detbear

Hey.. In order to make an object an emmitter....you must first create a material that emitts whichever particle you want... In the project workspace....right click on material.......choose "new Material"......then you will see Material created with a subfolder under it titled "ATTRIBUTE".......... Right click on the word "Attribute" and choose "CHANGE TYPE TO"........"PARTICLE SYSTEM"..........Choose from the list....Streaks, sprites, blobbies, fluid, or hair.... Then you have a basic partical emitter material created. TO ATTACH IT TO AN OBJECT: 1. create a sphere from the primitives that come with hash. THEN drag select the sphere and name the group...."emitter" or something...doesn't matter what. You just want a group to attach the particle material to. Drag the emitter partical you created earlier on to the group in the sphere model. Start a new "action" using the sphere. Place some keyframes on the action.....IMPORTANT to make sure that in the options tab /Particles and hair is set to on.. If you run through the keys on the time slider, you should see a basic emitter taking place...... William

Hey everyone... What is the way to change/ increase the dpi for a high quality printable render from Hash. William

Hey... Thanks Paul and Robert for your help.... I found a fix for this puzzle in the text editor(word pad). Open the Model or choreography with this problem in the text editor and there are a zillion tag lines called "" erase these and they will no longer come up in the PWS. I think this needs further investigation to find out how this all gets started, but it is solveable using this method. William

I found several models from those choreographies which seemingly have been infected like a virus with these folders. I found this by opening them up in word pad.. Now...if you load them into other choreographies....Wamooo the folders arrive. IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM for me...that has the potential of shutting my production down... It's like an infection that grows. William

Hey Paul... I'm using Version 15. However ...I started the project in 14. Maybe that's the problem. I remember after I erased the rotoscopes from the camera..it coming back and asking for them. But I had rid my files of the rotoscope images. That was a bad choice.... As you suspect, I think it's attempting to load images and not finding them. As a result, it seems to spit a bunch of empty folders into the PWS in reaction. I've never opened a model in the text editor. I'm not sure which model to open. William

I've used Hash since 2000, but this is the most major problem I've ever had. PLEASE HELP WITH THIS: I'm using Hash for a production. At one point I set up choreographies with my own frame counters in the form of image files per frame as rotoscopes in the camera...(single camera in each chor) I erased those rotoscopes to move on in production, but now all of a sudden...when I load these choreographies there are a zillion folders that load into the PWS. So many that the files are huge and I can't navigate without taking 10 or more minutes to erase all of them.... The folders...all one zillion of them are named "Rotoscopes" This has made it nearly impossible to work on the production. I'm at the anger point William

Hey Washbucket, Yeah....A:M uses WAV files. You can drop as many as you want into a choreography/ action as you like. You can also move them by verying the time option under "properties". Be sure to work out the right bit rate or there could be some fuzziness in a direct render out of A:M. Unless you use a compositing program to bring it all together later. I just finished a shot with 4 characters in full dialogue. But the Audio was already pre-recorded in a studio. You can make a "DOPE-SHEET" if you like which will help get your timing set up. Depending on your level of skill at animation, it may be a good place to start in timing if you are just beginning. But as you progress you may find that the playback in A:M provides the best timing workflow. A:M has awesome playback for instant looks at how your timing is going. The dope sheet for me tends to result in a robotic look. But thats me. You and others may find a better result.

Tim, I think this is a definate improvement from your version with Shaggy. As an animator, I'm gonna give you a suggestion that I see could use improvement: 1. Animation begins in the core of the body.....some say the hips. We've all made the mistake of hitting the cool parts first, like hand/ arm motions and lip sinc. However....in the end, you want life flowing through the character and the first motion comes from the body out into the extremities. SO get the hips moving even if it's very...very slight. You can add arms and lip sinc later, but not core movements like the hips. Your base appoach to poses needs to spring from that major. William

Hey Tim, I would suggest setting up the shot at a broader angle and set up your key poses to the dialogue. Either do the body poses along with the dialogue or just the body poses first. Listening to the audio....it seems like more of a subtle shot without a lot of running and jumping...so you could mayber perhaps get away with a medium shot....But for the 11 second club I would push it. I would also consider changing characters.....but if you only have 2 days...that makes it a close call. For future reference and as a suggestion. Planning a shot out will save you a bunch of time. Study that audio and plan it out. come up with key poses to effectively tell the story in a creative...witty way....Then you're well on your way William D Animator

Hey everyone. Thanks for the awesome responses. Those are some great ideas and examples.

Howdy All' So I'm working on a project where I need to simulate sand pouring out into a heap on the ground. Do any of you have a good suggestion as to how best to approach this in Hash? It doesn't necessarily have to look ultra realistic. But the more real the better. Any suggestions. I though of using a combination of dust, animated mesh and particles somehow. But I'm not sure how easy that would be. Is it possible to thicken and texture the fluid system in hash to serve this purpose?

