Roger
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Posts posted by Roger
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So why is it that your ability to find an item is always inversely proportional to your need to find that item?
I can't find my flash drive with my AM license backup, so now I will have to email Hash. I guess my other option is to put
my old HD back in my laptop for a bit and pull it off there.
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rodney, i offered my help for free, so i guess that tells how i feel about supporting hash in any way
Acknowledged. I wasn't trying to diminish your offer in any way.
On the other hand, I do my very best to encourage people NOT to work for free.
>
*I hope at least some of the content of the animation sinks in.
(Note that I do not agree with everything depicted in the animation. For instance, I think they've set the level of engagement too high on their chart. There is also an aspect where the engagement pyramid is inverted. This is especially true where communities of artists and animators retain high levels of individualism. In this sense the executive is the individual artist... and vice versa... as each individual gets their turn at being the creative head of their own project within their community.
Blah blah blah... "manage synergy", "cascade goals", "paradigm"....snooze. Bet you could sell a lot of seats to MBAs and PHBs with that seminar. Maybe I picked the wrong line of work.
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i tell you why a good homepage with professional looking images is so important. and i don´t mean a image-gallery, big images of high-quality renders in the background, that you will immediately see, when you visit the page. i don´t know how you do it, but when i hear about a software, that i might be interested in, i look for their homepage. if that´s what i see there looks kinda homemade and unprofessional, i might loose interest very quickly. if what i see there looks top notch, and the images display exactly the output i would like to create myself, i will stay and get more info about it. i don´t say that a new page gets hash loads of new customers, but it´s essential for the image of a company, especially when that company is a software company. if it´s not that important, like few of you´re saying, why are big companies spending huge amounts of money on their web-appearance? i will give you a hint: because it IS important.
and robert is right, the main reason why blender got so big is because it´s free. certainly not because it´s intuitive or better than others.
I guess I don't see what it is that is displayed on the web page that looks that bad? 90 percent of the stuff that is in the marquee or was in the old format looks just fine to me.
I get that everyone wants AM to be successful and there is a certain appeal to using what the "Hollywood pros" use. (There is a psychological term for this, the endowment effect, where an object takes on extra appeal because of who it is used by. A guitar owned and played by Jimi Hendrix is more valuable than one played by Joe Schmoe. It is the reason you see so many celebrity endorsements.)
However, the value in AM is that we are open to everyone. It isn't exclusionary. You don't have to take out a 2nd mortage on your house to afford your tools. Heck, all you would have to do to get the money for AM is one odd job every week for a month for $20, and you would have the money.
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Ah, crud. So the $995 is just the camera body, no lenses? To be expected, I guess. Wonder what you need to spend (not what you could spend, that is entirely different) on lenses to have a decent range of capabilities? As long as you didn't go crazy with lenses, you could still end up under $2k.
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Not sure I could tell my story in just one minute, that would be pretty rough.
Sure you can. In fact, it has been said that a good story should be able to be summarized in one sentence!
The real question then becomes... what do you do with that second minute.
An important concept to grasp in filmmaking is the difference between 'real time' and 'screen time'.
When we begin to recognize that we can span a story of millions of years within a few seconds this should start to sink in.
How to do it?
Distill the story down into it's very basic elements.
Who?
What?
When?
Why?
Where?
How?
(and my personal addition to the list) To what extent?
Dialogue is the real boogabear of filmmaking. Most of it is unnecessary.
Spend time distilling dialogue down into only what is required to be heard, and let the remainder be internal dialogue.
Transfer all other important dialogue elements into pantomime and performance (non verbal communication).
Show. Don't tell. An image is worth a thousand words. An animated sequence translates a thousand images. Etc. Etc.
Underlying thought: if you can fully distill your story down into two minutes then you can more easily expand that story out to 90 minutes by manipulating the story to alter the sense of time and emotional involvement on the part of the audience.
Consider that most movie trailers run less than one minute.
