I didn't realize they were so old. I remember them being big in the 80s thanks to that memorex ad.(it was memorex, wasn't it?)

nemirc: I didn't link to 'great' animators, though. Just the competition... ;) You can see the good, the bad, and the ugly there at cgtalk. Look for the ones fron Vancouver Film School. A lot of those guys get featured on the front page from time to time. But you'll also come across a lot of people who still really need practice. When you only see the super good stuff, it's easy to feel disheartened, and say to yourself, "I'll never be that good". Sometimes it't better to be able to see somebody's work and say to yourself, "I can already do better than that!"

You can check out some professional demo reels here:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=154

Just look for the threads with "Demo" in the title. (You may have to join in order to see the videos).

If you are planning to submit to a major studio, you might want to check their requirements for submission. They may want a certain format, a certain length, and they may ask you to demonstrate certain skills. For instance, BlueSky wants animators to be able to rig, if necessary.

Generally it's a good idea to make sure you clearly demonstrate a mastery of the 12 principles of animation. Weight is very important. (Weight is rather difficult).

Lip-synch is important. Don't expect every place you apply at to be using automated lip-synching software.

Acting is super important. It's important that the character seem like a thinking, feeling being.

If there's anything special that you know well, (Kung-fu, juggling, dancing, etc.) put that on there as well.

And in case anyone wants to see some more cool stuff done with A:M, you can find it here: http://makeashorterlink.com/?L5B722E6C

Hey Bob. Haven't seen you since they shut cheryle's place. I've been lurking around in here again since I joined on the "Tin Woodsman" project. Sorry about cancelling the project. I've been trying to get started doing some "Photoshop for 3D" tutorials, but I'm having a hard time working with such large files. If I were going to do dvd-roms, they wouldn't be a problem, but I wanted to put them on cdrs, because I know a place that'll burn them and drop-ship. What've you been up to? You can pm me here if you want. I'm between e-mail adresses for a few days...

Animation:Master has sprite particles built in that work very similar to particle illusion.

It's very easy to set up the particle emitters, they use .tga files with alpha channels as sprites, and they can collide with other particles, or anything else you can put in the scene with it.You can make your emitters whatever shape you like, in 3d, you can even set up invisible deflectors just like in particle illusion, except in A:M you can actually make the deflectors 3 dimensional.

A:M also has "Mouse motion capture", which means you can record while you drag the emitter around the screen, and play it back, just like in illusion. Or you can set up a path for the emitter to follow in 3 dimensions.

The only major differences are, you get less presets with A:M, and you save $100. ($200 if you get A:M at a trade show).

Eye movement is pretty frenetic in and of itself... Even when we aren't focusing on anything in particular, our gaze shifts each time our train of thought changes tracks. So it stands to reason that the more frantic our thoughts are, the faster our gaze will shift.

Now Maxx, that's VERY good.On a less realistic character that might even be enough,although as luvver already pointed out she should be doing something with her eyebrows and the rest of her face, subtle changes here and there to show a thought process. Overlapping the rotation channels, especially on the head might look a bit more natural. (So that the rotation doesn't simultaneously stop on the same frame for all channels). There should be some overal overlap for the big turns, too. The eyes turn first, then the head, then the neck, then the chest, etc. The perfect squareness of her shoulders bothers me. They should be slumped even slightly, and they could have some slight movement to accentuate the thought process too. Kristin McKee, of Anzovin Studios, on her "Animate! with Christin McKee" cds, said that before anything she does gets finalized, she checks to make sure that no part of the body is not moving, even if only slightly. If you leave something sitting still for too long, the character dies a little. You've got a lot of potential, though, Maxx.

Attached Link: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18519

nemirc: The custom interfaces make it a lot easier. It becomes like tweaking four sliders at once, with one handle. Fewer controls to tweak means less time spent fiddling with each frame, which adds up. We're supposed to be getting a nifty new face rig on "The Tin Woodsman of Oz", along with a squetchy skeleton. I look forward to playing around with it. It's actually going to become the new standard A:M rig. As for whether or not you really need slider driven bump maps for wrinkles on a realistic head, take a look at the films here: http://www.jasonosipa.com/Downloads/Movies/NVidia%20Demo%20Movies/ Pay close attention to 5-10. They compare animated motions with and without the wrinkles. How much more tension and emotion is there in the creased scrunch vs. the uncreased? Besides, Nemirc, you've got Maya, don't you? You can do al those nifty things! Buy the book. You won't regret it. While you're at it, Buy The Setup Machine for Maya. I've got the Animation:Master version, and it rocks. And it doesn't even do all the stuff the Maya version does. Operaguy: I stand behind what I said. She's holding too perfectly still after that first head turn for too long.There should be some subtle motion while she's looking off. A slight imperceptible nod perhaps, or maybe she could just raise her chin slightly in the pause. Even just breating, the slight rise and fall of her chest, would help make her look more alive right there. You also need to animate her eyes moving. Right now they're practicaly locked in place in her head. Her eyes should either lead her head on turns or trail behind, they really shouldn't just turn with the head, unless you throw a blink into the turn, which this one really doesn't need. I suggest having the eyes look over a frame before the head starts turning. you should only need one or two frames for the eyes to move. There should be some other eye movements in there as well. She probably shouldn't pause after she dips her head. I'd have her already shaking her head as she's dipping down, and her eyes should be closing on the way down, and closed when she's shaking it. More eyebrow animation would also help show what she's feeling. I shouldn't need the dialogue to tell what's going on in this shot. All the clues should be there on her face, most of it in her eyes and eyebrows, but right now it isn't. I'm not saying these things to attack you. I'm not getting some perverse pleasure out of poking holes in your performance. I'm going through the same thing myself. I've got an animation director and my bootcamp instructor giving me critiques. I have to redo a run animation, and I'm still not finished with redoing mrball for the third time. Here's three pages of me getting picked on: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18519&st=0 And, I have to polish all of that off before I can get to the point where I can start animating subtle facial expression. Here's what I'm working through: http://www.hash.com/amtutes/Bootcamp/ABCultra.html I haven't even heard from the other 2?-3? animation directors on the project yet. I had a brief conversation with the director, though. We talked about "Madagascar". I'm going to have to talk to him about my animation sooner or later, and he's directed at Disney. Bob's a nice guy though, so hopefully he won't be too tough on me.

