Gerry

I'm completely unfamiliar with simcloth. I'm working with the Lady Goodbody/Snow White model and before I started rendering her walkthrough, I went through and tweaked cp's in muscle mode where I was seeing the leg geometry penetrating her dress. THEN I noticed that simcloth was turned on. It's rendering now and I won't see the final result til morning, but have I "broken" something by messing with the dress's mesh? If I had left it alone would the simcloth have fixed those areas of penetration in the final quality render?

Great to hear that, I really like this series. I hope you can find a way to continue!

the render's coming along just fine, about halfway done. Turning off "sleep" mode was a big help! I also changed Lady "Snow White" Goodbody's dress, gloves and shoes to red red red!! Ooh baby!

Yeah, I should look at that. EDIT: Yep, it was set to sleep after a half hour. Just changed it to "never".

More rendering weirdness on my Mac... I've been letting the render run at home all day while I'm at work and it's rendering about 3+ minutes a frame. I got home tonight and checked the render and only about 20 frames had been done all day! I looked at the render times in Bridge and frame 651 rendered at 9: 49 this morning, and frame 652 rendered at 6:49 this evening. Apparently the machine went to sleep and hung up the rendering. I thought it would just run. I don't do anything special, just set up the render and let 'er rip, but now I wonder if I need to nudge the mouse every half hour or so? when I render on my office pc it does run all night...at least I think it does.

Thanks Robert!

When I set the renderer to use the camera settings, I notice AO is on. Is that correct?

I made that adjustment and it seemed to help. I think the path constraint was still set from when the walk cycle was 40 or 45 frames and I never adjusted it.

But the probem isn't that she's crossing too slow, it's that her steps are a different speed than the walk cycle. Wouldn't adjusting the ease cause her to slide? I'll try it though.

I'm having a timing problem I don't understand. I've been trying to fix a general problem where my whole animation just seemed to be running slow and sluggish and no matter what I did to make it snappier, it still seemed sluggish. Well I was working on the lady's walk cycle and got it where I was happy with it, did a test render of just the walk cycle, then rendered a wireframe of the whole scene. But while the walk cycle itself is fine, it's much slower in the scene than it is by itself. I'm stumped by this. Here's a test of the walk cycle (comments welcome on that btw) and a wireframe of the whole scene. You'll see the difference easily. I've checked the frame rate and both clips are 24fps, the walk cycle is 30 frames and I haven't changed that in the chor. I don't know what else to check. LadyGoodbodyWalktest4_h264.mov BusStop_wireframe_v1_h264.mov

It's my day job. We do litigation graphics and this one is a patent infringement suit over trade secrets on this injection process. Litigation graphics is a big field and almost no one has ever heard it. I've done this sort of work for three different companies over the last ten years. John, thanks for the clarification. I tried to do it in an on/off pose but immediately ran into trouble because I was hiding groups instead of changing transparency. EDIT: Paul, I just saw yours. But I can't change the "active" setting for groups, can I? It would only work at the model level, right?

Here's something I 'm doing for my day job, a machine that creates rubber injection-molded components for high voltage uses. I'm going to need to do versions where some components are hidden or turned off. Is it better to do that with an action or an on/off pose? 103203_Ric008IV_Step1Rotate_v2h264.mov

Wow, that's really terrific!

Thanks, Nancy! It does the same thing in 15. The specs for the animation are 720x480. They don't specify DV. But it does looked stretched when I change the PAR to 1. I guess I can't focus on making it a "tracing" of the original. I can live with the stretching. But maybe I'll contact the guy who's directing and ask him.

Hey, I'm seeing something weird in my renders. I'm using the newest version on a Mac. I've got the render settings to DV format, so it says 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9. But the renders come out 640x480. I need my renders to be 720x480 or Mr. Plympton will be very very angry! Am I missing something? Perhaps I should set the PAR to 1 rather than use the default DV settings?

here's my nearly-finished still. Have to do the cricket's eyes and fix some leg patches, and I may try it with a toon render too. Then I have to deliver the still by Oct. 1.

I should have mentioned that in that brief pause I'll be having little hearts floating above his head, right up to where he keels over. So I think the timing I've got will work. We'll see!

Thanks, I think when the grasshopper is "painted" it will fit better. I'm also thinking of rendering it with a dark/medium grey toon line, or even an edge gradient. It's funny, I'm trying to find a balance between "matching" the original, and doing something different! But I have a feeling I'll be running the A:M render through AfterEffects to achieve some of the look as well.

No, my WIP isn't being posted on AtomFilms, Paul. You can see the original animation there, but the work on the animation jam won't be available until it's all done. This "painterly" approach to decaling is something I've been wanting to experiment with for some time. This is the first time I've actually implemented it, and Bill Plympton's drawing style accommodates it pretty well!

Here's the look I'm going for. The set is textured but not the grasshopper. I've also given the painted surfaces a slight displacement but it shows better on the back wall than the floor or left side. Edit: also added one of the screen shots I'm working from.

No, there are no restrictions on technique or software, as long as it bears a clear resemblance to the original. So the animation will be A:M, but the decals will be painted, probably in Corel Painter to approximate the appearance of the original but in 3D. On the entry pdf they included a couple of examples of other techniques, and two of them were CG. One was quite abstract.

Here's a shot of the model so far. I think I'm going to do a technique I've been wanting to experiment with, painting the decals to look like painted brushstrokes. Go watch the animation at AtomFilms to see where my shot is!

Rob, the new deadline is great news. It gives me a lot more flexibility, though in thinking about my wip I'm actually close to being finished except for the rendering.

wow, that Group Duplicator is a new one to me, Robert! Good luck with the snail, Roger!

Gene, that's just great!