Gerry

Hey Ultimate shouting goofy guy - This is a terrific start! I was going to suggest a lamp but then I re-read your post. what case said about the window is definitely something you should look at. Here's a couple of things that caught my eye: That crackling texture in some of the floor tiles is really working, and i assume you're going to carry it through the whole floor. The rug is a little on the traditional side for the modern style of the rest of the room. Maybe something a little more modern, but that's strictly a judgement call. I'm not crazy about the frame on the painting, either a different texture or more detail in the moulding maybe, not sure what it needs. I really like the style of the table. something about the design of the couch makes it not as cozy or inviting-looking as it could be. Maybe it just needs more front-to-back depth, or more roundness in the cushions. So much for my maybe-a-little-of-this-or-that-maybe-not critique. Hope it helps! gerry

Tried to watch it but the connection kept timing out on me. I'll try again tomorrow.

Wow, really nice work!

Yeah, I was just moving things and setting keyframes to see how some movements looked rendered. This is all too slow. Oddly, in the chor, the antennae movements were much more pronounced even when I was scrubbing or stepping through frame by frame. In the render it's almost nonexistent. What do you think of the unsynchronized eyeblink? I think it adds to the character, but someone commented that it looked weird. I pointed out that this is an alien, so weird isn't a bad thing! I'm also taking a (nother!) step back on the rigging. I'm not as far along as I thought.

Here's another test of some of the facial pose sliders. I thought I had some dynamic constraints in the antennae but I guess they're either too stiff or the head motion is too leisurely to get some bounce in the secondary motion. I'm also still trying to make the last fixes in the rigging.

Yep, there's supposed to be some secondary movement in the antennae. If you look close you'll see it happens slightly, but they bounce up instead of down. You mean spring systems? The facial expressions are all pose sliders. and I've smoothed out the face a little after this render.

This is a great start, Heath! I like the way the eyes bob up and down as a secondary motion. Yeh, maybe it could have more weight, but I like the way you show the various tweaks from one run cycle to the next. Each one is definitely better.

I took a break from animating this to step back and get serious about learning something about rigging. I did Mike Fitzgerald's excellent cog joint tute and got it about 98% done. I'm still struggling over a few details (and Mike has been a great help), but I also finally created eyelids and put in some pose sliders for the face etc. here's a test of some facial movement. The rigging problems consist of not being able to bend the elbows and knees. I have a prj file I would be more than happy to post if anyone would like to look it over. I've also had a few ideas about fleshing out this animation. As I was rigging I decided that this is way too much work for the brief blackout sketch I had planned, so I'm toying with adding some dialog and a few other touches. Who knows, it could end up as a feature film!

Thanks Paul. I'm already working on another solution with the guy here who does post work in After Effects. Rather than my try to create shadows and bg gradients with the lighting, I'm deleting the ground plane altogether, rendering with an alpha channel, and he'll fake it all in post. The real problem is the loss of the laptop model. DJ, that's the problem. I do have about five versions of the .prj file (I save constantly), but when I open them they all ask for the laptop.mdl. When I found the bare bones laptop in the Hash library and brought it into the project, it stayed linked to the library. It never occurred to me that even after I did all that modifying that it was still linked to the library. So when I uninstalled the app and all related files, there went my laptop. I can redo it in an hour or so. But that model was already approved by my boss and shown to the client, so I can't just switch to another model. Let this be a lesson to me!

I am TOTALLY BUMMED! My beautiful laptop model is gone. I reinstalled A:M, after first uninstalling. However, the bare bones laptop model from the Hash library,that I extensively modified and made BEAUTIFUL, was apparently still linked to the library. So when I trashed the app and all the libraries, apparently the modified model went with it. It was real pretty too...

