AM crashes whenever I try to add a dope sheet

[JMonstre]

Hi All,
I'm new to Animation Master (I just started using it today), and I'm encountering a problem when I try to add a dope sheet.
I can type a sentence, but when I OK that Animation Master crashes out.
I've tried different sentences, and different sound files.

I'm not sure if this is related, but when I scrub through any sound file on the timeline, I don't hear anything. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hear something, but the tutorial seems to indicate I should hear the sound.
A I doing something wrong? Do I need to configure something?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[robcat2075]

Welcome James!

In 20+ years of AM-ing I have never used a dope sheet!

It's a bit of an obsolete technique for animation today, but if no one else has an answer, I'll take a look for completeness's sake.

Do you have a sample PRJ you are working on and can you post it?

 

 

[robcat2075]

6 hours ago, JMonstre said:

 but when I scrub through any sound file on the timeline, I don't hear anything.

You should hear something.

[robcat2075]

I was able to do the steps in TAoAM 7 "Can You Say That?" without a crash.

First try Help>Reset Settings and reboot and see if anything changes.

[JMonstre]

Thanks for your assistance @robcat2075, and for taking the time to reply.
 

16 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

In 20+ years of AM-ing I have never used a dope sheet!

It's a bit of an obsolete technique for animation today

Really? I've been doing 2D and stop frame animation for almost 25 years and I've always used dope sheets (or the digital equivalents available now). What are people using in Hash A:M to work out their lip synching, if you don't mind me asking? Because if this is an obsolete method and there's something better then I'm all for trying it.
As you appear to have worked out, I'm just following the lip synch exercise (Can You Say That?) from AoAM.
 

 

16 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

You should hear something.

Unfortunately, I don't. I've tried other sound files and that doesn't work either. They also look 'greyed out' in my UI, and not quite the same as in the AoAM (although that may be due to a change in the look of the UI).
I've put a screen cap here https://imgur.com/fjNt8wE

 

4 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

I was able to do the steps in TAoAM 7 "Can You Say That?" without a crash.

First try Help>Reset Settings and reboot and see if anything changes.

Thanks for that. Unfortunately, that hasn't made any difference.


 

 

16 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

Do you have a sample PRJ you are working on and can you post it?

I've posted the PRJ file here. It's exactly as in the AoAM exercise - I haven't attempted anything different.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d-ilFnqXzmgOFczGIwnFfMNJJXl4VWvD/view?usp=sharing

Again, any advice you could give would be most welcome.

[Fuchur]

I'd say it is not obsolete just uncommon. I like dope sheets but often use the manual approach too if I want to act something out a little bit better.
Still for long speeches and stuff like that it really is a great approach.

When you hit OK A:M crashes? Could you try starting A:M with Admin rights once?
A:M has to create a file in some situations at the first time and that has to be done in the install folder which might need admin rights.

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

28 minutes ago, JMonstre said:

 I've been doing 2D and stop frame animation for almost 25 years and I've always used dope sheets (or the digital equivalents available now). What are people using in Hash A:M to work out their lip synching, if you don't mind me asking?

When I refer to "Dope Sheet" I just mean the A:M use of the term, that feature that automatically converts text into keyframes of Pose Sliders that represent specific phonemes. It gets a result in minimum time for a new user but it creates an overly-active look to the mouth. I don't recommend it for "lip synch" today.

I'm not sure it's a great use of the term "Dope Sheet"

"Dope Sheet" is also sometimes used to refer to the timeline view that represents keyframes as red dots on horizontal lines, as opposed to the view that shows channel curves for values of W, X, Y and Z... the "curve editor"

 

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Because if this is an obsolete method and there's something better then I'm all for trying it.

In stop motion you had to get everything done in the first pass and that was largely true in hand-drawn 2D before drawing it onto a computer became a thing.

So you did plan every frame in advance and matched to a frame number, down to the mouthshapes even. The exposure sheet or "dope sheet"

But in 3D, the feedback cycle is so fast and so available you don't need to work that way. You put the body performance of the character in first, the mouth movement is probably the last detail you worry about. At any point, you can hit Play and see how what you have done matches the sound track.

