detbear

Cool shot!!! Good staging. And I especially like the lighting too.

Holmes!, Remember that your reel is only as good as your worst piece on it. I think you can x out much of what you have in this and you will have a much stronger reel. Your reel is way too long. Music is a bit strong for me....But that's your artistic choice. HOWEVER...remember that you never know who is going to be reviewing it...So it is safer to have nothing that distracts or annoys a recruiter. A recruiter rarely "REWINDS" to watch again. They have hundreds of reels to go through weekly. If you don't get there attention on the first view....Errr, well.... SO IT's actually better to have 3-4 animations that are top-notch than 10 animations that are mixed quality. AVOID using all of that animation of characters talking and yet you can only hear music blasting. Its better to show your lip sinc animation ability. If there isn't any...cut it from the reel. CUT out that shot that starts right when you press play....You need to begin with the Name Tag. Plus...I think the witch coming through the door is not as strong of a shot...especially to open up with..You want to start with a great piece and end with a great piece. Although nothing on the reel should be weak....the weaker ones should come inbetween the start and finish ones. CUT OUT the shot where "liquid" is pouring down on the tin man. ALSO.....Don't cast the viewer into a scene where all of a sudden the person reviewing your reel has no idea what's going on even though the animation may be good. IF ALL POSSIBLE....use the shots that are understandable....as well as good animation. This means shots that begin in a way as to allow the viewer/ recruiter be able to see whats happening. THIS IS NOT ALWAYS EASY. I remember one time having what I thought was a solid reel and a well respected animator hammered me on this same point after reviewing my reel. I wanted to crawl under a rock I think you have about 4 pieces in here that if you cut the rest, it would be stronger. Hope this helps, William

It's amazing to me the time people put into such minute details for models that will be animated and the viewers don't notice the difference. There of course has to be enough detail, but much of what takes hours upon hours to produce makes little difference in the final product. This is why Directors make some of the decisions they do and anger their artists. Directors realize that the audience sees only what it sees. If it's a STILL image, that's a different ball game. But animation blots out a bunch of the detail. Normal maps VS. Bump maps. My experience with normal maps is that they are heavy on the render. I eliminated them on several occasions and went back to bump percentages. My method is Stamping two maps onto a model. A color map stamp and a "Bump" version of the color stamp...... Which is pretty much the standard process for most models. Some add a specular map also, etc. Then I adjust the bump levels in the "Decal" manager within A:M. The less bump percentage, the faster the render time in my experience with it. As far as the boot example above....I think it will be fine using a color stamp and a bump stamp...especially if it is going to be moving with motion blurr, etc.

That could have been me...can't remember if I posted anything about it. However, I did have this issue at one time. It was a V.15 bug I think. I normally just use MOV's and/ or TGA sequences though. A work around is to render out TGA's and composite the audio in a post app like After Effects or Premiere.

Hey everyone, This is a basic question I have about the channels under the choreography of the PWS. Specifically the choreography action channels for the characters bones/controls keys. I have a character that I've animated in the choreography already. BUT...the bone/ control keys are seperated by unrelated controls..... Is there a way the move the channels around so that all the say.....left wing controls are stacked together. This will allow for much easier selection and tweeking the keys. Is this possible to do? William

John.... That is really cool about your Mdd export to Zbrush.. I did something similar to this in Vue...Re-applying the "single" texture maps. It works really well. I'd love to see your results with that. William

That is Fantastic you guys!!!! Thanks for sharing that.. This is really promising news. If Steffen can get the OBJs to export the "decal" mapping somehow....WOW... that would be incredible.. The .3ds exporter is suppose to do that but I havn't been able to get stable results in every case. Still...I'm very thankful for those export plugins. HOMESLICE.....I converted to Collada into/ from Vue 7.5. It is surprisingly good....But that was after I exported an obj from Hash, imported it to Vue...then exported it from Vue as Collada. But that was for stills/ not animation... BUT I KNOW THAT VUE uses this type system for importing animated meshes from programs like poser. William

As far as converting .objs into splines from other apps...this is not instant, but very able. The following is a current project I've been working on. I imported this model as an .obj and then fixed it into a more simple spline.... Although I don't plan to take it back out from Animation Master to another App...I went ahead and exported it back out as an obj from the hash version and imported it into Vue: cheers, William

So what were the settings in the dynamic controls did you use to get those results... If you set the "Target" to "springs"......where/ what did you set to get that natural response? Were you using one bone or a chain?

That is very cool..... It doesn't export textures though....right. Is it kind of like a "prop" exporter which allows mesh motion? sounds interesting.

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

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

You should see the new Bishop.... It can change sizes, shapes, everything. A dream character for creating just about any acting role.

I saw a presentain on one of their characters and they have what looks like "modes" for every possible situation/ emotion. Like having 4 or 5 riggs on just the face at the same time. After seeing that, I totally understand how it could take a year. HOWEVER... I imagine they put each stage through an exhaustive trial and error process to make them "pipeline" ready. They test animate everything more than likely. That probably takes a while. Sorry CG, 3D, Pixels, riggs and Textures..... I'm afraid the 2nd Boomer will be about 60% live action and only about 40% animation. Well....unless there is a huge change in the script. Not the 95% CG required for the 1st episode.

CURRENTLY I am debating how long TSM2 will survive for A:M. If the trends/ rigs move further and further away from TSM2, I may need to spend time on other riggs...Scary for me, since I am so familiar with TSM2. HOWEVER....with several projects in the works, I may be looking to hire more contract artists who are A:M proficient and familiar with available riggs. Robert -- That issue with William was probably more my bad, with the version he worked from....It already had the face rigg you had done for me and I was trying to maintain it's function without him having to re-work it. It worked soo well, I was also trying to keep it the way it was because if it was damaged in any way, I doubt I could have fixed it at the time. Home-Slice -- You are so right with projects like the "Greek" statues... I have found that rigging becomes a project, and even a shot by shot need. Sometimes what works 90% of the time, totally fails in certain instances(Very frustrating cases). Having that perfect rigg still requires additions/ changes from time to time. I can totally see how TSM2 can lack in certain ways. FOR ME, I am just more familiar with TSM2, so it is an easier option for my own pipeline. Tight schedules and even less budget has kept me to what I'm familiar with. BUT as William mentioned, the collaboration of work on a project carries a need for more artist to add/ make changes. It's an ongoing process as you Masters know. NANCY -- I'm with you all the way as for as remaining simple...I wish this stuff was more simple. It's a real jungle for me to try and hack through. I'd get more sleep at night.. Hat's off to Robert and how he can crunch through that rigg with all the bones. Anzovin created a face machine for other softwares(as you probably know) after they stopped supporting later versions of A:M....... For those of us who like working with it, we can only think with wishful thoughts how cool that would've been to have it in A:M.... William "Kevin"

Robert's facial rig is the closest to what I've seen when animating for shops in the industry. The way the controls are set up allows for extreme flexibility. The most desireable part of this setup for me is how the mouth "corner controls" work. Most cg characters have the horrible linear look to how the mouth operates and produces a very un-natural look with pinches and stiffness. This setup on the other hand has a more "fleshy" result. Since I don't like working from sliders or controllers set away from the face, this is just my own preference. That is to grab a handle directly on the face spot. This way I can grasp what's going on in the graph editor more easily. I also attempt to create quick keys to set base keys on easier. Like a set of base poses to get with a click/ drag for (brow frown, smile, snarl...etc.) That will auto set a key without having to key all the controls each time. And this is editable from that base pose. It's not easy to set this type rig up though....especially since each character is different and since the rig is not based on "one fits all" formula.

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