Search the Community

decal for face accidently erased xxxx.prj

You can make them talk wuith the right image on a simple project

Here is another modern render of one of my old Animation Showdown animations. I added a school gymnasium set and rendered with radiosity. A birdseye view of the chor looks like this. The set is a completely enclosed box with two kleig lights in the ceiling... A conventional render with those two lights gets this... That is very severe. If I were going to use conventional lighting I would need add a number of fill lights in strategic places. Here is a radiosity render. The shadow areas are no longer pitch black and there is visible detail even where the lights do not directly shine. Overall, however, it is too dark for my taste. Increasing the Intensity of the lights so that the charcters were well illuminated caused the brightest spots on the floor to become overbright and clip. Instead I applied a gamma correction to the radiosity render. I''m liking this much better... Unfortunately, the shadowing that was indistinct in the raw render is now ever weaker. To give that some more bite i rendered a pass with ScreenSpace Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)... ... and composited that by "multiplying" it with the Radiosity. I did that in After Effects but an A:M "composite Project" can do the same operation. This PNG alternates "before" and "after"... SSAO has no anti-aliasing so I had to render those at 3x3 times the normal resolution to make smooth versions suitable for compositing. When A:M introduced Radiosity our computers weren't ready for it. Each render took so long that animation was unthinkable. But now with a modern CPU and NetRender it is within reach. My 640x480 test renders for this scene took only about 3 minutes per frame. After i got my settings decided and cranked up the quality, the full-frame final renders took only about 20 minutes each. Get started with Radiosity with Yves Poissant's Cornell Box Tutorial Learn more at Yves Poissant's Radiosity/Photon Mapping Pages

Can you upload a sample project where this happens, Robert?

I had to give this one a lot of thought, but I've decided to work on a second project while still working on "Stalled Trek." I realize that this will put some more stall into Stalled Trek, but I think it's the right thing to do. The reality is that Stalled Trek is pretty ambitious and I want to get it right. As such, it's going to be a long time before I can finish it. Also, I'd like to have some more experience with the other aspects of the process (namely animating) so that my skills will (hopefully) match my ambition. I'd rather not have to go back and reanimate everything, like I'm having to go back and re-model the characters right now. So, while I continue to work on the "hard" project, I've decided to work on a simpler side-project, which will hopefully allow me to make more of my mistakes on it... rather than on Stalled Trek. I think this project will be a lot of fun to do, too. Not only because of the source material, but also because I won't be the Lone Ranger on this project. Some history: in 2003, a friend of mine pulled together a bunch of his friends and made a little home movie about pirates. Since we no longer live in the same part of the country, I wasn't going to be able to be involved, but thought I might be able to contribute in other ways. I came up with the notion of doing an animated sequence for the opening titles, using cartoon versions of the cast. Unfortunately, my life was in a bit of upheavel at the time and I finally had to accept that I just wouldn't have the time to pull it off. I had done the character designs, though, so we made some still images that were used behind the opening titles instead. Not nearly as satisfying, but what are you gonna' do? Anyway, fast forward to now and my friend and I were talking and he said that he'd had an idea for a sequel to his movie, but it would require a lot more to turn it into a movie and he wasn't sure if he wanted to take on all of the work of doing another one. I thought about it for awhile and finally asked him what he thought about the idea of doing it as a short animation. After some debating of the logistics, we both thought it would be fun and decided to do it. The great thing about this is that my friend is an artist, too, so there's going to be a tremendous amount of sharing the load. He's going to write the story, storyboard it, design all of the props and paint all of the backgrounds. (The only 3D will be the characters and the props and parts of the sets necessary for them to interact with. This will keep the amount of modeling down to a much more reasonable size.) He'll also record all of the dialogue (using the people who played them in the movie he made.) I'll *just* (ha!) do the modeling and the animating. :-) I'm not pretending it'll be easy, but dividing the tasks like this and having one another to bounce back and forth off of and spur each other on, should make it easier than just doing everything on my own. The look is going to be pretty cartoony and stylized. Like I said, the backgrounds will be flat and we're going to try to keep the story relatively uncomplicated and the number of characters to a minimum. The movie was done in black and white (my friend loves the old Errol Flynn movie "The Seahawks"), so this will be in black and white, too, which helps keep things simple, too. In the end, the cartoon should make a great extra for his first movie and an excellent bit of practice for me on my way to completing Stalled Trek. Since I'm not involved in the story (which my friend won't begin writing until next week or so), I'm not sure exactly what will be involved. I do have the character designs I did of the cast of the first movie and although I don't know if all of them will be used, I'll feel safe starting to model the main ones. Here's the character designs I did all those years ago... Not sure exactly how well they'll translate into 3D. I tried to keep them extremely simple back then and I think that'll help to make for simple 3D character models. Here's a couple of the "stills" I did back then. I think the look of this will be very similar, just with the characters and some elements in 3D.

