Ilidrake

Hey Rodney the latest edition of the script was sent to your email.

That's two!!! One thing that I think needs to be clarified is how will these mini-courses be conducted?

Robcat has offered me a chance to do some learning. He has three courses to teach. I would very much like to have others join in on this class and if your interested please post here to become involved. Once we have enough I will defer control to Robcat who will be doing the teaching. The animation courses being offered are the following: 1 bouncing ball 2 broad jump 3 three emotions On a side note, Rob if no one is interested I am still very interested in learning what you have to offer.

It's interesting but the more I work on the script the thicker it gets. I've been finding all the little loose ends and better ideas for dialogue, better shots, etc.....*sigh*.....fear not it is still in the works and you good sir shall recieve a copy soon. Yes I actually have those sites converted to PDF files. As for Latimer I may have to go back inside each phenome pose and stretch them a bit because I don't think I took them as far as I need to.

Thanks Rodney. Actually I will be going back to this take because I spent so much time doing the lipsync. I know your supposed to do that near the end but I really wanted to play with the dopesheet function a bit. I'll be playing with this take until it really flows smoothly and I learn to really push the animation. I guess I'm just feeling myself and my character Latimer out to see what we can both do. So I hope I get more feedback as I complete more sequences.

Very nice

Thanks for the feedback guys. So here's what I have so far. In case your wondering I kinda jump around a bit and I figured I'd try this out for giggles more than anything. Anyway, Robcat I'd love to have some coaching as I have no formal schooling in animation and I figure I have to start somewhere. So if your serious I'm all for it. I just don't know where to really start. finishes_here.mov

Yep I agree. I woke up this morning, replayed and almost chocked on my coffee. Terrible. Even I didn't know what he was talking about!!!! I think I was more interested in just getting comfortable with the curve graph that I forgot about performance. So I'm scratching what I have and redoing it again.

Okay I finally got it down to something manageable. Take a look and tear it apart. finishes_here.mov

I got it down to 357 meg. Know of any good compression software that will shrink it. Check that if I do a low render it hits 90 meg...

Well I would update but I usually like to wait for about two cycles before doing so. Anyway, thanks for the help. The OpenGL and DirectX swap really helped. So here's what I have so far. Remember this is simply a blocking pass. No refinement yet. Still trying to figure out the best way to start refining. I'm totally open to pointers. finishes_here.mov

v15j actually. Hadn't thought about swapping between OpenGL and DirectX but will give it a try and see what happens.

Interesting though if I do a Final Render everything works fine, just can't do quick shaded renders.

It is on it just doesn't use it for some reason. If I try to render shaded quicktime with any settings all I get is a sinfo file type???

So here's my WIP so far. I'm using this scene to test the Latimer model I have. This is a very rough blocking and I'm simply looking at the timing of it now. I would have used the frame burn post effect but it doesn't seem to be working. Anyway I'm looking for feedback on initail poses and how I could make them stronger and better. finishes_here.mov

Ya. Don't worry about it I found a work around so no big deal.

Unfortunatly not. It happens no matter what I try. Still pics render fine. And only when I try shaded mode. I've been tinkering with it for days now and habe not figured out what the problem is. It's the first time I've had this issue. And it occurs no matter the machine I use.

It is not resolved. When I try to render avi just shaded, uncompressed, the program crashes to the desktop. When I render out quicktime, no matter the settings, all I get is a sinfo file???? I'm at a lose. I don't want to render test pics and have to load them into after effects just to see what 11 seconds of animation looks like.

The price isnt a problem. I just dont want to waste money. But after playing with the trail version i definitly like it. I did find the keyframes in the timeline. I do believe ill get it and put it to work.

I understand how to do it, I just don't understand why the timeline goes crazy on me. It quite literally will not show me the curves no matter what I click on. If I close the project, open it, and then select timeline it will work fine until I go from curve editor to the other view, and vixe versa....it's just weird. What about Magpie? Anyone ever use it for AM?

Another quick question. What is the deal with the timeline? While trying to setup phenomes shapes for the animation I can select a particular part of the text on the dope sheet and then hit the curve button to edit the curve and all I can see is the graph of the sound file. No matter what I do I can't find the curves for the phenome shape? There has got to be an easier way to do this!!!!!

What exactly would the purpose of a users group be? If it's just to share ideas and learn from each other don't we already do that with the forums?

Thanks Robcat! I've spent so much time modeling and rigging I hadn't rendered any avi or mov files in a long time. Forgot about those settings LOL. Works like a charm. Thanks.

So I've been setting up my main character for Woke Up Dead. To test said phenomes I am using a sound bite from another website. (I can post the bit if you want as it's from a movie and they have no legal right to it.) Anyway I figured I would post my work here as I slowly progress to get a little feedback from the community. I could also use advice. For some reason if I try to render an avi film it tells me it's unable to write to the location (any location on my harddrive). If I do quicktime it crashes AM. I'm using AM v15. Any clues?

Thank you Rob. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. The technical and the artsy part. I think AM could use a tut like this, especially for newbs.