Tralfaz

I had no idea it came from Wizard of Oz. Learn something new every day... Al

I remember seeing the movie Zardoz a long, long time ago. No idea where the name Zardoz came from though. Al

The name Tralfaz comes from the Jetsons. You know the show... "Meet George Jetson, Jane his wife, His daughter Judy, His boy Elroy." Well in the show, they had a dog called Astro. But Astro was not his real name. Elroy found the dog in the park and brought him home and called him Astro. There was one show where Astro's original (and very rich) owner tracked him down and wanted to take him back. It is in that one show where Astro's real name was given, and it was Tralfaz. Used to collect all sorts of useless trivia like that. A group of us would go out to our favourite bar after roller skating and try to stump one another with odds and sodds like this. And this was all before Trivial Pursuit. The one rule in our group, was you could not ask a trivia question without knowing the answer. Al

Holy Crap! Hate to be the driver of the white car. Hope no one was seriously injured. Al

Looks really good. Is it possible to post another render side by side, one with SSS and one without, so I can compare the difference between the two? Thanks... Al

No problem Gerry, glad you were able to get one working for you. Hmmm, never been called Tralf before... no objections here. Here is a bit of animation trivia? Any idea where the name Tralfaz comes from? Al

Any particular version (e.g. A:M v13) for the model and what time frame are you looking at? Thanks... Al

Hi Gerry: I am not at home so I don't have the Extras CD with me at the moment, but I believe there is a laptop model on the CD. Al

Thanks for the tips folks. I have not sent in a bug report yet, wasn't sure if it was something I was doing or not. 1) Did not check normals 2) There is only one decal applied to the floor. 3) Not sure what you mean about a decaling the spot. The black spot does not appear until the 12th pass of the render on the specific frame. 4) Yes, I tried rendering to a .tga file and the same thing happens. 5) Have not tried changing the resolution of the decal. The image is in .jpg format and is 512 x 512 pixels, 96 dpi horizontal and vertical resolution and 24 bit. 6) No bump maps were used. 7) Not sure what you mean about low magnitude percentage, just went with default values when the decal was applied, other than having it repeat itself to cover the floor properly. 8) The planks are not separate meshes. The floor is essentially a 4 point mesh (created using the 'perfect' mesh techinque) with a single decal applied to simulate the floor surface. I ended up going through the frames that were affected with Photoshop Elements and manually removed the marks. How do you go about turning off the decals in the final render? Things I've Tried: 1) When I render without multipass, the mark does not appear. 2) Rendering multipass (9 3 x 3), the mark does not appear. 3) Turned off all objects except for the one containing the floor, and the mark does not appear in multipass (16 4 x 4). 4) Turned off only the dog, still multipass (16 4 x 4), the mark does not appear. 5) Turned back on the dog, turn off reflections, multipass (16 4 x 4), the mark does not appear. It would appear to be a combination of the dog and reflections that is causing the problem. Al

Hi there, I am rendering a scene for an animation, and am having a rectangular artifact appear in the final image. The animation is being rendered out at a multipass of 16 (4 x 4). The artifact does not appear until the 12th pass of the image. I am using A:M 13.0n on Windows XP Pro SP2. I have an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card and have all the latest drivers for the card and Windows. Out of 150 images rendered, 14 of them have the artifact in the same location and same height, but vary in width. Sometimes the frames affected are sequential, other times they are not. For instance, the frames affected are 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 then skips to 27, 28 then skips to 30, 31, 32 then skips to 34 and finally 39. Frames are being rendered out to .bmp format. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks... Al [Edit] I just rendered to a .tga file and the same thing happens. As soon as pass 12 starts, the solid black rectangle appears. [/Edit] Frame 15 without artifact Frame 16 with artifact

Nice job on capturing the lines of the Vette. Tires and rims look great! Al

Quick Update: Changed the wall color (not sure about it though) and added fire in the fireplace. Al livingroom.mov

