robcat2075

Is it possible you are exporting your wav file in some odd bit rate... bit depth... integer high low order... something? Do you have QT Pro? try re exporting your wav from QT Pro to another wav. You could always download the installer on one machine and carry the file over to the other machine.

Is there a reason not to be using the latest update? V15j+ free update. ??

Thought about it... it's 3X the render time and HD Youtubes take a long time to buffer. Maybe going up to 480p (854x480) could be optional. We can think about it.

In either case I think you'll need to edit the hair material to undo the incandescent white look it's getting.

In the objects folder expand "OneLight" until you get to "Light1" and increase the intensity to... 15% or 20% maybe.

Hey, Gerry... just as an experiment... import this chor into the chor you have ( on the chor>import>Choreography), turn "Global Ambiance type" to None in the chor properties, turn AO off when you go to render and render with 5 passes and see what the render time is. AODome.cho This is unofficial and unapproved... it's just to test.

My dad shot lots of Kodachrome slides in the 50's and 60's and 70's. And he'd set up the projector and we'd sit thru slide shows of our various trips. I'm impressed he got the exposure right so often since he was always shooting on the run with a manual camera and no light meter. He was a chemist for 3M and every now and then they'd come up with their own slide film but he was always disgusted with it when he tried it. He always said the brand name "Kodachrome", never just "slide film". When he made the jump to print film in the 70's he was always an unhappy customer, frequently bringing things back to be reprinted. I'm not sure if he's aware Kodachrome is being discontinued. I'll have to try that out on him next time he calls.

It's actually set in the PRJ properties, but double check to make sure.

That black robe could use some sort of an edge texture or backlight to show it's shape a bit more

Remember you can key any bone anywhere it needs to be at any time. Just because a rig doesn't have a heel lifter, you can still pose the character so the heel looks lifted. But if I were going to do much animation with a character I'd re rig it with a more capable rig like TSM2.

hmmm. That's asking for trouble I think.

Yes. In your action you can measure how far forward the character moved. Use that as a basis for eye balling it. Easy to do since youcan scrub the chor in real time to look for jumps. In the main chor action. The marching band scene in TWO did this for all the band members. 2_01_80? (be warned that it takes about an hour to load on my PC. YOu'll need to hide all but a few characters and change them to bounding box mode to scrub anything) You might try dropping one marching band winkie in a chor There were two aspects to the idea. You might have gotten the first, but I'll just repeat/restate that. It could be done but the current copy/paste + thoughtful brain power can get the same result so it's unlikely thei feature will be implemented. As Martin woudl say it's possible like going to Mars is possible. Ultimately the complications of canned walk cycles are good reasons to animate walks directly. At AnimationMentor the lecture on walks began with a clip of every animator they knew saying how much they hated doing walks. So it's not a trivial thing. But the walk cycle is more trouble than it's worth if you need to do things besides walk.

I suppose one way to find the direction of a spline is to attach something to it with a path constraint and see where it goes as you increase the ease from 0% to 100%

You can completely, totally, absolutely, positively save yourself time and trouble by animating your walks directly just like any other character motion. Neither of those characters has many steps to take anyway. Have you watched the vid in my signature on blocking out walks? Watch that. Richard Williams goes thru it all in his book too.... Key frame the heel contact poses first ... then keyframe the passing poses between those...then keyframe the breakdowns between those... once you understand the motion of two steps it's easy to make all the other steps. And if you don't understand the motion of two steps what are the chances your walkcycle is going to be worth repeating anyway?

I'm doubtful but can you show an example of a decal reacting to this? I'm not sure about this either. It seems to be the spline that is closest to the "back" of the model but not always. If you look at the UV map view after you apply a cylindrical decal you can see some strange choices about where the split happens, but somehow it all fits together in the render. Note that the Repeat X value for a Cylindrical or Spherical decal needs to be 3 to wrap the decal once around the model.

For characters, I just place the model bone once at the beginning of the scene to get the character in the right area and leave it. After that everything is posing the character parts There has to be some structure in the model that all else is a child of. In A:M it's the model bone.

Our goal is to use as few keyframes a possible and manage the interpolation inbetween, but a lot of times you just gotta go in and nail something down where it needs to be nailed down.

You certainly may. Or you can keep it top secret, whatever you feel will get you the best result.

I like that bird. Is he new? Or did I see him on the ark?

We have that option... animate the forward moving cycle and jump the model bone forward at the start of every new cycle. This is easy. Set the interpolation of the channel from foot contact to foot lift to be "linear" What do you mean by "wherever you wanted"? I'll disagree with that. There's about 10 basic ways ( and a zillion variations ) for a computer to interpolate motion between two keyframes; in a walk (and in all character animation) the "way" that needs to be used is different for each pair of keyframes. There's no way for A:M ( or Maya or Softimage or 3DS or any other app) to know what choice to make. A:M only knows it's moving bones around. YOU are the one who knows those bones represent human body parts and you need to make those interpolation choices for A:M. In hand drawn animation the "Animator" would draw the key frames and the "inbetweener" would fill in the missing frames. But the Animator had to explain the interpolation in every case to the Inbetweener. Richard Williams spend a lot of pages discussing what would go wrong when an Animator just assumed the Inbetweener would get it right. (He doesn't call it Interpolation, but that's what the Inbetweener is doing) He's not wasting your time with those inbetweener stories, they are absolutely relevant to CG, because... In CG, A:M is your Inbetweener. If you manage it right you get great results. I f you leave it to do the default each time, you won't.

Good question. It's possible the bus may zip by very fast sometimes so not much idle time may be needed. Let's say give your scene about an extra second on each end. Ideally you wont' have your characters frozen but they'll be doing some simple moving hold thing. Consider also that the right side will be the first revealed when the bus departs and first covered when the bus arrives.

Test your render time early and plan ahead for whatever that is!

You've got more power than I do!

It looks too fast partly because your animating 12 frame steps but rendering at 30 fps animate at 24 fps. Almost all animation uses that convention. He's also stepping too far for a casual walk. I know i've said this: And Richard Williams shows it in numerous diagrams. The body should be heading DOWN thru the heel contact. If it's higher on the next frame that is not going down, that is going up. Look at the diagram on pg 102 (my edition), the one labeled "useless fact" at the top. Does the body go down or up after the heel contact? he's showing you exactly what to do... but you gotta do it. you jump the model bone forward if you intend to use this as a cycle. Or... just animate more steps forward.

Rule 11) By submitting your entry you are saying it's ok for us to use it and add it to the pile and put the whole thing on the web. For anyone incorporating sound in their work... a) It's sound you have the rights to. No commercial music or sound tracks. b ) I'll add directions later on how to send your audiotrack so it can be put in synch with your image series