sprockets 2001 Star Gate effect in A:M with PRJ Comparison of AO and Radiosity Renders Animated Commercial by Soulcage Tralfaz's Lost In Space Robot Rodger Reynold's Architectural WIP Live Answer Time Demo Tinkering Gnome's Sparkler PRJ
sprockets
Recent Posts | Unread Content
Jump to content
Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Caroline

Hash Fellow
  • Posts

    1,248
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Caroline

  1. Hi, TanMan - Have you worked through The Art Of Animation:Master - TaoA:M? This is the manual that came with the software.

     

    There is an entire forum dedicated to completing this, and each exercise takes you further along the road.

     

    The address of the forum:

    The Art Of Animation:Master

     

    Exercises 8 - 12 will take you through modelling, and Exercises 10 and 11 show you how to use a rotoscope (that's the term for a 2d picture) to create your 3d model.

     

    I'm currently working through TaoA:M myself, and at the end of the book I look forward to receiving a certificate. So I look on this as a full on-line self-paced course to teach me 3d modelling and animation. It's not easy, (Animation:Master is easier than others, though), and if you take it in small steps, you will learn the basics in a few months. And it's fun :D

  2. I did a search on +image +contest and came up with this thread Image Contest Vote which has the link to the contest.

     

    Personally, I don't see why you can't vote, even if you did enter it. I don't even see a problem with voting for yourself if you think yours is one of the best (but that's just my personal opinion, probably based on if I ever got to enter a contest I'd want at least one vote :lol: ). You get to vote for four, so you still have to vote for other people's as well.

     

    When you vote, you enter your email address, and theoretically you should receive a reply, but I think I've only ever had a reply for one contest - usually I get an error. But when I try to vote again, it says I can only vote once, so I am assuming my votes are being counted.

  3. Not 1MB file limit, Jerry - On my reply window here, it says Max. single upload size: 8mb. It used to be 4mb, but may have gone up with the new forum. But 8mb would be very big, and may deter people from downloading.

     

    You can do the video conversion within A:M, you can convert tgas to mov, mov to avis, etc.

     

    There's a video of how to do that in this Thread.

     

    Since I've been using mov, I actually prefer it - I like being able to step through it frame by frame with the arrow keys, and being able to loop it.

  4. I also have a question about file size. The next few submissions will be increasingly large movies (well between 1 and 2 mb). I compress the avi into movs trying to manage a tradeoff between size and quality. What is the limit for posting? The attachment form sez "max. single upload size: 8mb". Is that true?

     

    --Jerry

     

    Hi, Jerry - nice lighting :)

     

    If you render your animations to use the Sorenson 3 codec, the file sizes will be a lot smaller.

     

    1. Make sure that on your Render to File Settings dialog you have Advanced ticked.

    2. Change the format to mov

    3. Click the triangle next to format, and click Set.

    4. Change the compression type to Sorenson Video 3

    5. Change quality to Medium.

     

    You should be able to render the shorter movies to VGA, and still be under 1MB (that's with no sound, though).

  5. I see in your documentation where it should be, but I still don't have it. In your doc, you have Use Calculatet CoM and HIgh Velocity Object between Freeze object and Group Density, but this is what I have:

     

    post-9673-1168036692_thumb.jpg

     

    Is it important? This exercise works really well without it.

     

    Also, when I run the simulation on your example project centerofmass.prj both on Com ON chor and Com Off chor, I get the message newtonlog_centerofmass.txt contains an invalid path, and no animation happens. I'm using A:M 13.0j.

  6. Thanks, Steffen, and thanks for the other plugins that I have yet to explore!

     

    I could not find a setting "Use calculatet COM" anywhere. I wonder if it is included in the v13 version, or if I am just being blind. (Probably that B) )

     

    To my untutored eyes, at first on this particular project I could not see much difference when I split out the Newton_ areas, but I see now that when the pin falls, the top wobbles when it hits, instead of just falling flat. Thanks for pointing this out.

     

    I'll post my project on TaoAM Ex 17 when it renders, and with it I'll post a noobie intro to do this, as it took me quite a long time to work it out. I guess I wasn't expecting it to be that simple. I hope I haven't made too many blunders.

     

    I am interested to notice that the simulation is not exactly the same every time - some randomness is involved. It is fun that I do not get a strike every time. :lol:

  7. Edit: Thanks, John - it was the bone. I tried your penguins, and they fell properly, although they did fall before the ball hit them. Perhaps that's the nature of penguins. Their root bone was at the base, whereas the pin root bone was in the middle of the pin.

