robcat2075

Lot of great looking work here, I'm glad you brought this thread back.

Cute bedbug! In case anyone missed it the Doo-Sabin subdivision in Wings does a good job of eliminating most topology problems in polygon models before import into A:M. Some manual edits still needed.

I hate it when TV shows split the screen to run promos while the credits are scrolling, but on the other hand... you got books to sell! If the ordering info is small enough you might put it in a bottom third and run the credits on the top two thirds.

I haven't peeked yet because I want to see the whole thing in it's intended state. Yes, don't be shy about the ordering info. Make sure they catch it.

On the suit smudges i'd suggest making them grainier and not so blurry so they look more like dirt.

That's a good solution. Might even be good use for mocap if you had a mo-capture device.

Where it says "save"... After you have set all the setting you want to set use that button to save those settings as a preset. post that file here so we can load what you are setting.

Save a Render Preset from the render dialog after you've made all your settings and post it here . Right now there's no multipass turned on in that chor and that's got to be part of the process, right?

Full across-the street-buildings may not be needed at all it we introduce Thom properly. I think Mark has the essential idea going, it just needs some variety added to it like I commented earlier. I think he's pursuing that. Let's see what his next iteration looks like.

Many people who use their own creations will be hesitant to submit a full chor with characters. Make it known at the outset that part of their participation will be to revisit their work to render these transition frames, make them do it for you. You'll have lots to do none-the-less.

My preference is that, from the side view, the origin of the thigh bones and the origin of the hips/pelvis/spine appear to be at the same point. That way it's possible to tilt the pelvis forward and back without moving the legs. In real life spines are curved, in CG people tend to simplify by making them straight. The front to back placement of your spine depends on where the mesh of your character is, it doesn't have to be at zero.

I'd expect it to. I don't recall whether iit did or didn't in my vid. Possibly I deleted the extras when the cam was off?

They can follow whatever the shape of the leg is. In your case that looks straight up and down from the side but a little tilted inward from the front. I eyeballed it but you can look from the top to get the best view for such a bone.

There's that. Most windows will not be seen at a straight-on angle where that would work. Also, not every thing may happen within the frame of a window. a character may be lean out of the window, may be on the balcony, may be down on the street or in a doorway.

Here's a solution for problem #2 Let's say Nancy, Robert, Gene, Matt and dblhelix all say they are going to do a segment. Each stakes a claim on a location in the set and does their segment. In addition to submitting their rendered footage, they save and submit a chor that has just their camera keyframes in it. Paul, our producer, looks at all the submitted segments and decides that the most felicitous order is Matt, Gene, Robert, dblhelix, Nancy. Paul takes the ending camera keyframe from Matt and the starting keyframe from Gene and pastes them into a new chor that will move the camera from Matt's last position to Gene's starting position. Let's say the move lasts one second. He sends this chor to both Matt and Gene. Matt uses it to render 12 more frames after the end of his animation (the camera swinging away from his characters) and Gene uses it to render 12 frames before the start of his animaiton (the camera continuing to swing over to his characters.) Matt and Gene send their additional frames to Paul. In theory they should hook up exactly. Paul does this for each segment pairing. Paul will need to plan the order of segments so that there is enough distance between each one that at the midpoint of the swing neither segments' characters are visible. Or if he really wants to follow a segment with one that is right next door, he coudl animate the camera motion to temporarily search to some other location in the set before ti reaches it's goal. What if one of the segment makers doesn't render their additional transition frames? Then an insert cut back to voyeur Thom could be used as a transition

We have two problems to solve... 1) making sure everyone isn't using the same 2 or three windows out of the 20+ possibilities. We might avoid that by having people claim a window, first-come-first-served style, and somewhere record windows as "taken" so everyone knows. There is the problem that some people will claim a window and not get a segment finished but we could either live with that or allow some light overlap on the claims if there are more people wanting to play than there are windows available. 2) how to make it possible to transition the binocular view from any window to any window without having to insert a cut back to Thom every time. We could fix the order in advance by assigning it as participants come in, but that doesn't cover the likely hood that some will drop out. It's also likely that the most effective order for the segments will only be apparent after they are all submitted and the editor can assess them.

The one to start with is the smoke and fire tut in TAoA:M. Have you done that ?

Welcome to the A:M forum! When you have questions... someone here has an answer. Perhaps it can be!

So we need to think of a way to make continuous transition work without looking like too much of a cheat and without needing to cut back to Thom every single time.

that's why i called it "the Train Problem"

One potential transitional device would be to cut back to our Voyeur (Thom?) briefly to show him shifting his binoculars to a new view, then cut to the new segment, as they do sometimes in "Rear Window" But i would prefer to be able to do it as a seemingly continuous scene, much like BUS STOP was. Or perhaps cut back to Thom just a few times to break it up a little.

Great crackly material, John! Here's my attempt using a spherical combiner to limit John's crackly material. I transplanted (with a text editor) John's material into the first node of a spherical combiner. I sized Ring1 to make the center area big enough and then sized ring2 to extend the rest of theway past the edge of the object. Spherical scale Y is set to 0 to make it form concentric vertical cylinders rather than concentric spheres. testmat3.prj If you need an irregular area affected by the crackly thing, however, a decal approach is easier.

The spherical combiner can make, for example, a black circle in a white area. It can also make a soft edge to that. If you changed the black attribute to be like the crack material and change the white material to be all default with nothing set it will make the crack material fade out to the edge of what was the black circle and leave everything else to be whatever it was before the material was applied.

remember not to have a bent leg at the heel contact when you're walking.

Regrettably, the TSM2 plugins do not work on the current MacOS. Hash would need to get the source code to fix them for current MacOS and Anzovin hasn't released it. They do work for 32-bit A:M on Windows Other rigging options for mac users would be any of the other premade rigs (read the instructions and follow them) in the "featured Rigs" sub forum.