I have to create my *very first* alpha channel for this laptop project. I’m rendering out as a series of targas and I’ve noticed that they automatically generate an alpha channel when I open them in Photoshop, but by default the alpha is a blank screen, so I need to figure out how to silhouette just the main elements, However I think I’ve created a problem for myself before I’ve even left the gate. Can an alpha channel silhouette only one part of a model? I need to silo the infamous laptop computer and its cast shadow. But in order to solve another problem, I had deleted the default "ground" from the chor and included a ground plane as part of the laptop model. Now of course I need to silo just the laptop for the alpha channel so I think I've screwed myself. However I also don't see where you select elements to be separated out by the alpha, so I don't actually know what I'm doing. Any help will be appreciated. Gerry

Ha! That has got to be THE MOST OBSCURE trivia question I've ever heard! But now if it ever comes up I'll know the answer! I guess it would be plain silly of me to ask if you know where the name of the movie "Zardoz" comes from...

Hah! I had a similar experience with a hair material last fall. It misbehaved and misbehaved until I finally deleted it altogether. It was clear that the banding was perpendicular to the light but I never tested that until I'd run out of other ideas. Thanks Matt!

Hm, this is interesting. The banding seems to have been a problem with the default light. No matter where I moved it I got banding perpendicular to the light source. So I deleted the light and created a new light, same settings, and the banding has completely disappeared.

Here's a first draft of the final movie, and at 16 passes the banding is still evident in the opening closeup. I've got a little "roughness" in all the other surfaces of the laptop and didn't put it on the top surface of the cover because it was too distracting. But I may go back to that and just lower the settings. John, I haven't looked at the shadow bias settings but I will now. Edit: I'm also putting up the prj file in case you want to play around with it. Plus you get a free laptop model!

The only thing I keep coming back to is "Tralfamodore", the alien planet in "Slaughterhouse Five". But I know that's not it.

I've been thinking for two days but nothing comes to me!

...and that's a really good New Year's Resolution!

Killi - these are some nice jet models! The animations you're posting seem to go by really quick. I realize this is part of a longer sequence but it would be nice to see either this shot slowed down a bit, or maybe a wireframe of a bit more of the scene. If you work out the trajectory of the plane through the scene in a believable way, then all the smoke effects, backgrounds, explosions and stuff will fall into place I bet!

I think my one light source was at too oblique an angle to the surface. I shifted the light up slightly and the banding was still visible but it now vanishes with successive passes. Using 16 passes solved the problem. thanks for your input gentlemen. Gerry

Hi Matt - Yeah, I used anywhere from 4 to 25 passes. This image was just one pass to really emphasize the effect but I can't get it to go away completely. The odd thing was that as I watched the render, some passes would smooth out the surface but the banding would be reintroduced on the next pass, fading in and out on each pass. I have one rim (spot) light, white at 100%. The cone is pretty wide because of the way the scene has to be lit. It was at a fairly oblique angle for this shot and I moved it up, which helped a little. There's also a fill light behind the camera and pointing away, because I dragged it there to get it out of the way, but then I found it's filling the shadows just enough so I left it there. Z-buffered shadow: Don't know. I'm at home now so I can't check but I will tomorrow. No material, just a surface color, as well as ambience and specularity. The white text is a decal with an alpha channel. Yeah, the banding is definitely perpendicular to the light source. I think that's a clue. Light intensity is 100% I'll post a chor setup tomorrow. and thanks for the look!

This is the model of the laptop I've tweaked and I'm working on animating a tutorial about pixels. This is a plain rectangular shape colored flat gray, with one light on it. As you can see, I've got a pretty severe banding problem. Compounding this is 1) I wasn't having this problem yesterday, and 2) It seems to be getting worse in the course of the day. Earlier today, my renders would start with the banding, then it would smooth out by the end of 16 passes. Now, even with 25 passes it's still somewhat visible. Any suggestions are welcome. Gerry

Thanks, Tralf (can I call you Tralf?) but my boss already signed off on the one I modified. It actually came out pretty nice. I'll post something tomorrow.

I've been authorized to pay for a model. So if anyone knows of a laptop model anywhere, let me know. I'm modifying the one out of the library, but I like to present some options on something like this.

that's the first place I looked and didn't see one. I'll poke around there again. EDIT: Dang! There's a laptop in the library but it has no keyboard detail!! Maybe I can decal it.