robcat2075

Have you watched my "Making things stay in place" video? There's a small discussion of the curve editor there. link in my signature.

Wonderful work! I've seen things like that in "making-of" articles on the Star Wars prequels and this looks just as good. I guess they call it "3D matte painting" Very convincing effect! Was the depth map needed to make the animation? You ought to post that on the 3D Photography Forum where I sometimes post my 3D creations. Member photos>video Windows media player will play it

Mark, when you're done tweaking it could you zip it up and send it to me? theguy (at) brilliantisland.com and I'll torture test it before I kick off the project "officially".

I think you're making things too complicated for this exercise, Gene. Follow Robert's advice: Start simple, then work your way up to the complex stuff. I thought I did good Sorry , i didn't even see your bouncing ball clip there. That has several classic missteps in it that almost everyone does. Here's one... the ball bounces up from the ground, moves in a straight line to its peak, then moves in a straight line down again to the ground. A real bouncing ball will never glide in a straight line like that. Watching this I can see the fundamental problem, you're either not using the curve editor or not using it right. That's another reason we start with Bouncing ball, because it's a chance to start using the curve editor (there's no way to really do the exercise without getting into the curve editor) with the fewest other complicating factors. When i get some other A:M things behind me ( I have a freelance job that needs to get going, I need to get the forum project started, I need do edits on TWO, I need to do stuff for SO) I can look at putting some lessons together on this.

The Stuff file isn't an installer. Whether you can run v14 depends on what CD you have. I don't have a CD that runs V14. My Yeti CD runs v13. The Yeti CD ran some v14 betas but not the release version. I think you need one of the OZ CDs to run v14. I don't have one of those so I don't know which file will work with those.

ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/windows/ There really are no "update" files. Every installer is a full working version that doesn't need a previous version installed. If you install a web version, save the master0.lic file to simplify reinstalling it later.

For your first bouncing ball, just do a vertically bouncing ball, no left to right, no squetch, just a bouncing ball.

Yup, we definitely need to get you rebooted on this body mechanics stuff from the beginning.

yes. Because... That is what this premise is about. Other premises are not bad, but if I'm the one who's going to have to make everyone's clip fit together, I like the way this premise has "fits together" built into it. Also by using the same set, we keep it about the character animation. Clips will fit together vastly better than "Pass the ball" and yet everyone still has much freedom to so what they want to do.

Can you weather the sidewalk and road surfaces so they don't look so uniform? The bench looks nicely aged. Maybe some chips and cracks and discoloration?

I think we'll probably do the bus stop premise. I think it will be easiest for everyone to do something with.

looks cool. I'd say say the shapes that appear around 4-6 seconds need some glints or highlights to look less flat.

I agree. Now comes the essay part... why does that one show mass and force better?

Try this... Both of these animations start and end in the same place but which one suggests more mass and force in the movement? PushA.mov PushB.mov

Watching that has given me a small epiphany about why some things show force and others don't even though they are very similar in appearance. Now to figure out how to explain it...

If you click on one of those large nulls they should be highlighted in the PWS so you can at least identify them. Looks like the hip and foot nulls have gigantism.

That's getting better.

I'm kind of liking the bus stop idea. But here's a mock up of how the Next Room thing works. This shows two individual clips separately and then edited together as they would be in the final conglomeration. RoomSwitch.mov The camera and characters can do anything in the middle as long as the intro and outro moves aren't changed. We never see the characters open the door so that would never need to be animated.

Count me in for such exercises if it happens...I could really use it. The major thing in the way of this endeavor is that I still haven't found a screen capture workflow that works first time, every time, captures both video and audio simultaneously in the same app and doesn't need to be recompressed after it's done.

I'm not sold on any scheme yet. The problem with the room is the time involved in getting from left to right. The problem with the park bench is that the scene needs to be totally vacated between each person's segment.

That 's not a camera view. I'm just showing what the shape of the room might be. If we are doing "next room" the side walls are needed to block out the previous and next room during the camera moves. The right side of the room needs to be able to match up to a copy of the left side of the room. There is no premise that is everyone's first choice, but "next room" has some mechanical advantages. Still, it's not final yet.

Here's a proposed room. Each person could decorate and light it however they wanted. But I'm not sure what proportions the room should have. If it's quite wide there may be trouble getting the action from one side to another in a reasonable time. If it's quite narrow it will seem claustrophobic. Anyone got ideas on a default lighting scheme? Something that will render fast but look nice and look "indoors"

I agree. I think constraints and guidelines are good, but at some point it might get a bit in the way. Yes. The more a person has to get right, the more likely they are to not get it all right. When we did the Stereoscopic AniJam I thought I had everything explained perfectly but only about half the people who tried got anything done.

Here's an idea that might help bind it all together... The character that enters the room is not the character we follow out of the room. Character A enters the room... something happens in the room... and then Character B (who was already in the room) leaves. If you want to use your own character you still can but he's part of that middle something and isn't the character entering or leaving. We set up a series of character pairs in advance like this Thom, Shaggy Shaggy, Rabbit Rabbit, Knight Knight, Lady Goodbody and so on... Everyone claims one pair at the outset and then we can edit the segments together by matching up the leaving-->entering characters. Maybe. I was thinking people might want to post their wips for help. We might make that optional.

Well, an attempt to make a simple screencam crit turns into an all-day ordeal trying to figure out why my screencam doesn't work and my Quicktime doesn't work and my FTP doesn't work. anyway... Body mechanics is the thing most people trying animation get wrong. It's very hard to teach. Even AnimatonMentor hasn't figured out a magic bullet for that. When I was there students either got it or they didn't and no amount of critting seemed to change that. I've made some comments here. I couldn't' get Quicktime to re compress it so it's absurdly large (but worth every hour you'll spend downloading it ) heavy push crit It also has some sound drop outs so not every sentence will make sense. Heavy push is a complex thing, and there are many overlapping issues that make it hard to point to one thing at a time to fix. If you really want to do body mechanics you should start with "bouncing ball". Body mechanics is all about showing force and mass and inertia and bouncing ball boils that down to the just that. That's why bouncing ball is the atom of character animation that every thing else is built on. Animators who don't get bouncing ball really never get it. If you're interested maybe we could make a small curriculum of a few exercises out of it and rope in a few other people who are looking for the same thing.