Darkwing

"Sir, we're running out of ammunition to hit all these birthday people!" "Switch to the heavy artillery, just blanket the month of June!" "Aye sir!" Sorry, I been feeling especially giddy lately. Happy birthday to Fucher and all those having birthdays this month!

I honestly think I could touch that...it's like right there in front of me, but my dang monitor always seems to be in the way and I can't grab it! If you don't understand that, essentially I've just said, great job, looks real!

yes, instead of cake, he will have human sacrifice.....any volunteers?

Wow, my mac isn't as fast as that and it renders faster than what you're saying. But what Nancy says about Mac rendering slower is both true and not true. I've noticed that things like basic procedurals and materials render considerably slower on a mac, however, effects like Particles, Lens Flares etc render considerably faster than windows do. I've had a shot that had an intense particle effect, would take almost 2 minutes to render on windows, about 10 seconds on a mac. It was crazy.

I do believe someone once told me that doing more passes on an AO render makes it not take as long. I tried it once I think and I do believe it was right

Happy Birthday to the master of Animation Master! Have a great one and many thanks to making this awesome software

Y;know, if he and Marcos were to team up and do a project, I think the universe would just plain and simply end because it couldn't take the raw awesome power of the two AM masters together. That's just my opinion

render as lines acts as any model does, it is essentially just another texturing techinque, at least that's what I've found. I've never tested it in fog or anything, but so far it has reacted how one would expect it too

here we go: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=a...st&id=51063

I used the render as lines function for my holographic panels for the endeavour. It;s best to apply any surface effects to the model as a whole and then use the group function to use for the render as lines bit.

Plus improved stability! I'm liking that I don't have to use the hide function anymore to get AM's pop-up windows to work!

ok, back to the drawing board I guess. I kinda liked the back-flip, but if it could very well just be because of my inexperienced ways in the matter. Guess it's time to review some scenes from Hancock

ok, well i just tried this as a basic test to see if this idea mght work better. mind you it's quite late at night and i didn't really put much effort into it and i've already picked out a bunch of things in it, but this test is just to see how well a back-flip works and this test has proven (I think) that further, more detailed testing is worthy shot9.mov

yeah, that's sort of what I've been going for, not a controlled landing but a fall after the "jet-packs" shut off

Here's another go at it. It's the same shot from two angles. I caught one mistake already and it's his arm flips around in the wrong direction, can't believe I didn't catch it before rendering, oh well, it's not hard to fix. shot7.mov shot8.mov

ok good, the term quicky can be misleading in the world of animation At least that is one thing I've always been half decent at and that is coming up with shot angles and whatnot.

yep...that would be it. Not as low to the ground with the swoop, but yeah, that's it. Funny how your quicky is considerably better than what I spent a few hours on Oh well, I spent the last 4 years trying to learn how to model. Now it's time for animation

I see, well, I touched this one up a bit following some of those tips. Not quite there yet shot6.mov

so, heel to toe essentially? When he lands, he should land on his heel, then his foot has complete contact one frame later?

OK, here's another try at it. This time I made him swing his legs out in front of him and then arced his back backwards and then forwards, more like he's jumping in mid-air. I think he still needs a harder landing and that my timing is off some. I also expect his right leg to be further back so that he can have balance when he lands. shot5.mov

I always use the white timeline, less confusing for me (insert sheepish emoticon here). As for the key framing, yeah, they're all on the same frame. I quite dislike keyframing which unfortunately is the whole methodology behind animation in general. But yeah, so basically don't make him his feet straighten out for the landing so close to the ground correct? Have more space between him and the ground so that when he "falls" there's actual shock for him to absorb, thus the knee bending action

Landing's always the tricky part they say shot4.mov

yep...my memory is just that bad

oh and who's that character you used, is it one of yours, or one that comes with AM, cause it's a nice character that might be good for these tests due to having certain appendages that thom hasn't

Dang, well, yeah, you're good. Motion and general animation technique is something else I'm trying to play with in these tests, I can do it with real life actors, not so great with the CG ones currently, but I'm trying So, all the advice you guys can give will be appreciated!