Gerry

yeah, the models look great, but the shadows are a little confusing. You've got the hard-edged shadows off to the left, then the soft pools of shadow directly below the heads...or is that an oil leak?

Yeah, unless the brainstem is a part of their logo you could probably do without it. The animation looks great, and the still of the stage set really shines. I also had some thoughts on the arms and legs, but in the end I think it's better to just leave them "cartoon-style" like you have.

Josh, if you get around to it I would be interested in some clarification on that point. Doug, to answer your question (though I don't know which approach will work for your purposes) open your face image in Photoshop. ( If that's what you use. Should be similar in other paint progs though.) With the wand, click in the area you want to be transparent. Make sure it's all selected. Under Select, choose "save selection..." and you'll get a window asking you to name the selection. Call it "silhouette" or "outline". ClickOK. In your Channels palette (usually tabbed with your layers palette) make sure there's a new channel with the name you gave it. this is called an alpha channel! Save as a Targa file. Now in AM the image should be silhouetted, with the background color masked out. You may need to re-import it, but it *should* update by itself. Like I said, I don't know if this method or Josh's will work best for you, but you will definitely find it handy to save Targa's with an alpha channel in the future.

This is looking great, nice natural movements and secondary body language. A couple of things aren't clear though. Is she sprouting a wedding veil and asking for a ring? If yes then its working, but the veil maybe should be more ornate, and maybe she gestures to her hand in addition to holding it out. And maybe eyelashes on the girl to clarify that she's a girl. I know a couple of these things have come up already, so sorry if I'm being redundant.

This still looks great Nancy! It's got a great unified style in keeping with the characters.

Allright! I downloaded Audacity both at work and at home. It looks like a great freeware app, exactly what I've been needing. We're cookin dude!

I was just over there and tried to download from at least three different links and nothing was working. I'll try later from home.

Yeah, this short looks like fun and I really enjoy playing with sound effects. I do need a freeware sound mixer if anyone can make a suggestion, either Mac or PC will do. The one I've been using, a free version of WavePad, has only one track as far as I can tell.

Colin's tute over on the ARM is still a pretty good ear model. So says I. But PS that's some beautiful splinin', Yves. Colin's ear modeling tutorial

This is fun and really looking great. that background still seems dominant. Maybe try reversing the gradient, so it gets lighter as it gets closer to the ground. This may keep it from drawing the eye too much. If you still want some help with the soundtrack I'm game!

Great little demo John. I just got v 11.1 but this looks like a good reason to upgrade.

Yeah, really nice. Too bad they took out the humor! Especially since humor means water, but then that's a whole nother kiosk!

P.S. - there's a great tutorial over on the ARM by Bill Sutton on decaling. Hugely comprehensive, with stepbystep directions for flattening in an action window, making the screen shots, etc. etc. That may be some help.

Wow, good thing you've picked a simple subject to start with! One question I would ask is, is the decal out of place when you do a render either of the model or the scene? I discovered one interesting anomaly on my project, which is that if you just look at the model in shaded view (by hitting "0" rather than rendering by hitting "Q" for a quick render) and if the patch has a curved edge, the decal will look out of place or stretched, like it's being "pulled" by the patch's surface tension, but when you do the quick render or a choreography render, it's actually where it should be. could that be the problem? Another thing to keep in mind (though you probably already know this) is that you don't necessarily have to flatten every section every time. If you rotate the model to where you're looking at the patch(es) to be decaled more or less straight on, take your screen shot, paint on it in Photoshop, then apply the decal at the same angle, it will go on pretty nicely. In other words, you can apply a decal from any angle, not just from left-top-front-side view. I'm afraid I don't have much experience with flattening in an action for the purpose of decaling so I have no advice for you there. I hope this is some help. Let me know.

Eric- I'd be glad to respond to your question as I'm just finishing up a fairly complex project, decal-wise, and I've learned a ton through trial and error. but I can't tell from your screen shot what you're showing. What's the decal? The large grey shape? The dotted triangle? If you can show me something that more clearly show the problem I'll try to help you out. Gerry

I've got a very rough first render of this movie and it appears the QT movies I used for decals are not playing. I'm posting a link here to a quick and dirty render (4mb) to see if someone has a suggestion. There are two places where movies should be playing: on the nine reels of the game screen as it flies by (too fast but I'm going to fix that) and the horses coming out of the gate. The horses are existing art, a series of four stills that I have to work with. I created a series of cross-fades to "fake" the implied action and the QT movie itself plays fine. The reel movies also play fine by themselves but as decals they do not seem to be playing. The second problem I need to solve is how to keep the movies on the first frame, and then have them start at a specified frame in the main movie, i.e., when they fly by the camera. Suggestions appreciated! Test movie

Yeah I tried again today and I can only render in final mode. I haven't tried Default though, I figured that meant wireframe. I'm not sure how I have prefs set. I may send in an AM Report on Monday.

With a little trial and error I've been able to render just fine in final mode, but I haven't gone back to try wireframe render. I'll try that today and see how it goes.

Nope, but I've got another one. When I tried to do a wireframe test render I got this message: Failed InitBoundRender Info And it wouldn't render. I'm on a PC, Windows 2000Pro, not sure of the video card as I'm doing this at work. I'm a Mac guy at home. It's 7:30 and I'm going home, but if anyone knows what this might mean that would be a big help.

Thanks Nancy, in fact I just got a reply from Hash outlining what you described and it works just fine. thanks for your comment. HASH ROCKS!!

Hi Ken- Here's a zip file with a quickie project (one four-patch object and a decal img) with the same problem, the image goes onto each patch separately. Hopefully it will look the same to you as it does to me. decaling problem file

I'll open a new project and see if I can duplicate the problem. If I can I'll post it for you to look at. Thanks Ken!

Yeah Ken, I'm working with another (still) image to decal across several patches, and it apparently wants to apply the entire image to each patch. There also doesn't seem to be a way to rescale the image before applying like in earlier versions. This is the brand new version, with the little red headed magician holding the Thom doll on the cd. Just got it yesterday and I'm on a hellacious deadline with a live project.

Here's a link to the image. It appears the animated decal is being applied to each patch, with some being stretched horizontally and one being applied correctly. Screen shot of offending movie

I'm attempting to apply a small QT movie as a decal. It will be on a curved shape and will create an illusion of spinning with a series of blurred frames. but when I apply it, either directly in the model window or in an action window after flattening, it applies exactly the same way, with a few stretched/repeated images. I'm attempting to attach an image to show the way the movie looks, and the way it applies. Can someone telll me what I could be doing wrong? Thanks! P.S. The attach image may not be working. Don't know why, I browse for the image but there's no way to upload apparently. You'd think I'd know how to work this by now.