robcat2075

Yup, "Flatshaded" was what I should have said.

Has a brief test run been done yet with perhaps three people?

An object set to be the same as the background color and set to 100% ambiance would appear the same as an object that showed the background color through it. No?

So the object itself is basically a silhouette moving across the scene and inside it shows only... the background color?

I didn't catch the animations you posted. I like the reveal of the wings! I think the blue boxes have to do with how many posts you've made.

Of course, your drivers are actually up to date, right?

Could you post the specifics of what you had to change in a thread here? i know another user who was stuck on that.

thanks for the tips! How about a special deal... $79 for one year? Welcome back! I think i just saw your birthday on the bottom of the forum a few days ago and thought," haven't seen that name in a long time."

Was there actually a picture posted with numbers? i dont' see one.

You can get the tech ref free as a pdf on line: ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/docs/ It is mostly accurate, it lacks coverage of a few newer features. Ask on the forum if you get stuck.

If you're starting to animate I recommend you watch my "Keyframing Basics" video, found in my signature link.

The window won't be necessary for any one doing their shot. Only in the opening sequence will such a thing be needed.

The "It just crashes all the time" crashes suggest a video card driver problem.

I like Knight. He has fairly normal human proportions, unlike Thom or Shaggy he has identifiable hips and torso and the AM2001 rig in him is adequate for basic purposes. The upgrade I'd make to him is to re-rig him with TSM2

Serendipitously, there's an effort to update the beginner documentation and you may find the first (and only , so far) installment: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=358113

I'm pretty sure people have been using syntheyes or some other app to do motion tracking for A:M for quite a while. I know I've see examples here. Interaction with other apps? A:M has always been sold and promoted as an end-to-end pipeline for narrative character animation without needing to step out to some other app to do part of it. That is what it is designed and developed for. Outside of that purpose you need to study whether A:M and whatever other app you need to use have enough common elements to exchange assets. I know nothing of writing apps for iPhone so I can't tell you either way if A:M is useful for you. Image formats are pretty much universal. OBJ export from A:M seems to work well for people. Advanced users have animated in A:M and exported with MDD to render in other software when they needed to.

Yes, the camera can zoom in or out to whatever is needed. The camera view is a view through binoculars.

Here's the actual view point from the film. This appears slightly lower than the third story of the building on the other side. Here's a previous view from Mark. This is slightly more to the left of center and a bit higher. I think I prefer this not-exactly-centered viewpoint over the one in the film which looks rather flat. Right of center might be an option to try too. It's not necessary to perch the camera on an actual part of the set, we can hang it from an appropriate point in space.

Here's my view on this... We do need to find a chosen place for the camera.. There are two kind of shots n Rear Window: -the things we see thru the eyes of Jimmy Stewart. These are all from the same point of view on the set (or cheated to fool us into thinking they are) because... this conforms to the premise that we are seeing with the same limitations that Jimmy Stewart has: He's stuck in that one room. -everything else. The camera is not looking thru the eyes of Jimmy Stewart. It's showing him in his apartment and what goes on there. The camera is placed wherever it needs to be to show a detail Our short is made up almost entirely of the first kind. The camera can restrict its view one window or use a wide angle to show more of the set but it doesn't move to a different vantage point. The camera can pan around the set but it doesn't move on a dolly to see from a new location. We need the second kind of shot hardly at all. Perhaps one at the start to establish the premise of a charter looking out a window. Possibly other cutaways like it might be needed if two segments come back that absolutely can not be transitioned between with a piece of camera view, but hopefully a camera transition can always be engineered. We won't have a developing plot like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" does. We are borrowing the technical concept of unifying random events by making them all be seen by one observer. Since we are doing a short and not a feature we can strive to make it appear to be literally one continuous shot and not have to cheat it with with cutaways like Hitchcock has to. We need a camera location that is more like the one in the film, centrally located and few stories high so that the whole set can be explored from that one vantage point. It does not need to be in some window that exists in the set. If you want, I can do the first establishing sequence that sets up the premise and makes it look like we're in a building across from the set and we wont' need to build a whole new building on the set just for that purpose.

Just give us your non-binding opinion of what you regard as the most felicitous view.

Welcome back to A:M! A:M has been dramatically more stable since about v11 and crashes are quite rare now. I use the PC version but the Mac users here seem to be happy with it too. There are no more "upgrades" but you can buy the one-year license version for $79. It is locked to the one computer you install it on but you don't need a CD in the drive anymore to start A:M. After one year, it expires and you buy another one.

Hey mark, what would you pick as the ideal camera viewpoint?

None of those look like they have a big rectangle on them, so it's not the bitmap itself. Next guess, I'd go into the decals folder and "recall" the position of each one and see if perhaps they are missing some portion of the mesh. or... Most of the dress is semitransparent? Does the Group that has that transparency setting in it not include those patches at the back? They would be easy to add back in.

First step.... just look at the decal. Does it have that on it? If it does then it's a simple matter to paint over it, save a new version and point the model to that instead of the original.

I missed that one. Wonderful work!