Teaser: 15-30 seconds
Trailer is 1- 1:30 seconds
Long Trailer: 1:30-2 minutes
A quick random sample of theatrical trailers yielded: 1:25, 2:05 and 1:46 seconds each respectively.
And get this.... the primary element missing from a trailer is the story's resolution.
That is the remaining 88 minutes of most 90 minute films.
But consider that in a comedy (or a punch line) the resolution of a story can conclude in about 2 seconds.
But really, why tell short stories?
Answer: So you can tell more stories or other tales with different characters.
Well, I'm golden there
No dialogue in my story at all. I'm planning on conveying everything through body language.
Maybe once I get down to it, 1 minute or a minute and a half will be more than enough. I won't know until I'm there.
I really need to do some kind of animatic, I think that will give me a better sense.
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A really nice bit of character animation worth analyzing:
qx1oyMUxmkc
Moral of the story: 'Never mess with the animators'
Note the length of this 'story'.
In my estimation, this is about as long as most A:M projects created by lone individuals should be (i.e. not more than 2 minutes in total length)
In fact it is probably a bit longer and more involved than many lone projects would need to be.
The 3 fingers are different. Was expecting 4 but they make it work.
Not sure I could tell my story in just one minute, that would be pretty rough.
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This is getting OT but most print media's dreams of just moving and setting up shop on the web seem not to have not worked out for mot of them. No one want's to pay for anything (witness how $79 for A:M seems to be a hard sell) and the online advertisers can't be worth much either.
I can't figure out how anyone makes it work at all.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, the reluctance to spend on anything (especially anything online or something that is perceived as having zero production cost beyond the initial investment (movies, music, micro-code) may have more to do with wages being flat for the last 30 or 40 years, adjusted for inflation, than anything else.
Back to my initial query, I did manage to find www.3dartistonline.com but it does not seem to be the same publication as 3dartist.com (the defunct wone that I remember as having more AM content).
They seem to be doing ok but I suppose could be struggling. I'll have to see about getting a subscription, the newsstand price is pretty brutal.
One thing that strikes me as odd, has anyone noticed the UK publications generally seem to be better quality (more how-to articles, better content in general) whereas the US publications are more like nothing but ads? I realize they have to pay the bills but when 90% of the magazine is ad content, that is an awful lot.
This is veering off-topic again but I think that computer magazine hobbyist publications took a wrong turn once they started catering to the bean counting crowd as opposed to the engineering/hacker types (think Byte turning into a publication cheerleading for MS Office when they used to have actual articles on programming and stuff).
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It's been a while since I saw a magazine cover A:M, but it's been even longer since I've bought such a magazine.
Maybe someone just needs to hit them up with a proposal for a series on A:M
Well, this sorta ties back in with the "let's do something with AM" thread. I think the impression is that outside of our little community AM has fallen off the map.
I haven't bought a 3d print publication in a while, I think a lot of the old magazines that catered to that market went under. Last time I was in the local bookstore, the only thing
I remember seeing was Photoshop magazines and maybe one design magazine, but nothing geared to animation or CG animation specifically.
It may just be that those niche publications aren't very profitable, and with regular print publications going under for lack of readership they may never return.
Maybe they'll move to the web, seems like you could charge a low monthly rate and still serve up the same content but for much lower cost than what it would take to run a print publication.
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I'll have to do a forum search and see what I can find.
I think the tutorials off the main page are just the Art of AM
stuff. I wish I had downloaded more of this stuff
when it was easier to find.
Thanks
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Are there any 3d magazines out there that feature AM tutorials on a regular basis? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is 3d Design, but not sure they have much AM content. 3D artist was pretty good way back, but they are no longer published and while there is still a web presence it appears largely defunct.
I ask because I would like to find a source for small projects (something that could be completed in an hour or two) that would keep my skills honed on the days that lose steam on my movie.
Thanks
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Possum's don't like loud music, put a boom-box in the basement on an out of range rock station so it's staticy, and let it blare for 3-4 hours... once the critter is out... seal him out.
