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*** Paul's Playground ***

Paul Forwood

By Paul Forwood
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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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I imagine him saying "where did I leave may car keys?"

Heh. Well, he found his car keys but he's still not going anywhere fast:

post-183-1275042976_thumb.jpg

TrafficBVH__A00.mov

 

Thanks, Spleen. :)

 

Kat and Myron, you seem to have picked up the same rhythm. Are you dancing? ;)

 

Myron, don't get too excited but I made a start on this:

post-183-1275044262_thumb.jpg

I don't know what it is but man it put up one heck of a fight!

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Thanks, Steve. The faeries are certainly more alluring than this fishy fiend. ;)

 

post-183-1275404071_thumb.jpg

 

I like the green backgrounds but I will probably have to change the colour of the character to give better contrast and separation. A red background would work but not what I was imagining for the scene that includes this character. It will be moonlit so I want dark blue or green backgrounds and yellow from the moon. The water must have a slight blue or green glow to it.

Here is a blue one:

Thing360_A14_.mov

 

The moire patterns are really bad at this resolution and completely hide the real texture on the fins so I will try something less busy.

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Strange happenings!

 

I have been going around in circles trying to get a particle emmiter to remain transparent in a final render. After a great deal of testing it turned out to be a problem where having object collisions turned on in the emitter's properties causes the emitter to show up in the render. Nancy suggested applying an all-alpha image to the emitter as a cookie-cut patch image to make the emitter transparent. Thanks, Nancy! :) I forgot to apply it as a patch image and applied it as a cookie-cut decal instead. It did seem to work but as you can see in the render below something is now affecting the lighting. Actually I don't think it is the lighting. You can see that the water becomes divided into two separate tints, splitting horizontally around the centre of the screen. It starts just as the character's hand grabs the fishing float. I have checked everything in the choreography but there is no sign of anything wrong occuring in any of the channels. The lighting has not been touched.

 

This is all in A:M14c so it may have been fixed in A:M15.

 

ThingFloat_A07_e.mov

 

I've spent so much time trying to solve this that I haven't got back to tweaking the particles yet.

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NancyGormezano Animation:Masters

NancyGormezano

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I have checked everything in the choreography but there is no sign of anything wrong occuring in any of the channels. The lighting has not been touched.

 

Have you tried deleting/inactivating things from the chor to see what might be influencing this? It's pretty hard to guess without a chor? Something is changing. What's changing when it starts?

 

EG - Is there a ground plane (or rotoscope or something) under the water changing in altitude? and we're seeing the background or something else perhaps? Not sure how you are creating the waves (which look terrific, as well as the critter and his bubbles)

 

Try to create the simplest chor where it's still happening by eliminating stuff.

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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I have tried everything except deleting. I have scrutinized every channel on every frame but nothing is moving or changing. I haven't started deleting things though I will tonight or tomorrow. The rendered effect is reminicent of the problem that was occuring when rendering hair against an empty background. I believe that was related to a problem with alpha data. This may be the same as it started when I added the cookie-cut, all-alpha decal to the emmiter.

 

Nancy, the water is just a grid with a cyclic action and the bubbles are particles.

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NancyGormezano Animation:Masters

NancyGormezano

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The rendered effect is reminicent of the problem that was occuring when rendering hair against an empty background. I believe that was related to a problem with alpha data. This may be the same as it started when I added the cookie-cut, all-alpha decal to the emmiter.

 

Try adding a simple background "plane/dome" to check that out. And as a solution as well, perhaps.

 

Also - look at it in shaded/wireframe - might be easier to see what's moving - obviously the critter is moving. In shaded/wireframe or just wireframe you'll be able to see how the emitter, against background, water is moving.

 

As for channel data, here's a very very WAG: Sometimes channels get "messed". Don't ask me how. I wonder if you might have a duplicate channel somewhere that you are not aware, that became a child of the wrong bone in the chor ? I have seen this in 14c, and beyond. But it usually happened with a more complicated Squetch rigged character. I have learned that this problem is less likely to occur if I have "show property triangle" OFF in Tools/Options/Global. Ie have the properties show up in separate window, rather than inline. Less chance of messing up in the chor.