project file oolldd1.prj

Note: this post is incomplete yet and needs some editing. Starting a new MFC "Single Document Interface" style program in Visual Studio 2022. The second video in this playlist of MFC tutorials demonstrates the basics of getting a plain-generic Windows program authored in Visual Studio 2015 This post is to document the difference between what is shown in that video and the current situation in VS 2022. Video time - 0:35 Add new Project to solution (this presumes you already a "solution" loaded in VS) (In this image I am adding the new Project to an existing folder in an existing solution) Choose MFC App, then Next 0:40 Enter Project name (location should default to being in your existing Solution) 2:10 Choose Project options This screen mimics the choices in the video 2:12 The VS 2015 screen in the video at 2:12 has no exact match in VS2022 2:14 This VS2022 screen is default auto-populated with names based on the project name. 2:17 The VS 2015 screen in the video at 2:17 has no exact match in VS2022 2:19 Choose Interface features This screen matches the choices in the video 2:32 Choose Advanced features This screen matches the choices in the video 2:37 Generated Class Options This screen is default populated with class names based on your Project name. 2:51 Created Project 5:30 Compiling the Project now should run default MFC "Single Document Interface" window: 12:15 i had to delete the "Save" Button from the _256 toolbar 17:30 Choose Project>Class Wizard instead of "Add Class", then choose MFC in wizard 18:00 Choose from drop down list first then edit ClassName Then OK, then OK in Class Wizard window

found this render and model converted to gif BasicMan.mdl

trying ooot simple idea simpleok.prj

The project I've uploaded should open in v15 and v19. Probablly not v10 but it's easy enough to try. When in doubt use v19 unless there is some specific reason to go back versions... such as to use plugins are features no longer included in later release. Plugins usually need to be recompiled after time passes due to various changes both internally and externally to Animation:Master. I believe the attached in this post is the original project and that should open fine in v10... all the way through v19. A:M will prompt when saving to update so you'll have to make a decision at that time. For those that are curious you can also see various things that I modified. Stanley.zip

Regarding rendering images to file, Steffen was kind enough to add a Render option to the File menu. This is something even old time users of Animation:Master never had. That (in theory) makes rendering images more easily discoverable than using the classic Render icon. If we haven't saved our project, by default A:M will prompt us to save the project first and then take us to the Render options panel. Aside: In working with 2D folks I've noted that many simply don't have the term 'render' in their production vocabulary. For me. prior to engaging with 3D. I guess it meant 'to tear apart' but more closely means 'to separate or refine into detailed parts' as in 'the man drew a finely rendered drawing of the barn'. After introduction to 3D it just became the way we create images from our projects.

beentinkering around to make a monster as a project ..what if anything do you like or would make it better this is just a fun project

At the December 9 2023 Live Answer Time we talked about the Light "Bias" setting and I now recall the project where that had been a big problem... it was this "Parallel Reload" project! Here is a frame from a render with the bias setting not correctly set. The proper result is at the top of this thread. @Pizza Time

Sorry I've been off of the radar of late. A few weeks ago I decided to light myself aflame with gasoline. Note: I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS. The burns are not nearly as painful as the process of treating the burns. I have a new found respect for those burn center doctors/nurses/assistants and my sympathy for burn victims is tremendous. I am now well on the way to recovery... and the good news (for me)... I've found time to sketch with splines again and have been really enjoying that. I need to find my mouse because splining with a finger on a laptop is a royal pain. Tuckertown is a project (of sorts) meant to be a drawn comic strip set in the late 1800s. The characters seemed to translate fairly well into CG so I may press further with modeling them. If nothing else it'd be good to build sets, props and characters for reference. The (partial) models here are proof of concepts to see how difficult it will be to actually model them with the goal of proper articulation. Not all of the characters are fully designed yet so I've been splining and experimenting all along the way. Characters attempted thus far: -Fudley -Eda -Daisy Lou -Betty Lou -Cindy Lou Main Characters to go: -P.T. Boombottom -Louis -the animals And of course, the complete set/stage for Tuckertown! Will I continue to explore Tuckertown... I dunno. Probably. But I've been sidetracked modeling robots and Kirby-krackle lately. One of the real challenges is to deal with tall and short characters within the same shot/camera viewing area. I may have to rethink that aspect. Having all characters look like they belong to the same universe is an important consideration as well.

