torso into the gesture to put some shoulder into the motion toward the book.

is that the way they hold the wand in the movies? i think of the way Tinkerbell would hold a wand as if she was going to tap things with it, that just says "magic wand" more.

For those of you who got new portable gadgets, to run A:M on perhaps, here is the current best practices for maximizing your battery's lifespan. It's addressed to smartphone users but all Lithium-Ion batteries should benefit from this... How To Take Care of Your Smartphone Battery the Right Way

The stupid mistakes are the best ones, it's easy to see the solution!