robcat2075
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Posts posted by robcat2075
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first likely suspect...Discreet Cleaner XL formerly known as media cleaner from another company.
Inputs almost anything and outputs almost anything.
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Very interesting book, I think it's almost all usable in AM. For example, his Maya morph targets and expressions and custom interfaces are things we can do with poses and relationships in A:M... no? and probably with less work. Reading this book, my impression was, "gee, Maya users sure have an awkward set of tools"
His ideas on facial modeling don't seem to be too different from what the better A:M users have been doing for years, and his minimalist approach to lip sync is a big step in the right direction.
BTW, i got a "used" but like new copy for half price almost on bn.com
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ya know, it wouldn't take much extend this idea to make it output positions for bones in an A:M action.
Of course, making walk cycles would then become one more important skill most people would never learn. 
This brings to mind the "parametric walk cycle" generator I saw being advertised for another 3d app (for $999)
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this is just a quick reply....
first, Check out the ARM for much info on the unique strategies involved in modeling in A:M.
next, Booleans such as polygon apps typically employ don't exist in A:M. A:M does have booleans of a sort that are set up in modeling and revealed by rendering, but the booleans that actually add or subtract from the mesh of a model and result in a new mesh... nope.
Clever modeling strategies will eliminate the need for most traditional boolean situations and make for better models. The body of cool work that others have done in A:M show it's true.
DXF or any other import into A:M... It's usually impractical except for small objects. A:M uses flexible, twisty splines and patches to create it's surfaces, other apps use stiff rigid polygons. The other apps have to use many more polygons to fake a curved surface than A:M needs patches to show a real curved surface. Other apps models then are huge in file size compared to A:M's. Since there's no way (presently) to reduce multiple polygons into a few patches, A:M converts each polygon into a patch. for small objects like an axe, maybe not a problem. If you're trying to import a dinosaur... it's probably too many polygons to deal with successfully.
I can imagine someone dreaming up some sort of 3D data reduction scheme that would intelligently substitute A:M patches for large areas of polygons, but I'm not the 13-year-old math whiz that's going to do it. Also, since the polygon apps are just approximating curves with their polygons, any sophisticated Poly-to-Patch converter would be creating a simulated reconstruction of an approximation. That 13-year-old math whiz will need to be very clever.
BTW, the absence of simple polygon structures in A:M has alot to do with why traditional boolean tools aren't feasible.
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Ok, Lion King WAS still a musical, true...
but it was an original story
Of course, the Lion King story wasripped off from an even more exalted source . . . Hamlet.
and what about "Bambi"... boy gets orphaned, has to grow up to become king of the whatever and finds love along the way.
Wacky sidekicks too. -
This looks very promising.
Has anyone tried this on a more erratically motioned clip?I'm wondering what the advanced-but-affordable price is going to be.
I'm also hoping this doesn't get bought up by a competitor and taken off the market like the last advanced and affordable match mover program was.
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I like the character. The proportions remind me somewhat of Gerry Anderson's "Supermarionation" characters (minus the strings, a 60's thing).
What would ultimately be necessary to eliminate the aliasing of the hair strands? Would scaling down a larger render do it?
Also, the geometry on the very top of the head looks unusual (lots of apparently three point patches). Are we really looking at two layers of geometry there; something to do with generating the hair?
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hard to get some hip rotation in him,,he has none! But perhaps a swing to
the shoulders will do...I'll try it oot...
I think some experimenting with hip "swagger" might help. (side to side motion) just a little maybe. But i think for the audience to "read" it at all, you might want to slow it down also.
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The first 3
star wars were great. They were talking to adults.
I enjoyed the first set when i saw them as a teenager and had good memories of them as an adult. When i saw the re-release in the 90's i couldn't help but notice how painfully corny they were. I think George Lucas hit on a "so old it's new" idea that immensely resonated with the audience mind set of 70's. But it wasn't exactly "A Room with a View."
Still, I'm glad he made it, and i don't regret the money i spent seeing the sequels. Until "Episode One", anyway.
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Just thinking out loud here...
I'm guessing that your poster will be more than just an image rendered from A:M. It would probably also include some text, a clever slogan, logos, fine print... that's the sort of stuff you need hi-res for, but the continuous-tone photographic part (the part you're making in A:M) could likely get away with far less resolution than than 200 dpi.
Render your A:M image at, say, 75dpi and bring it into a dedicated print layout app like Freehand or Illustrator to add the higher-res text elements.
Also, remember that dpi means "dots per inch" not "dots per centimeter."
1 inch = 2.54 cm so...
A 200 pixel per inch render for a 120cm x 110cm image would be about 9449 x 8661 pixels, not 24000 x 22000.
a 75 pixel per inch render for a 120cm x 110cm image would be about 3543 x 3248 pixels
those are still a big renders, but not quite so monstrous.
hope that helps.
