detbear

Wow... I missed this until this morning. I have never noticed this feature and would like to get a bit more info on it if possible. I never noticed this "Wizard" before. Does this somehow render individual aspects of a scene? Will it render out just the shows in a scene for instance so that they can be layered into an editor such as After Effects. Anyone know how this works/ what it does exactly? Thanks. Kevin

Previz is the new storyboarding. Traditional storyboarding(Although beautiful, ingenius, and great art) is extremely time consuming and expensive. With previz, you're actually working on the following stage of the production process as well. I love storyboard art. But even larger studios who can afford it, are opting for the efficiency and effectiveness of Pre-viz... I seem to recall WETA doing some impressive work for the "Lord of The Rings" franchise VIA previz. Some of My animation friends(Who are feature film animators) have moved into "Pre-Viz" studios that only produce the pre-viz work on films.

Hey Vong. Thanks for checking it out. And thanks for your kind words. I'm really glad you liked it. In the past I would jump into something like this without a very clear plan or enough clarity as to what the details would actually be. Now.....before I start I keep a bunch of things in mind like lighting and render times. I always know that my animating is going to take up most of the time, so I try to plan that out as effectively as possible. And if I can, I only build sets that the camera can see. So I do a bunch of thumbnailing(storyboarding.) Most of those shots have only two walls and a floor. My ideas alway start out really elaborate and I have to reduce them to what I can manage. Thanks again for viewing. I'm working on more and hope to post more. Kevin

Madfox, You could also potentially export the model to a program like blender and then export out. I think blender will convert things to quads. Not sure of the process though. Also.....depending on the speed of your machine, it may seem to freeze up. Triangles will pretty much freeze A:M up trying to convert it to an A:M model. Especially one like that. But it looks like you were able to get it converted as an A:M model. I've had that same thing happen to me before..... As Fuchur said, V17 is when retopology started. You can actually retoplologize using an obj.....which keeps you from having to convert the obj into a model in A:M.

Thanks Matt.. Those were ideas that popped in there back when I was playing the game itself a bunch. If you haven't played the game, some of it might seem odd, but there are situations in the zombies game that seem quite funny. For instance, if you open the "Mystery Box" in the game, you take a chance that you'll get a really bad item that doesn't do you any good. I remember playing and getting useless items out of it. I would think to myself......"It might as well have given me a plunger and a roll of toilet paper" .... And the idea was born from that. Kevin

Hey Madfox, Don't get discouraged. This is a common problem with importing triangles. The good new is, the retopology tools can be used to make the model within A:M. If you are working in a software that can export "Quads" rather than triangles, it will help. But honestly, there will still be issues. ALSO.......If this model is going to be a prop without any advanced animation, you can import the .obj(Not a model import) directly into a Choreography as a "Prop". Right click on "Objects" in the Project Work Space..........select "import" and then choose "Prop.".........then navigate to your .obj and select it. A:M will import the .obj. These imported "Props"(.obj's) look really good in A:M. It's not a Hash model though....so it cannot be manipulated or changed as a model can be. You can animate a props translation, rotation and scale, but you cannot rig it or manipulate its mesh. Hope that helps.

Hey Guys. Thank you for your kind comments. I have a bunch more in the works. Hopefully I can post more soon. Game development, lego spoofs, etc. As you guys know, animation, lighting, and all that goes into it .....is really hard and time-consuming. Hopefully I'll get some more up soon. I also hope to continue my Flash Gordon spoof series. But the audio will have to be both different and re-engineered. That will take some effort. 1,000 thanks to you guys for taking time to look at my video. IT means a bunch. I'm working to build my youTube audience and subscribers. That takes time.... Happy Animating everyone. It is such a fun medium. Animation Master helps makes it much easier.

In order to keep the props and sets as simple as possible, I did watch my designs. The "Perk" machine sequence is the most simple. I wanted to add some more detail/ props.....but ran low on time. The hardest part was the animation. The way things came together forced me to do "Non" cycled walk cycles. The opening shot where all four characters exit the teleporter platform were all done separately....step by step with no pre-fabricated cycles. Step for step was hand-crafted. I animated one character jumping off. I decided this could give it more variety while saving a bit of work. It took quite a bit of work to have four individuals exit the screen from off the platform.