I was asked about whether the chair models were available. I don't think I am good enough to be selling the models and would prefer to give something back to the A:M community, so here they are along with the fireplace. Feel free to download and do whatever you like with them. I just ask that you do not sell them or post them as your own work. Thanks... Al chair.zip

Thanks for the comments folks. Quick update, added two chairs and a sofa. My wife agreed with you gra4mac about the crown molding and baseboards. I will search the internet for some pictures and try to come up with something in between. Al

I have been playing around with making a modern style living room. There is no furniture in it yet, but am thinking of something along the lines of the picture below. The lighting is just the standard chor lighting for now. C&C always welcome. Al

Excellent work Satyajit!! Great visuals and animation. I will need to watch it a few more times in order to see the video and not read the subtitles. Looking forward to see what else you will be working on... Al

Found a pretty neat program that creates seamless textures from Spiral Graphics ( www.spiralgraphics.biz ). There is a free program called Wood Workshop that allows you to create seamless wood textures with an almost limitless control over color, texture, pattern, etc. You can create the texture in just about any size you want, then export it to a .jpg, .png, .etc. They also have a program called Genetica 2.5 which allows you to create all sorts of other seamless textures, like brick, marble, cloth, wood, stone, metal and lots of others. The Pro version also allows you to create atmosphere and hair textures. They have a downloadable 30 day demo of Genetica. Here is a floor texture I created in about 15 minutes using Wood Workshop. Be interested in hearing what others have to say about these programs... Al

I think it was the use of the actual video that bothered me the most. Had you done something like South Park does, (and I am a huge South Park fan) it wouldn't have been quite as bad. Or if this was an 18+ forum, I probably wouldn't have said anything at all. Aside from all that, I agree that the animation of the devil was quite good. Al

I have been debating about not responding to this post or saying something about it. I have a pretty good sense of humor and can laugh at just about anything, including death. However, I thought this video was very inappropriate for A:M Forums. This is must my own personal opinion... Al

It is indeed the community-window. Drove me nuts until I closed the community window. I hardly hear bells at all any more, just voices... Al

gazzamataz: Not sure why you would be able to download only have the video. The skipping that Shaggy does is the standard Skipping Action that comes in the Action library. agep: I used the Icarus pdf User Guide when I created the camera tracking solution. It was well laid out and pretty easy to follow. I first used their Distortion app to remove any distortion that was present in the original video. Next, I used the undistorted in the Calibration app to calibrate the camera, determine the focal length and create the tracking solution. The solution was then used in A:M. Ethan: Here is a video example of Shaggy skipping along with a stationary "Lazy Dude". The tracking solution looks pretty good with a stationary object in the scene. Starting to get pretty excited about playing around with this stuff. My next test will be take some video that I shoot and try to integrate the CG into it. Thanks... Al [attachmentid=23239] test2b.mov

Glad that worked for you. Just out of curiosity, what was the problem that required you to roll back to version 'n'? Al

If you go directly to the FTP site from the Hash main web page, then go to Updates -> Windows -> Am2006 -> Old, - or - ftp://ftp.hashmirror.com/pub/updates/windows/Am2006/old you will find a copy of AM2006 dated 11/09/2006, which is the same date that WillP posted that 13.0n was available. It may be worth a try downloading that version and see if it is the one that you need. This is a Windows version. Hope this helps... Al

Thanks Paul. I am more and more amazed at what this software is capable of. BTW, I posted a link to this thread in the live action thread. Al

Downloaded the Iccarus software which analyzes video and re-creates a camera tracking solution which can then be imported into A:M. The video clip is from the Iccarus tutorials. I followed along with the documentation to create the tracking solution and exported the track into an A:M v9.5 project. The project loaded just fine into A:M 13. Then took Shaggy and added him to the chor and had hip skip merrily through the scene. For a first shot at doing this, I think it turned out fairly well (as far as the camera tracking goes). I know the lighting does not match the scene and Shaggy is too crisp and sharp compared to the video, but it was just a test. C&C always welcome... Al [attachmentid=23211] [attachmentid=23210] test2.mov