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So in my further test, if the project is saved with the action window open, the rotoscope is saved. If the window gets closed, rotoscope goes away.

A quick test on my own... If the action is in a PRJ and i save the Project, the Action will retain its rotoscopes when i reopen the PRJ. An Action saved by itself seems not to retain rotoscopes unless it is loaded by a PRJ it was made in. So... if you need rotoscopes, use Actions in the context of a PRJ.

I had created an action and placed a rotoscope to use as some movement reference. Saved my project, and when I came back and opened it a day later I found that the Rotoscope was not retained in my action file. This meant that my scale and translate settings (that I had not written down) were gone. This may have always been the case since I can't remember ever opening a rotoscope in an action window, but I was hoping that someone knew if this is an error or just the way it is. I did find that I could use Rodney's suggestion here to solve the issue, but it seems like a silly thing to not be able to hold the rotoscope settings. Thanks,

Guess what???????????? Search is fixed!!! and since there is no more massive imports it should stay that way. https://forums.hash.com/search/?q=project

it's rebuilding now are the A:M Stills import. At least I think that is the problem. It's going to be a few hours if not over night. When i searched "project" it only returned one result from 3 hours ago.

That got it to install, but it still wouldn't run. I tried the usual stuff, reboot, reinstall from scratch, run as administrator; still wouldn't work. For now I'm going to give Blender a whirl (I know it's harder to learn, but I'll give it a shot). Probably by the time I'm done with this project I'll find my other A:M disk (I think it was version 13, 2006). Thanks again. I'll be back.

Hi Robert, the same issue I'm having happens with your project and that's the hair refuses to not penetrate the model. I've had my hair moving like that (using similar settings) but when she twirls away at the end the hair at the sides of her head passes straight through her face and ruins the shot. I changed the hair settings on the model to the ones in your choreography and as you can see the hair just won't stay out of her face. Until I can figure out how to get the collisions to work there's not much point in having the hair flowing. Hair settings test.mp4

I tried that as well, it didn't work. My new Chor/Project is working fine. I have no idea what happened with the other one, I'm just thankful I wasn't further along than I was. In case I haven't mentioned it, I really appreciate your support.

This seems to have worked. I have no idea what happened in the previous project... and I hope I don't repeat it.

I opened a previous project and all is well. Somehow, somewhere in my current project, I must have made an adjustment or something that caused this, but I am at a loss as to what it might be. Seeing how I haven't progressed very far (60 frames) I may just start a fresh project and see what the brings.

and now it's working again...confused, bewildered, and curious, but not giving up. I on a deadline and will do any workaround I have to, like making multiple instances of butterflies VS flocking. I think I must have done something weird in the settings, don't know what it was but I'll keep trying after I finish this project. Thanks for all the advice and help. Kem

okay, I'm back. After resetting and opening your flying south04.prj, I now cannot click on the objects folder without a crash....restarted computer, same... and now I can't open my project i was working on without a crash...

Good question. Here's what just happened: I opened my project and looked around, made a few adjustments to the animation, then I closed the project and opened your flocking project. I looked around and all was okay until I clicked on the birds object folder and it crashed. I tried to re start TAoAM and now it wants me to register all over again... but not really...I put my name in the appropriate place and it restarted, of course looking like I just started it the first time ever. So I guess resting really resets it. Hopefully no more crashing...I'll let you know.

Hmmm...I tried the toggle trick. Now, no matter where I place my cursor and click, the software crashes... I think I'll have to start a new project and import all the models, etc. and try again.

By 'direct method' I simply mean not using additional groups as they aren't required in many cases.. Instead, group all but a few control points and use those ungrouped control points as anchors for the group you apply the cloth material onto. The example of this relative to the flag exercise would be to leave the last spline closest the flag pole out of the group you intend to apply the cloth material to. Those uneffected control points then will keep the flag in place while the rest of it gets cloth simulated. Edit: I'm attaching an example project that contains the example of leaving some control points out of the cloth group. Note that in the project there are two groups; a cloth group and a pole group. The cloth... gets the cloth material applied to it The pole... gets the deflector material applied to it. The end of the flag that is inside the pole isn't assigned to either group. I do believe that Robert hit the nail on the head with regard to the use of the Attached Group option. Use that in a Choreography and it should work as expected. Flag001.prj

You were moving the CPs by putting them on the end of a rotating bone. it's hard to not have rotation that way. If what you want is straight motion, moving a bone in a straight line is easier. Yes you can select a CP and see whether the Smooth or Peaked button is on, but it's usually visually apparent anyway. I don't know. They were always peaked for me. Lets say I don't have anything embedded in myproject01.prj and I make a change to a model and a change to an Action and a change to a Chor and then save my PRJ. The PRJ gets saved but even if i gave my new PRJ a new name like myproject02.prj the model and the action and the chor will get overwritten on their old filenames. Now suppose my animation doesn't behave right anymore or it crashes A:M for some reason when i go to render. Is it the model or the action or the chor? The previous versions of those are all gone now and even if I reload the previous myproject01.prj, it's just going to load the new overwritten versions of the model and the action and the chor. There is no way for me to go back to what I had before I made the three changes and try doing just one at a time to see which is the fatal mistake. It's easier to just have everything embedded and save myproject01.prj myproject02.prj myproject03.prj myproject04.prj myproject05.prj and know that each of them is totally independent and has everything* it needs to be like it was when i saved it. This takes up more HD space but HD space is cheap these days and you can delete the old versions you don't need anymore when you finish your project. How often do i need to go back to a previous version? i would say that on e very substantial animation project I've done I've needed to do this at least once to solve a problem. Or sometimes, I just don't like a road I've gone down animation-wise and would like to reset to some thing I had yesterday without having to figure out which keyframes are the bad ones. The only time i haven't worked with fully embedded PRJs is in a situation like "Tin Woodsman" where I made none of the models myself and would never modify any of the models myself and I only animated with models loaded from the TWO repository. Then I just saved incremental Chors for each scene. When someone changed a model on the TWO repository it could have been a problem, but fortunately it never was. It's easier to work in embedded PRJs *Remember that images and video files are never embedded. You need to be conscious of how modifications you make to those may affect previous versions of your work if you ever have to go back.

