detbear

Thanks guys...this was most helpful. That mufoof is very interesting. I will have to continue to build off of those principles.

Hey everyone. I'm attempting to simulate an object colliding with an airplane in mid air. It gets hit from the side rather than head on or from the rear and there is no explosion....just a physical hit that needs to break it apart. My question: Can some type of dynamics/ simulation break the plane up and simulate the pieces falling with drag? **Additional complication is that the airplane appear to be moving at about 100mph even though it's only moving up and down with a little rotation. So when the plane breaks up, there is no forward speed for the simulation to work with as far as the pieces dragging..... Is there a way to do this in A:M without going to a massive, complexed process? Thankz

Hey everyone, I'm doing a little reseach on how to get one of those cool/ realistic airplane prop spins. Anyone run into a good method with A:M. William

I'm with robert.... If you can, make the pose a little more "dynamic".....with a little less "Twinning"... Off balance as if he's moving in an action. Think that would enhance it bunches. I like your character...Nice work..

MouseM, Don't give up or let hitches/ hendrances get you down along the way. Work at it. I found that while I was producing 'Boomer', I kept going back and writing constant lists..... kinda like you have there. Over and over again I would re-formulate the stages I had done and the stages I had to complete. But I often found that some later stages of production would often get done earlier ....even before what seemed pre-liminary. I would suggest combining your storyboard digitally from simple thumbnails....This skips a massive "Boarding" process that is often unnecessary. Get two birds with one stone. Work out your "Staging, camera angles, and screenplay" all at the same time and use that as a storyboard. William

Hey There... Hair with Dynamics seems to be a very delicate partnership. I had problems with this in V.15 and several lower versions... 1.Sometimes it was merely a re-boot of the choreography that fixed...BUT CONSIDER THIS: Are you starting the render/ shot at frame 000, OR are you beginning the render at a further frame in the sequnce. For instance...Does your animation/ sequence have 500 frames and you are only rendering 220-350(just an example) Sometimes when you start the render at a frame later in the sequence, the dynamic calculations mess up in trying to solve where the "Hair" should be at that frame.. I've had cases where I had to completely cut frames out and bring shots back to start at frame 000 in order to get the dynamics and hair to work correctly. If the sequence and/ or movement of your model/ shot begins much earlier than the frames you are trying to render, this will sometimes cause problems. William

One of the things that made working with Animation Master such a right fit for this project, was the ability to work with a small group. The Animation consists of about 23 minutes. Including myself, there were only 4 actual animators: Myself, Mark McDole, Brian Nicolucci, and Robert Holmén Robert did a really nice acting sequence running about 50 seconds or so. As you all know, Robert is a very talented animator and performed some awesome acting choices. Mark M. did a similar length sequence where Sir Gilbert takes on a dragon(Sooo funny)... Although I haven't timed it out, Brian N. and myself did the remaining 21 minutes of animation. Of course after all was done, I had to clean up and prepare it all for final renders. But Animation Master was the right choice for the project. It would've been really difficult to use a different pipeline with a small crew.

Yes.. It is created to have a more 'family friendly' style. I think all ages can enjoy it.

Hey Everyone.... Thanks for all your awesome feedback... I knew A:M was up to the task and for a small crew it is unrivaled as a 3D tool. When the smoke clears from the launch of the video, I hope to post some making of type things and such. There's a bunch of animation not seen on the trailer and a bunch more characters. 23 or so characters. Yeah...I had some contracts and such where I had to keep things quiet. There were times that I wanted to show stuff but couldn't . Yeah JB...I wish I had time to make it all as polished. Budget and time worked aginst me. There were some really frustrating moments along the way, especially seeing that some parts shined a bit brighter than others. As for the trailer---- I found that for me, making a trailer is almost as difficult as making a movie...Requires a bunch of planning and scripting. Overall, I'm very excited about it and hope people like it.

Thanks guys, It is 90% or so... animation....About 5 minutes of puppetry in a 28 minute show (23 minutes of animation). The puppets are the host-like characters which lead into the main portion which is all animation. I didn't want to spoil the 3D fun too much with the trailer. William

Hey Everyone, It gives me great joy to announce the release of my new Childrens video: ADVENTURES WITH BOOMER - Episode 1- Fishin' for Friends. You can visit the website and view the trailer here: Visit My Website It took me over 5 years to finish it with a bunch of side tracks and obstacles. I would like to thank those in the Hash community who were contracted to work on portions of the production....In no particular order: William Sutton Robert Holmén John Henderson Nancy Gormezano

Be careful with Bloom settings. A little will go a long way. A trick in post that works on the "rim" area is to layer a "White" version of the character underneath the normal character. Then add some glow or blurr....This gives a nice edge rim light that can be controlled underneath via the white layer settings.

