animation master

[machineork]

Why does animation master have some many problems it keeps not doing what I want it to do. Also it keeps freezing on me all the time.

[agep]

What are you trying to do? What version of A:M are you using?

[machineork]

2006 it just keeps frezzing on me when i am working on my project for school.

[agep]

You are not helping much here. Could you please explain at what situation A:M freeze. Is it related to decaling, smartskinning etc, is it when modeling or in the choreography etc. Please be a bit more specific, so that we might able to help you. Just a rant post doesn't do any good

[machineork]

Im tring to make a movie for school and i am using the project called prisonscene after about 3min it freezes and all animation master just stops working and has to restart.

[paradymx]

Im tring to make a movie for school and i am using the project called prisonscene after about 3min it freezes and all animation master just stops working and has to restart.

 

One thing to keep in mind when using someone elses model or project is it might not have been intended to be "animated", that is, some users goal is just to create a static image that looks really good. So they put a lot of detail into the model. The other end of that is animating it is a processing nightmare. If you are going to use that model(I know what you are talking about, but I'm at work and can't look at it) try "dumbing down" some of the project features(like materials, or detail props, or lighting) or better yet build your own using it as a template.

[photoman]

Or if you need the scene to be complex use proxy models, or low patch models which can be later switched with the high detailed ones.

Are you running on a mac or windows? I know from experiance that the windows version of A:M is a bit more stable then the Mac version but that shouldn't make too much of a difference.

 

Photoman

[heyvern]

I would suggest starting smaller. Start with the tutorials or a very simple project. If you use a complex prebuilt project or model that you aren't familiar with there is no way to figure out what might be causing the trouble. That project you are using is pretty complex as I remember. It was on the first AM Extras CD as I recall. A project included from the image contests. I don't think it was intended for animating if that is the case.

 

If you are set on using this scene then you should delete each object (models, lights, etc) in the chor one at a time and render each time until you figure out which model or object might be causing the trouble. Sometimes it could be a "funky" image decal, or a really "slow" material. It could be some issue with constraints in a model rig. I had that recently with a circularity constraint "user error" that wouldn't allow me to render. It could be due to a whole bunch of raytraced shadows choking the computers resources. It might be due to rendering a MOVIE instead of an image sequence. "Movie" or AVI format rendering may require more computer resources. It might even be a codec or compression issue in your optional settings for the movie format.

 

-vern

[HomeSlice]

Does your computer freeze while you are

1) Modeling ?

2) Animating ?

3) Rendering ?

 

How much RAM do you have?

 

If the models you are using have a lot of pretty large decals, or if you are using Hair or other features that take a bunch of RAM, the scene may require more RAM than your computer has. When you run out of RAM, you are pretty much dead in the water.

 

If that is the case, the only two solutions are to 1) buy more RAM or 2) Simplify your scene. Resize all decals so they are no larger than 512 pixels x 512 pixels. Take hair out of everything except only very small areas. Decrease the number of lights. Only have one or two lights that cast shadows. Use Z-Buffered shadows instead of raytraced shadows.

 

If you can only render 200 frames or so before you run out of RAM, then only render 200 frames at a time. Render frames 0-200. Then render 201-400 etc. and join the movies together in AM later. (Make a new project. Import all your movie clips. Add them all to the camera as Rotoscopes. Set the Chor Range for each rotoscope so they play one after the other. Then render.) That will require much less RAM.