Roger

Well I copied my master0.lic file from my external drive back over to my laptop, and I get the error "wrong host for license -4". Which confuses me as it is the same darn laptop, just with a bigger hard disk. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to request a new license/activation key from Hash?

I have a hard time with managing my own project, I think I would be useless on a community project (at least until I'm done with mine). I do think that another feature film is not necessarily the way to go, as others have mentioned a short is probably better. Maybe with a maximum length of 20 minutes? It just seems like a short is more doable. Anyway, that's my two cents.

One thing you could do, have the planet with its atmosphere in the initial shot, but don't pan as the sphere comes into frame. Then, switch to a shot where you are riding down with it, sort of over the shoulder with the flames coming into the actual camera lens. Then you're back down on the ground - no pans, but you are looking form a distance. Sphere strikes the earth. You are then centered on the crater, but further away. You dolly or zoom in to the lip of the crater, but not so you can see into it. Cut to the arms reaching up out of the crater. Next shot is the robot clambering out of the crater, what you already have is ok, probably don't need to change that. Next, when he is looking around, that is where you pan, but maybe slow it down a bit, like he is methodically scanning. Definitely enlarge the font on the display so we can see what is there. Maybe instead of a pan down to the hands, cut to an external shot of his hands on fire, then back to his view with hands centered in frame and they are on fire (no pans). That is probably how I would block this out.

I like the idea. I'm not familiar with the character, but the spaceship crashing to earth and the robot crawling out of the crater is cool. Lot of potential for story development. Why is he here? Is he friend or foe? You could do a lot of interesting things. But yeah, that camera is way too busy. I think if you limit the actual pans to when he is looking around, it will work better. I really don't think there is a need for any pans in the rest of the shots. Or if you have to have one, make it simple.

I've been thinking about doing a short project, something like a goldfish in a bowl and I was thinking about using cloth to generate the fins. Does anyone know of any good cloth tutorials?

That is definitely one of those "it depends" questions. I start 50/50 and then if it doesn't look right, try changing it. The threads that Nancy references are really good, too.

I thought that in order to show all curves, you hit the button with the red, blue and green curves - how do you show the pose curves as well? I've gone back through my notes and am having problems finding that.

No, I understand, I'm not really concerned so much with winning as I am stretching my abilities with a short project.

Five seconds or so seems like it would be the sweet spot. I don't know that I'm ready to enter anything like this, but it might be a good learning experience.

Pixar has a way of making anything into gold. I seriously think they could do a short on the life cycle of dust bunnies and it would be entertaining.

I am perhaps the worst person to give advice here, seeing as how I don't actually have anything finished, but I'd have to agree with Robcat. I have drastically reduced the scope of my project in terms of length and am thinking of cutting it even more, down to the bone. Ripping out anything unnecessary. I am considering shooting for a minimalistic (or at least more so) look like Fluffy or Andre and Wally Bee. I've also been working on getting my bills down to a point that I can live on what most people would consider a poverty-level income, in the event of job loss or making the leap to working on this full-time. I make way more than I ever used to, but my financial struggles have left me with an extremely Bear-ish outlook on the economy. My family makes fun of me for being frugal, but I like having money in the bank. But, I digress. Back to your question - I guess if your project has ultra realistic humans, environments, etc it better be really short. 5 minutes is maybe too much. Maybe try to cut it down to half? I knew a guy in college that was maybe 4-5 years younger than me, extremely talented and was a TA for one of my classes. He was doing some long-form short (like 10 to 20 minutes) in the Star Wars universe. I don't know if he ever finished it, or what, as I lost touch with him. But 10 to 20 minutes is way too much for one person, unless you are extraordinarily talented and have excellent time-management skills. So maybe scaling back the scope of your project is something you want to look at seriously.

Well, managed to get the pose slide back, but not sure how.

I created my pose slider for my squetch ball, it was there before I switched to cho mode, now that I'm in cho mode and scrubbing through my frames of my animation, I can no longer see the pose slider. I've tried clicking on the squetch bone and the base bone in the PWS, neither of those brings up the pose slider. Have I done something wrong?

Ok, I think I figured out what I was doing wrong. I double-clicked the chor icon in the PWS and I got my camera view back. Maybe I wasn't switching back to cho mode correctly?

What if I have a laptop with no numberpad? Will just hitting the "1" key work?

No, camera is still there in the cho, cho is still open but I have no camera viewport. All buttons having to do w/ the cam on the camera toolbar are grayed out.

Closed out my camera view so I could make some changes in bones mode. Now I can't get my camera view back. I don't want to start a new choreography, but that is the only way I can think right now to get the camera view back. I checked the View options but didn't see much there. What am I missing?

I was pretty shocked by this. I always sorta assumed he would be passing it onto his kids, but I guess they may not have any interest in making movies. Could be he's tired of all the criticism over the prequels and doesn't want to go through that again? Or maybe wanted to pass the reigns on while he was alive to do so? I wonder if this includes the rights to Star Wars or if this is just the studio itself.

I guess that makes sense.

I installed 32 bit AM but now I am getting the activation screen again with AM 64. I was able to activate but I don't remember this happening last time with v16.

Ok, that's exactly what it was, I wasn't in skeletal mode. I was able to successfully move my object. Guess I'm going to have to make a checklist/AM cheat sheet or something.

Ok, I think I figured out what I was doing wrong, I was not in skeletal mode in the choreography. Going to try again.

Ok, here is something odd. I can move the bone, but the object doesn't move, even though I assigned all the points to that object while working in bones mode in the model window (before I dragged it into the cho). Hrmm.

I'm working on an animation exercise right now, and if I try to just translate the mesh I can move that just fine. If I select the bone that I have assigned to the mesh and hit the "n" key and try to move it, though, not a darn thing happens. I am not sure what I'm doing wrong, I don't think I have anything toggled that I shouldn't. Any ideas?

Ok, well that did the trick. I briefly disabled my AV and it activated right away.