robcat2075

expanding on my previous thought... CG has added a new complication to the general public's understanding of art skills. Some will think the computer does all the work while others perhaps understand there is some knowledge or software that must be mastered before you can get the computer to do all the work.

I think the public at large regards graphic art as mostly the product of inspiration. That's the way its treated in movies and the skills to make art are rarely discussed. On the other hand it's pretty much an accepted truth among the public that fine musicians have spent many hours and years practicing their skills. The public grasps the "work" of music more than of art so they are less likely to understand that art... drawing... could be worked at to get better.

She better be excited about it, it's the only choice she has if she attends that school. I'm sure she did something wrong, that's not a typical result she's getting there, but in an overly complicated software environment it's harder to track down the specific "wrong" among all the possibilities. She wasn't blaming the tools, but she was alarmed that she didn't know where to begin to fix it. I lost track of the thread on Facebook so I don't know if she ever got back on track. Have you seen Matt's Tireman character? That's a great example of A:M being a powerful tool. Matt was at an advertising agency and this tire company came in wanting their logo turned into a 3D animated character. The agency had a crew of Maya guys on staff but they said it couldn't be done, not without weeks of effort. But with A:M Matt was able to turn around a working version of the character in about a day. The client loved it and Matt ended up doing a whole series of commercials and promotions for them. One person with A:M got something done that a whole team of Maya people couldn't get done.

Great print but still too pricey for my casual needs. I'm sure it will get more economical in the future. So, you set all the colors in A:M and didn't have to recreate them outside of A:M, right?

It occurs to me that one could 3D design and 3D print a mold for an object like that and then you could make a bunch of them out of plaster or wax or resin maybe.

Fine-looking work as always! I see a few cases in your pic that look like a typical Font Wizard problem where it creates a four-sided patch that has two sides in a straight line (looks like a triangle). If you nudge the center CP out just a hair it will fix the patch.

Great result! That looks great, Matt!

I admire you for getting all those cast members done. That's more characters than I'll ever do!

When "darkness" is less than 100%, light is added to shadow areas so there are certain arrangements where it will appear that light is passing through objects. If you need a shadow area to be less than completely dark, it is best to set the darkness of the main light to 100% and use a fill light from another angle to lighten up the shade area.

Is the "Darkness" of the light set to 100%? It should be.

Yup. Boolean cutter or Material Effector would be my first gambits.

Not yet. The QuickTime doesn't work?

I'll note that this is a bit more specific effect and rather different than rain-drops on a pond. To do this right we would need to know what the shot is and be certain it's not going to be changed. The special effects you see in movies are designed for the the shot that is planned. Everything about he camera location and angle and lighting are known before had so hey can build the effect to work in that circumstance.

I have the Nicolaides book too. Several times I've set out to work my way through its curriculum but it seems to presume one is an art student in a class with live models who will be there for hours at a time.

I'll note that Betty Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" is a classic book on learning to draw what you see.

Paul. I did something along those lines a few years back. The effect was actually quite easy to achieve using animated maps to control the bump/ displacement, reflection and transparency for the ripples. Later project used cookie cutter decals to get rain drops. A combination of the two might get the effect you want ? regards simon Perhaps you could start a thread and explain how you did it?

We are looking for the two remaining contest entrants who are NOT on this list. Matt Campbell (John Bigboote) Garet Gratien ( ludo_si) Steven Grieve (blixien) Robert Holmén (robcat2075) Mark Largent (largento) John Lemke (johnl3D) David Simmons (itsjustme) Steve Shelton (Shelton) Who are you? Check your email for the message from Hash and respond with your address so you may receive your "Wobbling Dead" DVD!

I notice there's a touch of AO visible. I suppose that helps soften it up some.

Beautiful! Note the number of CG artists credited. Also notice the credit for "Compositor." That means those shots didn't come straight out of the renderer looking like that.

You're right. We should stick to discussing A:M on the A:M forum! Generally I do. However... Martin Hash once made the observation that "Maya bought every customer they have." That means they spent as much or more on advertising and promotional deals as they ever made in sales. How could they stay afloat with a business plan like that? Short answer: they didn't. The money came from outside investors, not the makers of the product. Eventually they ran out of investors willing to put more money into it and Maya, the program, was sold at a firesale price to Autodesk. That happened back around 2005. SoftImage XSI had a similar business plan and had a similar result: sold off to Autodesk when the money ran out. Much money was lost but Maya, the program, did win the market-share battle. How could it not? They were actually paying studios to drop the software they had and use Maya instead. It's excessively complicated and awkward to use but now it is entrenched and not likely to be dislodged in foreseeable future. Martin Hash and A:M never had the money to engage in the promotion war, but for those of us who are not in a studio where every part of the process can be assigned a separate expert in that task, A:M is still here (unlike XSI, now cancelled by Autodesk or Truespace, now canceled by Microsoft) and still powerful for people like you and I who want to get 3D projects done and need to be able to do the whole pipeline ourselves.

I had said I was going to do "cloth" as the topic of my next "It Can't Be Done" series but that is looking to be a major endeavor I don't have time for right now. I hereby re-open the table for nominations. If you have a smaller-scale miracle that you'd like to see done in A:M, suggest it below! If you suggested something last time around and are still interested in that topic, re-nominate it! I will pick one based on based on my own judgement of general interest and feasibility and the winner will, of course, receive their choice of memoir by Martin D. Hash! If, by chance, you missed the previous "It Can't Be Done"... check it out!

I am indeed a shameless A:M flag waver. A:M users sometimes wonder if A:M is the only program with an annoying bug or if somehow the other programs have some secret that makes everything easy. We typically see the work done in other programs... when it's done. Or we may see a sped-up screencam demo that goes from beginning to successful end... by someone who's an expert user who's omitting all the mistakes and wrong turns he made before he got good at it. Many A:M users come from other programs and already know that the other programs have drawbacks, but some A:M users are in 3D for the first time and it's useful for them to know that the other apps aren't a flawless, magical solution.

I bet she loved it!

A (maya) screenshot posted by an AnimationMentor student. Her character is flying apart and even the technical support at the school can't figure out why. That is life with maya for anyone below the guru level. I feel bad for her, I think she has a deadline of midnight tonight for the assignment.

I looked a the PRJ. I'm not sure I see a boomerang effect, the bubbles seem to be going where they are keyed to go. Here is one bubble that does return but it is keyed to do that. (see screen capture) The red channel records the horizontal movement. It starts near zero at the beginning (circled as 1) then moves quite a bit to the right (a larger x value, at key 2) then returns to near zero again because key 3 is near zero. Perhaps you unintentionally made that last key that is dragging the bubble back to its origin? If you didn't know that key was there then it would seem that the bubble was trying to return for no reason.