Tom

That is wonderful! Thanks! Tom BTW- Here is the hand drawn Smoke cycle from Brother Bear... SmokeCycle.wmv

You're right. Sprites have no real volume so they can't shade like real shapes. I think that effect is a bit more like a fluid simulation. Think of an aquarium filled with clear water and then pouring a half cup of milk into it. If you filmed that in super slow motion and turned it upside down you'd get something like that mushroom cloud effect. I think that's actually been done in some movies. Could A:M fluids do that? maybe. You'd have to learn a lot about what the various settings do. BTW, isn't it amazing that someone can DRAW that smoke? -someone did some cigarette smoke here recently -high viscosity slows particle motion -does baking particle make keyframes? If so, you could stretch them out to slow things down. Thank you for the reply! I was thinking there might be a way to get two tone sprite smoke. Use two separate emittors with two separate colored sprites and have one start a little before and behind the other one. I'll have to experiment but I agree that this is probably a fluid simulation situation if this previous idea doesn't work. Yeah-the 2D guys really could create effects. There is another great hand drawn cloud plume in Disney's "Brother Bear". It's the scene where the female shaman is giving the girl advice in the cave. It's a cycle but done so effectively you barely notice. BTW- I looked for the cigarette smoke on the forum but couldn't find it. Do you know a link? Many thanks! Tom

Hello- Playing with sprite smoke and wanted to ask two questions. 1) Is it possible to achieve an effect like the one in the still image from a 2D Disney cartoon whereby smoke is underlit to give a dramatic effect? Sprites don't seem to be affected by lights and if you colored the individual small graphic (which makes up the smoke ) to be underlit, then the underlit effect would be over the entire smoke cloud and not isolated as it would be in a dramatic setting... 2) I have been trying to get a very slow (almost hypnotic) effect with smoke rising using sprites. Can't seem to slow the smoke down enough to get that effect. I tried playing with the "initial velocity" and "gravity" settings with no luck. You could take a Hash smoke render and slow it down by time stretching it in After Effects but that is a cheat and it wouldn't look great. Attached is a slow smoke "boil" from a Dark tree animation. Unfortunately it's not 3D. but maybe it gives an idea of the desired effect. Thanks for any suggestions, Tom darktree_1.wmv

Great Tip! Thanks! Tom

Thanks for the detailed explanation..I couldn't have figured the process out without it! Tom

AFAIK, Sweeper makes one model, in the model window, where animation doesn't happen. At all. Sweeper wouldn't be the tool for that MMoP creates one keyframe per model. After that... you're up to your own wits. Did I mention you can Shift select a whole bunch of those cards to move them all at once? Thanks for the help! Tom

Thanks again for all the help! I was able to get it to work..cool! One thing that has intrigued me would be if "Sweeper" had a time function so that you could "grow" things over time.... it would be an amazing feature. I wrote to Emilio Le Roux about it but didn't hear back from him which is too bad because I think it could be an amazing feature. For example if "Sweeper" remembers all the parameters and cross sections and then lets you put in a time parameter, you could bring the model into Choreography and then a beautiful entwined plant or a sophisticated gearbox etc would appear out of thin air. I'm guessing there are ways to achieve this in other ways but a "time " feature would solve it in one snap. Getting back to the previous project with the MMOP plugin, I was able to assemble the cards along a path and then manually pull them out of the frame as was described previously. I'm guessing that manually pulling them is the fastest way to get them to react...since It seems the MMOP doesn't allow any pose sliding (?) Thanks again.. Tom

The MMoP plugin places the cards along the path, no path constraint is needed I got stuck on that one too, so I retraced it in the chor using the path tool. There must be a way though. Thanks again! I think the ability to sculpt a path in the modeling window would be high up there for a new features request... Tom

