There appears to be a growing number of animators who are members of Renderosity. Unfortunately there is no centralized location where we can go to find or view each others' work. Considering the time and effort that goes into creating an animation, I believe that the animators deserve just as much opportunity to have an audience as the still artists do. Therefore, I hereby request that an animation gallery be established. I realize that server space is a critical factor. However, I believe that there is a way of creating an animation gallery with no more impact on the Renderosity servers than that of any other gallery. From what I've seen, most animators post their animations on their own web site. Therefore the gallery could consist of: a). A still image depicting the animation (either a direct excerpt or a "movie poster") b). Artist comments (similar to those of the still artists) , including movie file size and format c). A link to the animation. The functionality would be similar to the Free Stuff areas; the viewer clicks on a button and either the animation downloads or a web page opens up that has the animation on it. The animation or web page would be hosted off the Renderosity servers at a site of the animators choosing, similar to the way the Free Stuff items are done. d). the standard comments section found in all of the other galleries. -- Credits for items within the animation could either be listed within the Artist Comments or on the animators web page. -- The key difference between this gallery and the others would be the link to the animation (or the web page containing it) hosted off site. However, the Free Stuff area demonstrates that the technology to provide this kind of a gallery exists. I don't know what the decision-making or approval process is for establishing galleries. I have no doubt that the priority right now has to be completion of the work on the servers that is already underway. However, when the present work is completed, I'd appreciate it if ya'll could at least investigate further what would be required to create such a gallery. If I may be of assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thank You, Bobasaur

Yes I think some kind of centralised location for animators would be a good idea. Its a field that is often overlooked but judging from forum postings is becoming more popular. Particularly now that Poser 5 has dynamic cloth.

I think that's a great idea 4th

I'm all for it...

"I am down"

Great idea! I'm all for it. Add me to the list of supporters. EdW

I also agree this would be an awesome idea,

I wholeheartily support the idea. Most of my stuff is created as animations, with stills being a side effect. Sign me up!

Lets go for it. Thanks to Little Dragon's help, I have Judy blinking and animating with Mimic now. This is going to be fun.

Amen, brother! Fantastic idea! Only wish I had thought of it. ;-) I didn't even realize there was a Community Ideas forum. DUH!

I think that would be great Great idea!!! -wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-

Cool idea. How about giving each user a limited space on the server for his/her animations? If a user wants more space he/she can buy more storage space or find his/her own host for the animations?

You have my support, hope it happens...

I second (or rather thirty-second) the motion! At the very least, allow AVI and MPG files to be posted in the regular forums.

hear, hear!

How about support for animated GIFs? They sometimes have enough quality to get an idea across.

Animated gif's are already supported. (The problem is the 512KB limit)

Most definitely!!!

I remember bringing this up about a year ago here at renderosity but it seemed to have been forgotten. I wasn't the first to bring it up either. It seems that it has been brought up several times. I'm still all for the idea. As said, it can work just like the downloads section by linking. I mean, we already have the Director's Cut forum which is highly appropriate for this type of gallery.

Maybe with such a gallery, more would be inspired to try Poser animation. Then there'd be more than 12.

I agree that some form of support for poser animations would be great, the forum was a good start but a gallery would then help expand the numbers exposed to it and hopefully this would boost the number of active animators. What would help this really get off the ground would be if DAZ, CL, Render or any other big player in the market supported an Animation contest with prizes equivalent to the sort DAZ gives out for its stills competitions. Perhaps a deadline set 6 months to one year from now for entries to give folks time to produce something of quality lasting 2-3 mins.

I'd love to see more than Poser animations though. Working on the Renderosity Video Loop reminded me that there's a wide range of talent here using all sorts of software packages - some of which I'd never seen before. I'd personally prefer the animation forum to be more about the art of animation and less about the software. We can learn and receive inspiration from each other even though we come at things from different places and use different tools. Wow. I know I sound like a bleeding heart liberal but in this case I mean it 100 percent. And if you think about it, a number of us use multiple software packages while developing a single animation.

Would be very good, I use bryce, PSP (and soon I hope Poser) to create animations, be nice to have a single place to show them all :)

A forum for animators??? When? Where? Let's go for it!!!!! A marvelous idea!

