robcat2075

Here's an experiment to try, Nancy. Load the 480p preset, turn Stereo OFF, then render. What happens?

Be brave Nancy, do the fun stuff you always do and you can watch it either way you want.

on STEREO.... Here's an example of how Youtube handles 3D: At the bottom is a red "3D" button. I uploaded a side-by-side render and Youtube used that to let the end-viewer choose any type of colored-glasses, shutter glasses, mirror 3D, no-glasses cross-eye.... almost every viewing method is available. And for every method there are various option to fine tune it, like these for red-blue glasses: I prefer cross-eye viewing without glasses myself. And... ... no one has to watch it in 3D if they don't want to. Youtube 3D lets you switch the 3D off and watch it "Flat" as if it had been rendered for 2D all along. If you have an elderly relative who won't have glasses, can't cross their eyes and won't be able to navigate that 3D control we can also put up a flat version that they can watch as they would any other Youtube video. No one will be left out of being able to watch this video. The set looks great in 2D and the set looks great in 3D and everyone can still animate like they normally would have, but the 3D render is a fun bonus that A:M gives us for VERY little extra effort. It's true that rendering left and right frames will take twice as long, but render times are not very long to begin with and twice as long as not-very-long is still...not very long. We'll give everyone time to render. The lower-res 480p option should make this accessible to everyone. A:M still renders stereo one frame at a time so I'm not sure how that could be taking more power than a regular render.

One small correction to my video comments... When I say it's "good practice" to have all the bones of a character keyed at the start of an animation, I'm refering to your conventional control bones that you animate with. Most characters have lots of fan bones and geometry bones that you will never want to key, of course. If you are unfamiliar with the possibilities of Keying and using Keyframe filters you may want to check out the "Keyframing Basics" video, found in the tutorials link in my signature. Another clarification to the video instructions: Frame rate After you load your chor and before you start animating) make sure the Project FPS property is set to 24 (circled in red in the screencapture). Check that every time you start a new session. You can make A:M default to 24fps by in the Tools>Options>Units tab (circled in blue)

Big thanks to to Paul Forwood and Mark Skodacek for pulling this great set together! It's got all sorts of great locations to stage interesting action, I'm sure we'll see some fine ideas from our A:M users. Download it today and get going! Not sure how to get started? (just in case you missed the link above)

That's not the main A:M forum and it doesn't have an obvious title.

Put it in the main A:M forum, and put the zip directly in the post, not ftp. It's only 20MB, make it easy to find and easy to download. And give it an obvious title like "2012 A:M Forum Collaboration Project"

I was curious about how A:M shifted the camera for the Multipass DOF effect. This is the image of a very bright, very tiny dot far behind the DOF range of the camera with various pass number settings. I would think that cluster near the center of the higher pass versions would not be ideal. The low number passes seem to be the same every time, but the higher ones change a bit with every restart of A:M

My proposal is for two presets, 480p and 720p. 720p would be the encouraged one but people would have the option of 480p if they have limited computing resources. The 480p footage (if any) can be stretched in post and no one will be the wiser.

Sorry, I did not get to voting at all on any of the entries so i didn't get to yours to do any comments, but I'll give you the one that came to me first... avoid "isolated motion". There are other names for it but it's when one body part moves but everything attached to it remains motionless. Like when the guy in front turns his head and his shoulders don't move at all. For some reason that works for Fred Flintstone and stop motion animators get away with it a lot but it almost always looks over-stiff in 3D characters. Having the shoulders help out even just a little bit on that motion would loosen the whole thing up.

Give all the ideas a try and see what works best.

Paul, did you get the email I sent with the video link?

Congratulations again, You're doing well lately!

Another angel gets its wings every time someone figures out a feature in A:M

The shadows-only workflow has changed a little bit since v14, i forget exactly what, but it was available in v14 somehow.

TSM_1_fingers_only.mdl TSM always presents a list of systems that you can choose to not have rigged. Like this...

Here's something to try... delete your current "2 finger" bones and import this model that has only the "2" fingers in it already rigged into your model. This will also import the relationships, which you may have to turn on separately from teh TSM relationship you have now. Or maybe not, I haven't tried. drag the "dummy Hand" to be children of your models "hand". Move and scale the dummies until the geometry finger bones are aligned with your model's mesh, then delete the dummy hands. Attach your mesh to the new "2" finger bones. TSM_2Fingers_only.mdl

If you run Rigger again on your model , do "2left finger" and "2 right finger" appear in the list of things to potentially be rigged?

I'll try to get the orientation video done today then we'll be ready to go i think.

Yes, that can be done. I'd be curious about what was different with the finger that caused it to be skipped.

That is normal behavior for model bones when looking from the camera view (use the translate manipulator to move normally) but the other bones, the ones you see in Skeletal mode, should not do that.

You should be able to open that in V13 or later. You might get a warning, but it should at least open.

that's not a bad start. i can see you are thinking about the problem of showing weight and mass in motion. I agree that he's not getting his weight over his feet soon enough to stand up. When he's pushing off with his right hand he can be leaning farther forward and over his knees. When he's standing up his whole spine can bend to lag behind his hips. A core challenge of all 3D animation is trying to make it not look like a set of parts flying in rigid formation. We look for opportunities to overlap motion so things are not leaving and arriving all at the same time and to not move them in straight lines. For example when he moves his right hand from his knees to the floor, the hand could lag behind the wrist initially. The wrist is moving down in two straight line paths (with a lurch in the middle), an arc that lifts off the knee then around down to the floor would look nicer. When the hand lands it shouldn't all stop at once. You could have the fingers contact first, then spread as the palm pushes down, or have the heel of the palm land first and the fingers flop down a moment later. There's something about that guy's upper arm that bothers me. It has an natural forward bend to it. I'd go into the model and fix that. When he glances to the side at the start, dont' just pivot the head, the shoulders should contribute to that gesture. In Hanna-Barbera animation they can get away with moving a head and leaving everything else locked in place but it looks odd with more realistic characters. If the face isn't rigged yet, at least rig the eyeballs so you can pose them other than straight forward, which is almost always too neutral. Something I'd experiment with is the way his feet react when he's standing. They look a bit too static for all the weight that's being thrown around on top of them. I'd think about having them nudge forward and down when he's shoving his weight against them from behind, like they are getting pushed into the soft carpet.

variation view AuroraB000.mov

Here's a go at the curtain effect... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=366288