mfortunato
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Posts posted by mfortunato
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Hey David -
This kid's looking fantastic. I'd love to see the latest update. You posted that you had updated it, but there's no image for us to gawk at and enjoy
.- Michael
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DUDE! This is absolutely fantastic! I love the character design, and even more so, I love the themes you've placed him in. Really nice lighting on the rock 'n roll Flubnub. And the Braveheart version...I'm still snickering over that. I can't wait to see where you take him next.
- Michael
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Hey Rodney -
Thanks for all your help through TAoA:M. And special thanks for continuing to kick my butt through ABC!
. I'll have some updates to post there soon, but I had a quick question. When should we be expecting that delectable AoA:M Certificate? Of course, I understand that you do this out of the goodness of your heart and in your spare time, so there is NO RUSH, I was simply curious (and excited - otherwise I wouldn't be posting this now 
).Thanks again for your continued help, Rodney! You're fantastic! (butters Rodney up in anticipation of getting the certificate faster.......XD).
- Michael
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Hey Jeremiah -
Spin looks pretty darn good to me. Of course, I'm a terrible bowler, so perhaps I'm not the right person to say that
. I noticed the ball likes to dip into the ground a few times - I guess the rigid bodies tool isn't perfect.You mentioned "baking" an action. Do you know how that works? Ok, not quite the right forum to ask this in, but I'm just curious.
Thanks.
- Michael
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Really nice model, Steve! I like how you finished off the wheels with bright, shiny rims! This and the Cooper tutorial really helped me with my modeling skills (ok - I still have a long way to go - but they still helped
).- Michael
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Welcome, Jonathan! That's really great that you are getting some credits for learning A:M! It really is a fantastic program. I'm still a n00b myself. I only finished the exercises a few weeks ago and now I've started the Animation Boot Camp. I have to say the interface is really user friendly considering how complex animation really is! Sure, I've got a long way to go, but it's been a lot of fun. I hope that you enjoy your journey as well.
- Michael
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Beauty! Thanks, Niels. I checked the Camera in the choreography and the alpha option wasn't there. However, I checked the actual camera object and changed the alpha to "off". Bingo! It worked like a charm.
Thanks so much for the quick reply.
- Michael
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Hi All -
I'm hoping someone can help me with a problem. In my camera properties, I set the background color (in this case to white). When I click the onscreen render button, the background is white. When I render my final animation, the background is black. I tried changing the bg color to all kinds of crazy colors. Same exact results. I'm sure I'm just missing a setting somewhere. What setting am I missing?
Thanks.
- Michael
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Excellent car design. Reminds me of something out of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Lovely animation too. Although, having it jostle up and down a bit in reaction to the engine working would help to give it even more character (not that you don't already have that in spades with your design). Beautiful job!
- Michael
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Excellent animation, Dagooos. My only comment - where is the cart coming from? I don't get a sense that Woot is following the cart with his eyes (and head, depending on where the cart is traveling). Other than that, I think it's fantastic. Way to go.
- Michael
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Hi Dagooos -
This looks very good overall.
Here are my thoughts on the animation. Of course these are just opinion and can be taken with a grain of salt
:The way Woot leaps at the tree, it looks like the momentum should carry him forward, causing his legs to swing under him. I think if you have him jump and grab the branch, then use the momentum to swing him forward, then have him swing backwards and plant the "ollie", and then go into his final flip to seat himself on the tree. I hope that makes sense.
Also, if you look at his feet, his toes are pointed too much, they look crunched. Also, as he's coming out of his "ollie" and swinging forward, I believe the toes would not be pointed so much. When he tucks in for the last flip, is when his toes should be more pointed. Also, I think that he would come out of the point earlier as he is about to plop down on the tree.
Take a look at the animation with these comments in mind. You may feel I'm daff, and that's totally ok
. The animation looks really good. I'm just trying to help polish it.- Michael
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Don't throw it away. I think this is looking very good. I think what will help is if you have a clear understanding of what they are watching off-camera. Then you can animate their responses to the action.
True, the animation is funny, but possibly for the wrong reasons. It does look like Scarecrow is getting a little too friendly with woot.
A previous post which mentioned to move Scarecrow over a bit, is a really good idea. This will help offset the action so that it doesn't look too, um, inappropriate
. Also, Scarecrow's reaction is extremely dramatic - do you know what action is taking place off-camera that they are supposed to be reacting to? In the snippet of script attached to this post, it doesn't mention an action - just that the two of them watch in anticipation, not knowing what to expect. But watching your Scarecrow animation, it's clear there is quite a bit of action going on off camera (pun not intended). While you have these incredible expressions for Scarecrow, Woot doesn't react at all. Perhaps you haven't gotten to his expressions and are still working on the Scarecrow.
