Tralfaz

Great job on the rat Ken! I love the suit you put on the little guy. The first thing that came to mind was seeing him in a song and dance to "Puttin' on the Ritz". Thanks... Al [attachmentid=21962] ritz.mp3

Thanks folks. Started playing around with the rigging and have a very basic head and right front leg bone set up. I am doing this while reading "Animation:Master 2002 - A Complete Guide". There are no constraints or anything else yet, just the basic bone hierarchy. Did a quick test animation to see how the rigging works. The animation was not trying to simulate real AT-AT movement, just the bone movement. C & C always welcome... Al [attachmentid=21953] [attachmentid=21951] at_at.mov

Update: I have pretty much completed the major modelling on the AT-AT. There will still be some little things that will need to be added and tweaked, along with textures and bump maps. I will probably start on the rigging next. C&C always welcome. Thanks... Al [attachmentid=21947]

Thanks Jim and William for the information. The reason I am asking about the proxy models is that when it comes time to start animating my AT-AT, I would like to be able to render quick animations to nail down timings. The AT-AT has a lot of detail modelled into it and will also include textures, bump maps, etc. As it is right now, it takes over a minute to render one frame (multi-pass) and it probably isn't going to get any faster by the time I am done. Thanks again... Al

Can some one tell me (or point me in the right direction) how to use proxy models in your animations? I believe a proxy model is a low patch/poly version of your more detailed model. I am not sure how you replace the detailed version with the low detailed version and vice versa. Are there any tutorials or documentation on this? I tried searching the forum, but did not really find anything. Thanks in advance... Al

Update: Started working on the front end of the AT-AT. Added side detail to the front body, neck and started modelling the head. Al [attachmentid=21710]

WOW, that was a fast reply! I will definitely be texturing the AT-AT for the film I am doing. Once it is modelled, I will move on to rigging it. Picked up the Animation:Master 2002 book which I hope in this area. I have been looking at 3D Painter from Pixosaur, but would like to find out more info on it. Wish they had a demo to download and play around with or an example video like A:M has. Once the model is complete, I will release it to the community and Extras CD/DVD for anyone to use. I did the same thing with the AT-AT created in Anim8or.

Update: Added some more detail on the sides and back. Some of the pieces added to the back came from my AT-AT done in Anim8or. There was a lot of clean up required on these parts and probably took longer than creating them from scratch! C&C always welcome. Al [attachmentid=21688]

I've seen video of animals kneeling down, and even that seems awkward sometimes. I would imagine it would be even worse for a machine. The logistics and mechanics would be pretty amazing, especially filled with troops in its belly! Hope those storm troopers carried Gravol with them!

Thanks Ken. The panels are all modelled separately, then placed on the model. When I did this in Anim8or, everything was modelled as one mesh. For instance, the body was one mesh, with all of the panel detail cut and extruded from the mesh. I was learning Anim8or at the time and this led to a slightly messy mesh. Doing things separately and placing them on the model gave me a much cleaner looking mesh. It also lends to re-using bits of added on detail in other places. In hindsight, I could have done this in Anim8or as well. Just didn't know any better. I checked the spacing of the legs and they are pretty close to the blueprints. The AT-AT is not a very practical war machine. When at rest, the legs would have to be offset and never like I have them. The toes would be on top of each other! According to the Star Wars: The Essential Guide To Vehicles And Vessels, the AT-AT would kneel down to allow the troops to embark and disembark from the vehicle. I would love to have seen them try this in the movies... Al [attachmentid=21623] [attachmentid=21624]

Update: Finished the basic drive train and started on the body. Oooh boy, this is going to be fun to rig... Better keep doing the exercises! Al [attachmentid=21616]

Here I go dating myself... The first computers I used at work were RAIR black boxes that were imported into Canada from England. They cost $15K a pop and came with a 5 MByte Winchester hard drive and 128 KByte RAM. However, you could only use 64K at a time and had to bank switch between the two 64K segments. Color monitors consisted of green and black (hee hee). Then we moved to IBM PCs with a blazing fast 4.77 MHz processor, a whole 512KByte RAM and an endless 10 MByte hard drive. Came with two 5.25" floppy drives as well!! Anyway, back to the topic on hand... Things are look really good Mike. Looks like you are being faithful to your drawings. Keep up the great work. Al

Congrats Dhar! Really well done video! Al

Update: Completed basic modelling of the legs. There are still a few more minor details to add. Will be moving on to the drive motor assembly next. Hmmm, things seem to go a bit faster when you build a model a second time... Al [attachmentid=21552] Edit: Here is a 360 degree rotating view of the legs. [attachmentid=21554] at_at.mov

Your dad is a great artist Case and it looks like you are following in his footsteps. Even with out sound Rusty, that was a very informative tutorial. Hope you do more of them. The picture of the space pod reminds me a bit of the ship Mark Whalberg used when he crashed into the Planet Of The Apes (Tim Burton's version). Keep up the good work... Al