It is so easy to slide keyframes forward and back in the timeline to perfect the synch that committing to a specific frame before you start is unnecessary.

It is so easy to add and subtract and revise any detail, big or small, at any point in the shot that needing to stake it all out to specific frames in advance is gone.

That was what they taught at Animation Mentor when I did that. The process basically went...

• Thumbnail drawings to develop visual ideas and storyboard.
• Shooting reference footage to study timing and body mechanics
• Key in the main character poses, matched to the sound track, if there is one
• Polish the motion between the poses and holds
• "lip synch" might be that last thing to go in. I would have some basic jaw motion in there before this, but just basic.

They never spoke of an exposure sheet or dope sheet.

Now that you can plop the sound track right into the timeline and scrub it, and press "Play" to instantly see how your work matches up to the sound, that tells you all you need to know about when things have to happen. (or, it would be if you could hear the sound!)

They spoke only lightly of mouthshapes, never of classic cartoon "phonemes", and discouraged the re-use of specific shapes, like we might see on "The Simpsons" where every "ee" is exactly the same.

The mouth nuances were something we fashioned after everything else was working, and were not identified with frames on an exposure sheet in advance.

Every substantial 3D animator I've heard talk about process since then pretty much has the same take on it and that is how I have always done it.

 

Quote

Unfortunately, I don't. I've tried other sound files and that doesn't work either. They also look 'greyed out' in my UI, and not quite the same as in the AoAM (although that may be due to a change in the look of the UI).
I've put a screen cap here https://imgur.com/fjNt8wE

The gray is not abnormal, that is just to make it not too contrasty.

Not being able to scrub and hear the sound track will be an impediment for you. We need to figure out what is wrong.

If you double click the audio file in the "Sounds" folder at the top of the PWS, do you hear anything?
 

 

 

[robcat2075]

I opened your PRJ and added a Dopesheet with just  "I've got a Secret".

Lip Sync Test_002.prj

Can you open it?

 

[robcat2075]

Here is a recent thread of a similar sound problem

 

[JMonstre]

Thanks for all the tips everyone. Again, I really appreciate your time.
 

23 hours ago, Fuchur said:

When you hit OK A:M crashes? Could you try starting A:M with Admin rights once?
A:M has to create a file in some situations at the first time and that has to be done in the install folder which might need admin rights.

I'm the only user on this PC, so I'm dong it with Admin rights (I assume). Unless you mean something else, like there's an 'Admin' mode I can run A:M under?

 

22 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

But in 3D, the feedback cycle is so fast and so available you don't need to work that way. You put the body performance of the character in first, the mouth movement is probably the last detail you worry about. At any point, you can hit Play and see how what you have done matches the sound track.

Thanks for that, and the rest of your comprehensive reply. Yes, I can appreciate that CG is going to allow me to rework and refine the performance incrementally, rather than try and nail it out of the gate. I suspected that the auto-generated lip synch would be hit and miss (there's something similar in 2D), and that I'd need to tweak it afterwards - if scrubbing through the timeline and finding the mouth movements that best fit the sound/performance is a better method, I'm more than happy to try that out.

 

22 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

I opened your PRJ and added a Dopesheet with just  "I've got a Secret".

Lip Sync Test_002.prj 7.57 kB · 1 download

Can you open it?

I can open it, and I can see the phenomes. Interestingly, I still couldn't hear anything in the file you sent me (until I worked out what was wrong, see below). I could see the phenomes though.
It I try to add another dope sheet within that file, however, I get the same result of it crashing. So, it really does appear that generating the dope sheet is what crashes me out. An already generated dope sheet works just fine.

 

21 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

Here is a recent thread of a similar sound problem

 

So, the above didn't directly do anything to fix this (the suggestion was to adjust the volume in the mixer - I could see the volume level was right up, and see the little bar moving up and down as if it was playing sound, but could hear nothing).
However, that thread led me here...

Which did at least solve the sound issue for me. If I go to properties and reduce the volume to 99% it works fine.

