[Stymied on Smoke...]

That's cool looking. I think you need to cheat the "nightime" light a bit so the shapes are more clear. It's very dark right now.

 

Thanks, robcat. Unless an event is taking place in full daylight, I have a tendency to start 'dark' and progressively add lights. Much massaging is in order. The goal at this point is to get the rider on the handcar, and smoke coming from the locomotive's stack. [plus a Fireman and Engineer...in due time] Once that's done [rider and smoke] I can set up several other camera angles and piece together the chase. What things are, and, what's going on, will, I hope be more clear.

 

Here's the handcar rider. Just got the 2001 Rig in him yesterday.

[Stymied on Smoke...]

Xtaz: I think you're right about the volumetrics. I spent last night [and into the morning] trying to make them behave. No luck. But your 'Train' example is great!

 

Holmes: I've just downloaded and printed out your tutoriasls on Sprites and Streaks. [When are you going to collect these in a book?]

 

Here's the latest on the train. Got a little [?] spurious movement in the foliage at the very beginning. It's fixed now and will render out tonight.

CHASER_FINAL_BIRDS_12sec..zip

[Evolution of a Character]

Pretty slick the way you morphed the Cap't. into the ne one.

[simple movie]

Nice cannon smoke. What version of A:M are you using?

[Sets_Braugtigan's Balloon Bazaar]

....I'm probably getting to philosophical about it.

 

Since the balloons lift off vertically, they can be in either location. I can go either way with it.

[Sets_Braugtigan's Balloon Bazaar]

Any specific software ?

 

Thanks Xtaz. It's just pens, pencils and paper...and years of practice. I drew underground comics for a while.

 

However; I was having trouble with my printer last night. I wanted to print out black and white copies and tone them with grey markers. As a fall-back, I did the grey tones in Photoshop.

[Sets_Braugtigan's Balloon Bazaar]

At the top of the hill, Braugtigan's sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking a river. The 'Balloon Yard' is down a flight of steps on a section of meadow. There's a large flagstone walk down between the lines of balloons.

[Braugtigan, the Balloonist]

Here's how he turned out.

 

Best yet!

[Stymied on Smoke...]

you do have the material in a visible window right? the one that shows the sphere. that has to be open to adust its props.

 

It's happening in an Action window.

[Stymied on Smoke...]

you can set any properties value as a CP in the channels. Of course the channel has to exist first, which may not be possible until you make change in the properties window.

 

Yup.

[Stymied on Smoke...]

I'm down to the point where the "Opacity Over Life" attribute has to be set. I click on the 'Smoke' emmitter in Materials and the Properties table opens up. But when I try to click on "Opacity Over Life" and open the box to type in a new value, the Properties closes. How do I get around this?

[Why does my light shine through walls?]

I think part of the answer is to have denser geometry.

 

I suspect you're right. Here's a demo I cobbled together: a cylinder with a hole, and four 4-point patches stacked inside. A spotlight directly above shines all the way through, while a spotlight behind the cylinder is blocked. [tho' it can blow around around the edges.]

[Can I limit volumetric haze to the foreground only?]

...though Volumetric Effects take a little more futzing with to get a nice effect.

 

Thanks, Holmes. I'm struggling with your Volumetrics Tutorial right now. [the struggle being with the 'futz factor', not your excellent toot.]

I also want to try a simple white panel with a gradated Transparency screen. We'll see what we see.

[Can I limit volumetric haze to the foreground only?]

Fog uses the camera background color as it's color. So, I guess the only work around for this is to use white as the camera background color. Then to get the black background, you could use ablack sphere around the scene.

 

I was afraid that was going to be the answer. A black sphere? mayhap. At the moment, I have taken the Ground Plane, colored it black, nrotated it 90 degrees and installed it as a background. I was hoping that if the fog was set to a far distance of 8000cm, the Ground Plane would obcsure the worst of it.

[Can I limit volumetric haze to the foreground only?]

I'm trying to add some haze to a night scene, but all settings convert it to daylight [camera background color being white] I tried other colors, but they don't look right. I tried black, which preserved the 'night-ness' but loses the sense of haze in the fore ground. How to get a light haze with a night sky?

[Rendering Overhead: an assumption...]

I'll refer you to TWO for all my most recent animation work.

Touche'.

[Rendering Overhead: an assumption...]

Kel has animation to show....finally? This I have to see.

 

Could it be your turn soon?

[Rendering Overhead: an assumption...]

OK. The returns are in. The envelope, please.

 

If objects are turned off, the CPU apparently doesn't see them and does not have to hold their CP positions in its thoughts. In the first anim., "Bare Bones and Red Lantern" the rocks and trees are turned off. It took 59 minutes to render the 10 secs. In the second, "All the Foliage", it took an hour and 43 min. Almost twice the time.

 

It is true, the foliage isn't very visible, even for being a night scene, but I intend to punch up the specularity so the leaves highlight mo' betta'. The object ahead of the engine is a handcar [being chased] and here's the little guy who will be driving it.

 

The two animations are rendered from different cameras.

BARE_BONES_RED_LANTERN_10sec..zip

ALL_THE_BONES_FOLIAGE_10sec..zip

[Why does my light shine through walls?]

I think what Rodney was getting at is: If you have [let's say] a single four-point patch as a wall [we'll assume it's a large one] the light will pass through. But if you have a cube, the light won't. If you just put another four-point patch in front of the first, both will pass the light.

 

I've noticed when texturing, some times I can go to the top view and select only the right-hand side of several objects. When I go to the Front View, they frequently overlap each other. However; I can apply a decal to the group all at once, and the front patchs don't mask the ones behind. So the question is: are you walls only single patch thickness?

[Braugtigan, the Balloonist]

Here's what I got for the Brat. I varied abit from the sketch in the nose shape. What ye think?

Looks good to me. Just give him lots of teeth when he smiles or talks.

[Rendering Overhead: an assumption...]

In my own experience and as far as I know it does speed up rendering.

If its not active, its not there.

 

That's encouraging. I'll put it to the test. Thanks.

[Rendering Overhead: an assumption...]

To speed up render times [in a multi-frame animation] am I right in assuming that objects that are turned off in the Properties no longer exist are far as render times and computing effort? I have a situation in which I've built jungle foilage. The individual 'leaf units' are light in CP's, but there's a lot of units. I'm thinking it would be nice if I could have them turned off before they enter the frame, and turned off again after they leave.

[Braugtigan, the Balloonist]

Thanks, Nancy!

 

........, Mr. Kelleybert !

 

ps: I'll get you for that!

[Braugtigan, the Balloonist]

Thanks, guys. [As an aside: the whole world knows me as 'Kelley', often abbreviated to 'Kel']

[Braugtigan, the Balloonist]

Here, at last, is Billy Braugtigan, the Balloon Man. I had originally seen him as an avuncular W.C.Fields type, but, in the event, he came to be a frenitic, suede-shoe, Used Car salesman. Talks mile-a-minute, always on the cusp of doing Big Deals, always has a sheaf of papers, contracts, sales slips, orders, etc.