Thanks for the bump. This is the first I have seen this thread. I am in complete awe of your modelling talents. I really do hope you post some more updates, pictures of models or scenes, perhaps a teaser trailer. Is there a website we can go to to follow the progress of the project? Looking forward to seeing more of this project... Al

Onwards and upwards... Quick update of the legs with front and back views. C&C always welcome. Al [attachmentid=21517] [attachmentid=21518]

Here is the foot imported into A:M after being exported from Anim8or into a Wavefront .obj format. It did retain the quads and is a bit better than .3DS. It was still missing some patches and other problems. Wavefront .obj imported into A:M [attachmentid=21489] What I don't understand is why the same .3DS foot model will import as a Prop correctly, but not as a model? The image below was imported into A:M without any tweaking or anything like that. If only A:M could import a .3DS file into a model as well as a Prop.... .3DS model imported as a prop [attachmentid=21490] Thanks... Al

Case: My plans for the AT-AT do not include Hoth. The film will take place at an AT-AT construction facility. Ken: I am attaching some screen shots of the AT-AT foot, exported from Anim8or to .3DS format and then imported into A:M. Some patches were missing and the bias would have to be adjusted on almost all of the control points. When the control points were peaked, then the foot had a very segmented look to it. This is why I opted to re-create the AT-AT in A:M. It will also help me with learning the modelling tools. Thanks... Al Initial import into A:M [attachmentid=21484] CP's peaked [attachmentid=21485] Rendered foot [attachmentid=21483]

I started working on a fan film a while back using Anim8or, a free animation and modelling software program. Due to some limitations in the animation portion of the program, I purchased Animation Master to continue the project. Unfortunately, the models did not import very well into A:M, so I am starting the models from scratch. The first model is the All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT) Walker. I am starting with the feet and will work my way up. As I gain more experience with modelling in A:M, I will go back and tweak parts that I am not entirely satisfied with and add detail that I am not quite sure how to do yet. This is the same process I used while learning Anim8or. Thanks... Al AT-AT Blueprints [attachmentid=21464] AT-AT Modelled In Anim8or [attachmentid=21465] [attachmentid=21466] AT-AT Foot Modelled in A:M [attachmentid=21462] [attachmentid=21463]

Thanks for the tips folks. I tried some of fixing some of the splines and control points and things started to look a bit better. Then I continued to fix things to the point where it is worse than when I started. I think I will give this a break for now and try doing the exercise again a bit later. Thanks... Al

Name: Al Dinelt Exercise Completed: Exercise 11.5: Make A Face Date Completed: October 11, 2006 Instructor: TAoA:M I spent tonight working on Exercise 11.5 - Make A Face. Semi-pleased with the results except for the creases and bumps that I could not get rid of. That and the Copy/Flip/Attach added a ridge down the center of Cooper's face that makes him look part Klingon. (I used the Cooper rotoscopes for the decal) Any suggestions on what I could do to get rid of the creases would be greatly appreciated. I now have a greater appreciation for those who can do organic modelling! Thanks... Al [attachmentid=21334] [attachmentid=21335]

Nancy: Prior to using Animation Master, I was using a free program called Anim8or for a couple of years. It is a great program, but was lacking a couple of features for some films I would like to do. The first film is a Star Wars fan film. Anim8or models and test animations on it can be found here... http://www3.sympatico.ca/al.dinelt/fanfilm/index.html The second film is called 10-100 and is based on a mural that I did around 30 years ago. Again, tests were done in Anim8or, but it was going to be very difficult to animate the characters for the film. Once I get through the exercises and become better with A:M (in both modelling and animating), I hope to do these two films using A:M. Robert: I think what I need to do is concentrate on just one aircraft and get the timing correct on it. Trying to crame 3 aircraft into a short 6 second clip is just too much. Do you know how would I go about adding specular reflection to the aircraft? Thanks... Al

This is a test animation of the P51-D Mustang I built for Exercise 10. I wanted to see how the propellors would look spinning as well as play around a bit with the motion blur. The movement of the plane is not quite as smooth as I would like (still need lots of practice). The third plane moves a bit too fast when it dives. I have posted the model for download in the Exercise 10 post (it is down a ways on the page). Feel free to use it however you like. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...3215&st=120 C&C always welcome... Thanks... Al [attachmentid=21254] P51Mustang.mov

Thanks everyone. Here is final scene rendered in all its glory! I am pretty happy with the way things turned out. It is great to be able to have real reflections and cloth and wind and, well the list goes on and on. And as always, C&C welcome. Now it's time to get back to the lessons. Looking forward to getting into the modelling portion of the lessons. [attachmentid=21004] schlitzy.mov