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Nancy, thanks for your input.

There is already a skydome in the choreography, though it is obscured by fog. There really is nothing moving that I can find by scrutinizing the scene from multiple views in wireframe or shaded modes and I haven't been able to find any errant keys in the timline for any channel. I'll keep looking and start deleting stuff.

 

Mark, thank you also. Yes I am using fog but it is not animated, The emitter is one separate model with two unconnected sets of patches. Each set has it's own, different, particle material assigned to it. I am going to turn these into two separate models to see if that has any effect. I think that the problem with not being able to make the emitter geometry transparent in a final render could be something to do with having three separate sets of properties, ( the particle material's emitter properties, the object's emitter properties and the set in the choreography that is being animated). I need to take a screen grab of each of them and compare them side by side so that I can see if something is being overidden that shouldn't be. I'm wondering if there is a conflict between the emitter opacity,which i believe should just affect the particles, and the emitter geometry's transparency, which should just affect the geometry of the emitter and not the particles.

 

I love a good puzzle but not when it breaks the flow of what I was doing for too long. I will give it one more day and then, if I haven't solved it, I'll try to get back to where I was, pre-particles, and find another way to make a splash. :)

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Eureka!

I moved the project into A:M15 and all the problems vanished. I remembered that Steffen Gross, (Yoda), did an amazing job of fixing the problem with particles, alpha and fog about a year ago and wondered if those fixes would have an effect on this project. I have a beta version of A:M15, which I was using to help with testing, so I brought the project into that and everything went swimmingly! :) So it must be time to upgrade my licence. A:M 14c still works solidly in almost every way but the alpha thing was a stumbling block in several projects. I'm so pleased to have found a way forward without compromising the original vision. Thanks again for all your suggestions, people, and most particularly to Steffen for continuously smoothing the path. :)

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robcat2075 Animation:Master

robcat2075

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Here it is before I start tweaking:

ThingFloat_A08_b.mov

Now I can get on with fixing the rigging, textures, particles, etc and then move on to doing the actual animation for the sequence. This was just my test piece.

 

I just caught that, looks wonderful!

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KenH Animation:Masters

KenH

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Cool character! I'd like to see the fins on his back a little transparent. It'd also be nice to get some displacement waves from his movements, but that's probably a step too far.

 

Edit: I like the glow off him too. It's like he came from way down. And his eyes could be wetter looking.

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Thanks, guys!

 

No that's not George, Gene, it's Charlie. :)

No recognisible polititions in this.

Edit: (Oops! Spelling again! I must make a mental note: Insert CIA into politicians)

 

Thanks, Robert!

 

Ken, I take your points about the fins and the eyes. they are both on the "to do" list along with the bump, specular and colour maps.

 

post-183-1277557684_thumb.jpg

 

I've been playing with mud. :)

This isn't a set that I am using in the video, other than the mud model and action. I'm just testing stuff.

A short animated example can be found on my blog, (See the "Fishin" link below).

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Fishin' is still moving along slowly, Myron. Very slow but still moving. A bit like the river.

 

post-183-1280654306_thumb.jpg

 

I have made a start on my contribution to the "Bus stop" collaboration. Lots to fix and develop but I will wait for the full set to arrive before moving on with this: (Link in next post).

 

That little guy is just a proxy.

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Paul Forwood Animation:Masters

Paul Forwood

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Thanks for all the positive comments, guys! :)

I haven't been able to do anything for the past few weeks but I found the drive to make a start on Captain Beany last night. This guy is for real! A Welsh eccentric who became Captain Beany to raise money for charity and probably to put some beans into his life. Good luck to him. :D

post-183-1285411353_thumb.jpg

Beany_A00b.mov

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Beany

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z1BL0sglWI

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