So, in short, the dope sheet feature is still inaccessible for me, but at least I can now hear sound and can therefore try and lip synch with the newer method that's been suggested.
Thanks again for everyone's help.

[robcat2075]

You might try running the installer again.

If the previous installation wasn't in the default location, uninstall and re-install (using the default location)

Is there a Dictionary.dic file in your v19 folder?

[Fuchur]

13 minutes ago, JMonstre said:

I'm the only user on this PC, so I'm dong it with Admin rights (I assume). Unless you mean something else, like there's an 'Admin' mode I can run A:M under?

Yes there is an admin mode (assuming you are running Windows).
See the attached image. (RMB = Right Mouse Button)
It should be something like "Run as Administrator".

Go to the Animation:Master Install folder (for instance "C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V19.0").

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[JMonstre]

1 hour ago, robcat2075 said:

You might try running the installer again.

If the previous installation wasn't in the default location, uninstall and re-install (using the default location)

Is there a Dictionary.dic file in your v19 folder?

Yep, it's in the default location (C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V19.0\)
I have a Dictionary.dic file at 5.23mb.

1 hour ago, Fuchur said:

Yes there is an admin mode (assuming you are running Windows).
See the attached image. (RMB = Right Mouse Button)
It should be something like "Run as Administrator".

Go to the Animation:Master Install folder (for instance "C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V19.0").
 

 

Thanks for that.
I tried running it as Administrator. I don't have to adjust each sound files volume level down to 99% to hear it when running as administrator, but I still crash out when I try to generate a dope sheet.

[robcat2075]

Try making the crash again and see if a *.dmp file is immediately created anywhere. There may be ones from previous crashes.

[Fuchur]

Just to make sure: Did you use Reset All once or reinstalled A:M just to be sure it is not something strange?

[JMonstre]

17 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

Try making the crash again and see if a *.dmp file is immediately created anywhere. There may be ones from previous crashes.

I've crashed it 3 or 4 times to see if I can get a .dmp file to generate, but no luck.
Although, what I am seeing (that I didn't see before) is that it's generating the phenomes now. I can see them for about a second. Then it crashes.

 

5 hours ago, Fuchur said:

Just to make sure: Did you use Reset All once or reinstalled A:M just to be sure it is not something strange?

Yep, I've tried that. It didn't change anything.

[robcat2075]

27 minutes ago, JMonstre said:

Although, what I am seeing (that I didn't see before) is that it's generating the phenomes now. I can see them for about a second. Then it crashes.

Progress!

Other ideas to try...

• Change your Tools>Options>Global>Real-time Driver setting to whatever is not the currently selected option and restart
• Install a previous version such as v15 and try. You can enable older versions by copying the master0.lic file from your current v19 folder to the new version folder.

[JMonstre]

15 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

Progress!

Other ideas to try...

• Change your Tools>Options>Global>Real-time Driver setting to whatever is not the currently selected option and restart
• Install a previous version such as v15 and try. You can enable older versions by copying the master0.lic file from your current v19 folder to the new version folder.

Thanks.
Changing the Real-time driver setting appears to make no difference.

Where can I find V15? I've looked around the site and can't find it.

[robcat2075]

v15.0j+ is pinned near the top of https://forums.hash.com/forum/2-latest-info/

 

All past versions can be found on the Hash ftp site, ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/

although v15 is the earliest that will run with your subscription license.

Likewise, you could install and try the 32-bit v19, just to see if anything changes.

 

If we had a crash dump file this would make a good bug report, but we need more detail than "it crashes".

[JMonstre]

On 4/3/2021 at 2:16 PM, robcat2075 said:

If we had a crash dump file this would make a good bug report, but we need more detail than "it crashes".

Is there anything I can do to generate a dump file, or is it something A:M needs to do?

[robcat2075]

18 minutes ago, JMonstre said:

Is there anything I can do to generate a dump file, or is it something A:M needs to do?

 

It is something A:M is intended to do on its own. I have no idea how it can do it if it's crashed!

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dump files now written again in the program directory, instead the current working directory