FABULOUS! Gets my vote too! If we can have still galleries why not animation too? Dave :-)

..casting my vote for an animation gallery. A great idea!! :) Britt

You can count me in:)

{I'd personally prefer the animation forum to be more about the art of animation and less about the software.} I agree with this 100%. There is already a modeling gallery which works very well. People from Lightwave, Rhino to Wings can come there and exchange modelling ideas without being caught in software politics. The same goes for character designers. People from Poser to Maya drop images there because most know that it is more about concept than software. Much of animation is pretty much the same across the board. The toolsets used are the only difference but the mathematics are all the same. If you can linear edit in Poser & Bryce then you can pretty much do it in Lightwave. Things like spline, brezier, linear and stepped are things most of us understand across a plethora of software titles so information should be able to be exchanged across the lines of software with the minimum of effort.

Good point Tephladon! The gallery could feature ALL animation - If you can upload it to the web in a viewable form, then go for it I say! Dave :-)

Thanks Kevin for getting the ball rolling here! Let's hope the Renderosity team take it on board. Sounds like we have tons of support here already! Dave :-)

Animation gallery is must to have in Renderosity. ;-) waldoo

I have always been disappointed by the fact that there is no animation gallery even though many of the programs listed do animation. This would be a great idea!

It's 22:54 according to the Rosity clock. Monday night, the first full business day since I posted the original message. Does anyone (especially the mod) know what the process is on Renderosity's part to respond to this kind of request? Please don't confuse this for a rant or complaining or anything like that. I just don't know what kind of follow-up I need to do. I'm assuming it needs to be discussed by either the mods or Bondware or both and then the technical aspects need to be determined by Bondware and then somewhere there's a Chain of Command and somewhere up there is a decision-maker who will say "yes" or "no" (or "not yet"). This is simply a request for information on how the process works. Thanks.

Surprised it hasn't happened already. My vote: YES! I'm sure E-on, Curious Labs or some other manufacturer would be happy to sponsor/subsidize part of the cost in exchange for plugging their motion products.

Yes, Yes, OK! An idea whose time has come.

Absolutely. I want an Animation Forum too. I realize there might be bandwith problems with such an idea but . . . (bikermouse wonders who he's gonna get to teach Kung Fu now that Uncle Harry's entered retirement, but is excited by the prospect of a Forum Dedicated to the idea of revelation by motion and sound.) - TJ

Yep, go for it. Count me in.

I think we should make this cutting edge technology and use MPEG 4 the file size in 1/4 of a avi or mpeg1 and looks like a dvd on screen. MPEG 4 scales for dail-up or T1 connection. http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/

@Bobasaur, in regards to #33,
i'll see what direction the P.T.B. are taking in this. You are correct, these types of request are discussed between "mods" and "admins" as it moves forward.

I, myself, thinks this IS a great idea and will support it in whatever way i can.

see ya' around
:)
retrocity

Yes to all of you, We are going to cover this over the weekend. The biggest issue is simply the bandwidth. We will see if we can come up with a way to support it. This is a great idea and we are closer to making this happen that we were last year. Spike

Thanks Spike! Great news! Dave :-)

Thanks Spike (and the rest of "we")!

sounds good to me. now who has free bandwidth for my 200 meg movie?

Spike, Even if you limit the number of posts the maximum size per post etc it's still seems like a good a good idea. - TJ

you could simply get some web space of your own and simply link to it, or copy the html in so it shows up on the page itself... I mean, after spending god knows how much on programs such as photoshop, lightwave, 3D Studio, Maya, bryce, etc, you must have SOME funds for some webspace, it really isnt that expensive anymore at all. and bikermouse, there IS an animation forum, has been for some time now...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12351

I was thinking the same thing Slynky. I think they are talking more about a gallery than a forum. Either way, it can also work just like the downloads section by linking but I don't really know how much more involved it needs to be since I have never ran and service like Rosity.

Telphaladon. Yes that is exactly what we mean. A place to put up animations, not just talk about them. Slynke, lightwave,maya,3dstudio - I wish. This wasn't a personal attack was it? I hope not. - TJ

Yes, we have spoken

{ Yes to all of you, We are going to cover this over the weekend.} Spike- What kind of timeframe can we expect for info re: this? And, who are the All-Powerful "WE"? Looking forward to the future...

"We the People ..." ? just a guess.