Gaijin

*Groan*

William Hennes, according to the other message thread.

Ah, the joys of being a solo animator - you end up having to learn more than you could possibly want about nearly everything. Animating musicians is difficult because "finger-synching" music is the direct equivalent to lip-synching speech.

It would add a lot of "pow" if you did some detail work on the fret hand of both musicians - doing so would make it feel more like a real jam session. Here's some examples to help:

For some odd reason the board isn't letting me send messages direct. Here's a little inspirational reference for your rat guitarist ...

We're starting to delve into biometrics - here's a couple of "starter sites" which deal in gait analysis: Introduction to the study of human walking Clinical Gait Analysis

Human walk cycles are usually broken down into several distinct phases, with the top-level division being between when a foot is in contact with the ground and supporting weight, and when a foot is in the air and progressing to the next contact point. We'll label these Stand (or Support) = foot in contact with ground Stride (or Swing) = foot in the air, progressing to next contact. In the process of one complete cycle, each leg progresses from Stand to Stride to Stand and does so in an alternating manner between left and right. All basic stuff - nothing new here. The overlap I was referring to was the point when a leg switches from Stride to Stand, and the heel of the foot makes contact with the ground. At this point the other leg hasn't yet transitioned from Stand to Stride, so you have a section of each half-cycle where both legs are in Stand and neither leg is in Stride. This segment serves to transfer support weight from one side to the other and comprises approximately 10% to 12% of the overall cycle (if memory serves me correctly). The measurement of respective heel strikes gives you the length of the gait. Once the foot contacts the ground on a "normal surface" - we'll ignore ice-covered lakes, sandy beaches, and other slippery or unstable walking surfaces - it does not "slide" along the ground relative to the bottom plane of the foot. Weight transference cause the Stand leg to "rock" from heel-contact to toe-pushoff in progression, but the overall foot position relative to its landing point does not change. Any amount of "slipage" in the foot's "grounded" position which isn't explained by the walking surface or overall circumstances is immediately recognizable and is what gives an animated character that unrealistic "video game glide" appearance. In addition, the human walk is distinctly non-linear in its forward velocity, although inertia of the torso mass tends to dampen the variations to a degree. A:M's cyclic action was designed around repeatable movement with a CLV (constant linear velocity) along the path axis, and determines the current and any interpolated path position by using the primary model bone as a reference point. Since a walk cycle's reference really needs to be the Stand contact point and any interpolation should be performed using NLV motions defined by keyframes, this makes it very dificult - at least for me - to construct a decent walk cycle using the cyclic action.

Another thing easily missed is that there's a 10% overlap between stride (foot in the air) and stand (foot touching the ground) - and that once a foot is in stand it doesn't move off the spot. This is especially difficult to do using the cyclic action in A:M.

Just a quick question on the scripting - what ever happened to Nene? You have Priss, minus hardsuit, roaming about on her motorcycle and on foot, and you have Priss's hardsuit in the middle of the action at the same time Priss (sans suit) is fighting elsewhere. I understand this is an adaptation, but for those of us who know the source material - both the 2040 version and the original 2032 OAVs - the discrepancy is rather glaring. P.S. Did you ever finish the hi-res version?

That looks .... really nice. I do have to wonder, however, why a hexapod would be using a barely-modified quadruped walk cycle instead of one designed to maximize the advantages of the hexapodal physiology. There is a sound reason why insects in real life are nearly always moving 3 legs at a time when they transit - they're always supported by a tripod and never have to be concerned with overbalancing. step 1 - move right front, right rear, and left middle step 2 - move left front, left rear, and right middle This gives you alternating tripod support on every step, and to me would be the "natural" walk cycle of any hexapod. What I could see happening with your critter is to have it use the 3/3 walk cycle for anything up to a very fast scurry, and then transition into a modified gallop to give that "hop-leap-pounce" effect at the very end. And yes, I have read entirely too much science fiction in my life.

Combat Kick Techniques, by David Mitchell, Copyright 1996 Leopard Books, ISBN 0-7529-0214-8 It's a good reference - has *lots* of pictures to use as keyframe reference ...

Here's a quick preview of a 12-mat shoji-screened room I was playing around with over the holidays. This will be a part of a larger temple building and I built this sample room to test render times and material effects. The material effects are in no way complete, but I liked the look of this quick pic when I was checking the transluciency settings on the shoji screens. [attachmentid=12858]

Don't forget to make sure that you have sound recorded on *both* tracks when you lay down the audio tracks. The one snippet with sound in your post is left-channel only.

Very cute! Under critiques, the main thing I noticed is that all of your sound effects are in the left channel only - there doesn't appear to be any right-channel soundtrack. Even if the sound effects are mono instead of stereo, I would expect both channels to be active. To be fair, I've seen other A:M shorts which exhibit this problem. I can understand how it occurs - the author reviews their work using computer speakers instead of headphones, and with a computer speaker system's typical lack of stereo separation it sounds perfectly okay when played back. This would have been caught if headphones were used exclusively when laying down & reviewing the sound tracks. Other than that, the short worked very well. Your sense of comic timing is spot on and the yoke is impossible to miss .

