Luuk Steitner

Any camera with decent quality will do. Even a web cam can be used if it has a good resolution and FPS. There is no minimum. For satisfying results you should at least have VGA / NTSC / PAL resolution with 25-30 FPS. If you're using a High Definition camera the result will be smoother, if your camera has a higher FPS you can track faster movements. And yes, it's a seperate app. Because it exports BVH files it can be used with any 3D animation program which supports BVH. I will of course promote A:M on my website to get users of other apps to do it with A:M

An other possibility would be that you have "show decals" switched off. (Crtl-D) Did you check that?

The facial rig is pretty simple, I will supply one but it is also possible to constrain the BVH to a squetch rig.

Oh really? What would you pay for it? That depends on how good/easy it is to set up. Only you know how difficult/time consuming this project has been for you. Seems like most 3rd party things in the A:M field sell between $30 and $100 I certainly have no problems in that area, but again, only you can figure how much it costs... Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com I'm not sure yet what the price will be but I'll make sure it wouldn't be too much. Actually the most valuable thing about my program is that it's really easy to set up. Just manually specify the marker positions on the first frame and click the track button. The program export a BVH file that can be imported into A:M. Of course you'll need to rig the face and smart skinning is also possible. Once the face is rigged and you need a diffrent animation it's just a few mouse clicks and it's done. When I release it I'll make a trail version so you can try before you buy. Yes, it will be "overexaggeratable" the current test version isn't but someone else already asked me to do that, and because I think that's really a good idea I'm getting on it this week.

Thanks for all the compliments Oh really? What would you pay for it?

Hello all, As some of you know I have been working on a facial motion tracking program. At this moment most of it works and I'm doing some tests. So, here is my first satisfying experiment: test 01 (Don't be scared, I'm just making faces for test purposes only ) It still needs some more tweaking, but I'm very happy with the results for now. Btw, the MoCap is done with just one regular DV camcorder. Some others from the A:M community will also do some tests with it soon, they can post their results here too if they like. I'll keep you guys posted about the progress. I think I'm getting close to a version that's ready for release.

The topics are listed here. You need to mail your entry to Steve. Normally participants don't post their work before the contest starts.

I believe that's the version that had trouble with stereo files. But did you give it another shot yet?

Welcome back! Does everything work fine again up there?

What version are you using? I know one of the previous versions had trouble with stereo wav files. I'm not sure if that was fixed. And you might want to check the compression method. When set to PCM it should work fine.

V14 has a Flash exporter.

Having your monitor correctly adjusted is very important for this kind of work. You can use a simple calibration tool like this to adjust it.

Not bad but those images could be a little bit brighter. Did you write a good story yet?

I think you should definitely try A:M Paint

you're probably in "perspective" mode. Hit '\' to switch between perspective and orthogonal views.

Great! what did I win?

I once had a problem like that. I was making spraying water that was moving fast. The blocks of particles where caused by the FPS limit. Apparently the particles are only emitted exactly on each frame and not calculated in between. One way to get better results out of this is increasing the FPS and render only the odd frames for example. Maybe your problem is the same, so you can try if this works for you.

Do you have the Extras DVD? There are lots of models on it that you could use.

If you really can't find what you're doing wrong you may post the project file so we can take a look.

Wouldn't it be easier to add the thought bubbles in a compositing program?

o dear...

Very nice. It looks almost real. Are you going to animate them? Otherwise you could have just taken a picture

The way shadows look depends on the light properties. See this tutorial for a good explanation: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29732

If you don't get it to play from the first frame save your project, close it and reopen it. (actually that is where the problem is) once you have reopened it the play range in the movie properties is set to 0. I don't know why this happens but it does. Maybe because this setting isn't available until you reopen. Go to the movie file in the PWS and set the play range to the actual length. It should play normal now.

Wow Jani! You make really good progress! Your results are becoming very artistic. Remember you weren't expecting that a year ago?