Ilidrake

Just doing some random animation with no direction. walk_off.mov

Mayhap it could be subject related? Someone come up with a situation and people interpet it and animate a short piece on it?

Okay, then we take your comic book idea and roll with it. One page and have the competition about animating the scene from block one to the last block. No sound bites. People would have a start and stopping spot. This would have them build upon character animation as well as camera work. Just an idea mind you. Not sure how well it would work in practice.

Interesting...but I'm more keen on the animation aspect, as that is what AM's primary function is. What if we took this concept and used it though? What if we chose a page from a comic and then had people animate it? Justa thought....

Okay then what sort of "contest" are we talking about? Something to do with a particular audio clip, or just random animations? The do-whatever sort of goes on in the WIP forum already I would say. The point of having an audio clip is to give the animator some direction, something to build off of. Much the same as when a director gives an animator a scene to work on. What the animtor does with it should be up to then with feedback given to them from the community here. I think it'd be nice to do something like this with AM. We could take it a step farther by members of the community offering a base model to use with the animations. I have a few I'd offer. The point is I think this would help alot of people learn the ropes of keyframing and animating through AM. I know I would dive in and do it. We could make it a bi-monthly thing. Two months is more than enough time to do a simple 10 second clip.

That's a real shame too. I had considered that when I conceived this idea. Still it would be nice to do something. I mean whats the current size of AM users? But people do have there own projects going on and I suppose they aren't going to waste time on something like this. There is the Scarecrow movie going on. And TWO was alot of fun. Oh well....

I like the contests that we have on here, although I myself have never particapated, I do enjoy seeing what the members around here come up with. Very inspiring!!! So I'm wondering how many people would be interested in having a contest each month? Strictly animation though. No stills or anything like that. In case your wondering I got this idea from the 11 second club, a website that also has a function like this. Its pretty dang great to see the work that comes out of this. The rules would be simple. Me or another member can choose a small 10 second clip and then members can animate something to go along with the clip. Segments must be rendered out completely. Sets and characters can be as simple or complex as the artist deems necessary to tell there short story but ultimately the only thing that will be judged will be the animation skills. I'm sure some sort of prize could also be established as I myself would be willing to contribute something to help get users interested. Although ultimately users would use this to improve there skills. So, what do you guys think? Good idea or waste of my time?

Really? Would you like me to upload it so you can take a look at it? It was created in v16RC. Here he is...let me know what you think or what could be better. Thanks robcat Base_Model_E.mdl

The main character with the TSM2 Rig installed. So far things are working out much better than before. Normally at this point I would begin installing fanbones but instead I have opted to concentrate on rigging the face as this is something I never really put alot of thought into. I've chosen to use mocap for all facial movements. As I progress I'll upload my work.

Practical application seems to be my biggest pitfall. The characters I model, I don't think I give them enough thought. At the basic level I simply lay out splines in an eye appealing method without giving very much thought to animation practices. Case in point the main character of my small film. It looks good but the actual spline layout leaves much to be desired while animating. So I've started another character to work on my spline and rigging skills. On a side note I may end up using this character in the film if he works out well. And also Rob after reviewing your small film I think your right. After watching it and reviewing the script Alex laying in the bed is completely useless and does nothing to help move the story along so that scene has been deleted. Thanks again for the feedback. Ive also attached a screen of the new character for feedback. Thanks guys!!!

Thanks for the feedback Robcat. Ya I figured the hand IK thingy out after I checked out a bunch of your vids on keyframing. After doing just this small clip the realization that I'm not even remotely ready to do this dawned on me. So I've looked around a bit more and joined this site here http://www.11secondclub.com/ A lot of good things to learn from this place and they have a really interesting contests going on. So I think I'm going to leave this project on my harddrive for another day and start concentrating on smaller projects so I can work on my animation skills.

Well it's been 3 months and this project continues forward!!! This of course is a milestone for me, as i have never finished any sort of project with AM. My above mentioned issues with keeping hands in place has been taken care of along with a slew of other problems. I decided to do some research on the forums and started reading and watching tuts on keyframe animation. Needless to say I have learned quite a bit in the last few days. Things are moving along smoothly for the most part. I think my biggest problem would be learning to animate subtle things. The small emotional parts that give a character, well.....character! Of course I am simply blocking in right now so I suppose the small things like that should be left for the final pass but I still keep them in mind while animating. But I'm rambling now. So for today I have only this render I did to test some lighting for Seq 3.7....enjoy!

Thanks David! I figured it out and it works great.

I've been working on a short piece for a while now and I'm using the TSM2 for all my models. I've been looking over alot of tutorials and have learned a lot about keyframing. I still can't seem to figure out how to make the hands of the character remain in place while the torso is moving, because this of course affects the arms which in turn affect the hands. I have tried this with IK and FK and the hands continue to move. Anyone have any suggestions on keeping them rooted to one place?

Okay I've started animating the scenes for this short and have a small section done. I'm not completely sure about it though. I have the motion pretty much how I want but his wrist pops near the end. I was wondering what you guys would suggest for something like this. I'd like his hands to remain in place until he needs to raise and get up. Suggestions plz seq_3_4.mov

Well I finally have Alex the main character completely rigged with fan bones and a facial rig for mocap purposes. I took some time out of the day to completely clean my system. I mean format the main drive and just give it a fresh start. Needless to say this fixed a lot of problems I been having. So the only thing I have to show off is a render of the main character inside one of the sets I have been working on. On a side note I wrote up a little batch file that gets run each time I complete something that automatically backs up all files to an external source. If anyone is interested I can post it. I know AM has an autosave function but simple redundancy is nice.

So today I continue with work on my characters. I'm currently working on the boy. I have the TSM2 rig installed and now I'm setting up the fanbones for all the joints and I'm very happy with results so far. I would like to know everone's opinion on MoCap for facial animation at this point because that will be the next step is to get all the dialogue and expressions in place once the body is rigged. I thought about a face rig but really don't want to bother with it. The pic below is with his eyes finally rigged with Smartskin and SSS on the skin.

Yeppers. I guess that'll be my best option. Thanks everyone.

Mine isn't a Quadro card. I use GeForce cards and still have the problem. The 32bit version running OpenGL doesn't seem to have this issue but it does tend to crash more often.

Yep. My whole system is completely up to date.

No. AM has always done this on all my machines. Anytime I use OpenGL this happens. I've tried many settings and nothing fixes it. Like I said it's no biggie cause I can use it with DirectX but the image is nearly as smooth or fast as OpenGL. I would prefer to figure this out and use OpenGL but if there is no fix I'll just carry on as usual.

Yep. Thats disabled and I've tried all the other options but nothing fixes it. Should I just send this to someone?

I still have no idea while it does this. It doesn't while running in DirectX. If I go to OpenGL it does. Yet performance is far better with OpenGL and i would prefer it if i could run in that mode.

Well here's a screen of my global options screen. This is v16 rc and I don't have anything about disable areo. This is the 32 bit version. The 64 bit version doesn't have the option either.