robcat2075

That would be fabulous! If something appears on my wishlist, then i don't have it yet. You can change the thread title, if you edit the first post.

I did some more experimenting. I made a set of gray bars in Photoshop It has five bars filled with gray values from top to bottom of 255, 192,128,64 and 0. On the right side I added small intermediate bars. The red numbers are the value you'd get if you sampled the original image with the eyedropper in Photoshop. On my (uncalibrated) monitor the grays bars seem evenly distributed in brightness from white to black. The image also has a stripe of 50% transparency down the middle in the alpha channel. I exported that in five formats and applied them to white and black surfaces in A:M. The TGA decals render exactly as I would expect. The grays appear exactly as they did in photoshop and the alpha is handled as I would expect. If I take this render back into PS and sample the grays they are exactly the numbers I would expect. So far, so good? The JPGs also show correct grays. JPG doesn't handle alpha channels so the transparent stripe is gone. The PNG is much brighter in A:M than it was in PS. I've read that PNGs have a gamma change of 2.2 applied to them. PS seems to compensate for this when I reload the PNG into PS, but A:M seems to take the saved values literally and doesn't compensate. PS doesn't translate alpha channel transparency properly when writing PNGs so that is gone in the A:M decal. When I save an EXR image from PS it presents me with a dialog box saying it will apply the inverse of the gamma setting to the image. The default is 2.2. The decal with that inverse of 2.2 on it loads and displays much darker in A:M than the way it appears in Photoshop. If I save my image to EXR with that gamma setting changed to 1.0, the resulting decal displays with correct grays in A:M, matching the result of the TGA and the JPG. However, notice the 50% transparent stripe down the middle isn't correct on either of the EXR decals. I don't know if this is a problem with the way PS writes the alpha channel or if it is a problem with the way A:M interprets the alpha channel.

Yes. This is what you are supposed to see. So when I create a decal in Photoshop ( with my "Color Management Off") I'm working in linear workflow, right? And when I use that in A:M, A:M is working in linear color space, right? And when I render in A:M... I should leave Gamma>Value set to 1? To me that sounds like linear color space and this is what I've been doing all along and the results have looked right.

A spherical material might work well too.

Almost everything in A:M has "properties" Make a new model and it has many default properties you can see by selecting the model in the "Objects " folder and then looking in the Properties window. You an change those default props. ForEx, you can change the surface color from white to red or the surface transparency from 0 to 50% If you make a group in that model it gets default props too, but most will be "not Set". Group props overide Object Props but if they are "not set" they let the Object prop for that thing pass thru. If my Object surface color is set to red and a group on that model has surface color "not set" then the surface in that group will still appear red. But if the group's surfColor is set to green then the part of that model in that group will be green, everything not in that group will still be red. If I had dropped a Material on that object that set "surface color" to yellow, that would override the Object's red surface color but not the Group's green surface color. Any parameter set at the group level will override a parameter set at the object level, even in if it was a Material at the object level that was controlling the parameter. However, If I had instead dropped that Yellow Material on the Group, that would override the group's Green setting with the Material's Yellow setting. The part o the Object not in that group would still be its original Red color. That Yellow Material has properties too. If I go up to the Materials folder and edit that color setting from yellow to purple, the Group that has that material on it will change to Purple as will any other models or groups that have that Material working on them. if I click on the Material where it appears under the Group (really a "shortcut to") I will see properties in the Properties window that look just like the Properties I saw when i was editing the Material in the Material folder. If I edit the Yellow to Purple here it will only change the one instance of the material on this group. The original material in the Materials folder still has its original Yellow setting and anywhere else it is used it still makes Yellow. When we put that Object in a chor we get yet another layer of ability to over ride. When you "Show More than Drivers" you can see all the groups and materials the object has and you can fool with the parameters again in yet anothe set of property windows that initially look just like the property windows you saw at the group or object level. Why would you want to do this in the chor? Because in the chor you can change these settings over time. You could animate the material to change from Yellow to Purple to Green. You could animate a property that hadn't' been set at all in the object previously like the XYZ position of a material on a group So ... Objects have properties Materials have properties Materials properties override Object properties Group Properties overrides Material on Object properties Material on Group overrides Group properties You can change any of these in the chor, it won't change the original saved model or material. The different kinds of maps don't usually have priority over each other since they control different surface attributes. One exception is you can't have a displacement map and a bump map since displacement maps steal the bump map shading process.

Since there are no linear color space display devices ( not in wide use) doesn't this mean all your work looks "wrong" until you do that the last conversion? I have Photoshop set to "Color Management Off" which sets the "working space" to "sRGB". My 128,128,128 grays appear as proper middle grays in this set up. Is that not what I'm supposed to see?

Good looking lightning bolt! I agree that finding some way to make it pulse from the root to the tips is worth investigating.

