OdinsEye2k

Of course, the moment I speak up on this kind of thing, I get super busy. But anyways - with my sporadic availability, I'm kind of thinking of more of a show-and-tell type start for the group. I think just about every time in past few years I've had a big idea for animation, I got buried in my engineering life. My two bits anyways.

Well, you have one in the range. I live in Glendale. Pencil me as a maybe and we'll see who else pops up. Bjorn

Hey all, As a delinquent member, I just wanted to pop in and say hi. I haven't touched AM about since my last contest entry because life as a student is absolutely crazy. In addition, I am currently working at an aerospace software house in Berlin (Pacelab for the US website) for the summer. The job came as a real surprise, so I've been learning German as I go. Luckily my project manager speaks very good English, so I can simply try to learn at lunch when it's not so high-stakes. Anyways, I hope y'all are doing well and still smokin'! Bjorn

Maybe it's the parka, but for some reason the latest Russian Batman pic looks like a shot from Robot Chicken. Or maybe it's the pose. It looks like something from real life, but at a small scale.

Cookie cutter decals will give you flat patches of hair if you do the stamps on a plane.

Dunno about kindergarten, but a couple of grades later it's easier. Defining a planet seems like defining the class bully. If it's big and aggressive, it's a planet.

Yeah, clearing the neighborhood is going to be a kind of confusing definition for non-experts (and probably some dueling between them as well). The Trojans of Jupiter are a good point, although they orbit in Jupiter's gravitational Lagrange points, so you could argue that they are already "captured" by Jupiter (actually, looks like the Wiki article agrees with me). If any asteroid leaves those two zones, they are likely leaving that orbit as they encounter Jupiter's gravity. Neptune and Pluto don't really share an orbit, they just cross over each other once in a while, but Pluto is really out of the plane that the other eight planets roughly share. This is pretty wild below. The gas giants are actually weaker in clearing their brethren away than, say Earth or Venus. It probably has to do with how much bigger in space the outer orbits are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar...ry_discriminant

Hey guys, Been a while since I've had any A:M'ing time. I got inspired by one of the Bradburies (I think it was Matt) who had done the planets. There are some *huge* textures out there (also, Blue Marble Next Gen is awesome cuz it has a picture for every month on the year so you can see the snow advance and retreat) that can be put to good use. I still need a cloud map, and I'd like to have some kind of auroral "roadway" from the Eastern Washington, California and New Mexico areas to finish it off. But here it is in progress. It is actually the opening screen (no text) for my thesis proposal presentation. I'll be dry-running in about two weeks, and hopefully have the paper ready to go in a month and a half. And in case anyone wonders, the topic is technology evolution, or as one might say, "intelligent design." There's actually quite a few economists out there trying to generalize Darwinism in order to handle the inputs of directed rather than random innovation.

Strange bit of trivia (and thus slightly OT) - you may have to take Pluto out or add a few more bodies. That trans-Neptune neighborhood is getting pretty strange: Pluto may still be a planet. Also, it may turn out that Charon is not really a moon of Pluto, but more like they are a "double planet." PS - Nice renders.

It actually worked pretty nicely for my Mars contest entry as well. Getting that reflection at the strength/coloration I wanted it at would have been a truly colossal pain otherwise. And also - the Spidey is sweet.

If so, Ken, we can always have Captain Thom standing proudly with the com tower raising high in the background.

Oooh ... if we did a weekend, I could also get some hang-glide lessons in at Lookout Mountain (early mornings and late afternoons are when the winds are quiet, I think). Whenabouts were y'all thinking about this? I also have been slacking mega-time on A:M. However, I did have a trick or two up my sleeve that I wanted to show around - mostly a fun potential use for the surface constraint.

Maybe a non-isotropic surface? Like when mud and clay mix around on the ground? Not really a deep concern, just trying to clarify...

Or if you are looking for a little encouragement: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg724n/scars.html Ignore the words if you want - just look at the absolute junk I started with and how it evolved into something tolerable.

Since there are so many still examples out there, I thought I'd post myself up a moving version. I think others have shown this technique before, but here's my thinking and set-up behind this particular scheme: You have the overall muscle bulk laid out (arm/leg masses, chest, etc). To add definition, you set up complex AM models (which would animate only with difficulty if part of the main mesh) as 'plus-ups.' These models would be good for structures like triceps, all those back muscles around the shoulder/spine area, tendons and whatnot. You could either paint these and try to animate them - or - you could build them out of splines, animate the splines for flex/relax poses. Applying a gradient material would be one way to get elevation data (I don't know where depth buffering is anymore or if it exists, if it has as many levels as EXR, etc.) - just run a flat plane though the 'muscle groups' to be your 128 ('flat') datum. This way, you've got all your stuff in quite an animatable form. Now, the results in this vid aren't close to anatomic, I suck at lighting it, etc. But I'm hoping you can see where I'm going. flextest.zip

Very cool.

My sentiments to this can be found by completing the lyric below: "Team America!" And I know you are kidding - but the funny thing is you illustrate the point beautifully. Rather than mangling up our beautiful, easily animated patches to build in fine 3d detail, we can now simply superimpose the fine details on top of a coarse mesh. And, it is animatable - so you could take renders of complex 3-d shapes, mash 'em up, stick them on your model, and you can even 'smartskin' this stuff. (Martin will object to my calling this feature small since it likely requires some calculation to know what screen resolution rather than patch resolution is) But here, small changes can give you a rather powerful increase in detailing ability - and it feeds back into allowing simplification of your meshes. EDIT: And it's further worth noting that Martin's doctrine of 'everything animatable' (esp. re: the infamous v9) is what makes it possible to lash all of these things together in a useful way.

You may want to smartskin the knees as well. The bending a little noodly.

I think I would also suggest not going straight at the pole on the jump. I know when I'm pole-swinging (don't ask), I usually aim off-center. If you go right it something, you'll just hit and stop. You need the off-center component to start the swing-around.

If you're choosing between the two, I definitely like "Juggler." There's a couple of good moments in there already (like the Taiwan bauble bit), and potential for chemistry between the strange shopkeeper and the kid. The conclusion feels kind of flat for some reason. Maybe there needs to be some realization or something of what the magic balls do. Like he's trying to sit down for TV or something and they won't leave him alone. (Edit) There is the montage you do, but I get a little sense of foreboding, but I don't see Mike really buying into it and then - bam, all of a sudden he's in the crapper.

Neat - that makes him look so - rubbery

Gents, Just wanted to say it was great to meet all that were there today - it was also very englightening. I've got a lot to play with for a while - especially since I should have v12 soon! BTW - it looks like Weight Mover has a lot of potential for moving from one character to another - just scale and fit Thom around the new model and whack the appropriate buttons. I got a pretty decent result on my character in my first try.

My God, I can't believe that actually worked. The ball even has a nice pop to it like you'd get when you deflate something.

Well, if I'm going in the same direction as you and Mike Fitz, then at least I know I have a worthy goal. I guess we'll see how far I get.

Damn. But, oh well, these are just really quick and dirties to get the main idea across.