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That's really neat. If I had to live in an apple I think I'd be happy in that one. About a month ago I created a worm when my daughter came home from school with a task to recreate a story from a book on a poster or somesuch. We designed a shadowbox (out of a shoebox). While we were thinking of ideas I modeled the scene in A:M. A fun time was had by the whole family. If the project isn't on my daughter's crashed harddrive I'll post it here. *** Wish I would have seen your apple back then. I would have had to add it to the scene *** With... ahem... your permission of course. Rodney

Oh, wow! I didn't get all of these forum-only replies! Let me try to answer all the questions. First, thank you very much for the compliments! Music: The music is "The Chickens are Revolting" from John Powell & Harry Gregson-Williams' Chicken Run soundtrack. Because the animation is for my church and I'm not getting paid for this, I am covered under "gratis use permission" of the music. However, considering this piece's great success and review, I'd like to use it to promote D.Joseph Design, enter in contests, and list on my website as more than just a "personal project." For that, I'm applying for commercial license of the music. There are 1,914 rubber duckies in the animation. These are not simulated with special trick-videography, and they aren't calculated by a flock. All 1,914 rubber duckies are "individually animated" meaning each one exists in the choreography as an individual model-copy with it's own action. I can select and ducky and do whatever I want with it. The choreography file is 5 MB uncompressed and contains nearly 90,000 lines of code. Unless I'm wrong, I believe I hold the record for the most individually animated models in a single choreography. Combined total for render time was 1,100 hours rendered by Mike Ulrich with RenderMuscle. Half of that time is re-rendering an eight-second section at 9x multipass where single-pass motion-blur just didn't cut the peanut butter. This took about 300 hours to model, animate, test, time, compile, and place. Are the duckies symbolic of anything? No. It was just a crazy idea my father and I had after getting sugar-high from ice cream and watching a movie with my mother(sorry, I can't remember the movie). I am rather pleased with the camera movement. There are a couple flaws, but you wouldn't catch them unless I point them out to you. Concerning the squeak. I decided against the constant squeak because it just got so annoying after much longer than I already had. Fading out just didn't seem to work because the duckies were still right there. BTW, that Camera2 scene at ground-level with the marching sound was inspired by old World War II movies that showed marching troops' feet down the ranks. Last year's opening animation? That was my first A:M project! This is my seventh animation. That's including little title sequences I did for last year's video. So what's next? Sleep. After that, I'm working on some fun ideas that involve less than 20 models. I'm working on a thorough document on how I did the animation. If for no other good, at least it gives me something else to put on my website. As of 11:53 PM EST, Thursday, February 5, I have had 596 unique visitors to my website, and over 3.4 gigs transferred since I announced the animation Thursday morning, January 29. Half of those numbers were the first two days after announcing the animation just to some friends and the Animaster Mailing List. Anything I missed?

Not trying to distract you from the character or rush you but... Have you had a chance to work on any backgrounds, props or supporting characters. I'm interested in where you are heading with your project. Rodney

Bravo! and Congratulations. So what's the next project? Rodney

Hi Hashers. I've updated the apple a bit, mainly textures/materials. I'd appreciate any comments on this as I feel i'm getting closer to completion on this part of the project. click and scroll down for update ... Cheers. Doug

John, Really nice work on all your stuff. I am looking forward to seeing your project develop. I am also very interested in your technique for facial animation. In the past, when doing some facial animation in version 9, I would make a separate pose for each phenome such as "A", "O", "E", etc. As well as one for smile, frown, etc. Could you or someone else explain your technique a little more deeply? How to set up this kind of system? What do you mean that a single smartskin can easily encompass 3 pose sliders? Keep up the good work. Joe.

** EDIT: 4/8/04, update has been posted on page 3.** Hey there, folkses. I'm making strides in my first big Hash project. The modeling for my merman character is nearly complete -- by complete I mean "all parts are there", not "perfect". I doubt I'll ever get it to that point. Anyhow, I want to make sure the proportions and overall look strike people well. Once I fine-tune that, I'll start decimating unnecessary splines and then -- *gasp* -- texturemap it. I know the bottom of the tail ends a bit ... flat. I'll fix that. Thanks! --Ross

WOW thanks alot for the feedback and encouragement guys...... I don't think this is the place to disscus this but just to let you all know, because of some error in A:M 10.5 am unable to render my scenes.... I have tried everything and the problem can't seem to be fixed. As a result if I decide to resume this project it will be done in A:M 8.5... which means I have to re-model from scratch amoung other things..... Over 7 months of planning and concept arts seem to be in vain; this is very dissapointing but it's ok things happens I guess.... Thanks again to all for your help and encouragement you guys are great.

Thanks Grubber, Here's the project as it currently stands if you want to pick at it and see how it works. Enjoy! -Drakk shiptest_early.zip

Update: Project finished and available for playing with... This is just an FX shot that im playing with. The main model still needs to be textured and finished, but the FX are pretty close to being done.. just need to fade the particles out before they die.. 600kb quicktime can be found here. Feedback welcome -Drakkheim

I heartily concur. Your artwork strikes me, Darklimit, I mean that. I would be sorry if you had to let this project go.

