Second MAAM Users Group Meeting

[Hubukai]

MAAMUG Meeting #2 - By John Hubickey

Can also be viewed at: http://www.hubukai.com/animationmaster.asp

The second Mid Atlantic Animation Master User Group meeting went extremely well and was hosted by Don Davis. We started the meeting between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m..

 

Chris and I arrived at Don's house at approximately two o'clock. There was an abundance of food Don had prepared for the meeting and I think the best part was Don's special chili! After having two or three bowls of chili we went in the living room where Rich was projecting some of his work up on the wall. Rich started off the meeting by showing us some of the detail of the male human character he has been working on. The level of detail in Rich's model was amazing. I would have to say that Rich's modeling and texturing skills are approaching the level of the characters in the final fantasy movie.

 

Some of the textures Rich is using on his character are extremely large which gives him the incredible detail that he is shooting for on his models. I will try to get an image of the character Rich is working on to post on the web site.

 

Pause, go get a beer...

 

After Rich's demonstration we proceeded on to hair and the dynamics of hair. One of the questions that I had was how do you get hair to react to forces and gravity. Rich and Vern both answered that question by using a simple primitive and showing us all how to adjust the hair settings. It got a little confusing because hair has so many possibilities but we worked it out and rendered a short 4 second ball of flopping hair that Vern was extremely jealous of! ;-)

 

During the whole discussion we also watched some of the Jeff Lew animating characters DVD. This DVD looks extremely helpful and I personally am planning on picking up a copy in the near future.

 

Pause, go get a beer and in another bowl of chili....(Yum)

I showed some of the stuff that I was working on since the first meeting. I was extremely happy because the first meeting encouraged me to begin working on one of my projects. Now I had some animation master fans that I can show my initial renderings and animations to.

 

We also got a Skyrig demonstration from Rich. I love the effect of the Skyrig because it gives you a very realistic looking render. Thanks to Rich, I am now using the Skyrig lights. Here is the link to the Skyrig setup and instructions on how to use it.

http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/animas/skylight/

http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/animas/skyli...structions.html

 

Unfortunately I missed Vern's demonstration as Chris and I had to leave a little bit early. Maybe it for lucky Vern will post is project so we can all take a look at.

 

The second Mid-Atlantic Animation Master User Group meeting was another success thanks to Don Davis and his spectacular chili and cooking skills! We are planning on having our third meeting in approximately three months.(November-ish) The details of the time and location have not been worked out yet but we will post them as soon as we have it figured out.

 

OK, now everybody get to work on that hairball and we will hope to see you and hopefully some new people at the third Mid-Atlantic Animation Master User Group meeting.

 

Sincerely,

 

John Hubickey.

[heyvern]

I would just like to clarify a small point so there is no confusion:

 

First off I am not jealous of the "hair ball" created this weekend. I came to terms many years ago with my lack of hair and it is no longer an issue with me... at all... not a problem whatsoever... nada... no probs.

 

The fact that my lack of hair is even mentioned, by anyone but myself, is irrelevant to any type of important discussions regarding A:M, and is only an attempt by excessivly "hairy" people to keep us hair challenged individuals "in their place".

 

As for missing my presentation when you left early John... no worries, I didn't really have one... I just showed the animatic of my Incompetent Secret Agent project which is available online here:

 

Incompetent Secret Agent Animatic

 

I did show earlier, the only thing I used AM for in months... a door that opens and closes. Took 36 hours to render. I wanted to know why it took so long:

 

Apparently having 3 or 4 raytraced lights with volumetrics will really extend the render time... good to know for future reference.

 

Earlier in the afternoon I also discussed the fact that the theory of black holes is incorrect! Things can escape from a black hole... I did... somehow I managed to escape for a short time on saturday, although I was horribly frightened by that bright ball of light in the sky.

 

Rich made me give a try at making the "hairy ball" work properly even after I insisted that "I don't know anything about hair!". Apparently my skills with trial and error are still very powerful. Not having a number pad slowed us down somewhat.

 

Once again I am not sensitive about my hair and no one should mention it anymore because I am not sensitive about it so there is no need to call attention to it. That's not why I wear a hat.

 

Vernon "baldy, clean-head, cue ball" Zehr

[Hubukai]

Vern,

 

The Incompetent Secret Agent Animatic is awesome. Its good we have some one like you in the group to inspire us to work on our own projects and actually complete them. That is why the user group is So good!

[entity]

John, you know I have great need of your render farm, et al, I will be done with all 15 of my characters around 2027 maybe in march or april of that year... will you still have the render farm then???

I did a fix on the shoulders of my rig and eliminated about 30 fan bones now the shoulders only use 12 fan bones... but I still crash because of the textures loading so, on a tip from Vern, I will reduce the textures just enough before the details "I want" dissapear or become to blurry. The meeting really did get me to understand that if I was working on a network or with other users on a project, I must consider the volume of my characters also... patchwise, texture-wise, and rig-wise.

 

Thanks all you "incompetent super-heroes" (Verns next movie?).

[ddavis]

I'm glad we all had a good time and that we had such a productive meeting. There does seem to be a direct relationship between beer and creativity... who would have thought??? I think this phenomenon warrants more study.

 

My thanks go to all of you for making this user group possible and for sticking with it.

If anyone did not get the "hair ball" (...easy Vern) let me know, I'll resend it.

I will not speculate as to the next meeting only that it may be some time in November or December. More to come in that later.

 

For all of you who could have or would have liked to make it, please please please consider coming to the next meeting.

[Hubukai]

Back from a short trip to Canada. What a nice country. Friendly people, good food. Anyhow, render quality is important. I caught the last 10 minuets of "Father of the Pride", new animated series on Tuesday nights and saw it in HiDef for the first time and was like "W O W"... I mean WOW squared! So now, although we should consider lowering the res of the textures, in Riche's case, I would suggest FINAL renders be don in HDTV Quality. I mean Final renders. I am doing my renders at approx. 30% HDTV Size to get the jist of what it will look like, but when I am don, I am going Full HD in size. What a difference. Unfortunately you need a video card capable of HDTV output, ATI has some of these and a little converter plug.... SO, by the time the next meeting comes around, i may have a computer hooked to the new 60" Sony for some HDTVAM. (Hmm, sounds like an idea for a web site...... www.HDTVAM.com

 

I like it... but I guess I should at least start www.amug.us first huh.

TTFN, gotta go to bed.

 

hubukai

[Fishman]

Will there be a third MAAM meeting? I am interested. I live in the Lehigh Valley region of PA, north of Philly. I signed up for the mailing list.

 

Lat meeting seemed to have been in August. Hope you guys haven't lost momentum.

[ZachBG]

I think Don Davis is planning another one soon.