What are Scarecrow's and Woot's intentions there? Why are they there and what are they reacting to? Knowing the answer to these may really help with this animation for you. Right now, it's not quite clear what they are reacting to.
I don't know the story, so I apologize if my critiques aren't helpful.
Thanks.
- Michael
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Thanks so much, Rodney. Truth be told, it took almost a year ti finish. i started back in March of last year. I had gotte through nine or ten of the exercises when my computer crashed and I had to get it fixed. I lost all of the work I had done previously, but the finished results were still up on the forums. So, I decided to redo a few of those I had completed before and continued through to the end.
I aslo have to thank Colin fir his excellent head modeling tutorial. Cooper was a joy to model, Colin
.I have now begun animation boot camp. As i complete a few of the exercises I will post them and I will (hopefully) help others by posting my critiques of their work.
Thanks again.
- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Ex: Exercise 20 - It's Getting Hairy
Date Completed: 01-30-2007
Instructor: Das Book
Comments: This is the last exercise in the TAoA:M. I have now completed all 20 exercises (including 11.5
). I did it! YEAH! This is a brilliant way to learn the program. Thank you everyone for your assistance and encouragment. Thank you Rodney for all your help.Issues: I had an issue with this exercise I'm hoping someone can explain. As you can see from the screenshot, when you create the Properties Driven item for either the diffuse color, density, direction or length, you are given a list of every one that has been attached to a decal. But you cannot discern which body part it's a part of. I had to start at the top and click on each one till the hair length or color changed. This was ridiculously time-consuming. I figure I just did the exercise incorrectly. Anyone have any thoughts on how I can streamline this process for the future? or is that the way it's designed? if so, has this been addressed with version 14?
- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Ex: Exercise 19 - Flocking
Date Completed: Jan. 29, 2007
Instructor: Das Book
Comments: Looks like the camera man should be fired. Good thing this is a small render, anything larger would have caused people to have motion sickness
.I'm off to kiss a wookie.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the reason the camera and bg are a bit herky jerky is because of a glitch I was experiencing in A:M. After loading the flock of birds, the screen wouldn't refresh correctly and I couldn't get a good sense of what my camera was actually looking at. The screen would keep the previous image still displayed - so I was getting a ghosting effect. I have since corrected this error. For anyone else having the problem, switch the Real-Time render from OpenGL to DirectX (under Options, Global). This corrected the problem. I cleaned up the movie file and reattached - still need to clean up the camera and sky movement, but it's certainly better. I really like that Bloom effect
.- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Exercise: Ex. 18 - Waving the Flag
Date Completed: 01-29-2007
Instructor: Das Book
Comments: I decided I wanted my flag to be a happy face, so I quickly painted a happy face and decaled it onto the flag. The background image is one that I painted the textures for an upcoming game I am a part of, The Silver Lining (www.tsl-game.com - shameless plug, I know). I just really liked that scene and thought the cartoon-like quality matched the happy face. So - et voila! It's like Roger Rabbit's ToonTown or something
.- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Exercise Completed: Ex. 17 - Cosmic Bowling
Date Completed: 01-29-2007
Instructor: Das Book
Comments: I cannot get the bowling ball to roll. I suppose I just have to add rotation in the keyframes - perhaps I should take advantage of Caroline's Newton Physics tutorial
. Perhaps I'd get more realistic pin results. Notice how they all fall down? Not quite sure why that happened. They didn't seem to wobble enough for that (not that I'm complaining, I got a strike because of it). I also attempted to use the Bloom effect for the first time. I love the effect, but no matter what I tried, I could not lower the bloom effect. I set the effect to Shortcut to Camera 1. Perhaps that was incorrect, I'm not sure. I will have to experiment further .- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Exercise Completed: Exercise 16
Date Completed: January 28, 2007
Instructor: Das Book
Remarks/Suggestions for Improvement: It takes forever for my laptop to render particles. I wanted to do more with my scene, but I became impatient. I definitely want to play with the particle effects more. While I followed the book, I don't yet have a good understanding of how the settings effect the particles. Plus I want to experiment with using other images for the sprites
. Guess I will have to start using my main PC for these exercises so I don't have to wait so long for the render.Now I feel like bowling.....