Don't quit on us now! Your dream (err umm nightmare) is looking great. Shame to not push it through to completion. I for one have been looking forward to the end product of this project since you first shared it on the board. Hope you keep it up!

zacktaich - Thanks I will darken it..... am afraid due to software technical problems I can no longer continue this project so I have cancelled it....... At least I ended up with an ok model that am pleased with.. Thanks to you and to all the other artist who helped me so much along the way..... Dark....

Here is the latest installment of my tree growth animation project. I haven't been able to put much time into it in the last couple of months, being too busy with my "real" job. Once I get the whole thing built, textured, and animated, I want to put it in the context of a vacant lot in the middle of a city-scape. Any recommendations or how-tos for that sort of thing would be greatly appreciated. Below is a simple still image render. Check out the latest animation at my "laboratory" .

Thanks for the comments Haikalle: Thanks, . I'm using a Skycast Righttp://skycast.artboxanimation.com Frank:The architectural walkthrough was done in another program which shall remain nameless. It was a long term project which I started as stills, pre-multipass renderer and Skycast. When time came to do the walkthrough animation, the building was already modelled in polys. I chose to model this stuff in AM so that I'd have it to use in Master, and so I can do the next walkthrough in AM. It was modelled direct from furniture catalogue photos. I use mostly texture maps because of rendering speed. Jurnco: Shucks, but they're nowhere near that good.

Thanks, I've always had a fascination with hands, as seen in the screen shot below. The screen shot shows a short film that I never was able to finish due to technical limitations on the software I was using. I used a freeware program called Alice which was very hard to work with. There is actually some fun stuff in it that will most likely be carried over to hands down, I wish I could show what I had completed of the film but the file is so huge my website would probably crash. That project was my first encounter with 3D animation.

This is a very short clip of a possible short film. I say possible short film because I don't know if I'll ever actually make it, I was simply doing this to test out some stuff I had learned. Keep in mind this is the very first animation that I have rendered (I've made plenty of animations that were so bad I threw them away) and there are plenty of mistakes. To name one, the hand sinks into the ground at the beginning, but it's not too terribly noticable. The hand was modeled in Wings 3D. When I imported it into AM, it looked like there were holes all over the model. The go away once you render the animation, but it bothers me anyway, does anyone know why it does this? Please use the .wmv file (windows media), you'll have to actually download it, but it isn't as harsh on geocities terrible bandwidth and it is the full version. The quicktime version can be viewed straight from the website but isn't the full version (missing credits) .WMV file: http://www.geocities.com/jurncostorage/hands_down.zip Quicktime: http://www.geocities.com/jurncostorage/hands_down2.mov I apologize if they don't work, but that would be geocities problem not mine. Please tell me what you think! My main project is a superhero project that I am afraid I can't release any details on at the moment. But, I was wondering if anyone knows a good website for modeling animatable heads. I have really nice looking legs, a decent torso, but I don't know how to make a head. So if anyone could help out there, It would be apreciated.

Very nice! How about using pens with erasers as the steering mechanism/rods and maybe a zippo lighter (the leather covered ones) as the seat back, just to reinforce that 'made at home' feel? Anyway, i hope you'll post more as your project progresses. .. (great, now I want to go and make something...stupid job gettin in my way again.... ) -Drakk

I like the scene and I think the look is quite fun. I think that style of house is called "half-timbered"? If that's the plan you maybe might add some diagonal timbers; those seem to be a hallmark of that style and would add some detail. I can go for the stone tower (ya gotta keep your damsels somewhere, right? ) but I'm not sold on that stone structure in front of the house, though. It seems out of place for such a dwelling. Keep the tudor front door but move it back flush with the front of the house and maybe have just a stone arch framing it? But it looks like a very promising project.

Fun project, Jeff! Very creative, and well done on such a short timeline. Kudos!

Zaryin said: I am glad to be back at my project again, not only that but using AM again is a GREAT feeling! Jim said: What do you mean wacky? My middle name's wacky! Vernon adopted it I invented it

Glad to se you are working on your project again. The modeling looks great so far. And except for the repeatable pattern of the texture, that also looks good.

Darklimit said: That's exactly what I want - none of this photo-realistic stuff - takes too long to do that LOL Mega said: I am not planning on doing too much with the backgrund at the moment... I think I will render out some trees as a layer and slap it on to make it look like a wood in the background or hills or something. AS for the lighting I haven't done a thing other than just mod the default lights that a new choreography creates. Sean C said: Again, that's exactly what I want! It's intended for a series of Children's stories that I have been working on since I was... oh, let me see now... er... hum... Thanks for the comments people, I really appreciate them it! Helps kick me into gear and get on with this project

Well, I have resumed work on me pet-project and have been adding things to Peg's Mansion as well as colouring it in! It still needs work on the tree leaves and bark, and the obvious tile pattern on the tower - but hey! - I have never really done this texturing bit before I have the '3D Painting & Texturing' book on the way which should help alot! Looking forward to your comments

Genius! :lol: bags of character and a bundle of laughs, I really cant wait to see this project completed! V Impressed!