robcat2075

TSM2 works with 32-bit A:M only. You can have both 32 and 64 bit versions installed using the same license. The tail rig of TSM2 isnt' necessarily useful for all tails. It presumes a tail that needs many bones.

That turned out real well! Welcome back to A:M

OK, I see it. The ultimate problem is that ghastly "balance" feature built into the AM2001 rig. Worst idea ever. It's a fake sort of averaging of the hips to the feet positions and not at all a good approximation of real "balance". Send your complaints to Rafael Anzovin who invented that. If I delete the second key on "Balance Right Foot" the drifting of the hips will stop. You may have moved it inadvertently. However, I recommend you go back to frame 0, set the User Properties "Balance" and "Balance Rigid" to 0% and then delete all the "Balance" channels in the action. Then repose anything as necessary. Posing the character's hips and feet will be far more predictable with those two "Balance" sliders set to 0. Do that at the outset for any animation you embark on with the AM2001 rig.

It's very difficult to diagnose this sort of stuff by text message. If you can post something, that will be so much more transparent.

I'm sure there's an answer but I'd have to see it. If you want to post it or send it to me at theguy @ brilliantisland.com I'll take a look.

perhaps part of it is you are trying to show her vocal vibrato with lip motion. Some people do indeed seem to open and close their mouth a bit for their vibrato but they tend to be big opera singer vibratos. I dont' know. Is there a reference clip you have of her singing that?

Guess... you are doing it in the wrong window but I'd have to see you do it.

You can change the enforcement, but I'm guessing that's not what you are talking about.

something has to be on somewhere

It's possible you have that relationship turned ON in another relationship that is ON by default.

I think they are doing too much motion... they seem over-active. "Why" should start out with an "oo" pose and stretch out from that I think the lips are closing too often or too soon sometimes. Unless you make a very distinct M, B or P sound the full closures rarely happen in singing and she doesn't say many M, B or Ps in her lines. A good exercise is to put your finger on your chin while you say the lines and feel the movement. It's really very slight.

I figured with the old television theme it should be "I Love Lucy"

Fun looking-crocodile. Or alligator. I get them confused!

Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity to explain more about 3D creation. For the moment, I recommend everyone animate and stage their action as they would otherwise. Our 3D goals for this outing don't require any major deviations from normal animating. continued... I recall you added quite a bit to the set for your BUS STOP segment but you also made it possible for the very beginning and end to plausibly match the normal look of the set. I presume you could do that again. There were lots of things about the limitations of the BUS STOP project that I wished were different, because i wanted to do something else, but I tried to engage with it for what it was and that is the nature of all group projects. I had to check my "my way or the highway" at the door and worked with the possibilities that were there to do my part. For this year's group project I wanted to do the "Thing" concept with hands coming out of a box, but that's not what we ended up with. So, I will think of something to do that fits our concept of an apartment neighborhood, even though that wasn't my first choice. I think the set we have presents enormous possibilities for interesting contributions.

In theory that would be wonderful, in practice, probably not so much. I think the more appropriate question would be: "why not have someone else render and rerender and rerender and rerender and rerender and rerender and rerender..etc etc, and oh...by the way...they also have a life". (Been there with TWO, SO). I would be willing to render for you even if it had to be done more than once. It sounds like there are other people willing to help too. If the actual Stereo setting is a problem for your computer I can create a dual camera for your chor that lets you render the left and right views separately without A:M knowing you are making stereo. In the past I have used AE to create various stereo view modes from stereo pairs. Whoever edits this project will arrange one side-by-side version of the movie in some video editing software. That one file is all Youtube needs. Also, A:M can create a basic red-blue anaglyphic render or a crosseye render if you just want quickly test the 3D effect while you are in WIP. I think you can even do this with a shaded render for a fast test. Yes. The Editor creates a movie that has the left and right views side-by-side. It looks like the side-by-side views below. From that Youtube is able to deliver any potential viewing format. Aside from what Youtube does we (meaning the person who edits the project) can also create regular 2D and various 3D formats if we want something to post on the forum. No, I only need to upload one side-by-side movie version. I'll note that if you set A:M to render to a MOV instead of an image sequence and choose "free viewing" as the 3D type it will create a a movie with side-by-side images. However, I've directed people to do their final render to an image sequence to make it possible to to fix stereo frame distance problems in post just in case they don't set it quite right at render time. I'll also note that people out there with yellow/puke glasses are exceedingly rare, but if that's all they have I'm glad we can accommodate them. True left and right views are needed to create the various display methods. All 3D formats are a way to deliver distinct left and right views to the left and right eyes. No one has to be gimmicky. My recommendation was animate as you normally would. Alfred Hitchcock made a 3D movie (Dial M for Murder) that works in 3D and 2D. It can be done. It's not a matter of how I want to watch it, it's a matter of how I want my efforts to look. You, others may not care about coloring, texture, line, composition but I do. 3D obscures all that. Here's a comparison of a regular render and the stereo left and right renders. The differences in composition and texture and line are insignificant. The people who choose to watch it in a cross-eye, interlaced or shutter glasses format will see the exact same colors i chose. If they choose a colored glasses format they will see a different color result than what i authored, but I accept that.

Everyone, see the clarification about Frame Rate in Post #3 This project is a 24fps project.

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.