I know they have copyrights, but I just couldn't stand the temptation.

tb112.mpg

If you can do cross-eye 3D you will see a vase, Eddie and the Sedan in 3D
 

I have an intersection in motion drawn from the Flownuts Hyperloop Intersection and Puff2 models.  Those can be found in a post called 'Models to Share' on this Forum.  The conceptual 'hypertrack' is 15' inside diameter.  The 'hyperpod' or 'hypercart' is meant to fit tight in the track tubes and sized to carry a semi trailer.

The website is Flownuts.com

Password: hash

The website is still "Under Construction" but I plan to keep adding things to it.

The concept of Flownuts is to be nothing short of the biggest corporation ever stemming from the transportation industry. 

Here's the look of the "HyperCart"

It's meant to hold a semi trailer that is going to load and unload at high speed...The animation has not been started, but it will show:

1. The approach of a train of HyperCarts linked together coming out of the Tube

2. Carts disconnecting

3. Doors opening, cargo unloading and loading new, doors closing

4. Re-connect to carts and re-enter Tube

When the cart gets to it's final Transport destination, it can drive on it's own to it's specific location...like a semi truck!

With a Tube inside diameter of 15', the Cart outside diameter is 14', giving a 6" gap.  The gap will have a flap to catch air for speed.

Carts will connect together for long distance transport.  Over long distances, Carts with heavier loads (water, oil, etc.) are in front, followed by products, followed by passengers at the back.  The most ambitious project is to haul water from Alaska to the Baja Peninsula to develop the peninsula (condos), while dropping water off to Lake Mead.

More will go on the website.  I'm getting a little better using Wordpress.

Here is SMF (Super Mega Fox) and her Evil counterpart, Sadomasochist Fox

Flat Tire! on YouTube

AI can make a 3D image of a hammer from a text prompt...

But getting it to do that in splines seems undoable.

YouTube version:

BooH264.mov

UPDATE... here is a shaded wireframe render of the full cloth simulation that takes place before the rendered portion above.

Although "Show backfaces" is ON, the cloth patches only show their decal on one side in shaded mode. Not sure why.

Boo Cloth Simulation.mov

mp4 version:

PRJ:  OctoberSurprise.zip

(this model will take a little longer to finish becuase school's starting! aghhh!)

I'll be glad to post the models here but I'm giving them to PT first.

In the meantime I'll share some turn arounds and perhaps add some detail about what I did... why I did it and... maybe even why you shouldn't do it that way! 

(Disclaimer:  I don't know any of these characters names so the names I supply very likely will be random)

First up:

But, does it work,.?

I was more about the couch launching the characters out and I lost the couch.

Which is kind of awkward for animation since most exercises tend to be very symmetrical with lots of "twins." i considered doing a guy hitting a punching bag but decided against it because I thought doing the fast moving bag would be time consuming to get right.

So here's plan B, twins and all!

See it on my Showdown page.

(Note to Rodney: It's got a camera move this time! )

BTW, there's lots of room for A:M animators at Digitalrendering.com's Animation Showdown. Why spend three months on a contest entry when you can do one in four hours?

I need to make more to practice so I make a little bit more complex  as a model for shoe 😁

Not perfect but I try it ! 😉

Hope you like it.

I share you a simple Donut model

and some screenshot

Last night's topic was "Dance." Had grander visions but... oh well <_>

The soundloop by "DrLoop" was from Flashkit.com

234KB QT Sorenson3

dance.mov

I am new to Hash animation master

I make a joypad very simple and what do you think of that ?

I'm dusting off a project I've neglected for over a year. I want to rig him up for animation, but need a somewhat simplefied or restricted motion given how he is constructed. His knee and elbow joints need to rotate about a single local axis as they are simple hinge joints. Anybody know how to restrict the movement accordingly? Same goes for the "toe" joints on his feet and most of the finger joints. Oh, yah...he also only swivels around one axis at his waist as well. All the other joints are ball and socket joints, so they can have a very wide freedom of movement accordingly.

http://wjgaylord.brinkster.net/GeazerBot_f-b.jpg

This "poses" (pardon the pun) a challenge if you want to use a labor saver like The Setup Machine. There is no spine to speak of, which is the main challenge. This may be an opportunity to learn more about such rigs.

I do want to be able to smoothly vary between forward and reverse kinematics in the arms and I want the typical null targets that make animating the legs easier, too. Any suggestions? I have Raf Anzovin's "Dem Bones" tutorials, which are very helpful, but take a bit of time to digest. I have used both the Anzovin TSM rig and the AM 2001 rig. Any updated tutorials on constraint setups for such rigs?

Bill Gaylord

2001 is among my all-time favorite movies.  It is film qua film, not merely a novel thrown up on the screen.  I saw 2001 at the Cinerama Theater in LA in 1968, with my college comrade and long-time friend, the late Robert Blalack, who received the VFX Oscar for Star Wars (1977).  To say that we were mind-blown would be the understatement of understatements.

These days, movie editing programs and software packages usually have some form of the slit-scan effect in their bags of tricks.  But why use them when I might be able to re-create a virtual version of the Douglas Trumbull set-up in A:M?  Down the rabbit hole I went with internet research on 2001, Trumbull, and slit-scan techniques.

