Gerry

I like the hairline, it gives the character a more futuristic look. Got to say that red head floating there is a little otherworldly! Did you do the chrome texture or use a prefab material?

That is great work Stian! Modeling, animation, all works great together.

Nice work Greg! Nice friendly bot and a very effective way to composite inside AM.

Charlie - the project file is 28K. Maybe it's too small and the internet can't even see it!! Thanks for your help, but it's in the hands of the AM Reports gods now...

This is a continuation of a thread from the v11.1 forum because for some reason I was unable to upload a file from there. So this is a really simple animation, 80 frames, 240 x 240, of a tumbling die. However, rendering got progressively buggier as I went, for reasons I've detailed on the thread at http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16586 I'm uploading version 2 of the project. If anyone wants to poke around it I would be much obliged. Okay, uploading doesn't seem to be working here either.

This is looking good Paul. No crits in particular, but nice progress on the various tests.

That shrink-wrap is looking better David! The thing about doing litigation support graphics for law firms, which I did for two years for a firm in NY called DecisionQuest, is that lawyers need such a wide range of kinds of graphics that it's hard for an individual, or even a small team, to provide a "one-stop shop" for them. Everything from time-coding video depositions, PowerPoint, medical illustration, animation, oversize boards with overlays, etc. etc. That doesn't even include the advisory/strategizing element, jury selection techniques, courtroom floorplans, and providing the hardware to display all the media in the courtroom. I can do quite a few of the former, but a law firm needs one source for everything and they usually need it at 2AM! It's not a business for the faint of heart. However it's a big market that is not going away. If you can get a foot in the door go for it.

David- I did a quick Google search on FANUC and couldn't tell if it was an acronym or a company name. Found some Japanese links and some to GE but I didn't learn much! I did some industrial type animations for a patent case a couple of years ago that I may have mentioned to you before. You can see them at http://www.mooneyart.com/three_d/three_d.html. They're the two "Ion implantation" movies. If the FANUC outpost down here uses this kind of work I'd really like to hear more about it. Gerry

Yeah, my first thought was that those are some LARGE cans of tuna! then it hit me that they *usually*don't shrink-wrap canned goods and that it was actually industrial-sized rolls of something. The camera move at the end of the conveyor belt is a little disorienting. You've got the camera reversing direction, the conveyor belt moving, and the product going off the belt into thin air. These all combine for a moment of vertigo. I'm assuming you're still doing some tweaks on it. Maybe you can fix some of the conflicting visual info that's going on at this point. Overall nice work though. I still like that articulated robot arm a lot!

Cool! Educational and creepy all at the same time!

Okay, that's just weird. Cool, but weird.

Yeah, really nice. Good lighting too. Are all the textures procedural?

Very cool! Intriguing movement and motion except for the very start and end as noted. But the middle, well, you make it look easy. Nice work!

Nice Ken! but one eye looks goofy, like one's concave and one's convex. I wanna see him walk around too!

Stian- Very nice work. If I may comment, the opening camera shot makes it appear that the "carriages" are moving and is a little disorienting in the first moments. Other than that the movement in general is a little slow. Sorry I can't help test the particles. Good luck with this, it's a great start.

Thanks Rago. Do you mean do the texture maps with pencil sketches? that would be interesting! I may just play around with that. there have been some pretty cool effects on some tv commercials lately melding sketchy hand drawn lines with 3D models. I had been planning on using photos of concrete surfaces to texture the subway platform, but I like your suggestion. As for the "detailed" head, that's mostly lumpy mesh problems. Still working on smoothing some of that out.

Well seven, all I can say is don't jump to any conclusions about the nature of this critter. I wanted to model a character that would let me get on to rigging and animating without getting bogged down in an elaborate model. So, an alien! If it's any consolation, he probably won't be green in the finished piece. Green was kind of a kneejerk choice (see my avatar) that I've since reconsidered. And I doubt you've ever seen an alien with such bad posture...maybe he's more human than you think!

Thanks for the comments everyone. Hey Brainmuff, I must need to update some info somewhere! I've been in Charlotte for about a year and a half but I thought I'd updated my address in *most* places. In fact I have been to the Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo, but years ago! A sister lived in Warwick when I was a kid and I also traveled through the Sterling Forest area many many times, pre-Fair. I know I've got an old sketchbook with some sketches of the park that I did when I was about 15. I have a distinct memory of trying to figure out perspective at the time. Also been to Nyack for a few gallery openings. Tell me where you saw my old address so I can fix it. Traj, I've already changed his texture but I am now officially between a rock and a hard place with AM. Just upgraded my Mac to Panther and now Classic won't launch, which is fine since I upgraded to get to the OSX version of AM. Now I find that my video card is underpowered, so I am in the midst of a daisychain of updates and in the meantime I only have AM on my Dell at work.

Not much to add Andy. I would say as above that as a test of controls it succeeds, but also has a nice appealing style that suggests stories. I can also appreciate your wanting to do something quick and simple and use those as strengths. That's what I'm trying to do with mine!

Thanks Andy. Here's a sketch of the main setting. I've done a lot of preliminary sketching so far, as well as some storyboards. On this model, I'm still working out how I want to do the eyes, as well as fine tuning the texturing. I want to get a a little more involved with the surfaces than I have in the past. You mean Gumby? I hadn't thought about it but he does seem to lend himself to it!

Here's a first render of the main character for my new short. I did this several weeks ago and now I feel guilty that I haven't done more! Just posting this to motivate myself to get back to it.

Yeah, nice work overall. I like the expressive potential of the mouth, and I really like your approach to the trees and clouds. I might try to make the tree trunks as bouncy/cartoony as the boughs and clouds, but they're nice as is. I am also working on a project with alien/cartoony trees and it's interesting to see how others approach this sort of thing without getting all Dr. Seussy.

This is looking great Jake. Good work! (Probably not the critique you hoped for though.)

Nice Work! The ponytail maybe bounces a bit too much, but hey, a walk cycle! I'm jealous!

Thanks for that link, Rodney. I'm in the middle of a project where the wheel stride length will come in handy. And Jake, your car is looking pretty good! Good luck with getting all the elements to work together.