robcat2075

Select only one point on the spline (not the whole spline) then press the lathe button. Selecting one pint will make A:M use the Y axis as default.

If i use displacement in a regular render I dont' get shading. How did you get that?

theguy (at) brilliantisland (dot) com

I forgot about the fire! Glad to hear your recovery has gone well. That was supposed to be "our"

the big hit is that you have to use multi-pass to use displacement maps In a test case (where the object covers about 50% of the image) a bump-mapped model takes 44 secs to render in 16 passes while a Displacement-mapped model takes 64 seconds which is not much more. But the bump mapped model can render with the same anti-aliasing quality in a non-multipass render in 7 seconds. If you drop the Displacement render down to 2 passes it will come in about the same as the regular render bump map case.

The timing finally looks plausible on that one. That's better! If you don't mind sending me the PRJ with the character in it I can show you where to go with that. You could even delete most of the mesh, just leave the legs and torso. You could email it to me.

Fabulous birthday wishes to out fabulous forum moderator!

-The impression of motion I get from both of those (and had a bit on your previous take) is that he jumps up, flys forward, then drops down. It's not quite as rectangular as that description, but it's not moving like a jump. I think you've gone from an arc that is too triangular to an arc that is too flat across the top. -He's still overshooting his landing. -He's not slowing down before he lands, that's better than it was, but he's now suddenly slowed the moment he contacts the ground.. Remember our ref video... the slowdown should come you approach the squash position at the bottom, there shouldn't be sudden drastic change of motion at the moment of contact. the body needs to sail thru that moment. Watch the crit again, I explicitly point that out, notice that the dots tacking the hips don't suddenly get closer together the moment the feet touch the ground. It's impossible for that much mass to suddenly change velocity. Spacing like this doesn't happen: *---*---*---*---******** motion changes velocity gradually (unless there's a wall involved) *---*----*-----*----*---*--*-**

I'm not sure what I really want, it may not be do-able. Mark's ear suggestion is a promising one. Is there a head with good ear on it that would lend itself to SSS?

Good-lookin abs! "The A:M Abs workout"

I separated the audio into bass, mid, high and top versions with the EQ filters in Audacity. After applying the plugin to the audio i deleted all the "bottom half" keyframes of the waveform and rescaled what was left to fit from 0% to 200%. WILh400.mov It has promise. I think it would benefit from some sort of smoothing or peak averaging to make the amplitude result more resemble the perceived volume of the sound rather than track the instantaneous level of the waveform itself.

The model is saved separately? Can you load the model as a model?

that one might be a bit too uncomplicated What is that?

Too many other factors in that, I'm afraid.

Something that is an obvious example of SSS and looks good for it. I realize that's vague. I like Jeff Bolle's Alien but it also has many texturing details that are not specifically SSS so it's hard to hold it up for 3 seconds and say "that's SSS" without further explanation. That's the problem.

Fun fact: the standing long jump used to be an Olympic Event and the current world record is 3.71 m, about 12 feet 2 inches. More than twice what I am getting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_long_jump Here's a professional demonstration. Note the expert advice: "jump as far forward as possible." http://youtu.be/6P8qmLl4rZQ

Here's my reference jump , now you have to show yours (I'm presuming you had clothes on) RCHBroadJumpESingleHopAH4k.mov

Wow! That's a great thread. Explains SSS like nowhere else, & probably should be included in some documentation, if that effort is still alive, and if still true for recent versions. I don't remember ever seeing it. Even with that info, still seems like SSS requires much experimentation, tweaking based on model geometry, chor lighting, and model's size. That is a great thread. Too bad those Bradbury boys went off to college...

We're stripping this motion down to the barest mechanical essentials, so in this case symmetrical is fine. At animation school we did this exercise with a one-legged ball which left any notion of offsetting or trying to be non-symmetrical completely out of the equation. I did some reference video myself this morning and indeed there is an enormous temptation to not keep the feet together, but we are working on a basic mechanical principal of heaving weight into the air and one leg, or two stuck together is all we need to study this.

Oh, go ahead and post it. And could you render the jump from a side view and post that too?

That's an appealing idea although it might have to wait for "v18" whenever that dawns. The mascots pretty much change with versions rather than years now.

Those are great images. I guess the problem with explaining SSS (in 2 seconds) is that it's a subtle thing, not like a lens flare, you pretty much have to see a before and after to "see" it.

And Happy New Year and happy animating in 2013!

One overall suggestion...don't constrain the light to the character, just give it a few keyframes to generally follow him, as if a person were having to aim it manually. That will make the outline of the light on the background less antsy and his motion in relation to the set will be clearer.

Does anyone have or can anyone suggest a great example of A:M Subsurface Scattering. Something that, as soon as you see it, clearly demonstrates SSS (and looks great). I want to stick it in a tutorial video on "Rendering"