I managed to import the cad DWG into another app....then I exported it out again as an .Obj.....I managed to get some stuff, but it came in all wacky.. I'm guessing it's the settings that I used but I mostly ended up relying on drawing the lines from plans brought in as rotoscopes.

Hey all, I'm actually not a newbie at A:M.....But certainly new at this I want to use a DWG file from Auto Cad 2007. I tried to convert it in another app to a DXF then import the DXF to HASH.....But as you guessed it gave me nothing but "0" vertices and surfaces....Or something like that. Is there a way to convert a DWG straight into Hash....Plugin or something? Or a way to get this to work at all. The DXF doesn't seem to work. Kevin

thanks.. seriously, i have no idea... any suggestions? i don´t even know if the outfit of the girl fits to the half-naked guy, tribe-wise... the idea for that only came to me when asked myself: what kind of nature-shot can i do without having to populate it that much with grass and trees ... and the answer was africa... HEY.... Honestly, if it were me....I would not use hair for the grass at all. It doesn't look very natural....and your characters have a more "Toon" style. I really like your characters by the way....Very nicely done. Consider trying to limit the movements of the grass and tree elements because it takes the viewers attention off of the characters and story. VERY subtle movements will take your production further than trying to crowd it with too much business......KEEP WORKING on the grass stuff(using hair) but save it for another project until you have more experience with how it works. For now....some good textured stuff with simple structure will win the viewers attention to the story without being distracted. AND I'll bet your product will actually turn out better than if you threw all the wind and grass junk in there. Kevin Professional Animator

So do any of you know how to exactly get an expression to automatically rotate the wheels in correlation with pulling a main body bone forward? What exactly do you mean by isnt smooth? That may depend on the frames you are giving A:M to work with... if you use 4 frames (00:00-00:04) you will get 90° per frame. You can scale the keyframes down to smaller numbers, but a frame is the smallest number you will see later (A:M is actually calculating inbetween the frames, but the output wont show anything that). That means that you will see jumps of 90° per frame. Normally that isnt a problem because the eye cant cache up with more than 25 frames per second. If you are after a more blurred look of the wheels you can however use Motion Blur to smooth things out. Have a look at your render-settings (make sure to use the advanced-settings, not the one with the images). There you will find a motion blur-setting. Play a little bit around and render it out. *Fuchur*

Yeah...Please keep us posted about the release.

COOL....Nice work.....I had one of those and won a few games with it too. Lots of fun.

I totally agree with Robert. Overall, I also think that your basic parts need to be smoothed and check the arcs of the hips, etc. Also, remember that bady parts rarely arrive at the same time...so make sure to have your parts move through their motions without hitting at the same time. That causes it to look more robotic than organic if it all happens at the same time on the same frame, etc. If you're going to leave the guy sitting on the bench, make sure he reacts in some way If that guy walked past him....surely he'd look or something. A really neat idea you have going their. Keep forward on it. William Professional Animator

Yeah....that's a fairly easy rigg to get in there....Well, depending on your use of the artist dummy. However, there are numerous tutorials for a basic body rigg. I would guess skinning, weighting wouldn't be a huge issue. I remember seeing a rigg of an artist dummy created in A:M. For some reason I thought it was on the Animation Master "Pit Stop" site, but I'm not sure if that's still running. Anyway, you can rig this up in no time with the artist dummy functions even if you start with a hip bone, add some spines, etc.

Indeed!!! that is very exciting and it seems to be giving some excellent results in your tests.

So the only capture device needed is a video camera and the face markers? Is that right?

I think Will Sutton has a tutorial on setting up a BVH file in Hash at his www.zandoria.com site.

So on the first and second passes...Forgive me if I missed any other updates.......Three very noticeable things stand out: 1.Holding strong to just a few poses, rather than the number you have in there would strenthen this clip dramatically. As is, it would communicate more clearly and stronger if you cut it down to half the Arm swings, etc. 2.There is too much Jerkiness as you move in and out of the arm/ head poses. A polish smoothing pass will help abundantly on that. 3.There is an "anchored" feeling from the hips down. The feet don't move enough if at all. I would suggest a single step or small slide. EVEN a hip sway would help. Since movement starts from the hips, it's easy to kill a shot by neglecting it. We've all done it. You have some great, subtle acting in there that communicates, but the broader actions need to be fine tuned for clarity. William Animation Mentor Graduate Professional Animator

I did this tutorial a few years ago and went through the same thing.

Hey everyone, I am in V.11. In choreography I want to make a part of a model go transparent from one frame to the next. Is there a way to do this. I have the geometry as a group within the model. I can make it go transparent by turning the percentage of that group up, but it won't key. THE funny thing is that if I select the whole model, it will key the transparency level. But I only want a group of the geometry to go transparent. ANY SUGGESTIONS as to how I can do this? Thanks so much!!