robcat2075

Question for someone who really knows the set.... What do we have to key to capture the state of every light and whatever else is affecting the appearance of the set? Is it ALL run by pose sliders?

I am baffled by the idea that the set and fixed camera location are limiting. I've got more ideas for things to do on this set that will be perfectly visible from a fixed camera location than I'll ever have time animate. What is it that someone is proposing to do that requires flying that camera around the set? The BUS STOP scenario was extremely limited, you couldn't even zoom or pan the camera and people still came up with lots of good ideas.

I dont' see a pic.

Also... in the PWS you can drag one model onto another to add it to the second model.

solution for now... These long frames are blank frames? And for some reason you need these frames in the footage? Render the whole thing to targas in shaded mode first. Then just render the frames where the object appears in Final mode. You can set a custom range of frames in render options. In your editor make the footage invisible where ever the shaded frames still show.

Penthouse = that glass thing? If visibility into that is an issue we could just take out every other vertical slat and that would improve the optics as well as swinging the camera across from it.

Here's a test PRJ I just made in v13 VaseTest.prj A vase travels from off screen to on screen to off screen. It took 5 seconds to render 30 frames to TGAs with alpha. That's my long way of saying i can't reproduce that problem based on what i know so far. There must be something more specific about your PRJ.

On SVN... I'm thinking we should not use it at all. It's bit too complicated for an "anyone can play" project like this and even though it could be explained you'd likely spend a lot of time doing it and it might be the initial barrier that stops some people from trying at all. Posting the ZIP on the forum makes it very accessible and email and DropBox are good enough for returning work.

Definitely keep us posted on your progress and the solutions you find along the way.

I think the nose looks rather more pinched than the reference photo?

Are there any nominees for a better prime camera spot than the one in the set now? My feeling about some of the windows not being ideal is... use a window that is! Windows could be reused, no?

Can you make a screen cam of this happening? Resize A:m so it's not covering the entire screen and then capture Just A:M.

That is indeed my expectation of how it would work except for the camera physically flying over to the windows. Ideally every shot could edit right to the next one, but that's unlikely so the character can be brought back to establish some major change.

When i make the changes to the "Shortcut to Material" that appears under the Bones folder, the keyframes get made in a accompanying "Shortcut to material" that is in the Choreography Action and those survive a save. But I'm having trouble finding a parameter to change that makes an obvious visual difference so I'm not sure if this is working right or not. I'm wondering what causes those "Shortcut to Materials" that have a question mark behind the gear icon. Those have been a problem before.

I'm not trying to irritate anyone with my explanation of gravity and squetch on bouncing balls, but if I'm giving comments on gravity and squetch I'll likely do it in the framework that made it all make sense for me and gave me the most information to carry forward to other animation that is not bouncing balls. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'd rather have the camera in one spot. Is there a better spot to put it so the most windows are most visible? I figure that no matter where you put it some thing will be not ideal. But maybe there's a better spot?

Can you tell me exactly what to try to set in the Chor ? I could try it in v17

It's not possible to make these projects all things to all people. Strong boundaries make for stronger projects. I'm sorry that's a deal killer for you. Hope you'll change your mind. There are lots of other places to stage interesting things besides in a window. I'll also note that those were "my" rules.. part of my offer to figure out how to engineer the transitions between what will still be very non-matching segments. If you want to commit to that task instead, Bruce...? But if I'm going to do it I want to frame it so that there's a real good chance it's do-able.

Even better!

that's quite successful! i suppose one could soften it by using an edge gradient.

I think you should get a small crew of people who know their sh*t and do a two-minute trailer. Not a ten minute trailer, a two minute trailer. Start out with that very narrow focus.

Your point is that explaining the deformation in terms of real-world mass muddies the concept because it's really about stylization. I disagree. I think my way of explaining it terms of real world mass gives the student the best chance to take out of this exercise insight that can be carried forward to the more complicated cases of moving things around. Most character animation doesn't involve things bouncing. It always involves moving masses around. I want the new animator to start thinking about those masses as soon as possible. Once you understand how they move you will know where to exaggerate that motion for stylized effect. At AnimationMentor I saw a lot of fellow students NOT get body mechanics and I think it was because school was dealing in abstracted rules like "it looks better for objects to move in arcs" rather than real explanations like "objects move in arcs because the have mass and can't change direction instantly" or "a hand moves in arcs because it's swinging on the end of a bone and not moving by itself." (After two quarters the faculty knew they weren't getting body mechanics across, but they were people who intuitively understood motion and not quite able to explain how they understood it.)

I think I said "imagine" it as made of separate molecules. I'm pretty sure I didn't mention molecular energy. I could have said imagine it as separate pieces of pigskin sewn together, or imagine it as separate plastic pellets melted and vacuformed together in a ball shape or imagine it as separate spoonfuls of jello in a containing plastic bag... All of those parts, even the molecules, have inertia and momentum. When the bottom of the ball contacts the ground, the molecules or pigskin or pellets or jellos at the top of the ball do not instantly halt when bottom does because they are only remotely connected to the bottom. Their inertia makes them continue down. Neither do they instantly fling themselves down just because the bottom of the ball has contacted the ground. The inertia that makes them continues down after the bottom of the ball has stopped also prevents them from suddenly zooming down faster than they had before (and there's no force in this bouncing ball situation that is even trying to make them do this). Of course all these molecules or skins or pellets are connected to each other (not so much the jellos) and those connections get stretched until they can't stretch any more and the ball has to stop squashing and start returning to its original shape. If that return is fast enough, the molecules or pellets or skins at the top get enough momentum to not only carry themselves higher but also eventually yank their loosely connected fellow traveling molecules or pellets or skins at the bottom of the ball with them. All of this is to get the animator away from thinking of the model as a rigid shell that deforms itself when it is near the ground simply because we have a slider to do that or because there's a diagram in Preston Blair that says that and start thinking of it as an real object that he needs to show is shaped and moved by the forces of inertia and momentum (and obstruction from other objects like the ground).

All this talk of squash and stretch ans overlap has very little reality with actual balls. Real balls hardly ever squash and stretch and overlap to the point we see it like we do in cartoons. However, other things in real life DO squash and stretch and overlap very noticeably, but those objects are very complicated to maneuver for a beginner and present too many intersecting issues simultaneously. Take a look at this guy's rhumba. He doesn't get body mechanics and he can't move mass plausibly on the screen. There's no way to even usefully critique that because there's just too much going wrong from the very first frame to ever just tweak it in to rightness. It's painfully obvious from watching that and his other 11sec entries that he doesn't know how to move mass onscreen without it looking fake and awkward. I'll bet you a dollar he's never done a decent bouncing ball. He really needs to be starting out with a far simpler case and a develop a good eye for moving simple things around before he leaps to full human bodies. As is true of us all. So we start out with a rigid bouncing ball just to get "falling" right and then move to a ball given an exaggerated combination of floppiness and elasticity so we can practice with managing a deformable shape in a very simple case. Then we move on to a little bit more.

At the beginning, we're not doing "personality balls" we're learning to plausibly move mass on screen and the ball is our simplest case to practice with. Personality comes later. Poor body mechanics is the hallmark of poor character animation and good body mechanics starts with being able to plausibly move masses on the screen.