Hey...Just got over to the post here. As always, Robert delivers excellent work. Final resolution is rendered at 720p with a few final compositing elements. DVD will be out soon. Along with Robert, there are several other artists from the community on the credits of the project. I hope to post the trailer or some highlighted portions of the show very soon. William

Stay Tuned .....

John, I just finished rendering a half hour childrens video with AO at HD 720p. The Characters were all rendered separately from any backgrounds. And ground shadows were also rendered separately. About 3-6 months of rendering on and off. I didn't use Open Exr's(But they are really cool) The characters on separate passes allow for more flex in the composite. Trade off was that sometimes the ground does not have AO shadows even though the character does. BUT this can be faked by adding a layer in AE. Also requires no real render time in Hash. Your process looks pretty good....I used Multi-pass from anywhere between 9-25passes. Also I kept the AO sample at 30%. I used 1 or 2 additional lights along with the AO lighting. For some sequences I used Image Based lighting with an HDRI image. Depending on the complexity of the model(s) and lighting, renders of characters took anywhere from 10-40 minutes.

I'm definately in Will....if it's not too terribly far away..... Sounds awesome!!!

Hey Will..... I'm several hours away, but i wish there was some group in this area.

That's really looking nice. Much improved from your original.

Thanks Nancy... I'll give that a try. I have never run into a situation until now where I need to get rid of that bugger.

When you do a "shaded" mode quality render rather than a "Final" quality render......The x,y,z indicator at the bottom left renders into the frame. Is there a way to render a "shaded" mode render without that appearing. Can you turn it off? Thanks, William

Nancy, I've had those horrible corruptions as well. Funny thing it seems for me that my Vista Machines(64bit) have the problem whereas my XP systems don't. VERY strange indeed...

My small studio has two web licenses and a cd license.... and they operate equally as well...The cd version just gives a bit more flexibility...As for new features...New ones and improvements continue to be released ongoing. I use it professionally, and it is very effective. v15 is awesome...fixed some key bugs that were in v14. Also carries some surprisingly awesome exports still for model exports.

This is not the only way....or the best way.....But its the way I would do it: 1.Make the Broom/Guitar part of the model. Copy and paste it there....then move it to a position suitable. 2.Create a new bone....for the broom/ guitar (bone1) with the bones base at the area of where the "Pic" hand will strum...... 3.Make sure the above bone is parented to the lower Back bone or hips....This way it will move with the body and yet you can also move it independently as well. 4.place a second bone(Bone2) at the neck of the Broom. Parent this to Bone1 so it will move with the broom but also move up and down the neck. 5.With your characters "Fret" hand set to IK(inverse Kenamatics)....constrain it to the Bone2(neck) with a "translate to" constraint. 6.Then you can slide Bone2 and control the hand...while at the same time the guitars movement will. **Steps 5 & 6 need to be done in a pose or action.... This is at least a start....You can add a bunch more detail.... Hope that helps some.

At the moment I can't, because I'm working on a Direct to DVD project which is taking up most of my time. HOWEVER, I do have a more lengthy story for this. But for now, it will only be a show reel piece. In order to further develop the idea into something more, I would replace the models with more refined rigs. Hats off to creators of these rigs from the community here. Talbot and the others are so talented at this genre. Without their permission to use those, I would not carry it any further than a demo piece. I would need to refine or replace the rigs/ controls....especially the faces.

Hey everyone... Thanks so much for your kind remarks. Jason....You're right.... there is motion blurr in there, but it's a very small percentage(didn't have enough experimental time to test render it with higher levels). I didn't use imaged base lighting although I do in most other projects. But it is full Ambient Occlusion lighting. Each character was rendered separately and composited back into a matched background. It's interesting that you mention a stop motion feel. From what other animation friends have told me, I tend to have a "stop motion" feel that comes out in my animation. I am a big fan of the Ray Harryhaussen films. Somehow, I guess my influences come out in my work sometimes. The rigs themselves also limited some of the smoother polish which gives it a more stiff feel.