What I'm doing is taking screencaps of the character I want to model. If you own the DVDs of the anime series in question, there's usually something you can find that's usable. For instance, the front/side head shot I'm using for onnaRanma came from the opening sequence of one of the Ranma OAVs. As far as scale goes, lay down some guidelines based on one of the pics you're using and then scale the other pic to match.

Yup - I was thinking the same thing. I've also realized that the eyelids - not to mention the eye sockets - need more work in order to animate properly, as I'll need a minimum of three spline arcs to properly follow the stretched surface of the eyeball on a blink. ... and here I was trying to cut down the overall number of splines. Ouside of the ear, a Takahashi-style head is rather full of hair, so I was going to use that to cover up some of the minor modeling sins. The main reason I posted this was just exaclty for the type of comments you made about the mouth. Thanks!

Greetings! Well, I finally stepped away from my mechanical modeling background and took a stab at the Katakata tutorial for making an anime head - this one is Takahashi's onnaRanma from Ranma 1/2. I'm posting it here for feedback - this is the first attempt at a non-mechanical mesh I've done in A:M, so feedback and useful pointers are more than welcome. My initial thought is that I'm probably a little spline-heavy (typical Shurtleff-style overkill in action yet again). I had a bit of a problem with creasing to start, but I think I've managed to get rid of most of it. One major compromise I've made in trying to implement Takahashi's style is with the eyes. I've pretty much given up trying to duplicate the vertical cylindrical shape Takahashi always employed - I figure a partially rounded vertical cross section won't detract that much from the overall look, and doing so allows me to use distorted spheres instead of open cylinders - which should hopefully make the eventual eye movement animating a bit easier to do. Anywhos - here's a couple of screenshots of the WIP to date. Comments, please. Front: Side:

Yes, well, some of us are just impatient puppies and couldn't wait. (BTW, Hash's mail order service was certainly fast - especially considering this time of year )

To me, the largest and most daunting task facing any prospective animator is learning how to model new items properly. I know that the product is Animation Master, and an emphasis on scripting, storyboarding, and animation mechanics is all well and good, but I doubt that anyone buys into the product with the expectation that it comes with all of the objects necessary to tell their particular story idea - and modeling requires its own particular set of skills. I also rather suspect that the effort required just to learn how to model objects, let alone implementing all of the objects required for a particular story, is a major cause of New Animator Attrition. Goodness knows I virtually fall into this category - I first bought AM in 2002 and have barely touched the program since. One reason was that I was waiting for all of the work on hair to settle down (upgraded to the 2004 CD), but another is a simple lack of time to prioritize all my hobbies with work and home life demands. The task of documenting how to model objects is almost more daunting than actually learning how to model because of the vast differences in requirements each different person brings with their story ideas. For instance, my interests are strictly in the anime field (Japanese style animation) which has a very distinctive style. While creating a base mannequin of an anime character uses most of the same techniques as a photo-realistic one does, implementing the finishing details (all the hard stuff! ) is quite different. Scenery and prop modeling is another thing entirely, and all of these major categories really need up-to-date tutorials with working project files (a large majority of the current modeling tutorials available are using old versions of AM). For character models, tutorials are needed for creating the base mannequin. Tutorials, plural, because not only do you need separate tutorials for each basic part of the mannequin (eyes, face, hair, torso, limbs, joints, rigging bones, etc), but you also need separate variations for each major style of animation (photo-realistic, cartoon, anime, fantasy, heroic comics, yada yada yada). Next are tutorials on how to modify the base mannequin to add clothes, shoes, equipment, etc. Duplicate the above for the various major types of animals, plants, insects, etc., and don't forget the major stylistic differences while you're at it. Next, indoor and outdoor scene modeling tutorials. For indoor scenes, making walls, doors, windows, glass, mirrors, tables, chairs, light fixtures, wheeeee the list is endless but can be pared down to several major category types. Outdoor scenes requires modeling terrain, plants, rocks, building exteriors, vehicles, all sorts of fun stuff. Again, these can be broken down into several major categories. I'm sure you can see why a beginner can get extremely discouraged in a real hurry. Having a good library of stock objects can go quite a ways to alleviate this problem, but it doesn't cure it completely. Note that the Hash free object library - as nice as it is - is currently nowhere near the size to be considered a "good library of stock objects". There are other ways around the modeling problem (and the need for so many tutorials), of course, but I have no idea if any are even feasable. For instance, a program that worked in a manner similar to Poser5 which could create basic rigged AM character models by modifying and morphing a set of base mannequins using a slider-control-like user interface would be a godsend. Similarly, being able to import/convert the output of architectural design programs like Punch!'s Home Design Architectural Series 3000/4000 would solve almost all interior set design modeling requirements. I can always dream, right?