Gerry

happy birthday Jason!!

nice, Mark! Congratulations!

Wow, that's as charming as all get-out! Any chance of it coming back to life? Well done.

no matter, I got it. I prolly did it wrong, but I got it.

Firefox

Thanks Holmes, that's a good analysis! EDIT: Here's a little tweak...

Rodney, thanks for such a thoughtful reply. There will indeed be more variation in most of the repeating shots, from different "dance steps" for the geckos to some nice business in the repeating kitchen scene. Mouseman made some suggestions about additional business that helped me look beyond what I had sketched and think about how these scenes can be fleshed out and brought to life. If I was storyboarding this for someone else to follow I would have been a lot more meticulous in the animatic. Since it's for my own reference I'm content to have a logical sequence and some sort of color palette, then I can jump off in different directions on the fly. for one example, I decided over the weekend that gecko imagery needs to predominate. In the kitchen scene, the drawer pulls, cabinet handles, decorations on the crockery are all gecko images. then following Mouseman's suggestion, when the guy drops the snapshot, we will see it flutter to the tiled floor in closeup. The floor tiles have a nice gecko pattern, and as the photo hits the floor we see the girl in the photograph begin to move and dance in a sort of stop-motion technique. Just some eye candy but it will set up or prefigure the dance sequence and help flesh out that first scene. The long shots of the girl dancing won't be 3D, but a series of loose sketches cross-fading. I'm looking for a more "hand-drawn" look to both the texturing and in some of the animated details especially where the figures are very small, like the long shot of people crossing the bridge. Not cel animation but drawings that fade into one another at maybe five-frame intervals. Something that keeps coming to mind is the "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" sequence from "Yellow Submarine". I should probably go look at that again.

Here are two test render stills, one of the street for the sax solo, and one for the opening shot in the guy's house. Both are still being worked on. The final animation will all be toon-rendered btw.

Classy!

Okay, on the pc if I do "Save as source" it downloads a file called "index.php" but it's the whole movie. Just renamed it "BusStop.mov" and it seems fine!

Well on the Mac I was able to add it to my Dashboard (I guess that means it's saved to my hd but I'm not sure how to find it) and on the pc I only was able to save the "index.php" web link, but not the movie itself. I'm home today but I'll try it again on the pc tomorrow.

Hey, I can't figure out how to download this. I'm on a Mac with QuickTime Player v10, and at work on a PC with QTPro v7 and I can't see a download option on either one.

Congratulations everyone! Great job robert!

Wow I was so impressed I completely forgot this was a 3DS import test. That's really cool because I am cramming on 3DS tutorials for the day job, we have it installed on our machines but in a pinch I always default to AM. However awhile back we got some AutoCad files from a client that had to be animated and I really fell down on the job because I didn't feel confident enough to jump into it, so we had to bring in a freelancer on very short notice. Can't let that happen again, so I've been doing all these online tutorials and getting up to speed. Just another tool in the toolbelt.

Hey Chris, that's one of the most dramatic animation tests I've ever seen! Great music and title treatment dude!

d'oh! I saw that in there but didn't copy it. I guess that's where all the scripts are. I'll try that next.

Flipper worked, then I auto-assigned bones, and TSMRigger gave me the error message: "No systems found" and didn't run. No idea what that means, but if anyone wants me to test more, let me know. I'm fine with doing this in the v16 beta for now but I'll do what I can to get to the bottom of whatever this is!

Okay, I copied the TSM files into my hxt folder, restarted the machine, loaded up a model, and tried the TSM wizard, and still not getting any bones. What I'll do next is take the half-boned model that I've been working on in the v16 beta and see if TSM flipper works in the RC1 version.

I have an idea what the problem is. The hxt files aren't in the hxt folder, but they show up in the "wizards" list, so I assumed the new version was seeing the hxt folder for the prior version. is that likely? How would they show up in the wizards list if they're not being seen by the program?? I even got the bones install dialog box. Just no bones. Hm. I started the TSM installer so I'd have fresh files in the RC1 hxt folder, but got an alert that "TSM is already installed on your system. Please uninstall before running the installer" or words to that effect. So I cancelled the new install. I'd try from scratch just to test, but I'm in the middle of putting in cog bones etc. at the moment. I'll check it later. Robert, I can't explain what that's about. I just downloaded it like two days ago from that link, and when I tested it earlier today to see if the link was live, a download started, I just aborted it. Didn't see the file size or anything. EDIT: Yeah, it's just a 320k file. How come the installer's not there anymore?

Right here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=39384 . It's the windows version, startup screen says RC1. I just tested it and the download started just fine.

Just tried it again by doing what John Bigboote suggested, and nada. The bones refuse to appear. Robert, I assume your question was directed to John, I am using the 32-bit version.

Looks like TSM Builder no longer works in the latest update to v16 on the pc platform. It does still work in the last beta version, so I'm using that, but with the newer v16.0 with the "RC1" stamp on the startup screen, the bones don't install. Too bad!

My sense on all these renders is that you hadn't set any keys on the face at all, as she looks fairly neutral throughout. I assumed you were leaving that for last and hadn't gotten to it yet.

Yup, $79/yr for a downloadable subscription version, but it's then usable only on the machine it's installed on. this works fine if you're using just one machine. You still are entitled to the updates throughout the subscription year, then the next year it's another $79. This works well for lots of people. And welcome to the forum. Stick around, ask all your questions!

Is her hair AM hair material? It looks really great. Very natural looking compared to most uses of hair materials.