Gerry

I'll check those things Dhar, thanks. There's something about the hand movement when it checks the harness that seems wrong too. And I think I want to show the snail for another beat in the second-to-last shot. Gerry

Here's the final animation with all the bits in place. There are still a few rough areas to smooth out, and once sound is added it will really come to life. Comments welcome! finalcomp_h264.mov

this is really coming along. the walk still looks mechanical, but others could probably advise you better as to how to fix that. But the guy on the park bench is priceless! It really makes the piece.

What Eric said. The stars need to be more like pinpoints, with more variation, and the planet needs a flatter, hazier appearance to give the overall image more depth.

Now my fabulous boolean footprints in the snow are misbehaving, well, one of them anyway. Here's a quick test I did because in the shot I was going for, the second footprint was appearing as a grey rectangle. So I set up a new camera and rendered just the footprints, and got this. I've replaced the bone, the geometry, the camera, and the one footprint continues to appear as a grey rectangle. Suggestions welcome. This has me stumped. I've checked that it's a boolean throughout the chor, so it's not like the setting is jumping back and forth. EDIT: Problem solved! newcam_footprinttest.mov

Now I've got some other issues going on but I'll continue over in my wip thread.

Okay, so remember that comment about user error? It seems SOMEONE forgot to group the ipod cable to the bone along with the rest of the model. Well, he'll get a stern talking to, believe me! heh.

Ken, I'll try those things, but I'm tellin' ya! I didn't try the spacebar thing. I did close it and relaunch to no avail. I will take a few minutes to try your other suggestions just to rule things out. Last thing that happened in that chor before I gave up on it is a pose slider that I made for Santa's smile stopped going to 100%. It worked just fine yesterday. I will be the first to admit to user error but I find it's easier when these things happen to just move on and come back to the problem areas when the easy bits are done. I have a revised rough cut that I will post in my other thread before the end of the day. EDIT: actually I posted that yesterday. Gerry

As I suspected, it appears the choreography is just buggy. Here's a screen shot showing a model of an iPod. This morning I added the cable, but it refuses to show up in the chor in question. I created a test chor, and the cable appears as it should. As for the action I was having trouble with, I created a new chor and it works just fine.

I'll post one from work tomorrow.

Thanks, fuchur. I tried alll three to no effect, but those are settings that I don't know enough about. However I played through the entire chor and the action never worked. The odd thing is that it did work at first, but just partially. Then it just quit working at all. When I was doing the co. holiday animation last year, I had a hair material that I was using for the tree's pine needles, and another for gold tinsel. The tinsel material just wouldn't behave no matter what. I finally deleted it, saved out the pine needle material, then brought it back in and colored it gold. It worked like a charm with no probs at all. Sometimes a chor can just get buggy! I started a new one and the action is behaving just fine so far. I'll let you know how it progresses. Gerry

So I've created an action for the snail's movement, but when I drop it onto the model in the chor, at first it only partially worked, then I deleted all the other keyframes on the snail model, and now it doesn't work at all. Here's the action. Apologies for starting a new thread but I was afraid it wouldn't get looked at in my wip thread. EDIT: I think the chor may just be buggy. I'm starting it over, so we'll see! snailmovetest01_h264.mov

Here's another update. Still some rough spots, I want to get all the scenes done and then go back and tweak. Critiques welcome! Comp01_04_h264.mov

that is so cool! I had the same sort of effect in one of the ideas I pitched to my boss for our christmas greeting, where a gift appears on a computer screen and unwraps itself in just this way. Of course they went with the Christmas Snail, but I was sort of sweating whether this effect could be achieved in AM. I shouldn't have worried!

Hey Mike, this is all looking great and it's nice to see you posting here again! I look forward to seeing more.

Thanks for your comments! Yeah, this is still rough and not all final bits are in. There will be footprints in the snow for sure. As for the runners, well, then I have to think about the snail's slime trail too I guess! A coworker asked what happens to the snail if they encounter road salt...so I gots to figure out just how far I want to take this. But runner trails in the snow is a definite possibility. I am totally jazzed that I figured out how to put footprints in the snow and feeling very inspired to tweak as far as my timetable allows.

Here's the first half, still rough, but I wanted to see how the shots flow. Comp01_02_H264.mov

Yeah, I don't seem to have the Repeat option in my settings. Not sure why. Everything else is identical to what you show. However I've figured out a way to put footprints in the snow with foot-shaped boolean cutters! Here's a quick test... footprinttest_02.mov

Wow, thanks Nancy! I'll look into that. I'm still tweaking the walk. Here's another render of the front view that I like pretty well, but it seems too smooth and rolling. Also, the bottom hem of the coat seems a little floaty. I'm also on the fence about putting footprints in the snow. While I'd like to, I'm not sure my schedule will allow it. EDIT- I just tried that and it seems Cycle Length and Chor Range are locked and change together. You seem to be working in a newer version based on the interface shot. I'm using 13.0q. Could that make a difference, or is there some other setting I should be looking at? Shot09_H264.mov

I worked quite a bit on the walk cycle as it wasn't working in the side view. there was a lot of slipping that wasn't apparent from the front. so here's a closeup side view of the walk. I wanted to get more specularity on the back of the boots from the interior light, and it was there at first but for some reason it's gone. But in most respects I'm happy with this. Shot08_H264.mov

That's some great news! The world needs to know about AM!

Yeah, here's more what I had in mind. Still a draft, but I think this is gonna work just fine... Santa_walk_closeup_v2.mov

Here's a first draft of the shot with the walk cycle. I would like to slow it down (I'm after a true, dramatic slo-mo effect) but I'm not sure how to do this. Should I just stretch out the action over more keyframes, or is there a way to keep the action at a normal speed and slow it down in the chor? I know I could do it in post but if there's a way to do it in the chor I would like to know. Santa_walk_closeup.mov

Hey, the Santa model is in fact rigged very nicely and I don't want anyone to think I don't appreciate a free, rigged model like this. I'm working on the walk cycle now and the model is working great, but I expect to be refining the knuckles a little. I don't want to sound ungrateful!

Here's a very quick and dirty animatic of the whole piece, just to get a sense of timing and overall length. Actual character animation will be minimal, though I'll be doing a walk cycle. the Santa Lion model isn't rigged very thoroughly and I've been watching some rigging tutes (for the squetch rig, though I won't be using it. Just need a refresher on rigging in general), checking in on the rigging forum, and agonizing over how much I will need to add. It won't be much, just one facial reaction shot that I may do with a pose slider, and I'd like the fingers to bend a little better than what they're currently set up for. I want the animation to suggest a dramatic movie trailer to create some contrast with the action itself, which is all about going sloooow. I've got some crossfades here that will actually be pans/zooms, but as I said this is q 'n' d to the max. animatic_h264.mov