- Michael
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This looks fantastic! It is very similar to your sketch. Like Colin said, you could use more roundness in the nose to better match your image. Also, the jawline is a more exaggerated in your model then your original sketch - but you may like it that way
. Really wonderful job on this! Now if only I can get my models looking that clean (I'll get there !- Michael
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Name: Michael Fortunato
Exercise: Exercise 15 - Eat My Dust
Date Completed: 1-28-2006
Comments/Observations regarding Dust: Perhaps I will learn this in the next Particle effects exercise, but I feel that no matter what settings I changed, the dust dispersal isn't very realistic. it's just a ball. We know that dust doesn't pop up in a perfect ball. It swirls around and settles back down to the ground unevenly. Each particle doesn't fall back down exactly where it first left the ground. The environment, wind, gravity, effects where it lands. I feel that while this is a nice exercise to show how to constrain a particle effect, I don't find it very realistic as is. Perhaps an added tutorial on how to get the dust to settle unevenly - or perhaps introduce wind to the equation so it looks like the knight is leaving a trail of dust. I have a feeling to make this realistic, I have to combine the dust with some other effects and chain them together in some way.
Comments about A:M in general: I have been forcing myself to come to grips with the Choreography window and changing camera angles, lights, etc. I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable with it. While waiting for this to render, I just saw "Briar Rose" on the A:M Films site - if you haven't seen it, you must. It's an incredible testament to the power of this program - and I mean to harness it!
.Ok, I think I've rambled on long enough. On to the Knight!
- Michael
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I can't leave this one alone. I'm determined to better understand animating with A:M. I have a very tough time manipulating the Choreography window and timeline. I now know how to successfully chain actions together. However, if I have constrained the model to a path, I do not yet know how to stop the constraint (turn off enforcement, I assume) before the end of the path just as the new action starts and then re-up the enforcement to 100% as that 2nd action is finishing. For instance, I was trying to have Thom walk toward the camera, stop and then jump even closer toward the camera. I wanted this constrained to a path. I can get him to walk and jump, but not stop so he can "prepare" for the jump. When I tried to edit the path's constraint, I kept getting an error message saying that the constraint didn't exist. The good news, is by playing with this, I have really started digging into the timeline. After I finish the TaoA:M, I will immediately dive into the Animation Boot Camp. It's silly to own a program called Animation Master and not be able to animate in it.
Sorry for all these posts today. I just got a little overzealous. But here is Thom with an action I created of him jumping in the air - I call it "Hooray!". I decided to play with animating the diffuse color and animating the camera a bit - since I have yet to actually move the camera. Once I can manipulate the cameras and switch between multiple cameras, I will have made a very significant step forward in terms of "framing" my animations.
Thanks for reading my ramblings.
- Michael
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Ok. I think I got it. I hope I got it. Did I get it?
Name: Michael Fortunato
Exercise: Ex. 13 - Show Some Backbone
Instructor: Das Book and the already rigged Thom model
Date Completed: 01-26-2006
Comments: After posting my previous post, I decided to look at the already rigged Thom on the CD. After scrutinizing, I think the issues were the Left and Right thigh Orients. They were pointing in funky directions. Now when I pose him, he poses predictably. I am creating a few Actions and will chain them together to test the Thom further this evening. But for now, here's Thom struttin' his stuff.
- Michael
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I appear to be having some difficulty rigging Thom. Everything appears correct, but he walks with a strange (and cute) slight wobble, as if his legs are a bit unsteady. I'm using A:M v.13 (latest vers of 13) and I'm using the 2001 rig. I have attached a side view and front view and a quicktime mov of him walking. Not quite as "resolute" as I was going for
.Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks.
- Michael
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Thanks everyone for your feedback.
Colin - thanks for the taking the time to show me the most effective corrections. I have made them and the model is looking smoother than ever.
Here's the latest. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at a human head.
Thanks again!
- Michael
Assistance with Luxo Lamp for ABC
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Hi All -
I have nearly completed modeling the lamp I will use to continue ABC training. If I can complete this model and successfully rig this sucker, I'll post the model up for all to use.
I have two questions which are stopping me from completing this model:
1) The lamp shade itself. I lathed the shade and then I added points to create the slotted cutouts (see images LuxoLampShade-Render and LuxoLampShade-Closeup for examples). When I added the points, the top-middle section of the lampshade is no longer smooth. What I'm wondering is, how would you recommend I create the slots in the lampshade to keep it nice and smooth?
2) For the lamp's springs, I am currently using cylinders (and for the sake of ABC, I may continue to do so). But if I was to truly model this lamp, I would have to create tiny spring coils which would probably be a nightmare. How would you recommend creating the small springs for the lamp?
I appreciate any assistance.
Thanks all!
- Michael