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i love that grimace that sharks always seem to have. I hope you'll add some gills. I suppose they could be an image map but modeling them would look cooler. I realize splicing them in will invite more spline problems but it's a learning opportunity anyway, right?
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What a charming, charming idea!
Just to second and third previous comments, a cartoony thing like this would benefit from more snap. Longer holds at the main poses and fewer inbetweens getting from one pose to the next. Monkeys are pretty snappy creatures anyway right? 
But what I'm really curious about is why your video source was at 29fps? 29.97fps I could understand, but how did you obtain something running at 29?
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I have had this problem also, I even bought the full codec. My work-a-round is to download the image then play it, it works every time.
Not every time. Just how is that process any different from when I downloaded the file and tried to play it? I downloaded it to my PC. Twice. It doesn't play.
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I tried downloading the AVI twice but WMP always says it has "encountered an unknown error".
Is this in some non-standard codec? -
A friend of mine is studying in China right now - it's kind of sad, all they do is memorize textbooks and recite them in class.
Henry Kissinger once commented that we were fortunate the communist countries were so backwards and ineffiecient. If they were to actually get their act together perform at their true potential, and we had to compete with that...
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I think you would need to do 2 renders and them compose them. One with object and reflection and one with no object. Overlap the 2 images in PhotoShop and erase the object.
A variation on the above, to avoid situations where the original would overlap the reflection, is to set up the scene with a transparent mirror and place a camera behind the mirror in a 'mirror-image' location to capture what the reflection world would see. you'd take that output (and flip it maybe?) and composite it with your original scene which was minus the object in question. With some clever crafting of your 'transparent mirror' you could probably make the reflection pass create its own alpha channel to simplify your compositing labor.
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I too got an error... "filetype not recognized" which is odd since the file is obviously a WMV. But I was able to view the NASCAR thing after right-clicking and downloading it first. Posting video on the web still isn't fool-proof yet...
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IF there are any experienced camtasia users here, I'd like some advice
I couldn't successfully download your tutorial so I can't comment of the specifics of whether it's overly large. However, we do make quite a bit of use of Camtasia in our work.
(You may already know that) Camtasia has the option of recording in their proprietary codec "techsmith" which produces very small files sizes in screen capture situations. Although "freely" distibutable you do have the issue of making sure your user has downloaded and installed that codec.
What we do instead is record in one of the less lossy Windows media codecs then transcode the resulting AVI into the Windows Media Screen Capture codec (if that were available within Camtasia, the transcoding wouldn't be necessary) giving us a file playable without a special codec.
Mac users may be out in the cold with the above however. I don't know what WMP capabilites exist on the Mac.
RoboDemo is another app that does the screen capture thing and can make Flash files. I don't know how it compares in files sizes to Camtasia, but you can DL the trial version and test that out.
Flash MX 2004 is supposed to have a screen capture codec built-in but i don't know if either of the above incorporate that capability yet.
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I am going to be building a new machine soon and wanting to go Athlon64
Some interesting news-gossip-speculation about the future of Intel 64-bit in this Inquirer Article
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No, for all it's excesses, Nortel never had a 20 piece swing band on staff.I gather that you arranged and performed the music as well.The music is from a library we licensed. -
IDL stood for Interactive Distance Learning. This is an opening I made to start off training broadcasts we used to do back when Nortel was somewhat richer than it is today.
It was meant to represent the Distance Learning concept of people from various locations gathering "virtually" (a real happening word at the time) to hear from a remote instructor.
I did everything except the video montage near the end. I think I was using A:M v5 at the time for the 3D, Strata MediaPaint for the fireballs and Adobe After Effects to tie it all together. The music is from a library we licensed.
Links you can right-click on to download in QT or WMV appear on:
http://www.brilliantisland.com/demoreels/demoreels.htm
(under "IDL Open")
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The cross-eyed appearance, even when they are looking straight ahead, contributes to their "cute" factor, but i think it's going to give you trouble when you have to animate them in a glance to either side. The pupil on the outside eye is going to disappear. Yes you can always swing the full head to point at whatever... but such nice characters should have subtler options available to them.
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What an interesting look and feel to this work!
I do very much admire it. I'm uneasy about the voices, however. This is obviously a story in a fantasy setting. Great "suspension of disbelief" is required of the audience to buy into it all and the everyday, middle-america quality of the voices is working against that goal. I'm wishing for voices with more "character". No, they don't all have to have old english accents or adopt speech impediments... but something extra is needed from the voices to fuse them with the characters we are seeing. I remember Ralph Bakshi did something called "Wizzards" a long time ago (the 70's), with very flat , expressionless voices. Maybe it was a reaction to all the highly exaggerated voices that populated cartoons at the time, but when i watch it today, it adds an element of tedium to an already iffy film.
Expresions (scripting) for CA
in (2003-2004)
Posted
http://webtranslation.paralink.com/urlmode.asp did a fair job of russian-to-english translation (and offers many other translations as well)
whatever will we do if the russians surpass us in A:M?