So I remade the bow so it is symmetrical. (Played with the copy/flip/attach) Reboned and am pretty happy with it except for one thing. So far... In the Action and the Chor., I can get all parts of the string to Peak. (No bendies) It is kind of intermittent though. When I close A:M and reopen the project, most of the sting does not peak anymore. When I rendered, it didn't peak most of the string. why? Music Bows.zip

Don't use a rotating Bone. Use a Translating bone instead Drop this version in your AM Project folder and look at the Action... Bow Music02.prj

Rather than Groups you may want to use Action Object to combine separate Models. That is done by drag/dropping models into an Action. You can start with an empty model to activate the Action itself and then drag/drop the models/rigs in that you need. As for Grouping itself... just select the Control Points and name the group in the Project Workspace listing. That allows different parts of a Model to be organized.

In the attached Project, why doesn't the string render? Please don't just fix it. Let me know what the issue is so I can fix it and learn. Thanks Music Bows.zip

So, in the Project Workspace, I see the Model > Groups. Can I use the groups to separate the parts of the 'model'? ie the Bow. The Arrow, The Shooting Machine? How do you put stuff into it's own group?

Hi Simon, Steve Shelton and Chris Daley and I took a look at this while we were meeting about a project we're doing and one thing we all noted was the cartwheel maneuver. There's something about it that seems too slow. I think he's in the air too long for the small amount of upward motion he gave himself at the start. If his jumping motion were stronger and his upward motion carried him higher he'd more plausibly have time in the air to do the cartwheel. I'm glad we got your render times down. I still need to write up the changes we made as I said I would.

Okay, a quick update on the state of the winter project. The girl will have 3 models in total. The one shown below where she'll be wearing a long coat, one where she'll be wearing a higher resolution version of the clothes beneath the coat and one where she'll be wearing a ball gown. It makes more sense to make 3 models than say have the high res undercoat version beneath the overcoat version. It would be way too resource heavy for one thing. Anyway, I've added a top to her now and as I said in the previous post I've been reworking her hair. I've had her moving her head and upper body throughout the process so I could make sure the dynamic options weren't going bananas and I've just about got it under control. She really just needs her fringe (bangs) adding and then I can start thinking about animating the first part of the sequence. I still want to add a few texture details before that though and rework the lighting.

Started a project to test a working process. The narrative premise is a bit corny but, it was the working process I wanted to find out about.The basic idea is that the ingredients of a cake mix, indulge in a dance off before jumping in the bowl ready for mixing. What I wanted to do was to animate and render it in AM, but then work over the top in TVpaint so it looked hand drawn, in a cg setting, so as to get a mix of visual styles in the same piece of work. I've encountered some problems along the way but will cover them later. This was the first test, hand drawn, no references. decided it changed volume too much so needed to use AM to avoid that, Line Test 001.mov This was the second test Animated in AM, then roto'd in TVP Sack Test 001.mov Different style of move using the 'Butter model' Butter A.mov That was then redone in a 'stage' setting trying to get the shadows on the work surfaces and walls, and the reflections in the mixing bowl Butter B.mov Made a bigger set, with lots of kitchen type fittings and tried to set up a simple lighting using only one light but with possible AO to be added later. Setup a series of actions to use on the background 'characters' while the other solo'd. Actions Test.mov Then animated the solo's and worked out some camera moves to get some variety. Shaded Mix 001.mov The moves were animated at 25fps and rendered out on two's for the roto work, (not even I am daft enough to try drawing it at 25fps). When it came to rendering it out properly I encountered a lot of trouble which Robert very kindly helped me with. I'll explain those more fully later. Part of it stemmed from rendering at UHD ( 3840 x 2160 ), which was chosen because I thought it would help with the drawing process post rendering, and because a lot of festivals prefer UHD with their applications. This probably won't get into a festival but hope the one its leading up to will. Still have 20 seconds of animation to go, hoping to get most of that done in the next two weeks. Any feedback greatly appreciated. simon PS the soundtrack comes from Appleloops

So I am starting on a project and basing both character off some cartoon rotos I found on the interwebs. I don't know if they're from the same cartoon or not, I don't really care, haha. I just want them to look cool together. I am making each mesh from scratch, except for the hands which I took from my J.D. character. I might take more things from other models of mine, but I'm trying to remember how to do all this stuff - so making it again is the best way I'm thinking. Here's what I got so far of the Batman. Just the base body. Still have to add all the detail and fix stuff as I go along. I should also mention that this is just a screen grab. Thanks for looking.