The holds are too solid. It looks robotic. Moving holds is what she needs. Don't let her stop moving for more than a frame or two. On the frames where you have her not moving right now, instead you should have her moving slowly. She should be easing into the next pose. You should be thinking about how her emotion affects her speed, as well as her body language. You are going to have a lot of hard work ahead of you if you want to get this done. Take a look at the book, "Stop Staring! Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right" by Jason Osipa. The book is full of great instruction on easy lip synching that looks far better than automated lip synch, as well as eye & eyebrow animation. It's written for Maya, but there is a lot of great, non program specific information in it, but there's also a lot of stuff in there that Poser can't do, like pose slider driven bump maps(For wrinkles that really wrinkle), two-dimensional pose sliders (They really do make things so much easier), and custom interfaces. Still, there is a lot that will help add some polish to your animation. An important thing to remember is that the level of detail for your animation must be consistent with the level of detail that you put into everything else. The more realistic you make the world, the more accurate your animation is going to have to be.

Don't foget, TP2 has that nifty "update" button, which is the reason I upgraded, but it doesn't seem to work right. Half the time it doesn't update...

it's transposer 1 thatcomes free with C4Pro. so you'd need to spend an additional $35 to update to transposer 2. Also, from what I understand, transposer doesn't play well with poser 6.

Message edited on: 09/05/2005 21:51

Attached Link: http://www.hash.com

If you're looking for low priced software that runs on mac and has powerful character animation tools, you could look at Animation:Master. Of course, from what I understand, it runs better on PC than a mac. You may want to look in the OSX section of the Hash Forums for any issues that might affect you. And netrendering for A:M isn't free, however they will let you use the cd to run separate instances of a:m on your different computers, so as long as you don't mind each computer rendering a different section of your animation, instead of all of them working on the same section at once, then there's no problem...

No.6 (Should be non specific) Simple waterfall Create an image map of blueish-greenish streaks. In photoshopCS2 you can do it by picking two colors and using the render fibers filter,(Looks really great if you use plastic wrap after, with high detail and low smoothness) or in other programs, use noise and vertical motion blur. Make sure the image has no seam when joining top and bottom. (In photoshop, use the offset filter, and the healing brush, or the cloning tool). In a video editing program, make a 1 second loop of this image rolling vertically (downwards). Apply this video loop as a texture to a simple arcing piece of geometry, (your waterfall) make it somewhat transparent (about 40%) snd give it a small, strong highlight. (You can even put the video in the bump channel). Add some particle steam or volumetric clouds churning at the bottom, and you've got a lovely animated waterfall, that will render faster than all particles, or an animated procedural material.

Certainly. I'll use a breast as an example, mainly because it's the simplest. In bones mode, create a new bone for each breast, parented to the chest, of course(If you don't have bones for them already). Right click on the model in the Project WorkSpace, and pick new:Pose:On/Off. In the new pose, Right click on each of the new Breast Bones, and pick New Constraint:Dynamic Constraint. This will give you a variety of options to experiment with, including an enforcement percentage, mass, drag, Object Collisions, Use Gravity, Use Forces (Like wind, for example) and an angle limit. I suggest creating a new action, and adjusting the enforcement, mass, drag, and angle limit until you get a bounce that you like. I also suggest turning off "use forces", as breasts aren't known to blow in the breeze. And that's it! Now every time you move that figure, the breasts will bounce and sway on their own. You can also use them on the last bone in a chain of bones. I used a dynamic constraint to make a ponytail move on its own. These instructions are how to use lag constraints in A:M version 10.5 and up. For older versions, you can take a look at using lag constraints here: http://demented3d.com/tutorial/lagconstraints/index.html And there is also an example of using lag constraints on pants instead of using cloth (which would also work really well with dynamic constraints). For all other programs, check your manual to see what kind of equivalent feature to dynamic constraints is offered.

LawnDart: you can also use a square or one-sided square. The eyes will point at the center of it, and it has even less polygons. Don't forget to take advantage of dynamic constraints (where available and applicable) to automatically take care of secondary animation for you. There are plenty of times when dynamic constraints can be used instead of cloth dynamics or spring systems, since dynamic constraints don't require any calculation time.