A:M and the Real World

[DrPhibes]

In the past I have posted about 3D printing from A:M, however, this time I thought I would show some of the work from my day job and how A:M plays a big part in it.

 

We recently finished work on ICE AGE LIVE. An ice show that will be touring Europe for the next few years. We designed and built the large puppets and costumes for the show.

 

In order to reproduce the characters as accurately as possible, I took the original animation geometry from Blue Sky Studios into Animation Master, and after a bit of modification to fit human performers where necessary, I patterned directly off the digital character within A:M to create flat patterns for our fabric department to then sew together into the fur bodies and costumes of the final characters. Sid the Sloth is a good example of a character that was almost entirely design and patterned from A:M.

 

Here is a video of the promo Sid character touring a mall in Germany;

 

In all about 60% of the digital design work was done in A:M for the 16 or so characters created for the show.

Here are a couple more video clips from the show;

Clip02

 

The main reason I am posting this is to hopefully get some of you thinking about how you can use A:M to expand beyond just images on a monitor, and translate your digital designs to physical creations.

 

Charles

[Fuchur]

Wow, I am really interested in the process of that. Could you show a little more how you did it and what you did there?

Very, very cool . I am looking forward to my new Replicator 2 which should be delivered sometime in November, but this is even a bigger and cooler way to translate digital designs

to the real world! You are indeed a big eye opener .

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

Thanks for posting that! That is very cool thinking-outside-the-monitor!

 

 

Perhaps you've already noticed A:M v17's new feature for fitting new splines to old models. I be that would be useful in this sort of endeavor.

[DrPhibes]

Perhaps you've already noticed A:M v17's new feature for fitting new splines to old models. I be that would be useful in this sort of endeavor.

 

Yes, that is a feature I wish I had 6 months ago when I was working on that project! I use that feature all the time on my current projects. A:M is now an even better tool for the process.

 

Still wish it had millimeters as an option for the working units thought.

 

Charles

[DrPhibes]

Wow, I am really interested in the process of that. Could you show a little more how you did it and what you did there?

 

I can post a little more on the process I use soon. I have a project that I finished last month that might be a good teaching example on how to do this on the cheap.

 

Charles

[robcat2075]

Wow, I am really interested in the process of that. Could you show a little more how you did it and what you did there?

 

I can post a little more on the process I use soon. I have a project that I finished last month that might be a good teaching example on how to do this on the cheap.

 

Charles

 

My guess of what you do is to put new splines over the old model to represent the edges of the fabric you want to cut. But how do you flatten those pieces out accurately? When you get to explaining more, that would be something I'm curious about.

[KJ'd Beast]

This is really great news. I wish Hash would post a list of companies that use A:M. It would be interesting to see where it's being used in the professional community. Perhaps Charles could give Hash a quote or a short article to use on the home page?

[itsjustme]

Wow! Great stuff, Charles. Thanks for sharing!

[Rodney]

This is really awesome Charles. Very impressive.