Hey Guys, Ya'll are so cool and very kind. I appreciate you taking a peak at it. With the exception of my Post work in Photoshop & After Effects, it was all done and rendered with A:M.. Kevin

It's a Parody Animation based on the Call of Duties Zombies game. If you haven't ever played, it might not be clear what's going on. Anyway, It has a few short but comical things based on the game play.

Hey Guys..... I've got a bunch of things in the works. Sorry that I haven't been around as much as I would like. I completed a new Animated short project and it is up over at YouTube. If you have a few seconds and would like to check it out, here is the link: xwww.youtube.com/watch?v=1IWYZcI7egE Kevin

I have the art of animation. It's a fairly decent book. Has a bunch of keyframe sequences from Dragons Lair in it....As well as many others. I would like to have the "Storyboarding" title. That would be very good as well. I want to work on the project. Wonder if they're hiring

Has Anyone in the community modeled a Toy figure of the Playmobil line of toys. Seems like Lego gets most of the spotlight. But I was going to try an animation with the Playmobil sets and didn't want to model a base figure from scratch if one already exists. Thanks.. Kevin

Like the Cookie cutter map type. It allows what is beneath it to appear everywhere that there is no image via an alpha channel. I was thinking this could possibly be used in correlation with controlling what areas SSS could be seen.

I think Robert is correct that the main effect of a "Masking" map would hopefully be able to allow where the SSS actually shows through on a model. So that SSS would show up in the lighter places. And you could blur the greyscale map to feather the edges. I don't know if the SSS in A:M could be masked like this via a decal map though?

Hey Rodney, I was thinking at first that there might be a current map type that could be used in this manner. But on a quick try, I couldn't find one that worked. HOWEVER, I still think it may somehow be possible. By making changes in the image(Via photoshop, etc.) you could control the SSS strength and placement.

Here is the link to that demo. The SSS/ translucency map section starts at 16:00. So just run it up to that point to see him working on that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKWWA4tv6yY

Hey Everyone. I was watching a demonstration on Marmoset Toolbag where game professionals drive SSS in their characters using a Translucency Map. Basically the "Greyscale" map controls how much or how little SSS effects specific areas. That way, you can have more SSS in areas like ear lobes, etc. I wonder if A:M could do this via one of the Map types in the decal selections. OR if a new Map type could be created to control this in A:M. Kevin

Rodney, Very Cool. I think I like that style even better than the original Tin Man Version. Nothing against the old version of course.

Even if you don't follow the games world much, these new "next gen" titles are visually stunning. Rendering at 60 fps real time(or something like that.) The real time render world and games show the value of GPU and physically based texturing/ lighting. Light years ahead of CPU. You can catch a look at these all over YouTube in HD. What do you guys think?

She probably just rendered an AO pass only to show you just the AO in the example. The SBAO has a setting that forces a render of only the AO.

Matt, I use them all the time in V18.... They look incredible and the render much faster than materials. Just get the 64 bit plugin and place it in with the folder with your existing HTX's. You can only see the MAT CAP results at render time though. MAKE sure you have the "Plugin Shaders" set to ON in your render settings. I also like the fact that you can add additional reflection, ambience, specularity, etc. The only thing I think that conflicts with Mat Caps are decals....For some reason, I think decals don't function properly when the share the same patch with a mat cap.

Wow .... Thats all great info. Thanks everyone. Matt....the normal AO still lags way behind the Jenpy and SBAO methods in render time. I like the Normal AO best, but the time per frame was wayyyyy too long on my current project. 20 seconds per frame versus like 7 minutes per frame. And the difference was not extreme. In fact, the SBAO had the same visual result. It just wasn't working well with the DOF effect. What I decided was to render in layers and composite in AE. That way I could just blur the layers as needed to give things a depth of field look. Turned out OK although the steps are a pain in the neck.

I seem to have run into son banding when mixing the Screen Based Ambient Occlusion and Depth Of Field. Is this a biproduct of the two being used or is there a setting in the SBAO that will decrease the dark "halo" like banding on things. Thanks for any suggestions, Kevin

I was always a big fan of the first(original) game. Remember my Sculptris to Hash project where I modeled Dirk? : https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45294&hl=dirk I think there will always be an audience for Dragon's Lair. Hopefully they will be able to get the project done.