I'll have to remember that for the next time my parents have one in their garage.
My computer case has to support two cats...
Ok, you can't post a pic of two kitties and not tells us their names.
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I have a possum in my cellar.
You want to rent out my dog? They are supposed to be good vermin hunters. Not sure how I'd get him to Texas, though.
As for possums, I can't stand 'em. They hit every branch on the ugly tree on the way down.
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If the case is too small the cat can't sit on it in cold weather.
LOL. I don't have a cat, just a yorkie that barks every time he hears a noise. I almost acquired a cat a few years ago, though.
I came home late from work on a really cold night and a stray tried to follow me into my house. I had to chase it away. Sometimes I wish I had let it in, but you never know with stray cats how they are going to act.
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I have 3 systems I would like to use AM on. My main laptop, my tower (would use mainly for rendering) and my junker laptop (which gets carried around more often because I don't need to worry about it breaking as much). $240 a year really isn't that bad, I currently only have the one license.
When was there going to be a $49 price, and how did that get hosed? If explaining that is going to cause a problem feel free to PM me.
Too bad, that would have been useful.
But as Largento pointed out, less than a quarter a day to use AM is a pretty good deal. Unless you are really destitute you could probably come up with the money.
I remember spending $500 (student version) on 3ds v3 waaayyyy back in the 90s. I never upgraded to Max because I think the upgrade was going to be something like $2000.
I hate to sound like an old man, but imagine having to pay the price of a used car to update AM. Heck, Alias used to be like $25000 or something with all the modules. And the computer to run it was another $10,000 or $25000.
I'm going to adjust the onion on my belt and go chase some kids off my lawn now.
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Well after spending a good hour trying to transplant the guts of my PC into a more svelte case, I think I'm going to leave everything in the tower. I'll just chuck it under the desk and get a really long cable for the optical drive and maybe wireless mouse and keyboard. Ugh.
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This is cool but I suspect might not be practical?
Poverty is a tough nut to crack. We can't seem to fully
employ everyone as it is. And the long-term trend is towards more
automation requiring less labor, not more. I really
don't know what the solution is.
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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.
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I'm trying to decide how I feel about using mo-cap on my movie. I am not sure if it falls under the category of legitimate shortcut or taking the easy way. It would definitely allow me to do more animation, but not sure if it would be better.
Xtaz, does the base version support all normal movements, or do you have to pop for the pro or advanced version? I think they have trial, basic, pro and elite with each one having a correspondingly higher price tag. I could swing the basic version but $500 or $600 (or even more) is more than I care to spend.
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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.
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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.
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You can use any rig that you can attach the imported BVH data to. It's like constraining things to things.
Great mocap results will require great mocap acting to capture. Editing mocap is problematic and a skill in itself.
I was just thinking, not having any acting training, it might be easier to just animate instead of trying to clean up janky mo-cap data.
Oh well, was worth thinking about.
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I ran across this on the Steam store the other day:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/227740/
I thought it might be useful for blocking out animation quickly with my characters and then go back add fine details.
I see it supports .BVH, that is compatible with AM, right? If you were to use something like this are you limited to using a single rig?
I would be interested to know what you guys think.
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My problem is I can't play my horn after I've had spicy ramen noodles.
Ok, I'll bite. How would that cause a problem?
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Something tells me you would have serious health problems if you did this:
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/teen...-165713286.html
I believe I would die of hypertension if I tried eating that much Ramen.
Things that grow legs
in Off Topic
Posted
Yeah, I knew that. I had backed it up (or thought I had) to my flash drive. Which I found, btw, but it doesn't have the master0.lic file on it.
So I need to pull it off the other drive, just don't feel like dismantling my laptop to do it (just yet). So I'll make do with my old disc-based version of AM until I get round to it. Maybe I'll practice rigging or do some tutorials in the meantime, since I won't be able to access my v17 data.