Finally got around to studying the project that was posted and (probably a silly question but) how are the cards attached to the paths? I did not see any "constrain to path" instructions for any of the card models? (Another silly question) How was the model called "castle outline" imported into the choreography as a "path"? I tried dragging a model into a choreography and did not see any instructions (buttons or right clicking) that would make it a path... Thanks again for any help! Tom

Thanks for all the Help!! I've downloaded the project and intend on studying it intently! Thanks again! Tom

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions!! Here is a variation on the Narnia movie. Can't tell if the castle [and other objects] is built from sprites or ? Any suggestions welcome as to how they did this... http://www.adobecards.com/ Afeter it finishes loading , slide the slider all the way to the right..and then after the movie plays...slide it back to the left again.. Truly Amazing.. Tom

Very cool..thanks for everyone's help! Tom

I accidentally first posted this in the tutorial section ..so it is being re-posted here.. Hello- Does anyone know if Sprites can be effected by Forces? I haven't been able to get that to work... Question 2) Does anyone know if Sprites can be contained inside another shaped object once they are emitted? For example, once sprites are emitted, can they fill an invisible object so that as the sprties accumulate, a form takes shape? Here is a clip from the second Narnia movie that got me thinking about this effect. It appears there is a quick cut between the particles floating and the humanlike body that they become.. Thanks for any feedback.. Tom Particles.wmv

Thank you! I'll go back and see what the error is! Tom Thanks again! I got it to work!!! Your instructions were great and I could never have figured it out without you directions. Tom

Thank you! I'll go back and see what the error is! Tom

I was able to animate some of the various settings on the sprite like rate of emmision etc. but I was not able to figure out how to adjust the actual images being flipped by the program. Is it possible to show a screen shot of where on the "frames" properties you can adjust the speeds, going forward or backwards, or holding a particular image.. Thanks! Tom

Excellent information! Many thanks! Tom

Hello all- I have a sequence of 26 images that I am using as sprite particles. Two questions that I haven't been able to figure out yet: 1) Can you make each image being used as a sprite last longer that 1 frame? 2) Can you make the 26 images cycle over and over? At the moment, after frame 26, the animation just uses the last image and repeats it to the end... Thanks for any insights!! Tom

Many thanks for all the help!! Tom

Great animation! Good job! If you do think of a way to achieve this with a material...please let me know. In the meantime I will try the other techniques! thanks !! Tom

That sounds like a very good solution! I have a couple of different shapes that need to use this technique so I was wondering if there was a way to create one "material" that can be applied to each different shape without the need to re-animate a different transparency map or material effector for each individual shape? If I am able to apply one material, Is there a way to make the "reveal" or transparency of that material follow the curves and twists of an object? It seems I will be limited to successively revealing along only one axis.. Again, thanks for any insight! T.

Hello All- If you view the attached picture you will see that the goal is to create a rigging whereby a Pose Slider can cause a larger tube to cover up a slender hose over time. I tried rigging the larger tube with a simple parent child boning situation however, because of the curve in the line, when the first parent bone is scaled down, it causes all of the children to collapse vertically and so the larger tube does not adhere to the curve of the slender hose. I thought of constraining to a path but was hoping that it could all be done with a simple Pose slider. Any suggestions are appreciated!! Thanks! Tom

Very Coool!!! Tom

Many thanks to all the contributors and John's animated Kaleidsocope was awesome!!!!! This was supposed to be for a book cover design and since there was a short deadline I wound up modeling and rendering one of the 16 "petals" and then I recreated a kaleidoscopic mask by hand in Photoshop for the printers. Thanks again...the forum is an amazing resource. Tom

Hello- Does anyone know how to create a kaleidsocope image, through rendering (or otherwise) ? Something similar to the attached jpg? I was hoping there was some sort of AM render effect that might work, or something that would at least create part of a kaleidoscope section....... that could then be x flipped. I was looking at my After Effects filters and they have something which says it creates kaleidoscopes but is more a "Tiling" sort of thing that looks cheesy anyway. Thanks for any suggestions! Tom