     

    Just working on the placement so they don't fall through the bowling lane now. :)

    Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

  8. I thought that cosmic bowling would be a good one to try Newton on. And after the learning curve, wow, it even spins the ball for me. But, for some reason some of the pins behave perfectly, a foot in the air.

     

    NewtonBowling2.mov

     

    These are the only settings I've changed in the tutorial project (changes made to the object, not the choreography):

    ground - static

    ball - dynamic, density 15, kinetic friction 0.1

    pin - dynamic, density 10

     

    To get this result with only those settings input is amazing - much easier than constraints.

     

    I've tried changing gravity, to no avail.

     

    Any ideas, please?

  9. I think it looks great - I love the atmosphere, and the broken up reflection looks good too. Only thing was that I was a bit confused by the wake (wave?) at the end, with the canoe being quite rigid on the water, as ruscular said, a little bobbing maybe.

  10. Sorry, I forgot that mesh is a technical term in 3d :lol: .

     

    I meant the mesh on the microphone itself, the bit where you speak into it. I was just trying to work out how you would do the holes more easily - was it a lot of splineage, or can you use a transparency map? (I haven't done one of those yet.)

  11. That's a nice fire, Jay.

     

    Thinking aloud here - do you think that coloured decals are necessary rather than greyscale? You could have several greyscale ones emitting different colours?

     

    I'll put that on the lengthening list to try out.

     

    Lens Flare? I haven't come across that being used - is it a good feature? And in what way doesn't it seem to work?

  12. You're right, William, I have a knack for complicating things.

     

    I was going to put flickering fire on the back burner :) as I don't think I'm ready for the whole light thing yet, but today's a new day. We'll see what it brings.

     

    (Did you know that if you look at your blue Q in your sig, then look at a white part of the screen, you get red Qs!?)

  13. Hooray - I got a moving klieg light gel! :lol: The tip there is to add it to the shortcut in the choreography, not, as I discovered after a lo-ong time, the object.

     

    It doesn't look much like I thought it would yet, but I'm now going to follow Bruce's tips.

     

    (Ungrateful person that I am, Bruce - I 'finished' my fire last night having given up on gel lights, I went for animated intensity. Then I saw your movie, and thought Bother - I'm going to have to redo mine. What a brilliant movie!)

  14. Hi, qube - I just saw your post - I missed it amidst all the festivities, I guess.

     

    How did you want the traffic light? With an actual light, or will it do with color?

     

    Have you done the TaoAM exercise 12 Lip Poses?

     

    You can create ON/OFF poses for color like this example:

    lights.mov

    by:

     

    1. Right click in Traffic Light model window, and click New > Pose > On/Off. You then get a new window, and underneath Actions, you get a "Relationship: Short Cut to Traffic Light - Pose1".

    2. Click the + next to this Relationship in the Actions section.

    3. Next to Shortcut to Traffic Light you will see a red X on top of "Show more than drivers" icon. Click this. You will now be able to change the properties of the groups. If you have a group in your Traffic Light model for the Red light, you can change the color from, for example, brown to red.

     

    Like So:

    post-9673-1167456826_thumb.jpg

     

    If you are very new to A:M, this might make no sense, so please let me know and I will amplify.

     

    With an actual light I can't help, as I am still coming to grips with them :)

  15. And looking at John's very nice explosion, 2 of the emitters had OFF and 2 had ON, and so you only get the alpha channel rendered for the ones where the emitter is OFF. I checked, and turned the other 2 off and got the full alpha channel rendered.

     

    Is this the way it's supposed to work?

  16. EUREKA :lol: (I think).

     

    I'm doing Exercise 16. I took the three tgas from the tutorial, as specified, and in the emitter Color Method, I turned the Additive Color to OFF instead of ON.

     

    I also had to put an alpha channel in the tutorial tgas (thank you John), so that I didn't get the black surround on the particles.

     

    I now get an alpha channel when rendering. (However, the renders aren't nearly as nice as with the Additive Color ON, but I'm still working on that....)

  17. I trembled as I typed them... :D

     

    I haven't seen a certificate yet, :lol: (still working...) so I don't know just how personalised they are, or how much work/time it takes you to put them out. Do you have a template / script? I don't know that it's inevitable to lose personalization - maybe the alumnus could submit, all at once, what pics should be on the certificate, when they've completed?

     

    I do like the cert though, as it validates the amount of time I can spend on learning - "Can't cook, working towards a certificate...". And, yes, when I get there I'll be excited - but I would probably be excited too if it were a standard cert with just name & date.

×
×
  • Create New...