robcat2075

Well, you got two months. Keep thinking about it.

My first inclination is to go back to the last saved version of the PRJ that rendered right and start hunting for differences.

Don't do that unless you already have it. I don't' know that this will solve your problem, It would just be an easy experiment to try if you had it already. How big is the file?

JPGS because they're going to send them to me and it has to be feasible for them to upload and for me to down load. JPGs because the visible difference is negligible. JPGs because the final compression on Youtube or DVD will far surpass any damage that JPG will do. JPGS because the plan is to render the scene without need for further compositing. (I'm going to composite everyone's background, character and shadow pass? Nope) What are the chances of everyone getting that right? A character pass and a shadow pass. Besides, the set has to be there for the AO to work on the characters. The objects in the set are what "occludes" the "ambient" light. The hedge and sky are front projected already. Render time for their imagery is minimal. The ground plane has to be there to there to catch shadows (and cast occlusion) even if you were going to render the characters separately to composite on an image later. Total render time would not be significantly different. For most users, total frustration time would be hugely larger, particularly since most will not be able to test out any compositing. Those would be the items. But glad to see you back Bruce! I expect to see a fabulous entry from you. (Without any pee, of course)

Quat is the default. Are you sure you haven't turned the "A" key off?

For some reason that looks like Bill Clinton and Bob Dole to me. Why is so much of the set black?

Freaky! (I'm not sure I could follow the plot, but interesting none-the-less)

I think we'll make 480x854 an option. That matches YouTube and DVD res. I can edit at that res and I can up-res any that are at 720x405. Someone try a 480x854 render and see if the camera rotoscope is still matching the set.

One easy check in a basic walk... is the body moving forward at a consistent speed? Frame after frame after frame after frame... It almost always should. Is yours?

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.