If she has a prop it gives you natural reasons to not do symmetrical poses. And whatever the prop is it adds a hint of back-story to her. A cup of coffee, an ipod, a book, a microscope... any of them could be there and each of them would suggest something different about her and her monologue.

It's one of those benches they put at bus stops so you can't sleep on it. Looks cool, whatever it is.

My inclination is to hit the accents in speech with head and body motion rather than try to do it with the lips. I feel that head motion also reduces the look of a static head with a jaw flapping at the bottom. But head nods and twitches are hard to do well and that tactic can get old too.

The environment map solution will work in many situations. If you absolutely need accurate, interacting reflections from the scene, a little picking and choosing may be needed. To get just the central object you will need to turn off everything except that object when you render. But then I expect you wont' get the reflections on it you need. So... Render it once, full scene (with alpha). this gets you your object, the surroundings and the reflections of the surroundings and the alpha you dont' want. then do another render of just the object with alpha ON. This will get the alpha shape you really want. Then in Photoshop (or any paint app that lets you edit alpha channels), copy the alpha from the second render onto the alpha of the first. Resave the first AfterEffects can also do this trick of using the alpha for one source as the alpha for a second source, but I forget the exact steps. It may even be possible to do this in A:M Composite. There is a Post effect called "Channel Select" that gives you access to the R, G, B or alpha channel of an image. I haven't investigated that much.

I think the body language is mostly working although my suggestion would be to not do such a long shot with only hand gestures. Find something else for her to be doing even if it's only handling a cup of coffee while she's talking. The mouth shapes often seem like too much too fast. A lot of syllables in speech don't really need a complete mouthshape change. In real life our mouthshapes are very indistinct I picked out a few here... a, b, c, and e seem overly stretched and an over complicated shape. b and c are a bit odd with the mouth so open while the teeth are closed I think a lot of people tend to bring the mouth corners too high for smile poses like in d. I find good smiles hard to do on most characters. In general they are all very big even when she's not talking loudly and when she gets to a spot where she really is shouting like in f she ends up with a smaller mouth than when she was talking at a lower level. the other thing that bothers me is the lips are very black and the whole arrangement starts to hint of a moustache and goatee rather than lips. The arm pose in g is called the "W" pose and most animators will regard that as a cliche to be avoided. You only do it once though. The hand are rather stiff ,as you note. Avoid poses where the fingers form a flat plane with the palm of the hand like in a and d and e. Animators call those "paddle hands". (animators seem to like to give disparaging titles to things). Avoid poses where the hands make a straight line with the arm. Avoid poses where the fingers sit evenly spaced like in a, b and e The fist poses in f and h and are very squarish, like in 1 below. Try something like 2.

As i understand it, 8 bits represents values from 0 (black) to 1(full white) in 256 steps 16 or 32 bit integers still represent 0 to 1 but with more steps. but floating point can represent values greater than 1.0 so, for example, your HDRI global illumination map can make the image of the white sun be much brighter than a white cloud. I think floating point can also do negative values although I can't think of a use for that.

Thanks for the lo-res. That looks good!

This Technical Introduction to OpenEXR covers the various compression options available in OpenEXR.

you could composite several blurs of different length to get a more diminishing effect on the tail.

Composite a multipass frame with 100% motion blur with a non-motionblur frame. The non-blur frame must be the frame after the mo-blurred frame.

OpenEXR is A:M's high dynamic range format. It is a floating point format. All the others are conventional 8 bit formats. Make sue you download the v15j+ update

I'm afraid it's a bit too much res for my PC to play smoothly so i can't judge the motion , but the renders look real nice. I'm sure the HD res is a time eater, but I'm still wondering if the lighting is as efficient as it could be. I think Wendy Carlos summed up the problem 40 years ago, "Every parameter you can control, you must control."

Here's a quick go at fluttering paper MoneyDrop5H.mov Here's the PRJ MoneyDrop_08_simmed_5_secs.zip the bills are all parts of the same model. A cloth material is applied to it. They are dropped into the midst of a "fan" force that blows them to the left.

Yes, a decal will always appear on both sides of the patch it is applied to. It is possible with compositing to have different sides appear on a single thickness patch and that would simplify the cloth simulation approach. The initial cloth tutorial is in the TAoA:M booklet. I recommend that as a starter.

Explain that more. I'm not sure what you mean by "thin enough" This sounds like this might be a job for a cloth simulation. Cloth could be made to be flexible like paper and could be dropped and blown about by forces. No bones required.

60! Slow down!

Remember that the ground plane is a model and you must delete it or turn it OFF so it does not obscure your background.

Rendering with an alpha channel will make the background transparent in applications that can use an alpha channel. I believe flash can do that. You have to render to a format that can support alpha channels. Targa sequence or Quicktime with "Animation" codec. Turn Alpha ON in the Buffers section of your render settings.