Hey everybody! I've been working on a personal project (Dark_Jedi is also slated to start on this) lately that involves creating TONS of Star Wars character at medium detail as photo-realistic as possible. (Sorry Colin, no Lost World entry yet) All in all, there are about 30 characters that need to be modeled. Here's my old work (about 6 months ago) for the project (they're animated): I'm not 100% satistfied with these and I might go back to them New stuff: This project involves a lot of "speed modeling" which I LOVE! This guy was done in 3 1/2 hours: Newest WIP--one of my favorites I'll post as I get more--hoping for a character every 2 or 3 days depending on their complexity. That may be a stretch for the last guy. If you would like to post crits, that would be great but I might not have the time to do them unless they're REALLY good. Thanks-Lee P.S--if anyone using V13 or higher is interested and thinks that they can make realistic movement for these guys and animate them (Oh, and rigging too, lots of quick, messy rigging. In fact if you're interested and capable of creating photo-realistic models too)--PM me

While working on my model (which is inside a project) I constanly used 'Save Project As', thinking I always have previous versions of my model if I dont like the current edition. Only now I realised that all project versions have the same version of my model. Is this how it should be? Maybe there is an option to have all models inside a prj file or smth?

Hey guys, I mentioned in my diary topic that I was working on a new audiobook project called Breckridge. It's a ghost story for anyone who's interested and takes place in and around Breckridge Secondary School in the fictional town of Southedge in the North of England. I also mentioned I was working on making Breckridge School to use as a visual aspect to the audiobook. Below is what I've got done so far. This part of the building is a geography classroom in the schools' south block, flanked by a girls bathroom on the left and a boys bathroom on the right. I know this because I'm basing the overall layout of the school on my old high school. The major difference being that I'll be adding a second floor to south block that doesn't exist but is necessary to accommodate the sealed corridor. Once I've built the second floor for this particular wall I'll add some gutters (Eaves trough's in North America) and then will have enough school to use as a photo in the first episode, which will be released over on Blip.tv/aceco. Thanks for looking

Hi Rusty, Always good to see you! There is the Treez plugin that is lauched from an Action. Perhaps you are thinking of that Plugin? It's not easily discoverable... had to remind myself how to use it but my memory came through for me. The key steps: Spline/Lathe a base shape - For example, Lathe a 2 control point spline into cylinder with 5 cross sections and then lop off/remove the top half leaving a circle. Select and name this group "base". Create a spline, plane, grid or set of splines and grids and place these above the circle/base as a target for the canopy to be created. If designed well you might be able to use these patches for leaves later. I call this group of splines and patches "target" although when generating using the Treez plugin It may be whatever is selected that becomes the target. Now the crucial launching step... Create an Action that uses this model, Right Click > Plugins > Treez This should launch and run to project the base toward the target. Edit: Just now see Robert's response and that will likely have more detail. Note that the target's control points are what determines where the branches will be generated and target.

Cool. I’ll try that. I also created a text file with the needed coordinates and saved that. I never save a project anymore. more than once or twice the project file would not open. Good thing I didn’t embed the component files. But that’s another topic!

aroughoballs.prj

What is Parallel Reload? I didn't know when I made this opening title and I don't know today but it is something important you need to know if you have the giant enterprise switch by Northern Telecom AKA the Meridian 1. I did this while working at Nortel in 1997 or '98. This was my first attempt at rigorously accurate mechanical modeling. I found the original project elements while looking through my debris and have re-rendered it in HD for modern eyes. For the most part, the original PRJ done in v6 loaded right up in v18. I just had to revisit a few of the animation curves and refind a few image files. The many long, thin horizontal lines on the Meridian 1 were very challenging to anti-alias. A standard render couldn't do it and multi-pass wasn't available so i set the pixel aspect ratio to 4 and quadrupled the intended vertical resolution. Scrunching that back down in After Effects made them super-smooth. ParallelReload.mov update: If you know how to view cross-eye 3D you can watch it in stereoscopic on Youtube. I recommend setting it to 720p and full screening it. Parallel Reload in 3D

Sorry for the humor thomtime.mp4 thomlive.prj

As a challenge to myself, I will start something to tie into my current project. I sat down last night late and decided to build a male and female head. Robert and I have been talking about aw transfer. Going to model something that use and low res mesh and transfer weighting to a denser mesh. I will post results shortly