Trumbull set-up (details vary depending on source):
Camera with open shutter on 15’ track.
Slit-scan structure to support 4’ tall slit (I have not found width of slit documented anywhere) and Artwork moving behind slit; slit is just off-center (Trumbull has said there were 2 slits, one for the left pass, one for the right pass).
Artwork greater than 4’ tall and as wide as you want to make it — many feet.
Camera moves down track from 15’ away to 2” (or so) toward Slit/Artwork over a period of 1 minute while Artwork is moved approx. 8” horizontally; Trumbull mentions that the camera was panned slightly during this move.  The result is one frame of exposed film, either the left half or right half of frame, depending.  Rinse and repeat.

First proof of concept in A:M:
I made a simple model, a panel with a slit in it, to scale, and an artwork panel set just behind the slit.  In the Cho, I placed the Camera 15’ away from the Slit-screen/Artwork model.  I keyframed the camera to move toward the model while moving the artwork behind the slit.  After rendering a series of frames, I composited the frames into a single frame and could see that I was getting something like the desired image stretch/smear of the slit-scan technique.

So the approach sort of worked, but the method was tedious.  How to “hold the shutter open” for a single frame during the camera move?  Then I remembered the MUFOOF (Multiple Frames in Only One Frame) technique posted by Xtaz in 2005.

As the Camera cannot be moved toward the Artwork within the MUFOOF action, I realized I would need to move the Slit-screen/Artwork model toward the Camera.  I made an action to do that, did test renders, and got strange results.  So I made an action that ran the set-up backward, moving the Slit-screen/Artwork model from 2” in front of the Camera to 15’ away, and got good, predictable results.

Also, the Artwork cannot be moved within the MUFOOF action and have its new location available for the next frame.  A second action is needed to move the Artwork between frames.

I did many test renders of the backward MUFOOF Slit-screen/Artwork model move with Artwork moves between MUFOOF frames, while tweaking the Multi-Pass and Motion Blur values, and got some beautiful results.  An example, using a 2 slit model:

The light trails move, scintillate, but the dynamic acceleration characteristic of the Star Gate sequence was missing.

The final ah-ha moment was realizing I could move the Slit-Screen model element across the Artwork as the model travels away from the Camera.  That worked.  Here is a wireframe of the set-up:

Once I had a working slit-scan system, I wanted to see what actual 2001 artwork would produce.  That artwork is long gone.  But a couple of clever people have managed to deconstruct/reconstruct it through some coding wizardry.  My 2001 Artwork was extracted from YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meEhkceeA94 and website https://www.seriss.com/people/erco/2001/ which reconstructed the original graphics by taking strips from each frame and placing them side by side.  An example still from a render using the reconstructed artwork, left side of frame only:

As my set-up has the slit on the left side of the model and the artwork moves from left to right and the Slit-screen/Artwork model moves away from the Camera, the rendered sequence moves away from the viewer unlike the actual Star Gate sequence.  No matter.  Modern movie editing software supports flipping sequences horizontally, vertically, and end-for-end.

Here is the link to a short version of the Star Gate sequence as done in A:M, rendered at 720p and up-res’ed to 1080p, including a Ligeti-esque soundtrack:

https://youtu.be/P4kflu1okxE

Two issues with Multi-Pass that do not exist with real film emulsion:  
Brightness of image diminishes from outside edges inward as passes progress; I used high intensity values (2000 - 4000%) for the Keylight to compensate which causes a somewhat blown-out result; kind of OK because the overall effect in 2001 is blown-out.
Banding from over-lapping passes; no complete remedy that I know of.  Think of it as a feature, not a bug.  High contrast artwork mitigates the issue somewhat.

Here are the files:

slit-scan-backward-indy-2001-artwork-60sec-01.chosingle-slit-screen-2001artwork-system01.mdldouble-slit-screen-backward-system-60sec.actdouble-slit-screen-backward-2001-artwork.act

I am working on another slit-scan experiment using Mandelbrot Set artwork created by another college comrade who was also along for the 2001 ride back in 1968.  I will post that item in the near future.

Best to all.

I stopped when I realized I would have to substantially rethink the particle emitters.

 

The artwork:

John Knoll has a fascinating video about slit-scan techniques (and shows a graphic of the Trumbull 2001 set-up at 5:07):

https://vimeo.com/391366006

He discusses various approaches including circular slits and other, similar, symmetrical geometry like the Dr. Who Tardis/police call box/tunnel sequence.

For this experiment, I decided to start with the 2001 slit-scan technique and then try circular slits.  Did not use the soft-edged slit approach as much rendering on this project was complete before that idea was tested.

The movie breaks down into these parts:
Vertical slit scan created on left half of screen, flipped and inverted onto right half of screen; Composite=Add.  Has the expected acceleration effect created by moving the slit-screen model element across the artwork during MUFOOF frames and moving the artwork between frames:

Circular slit scan (full screen effect), artwork movement between frames; has sweep, is pretty, but no dynamic acceleration:

Another circular slit scan clip overlaid on first circular slit scan clip with Composite=Difference; more dynamic because of counter-movement, but no real acceleration:

Circular slit scan with slit-screen movement Right to Left during each MUFOOF frame, artwork movement between frames; has dynamic acceleration but is asymmetrical:

Circular slit scan, slit-screen movement diagonally Lower Left to Upper Right during each MUFOOF frame, artwork movement between frames; has sweep and dynamic acceleration but is also asymmetrical:

I made other attempts at a symmetrical set-up, but they did not give a dynamic acceleration effect:
1. Moving artwork away from camera faster than slit-screen (z-axis), exposing more artwork, in each MUFOOF frame; moving artwork between frames (x-axis).
2. Changing size of circular slit, exposing more artwork, in each MUFOOF frame; moving artwork between frames.
3. Moving circular slit from below centerline to above centerline in each MUFOOF frame; moving artwork between frames.  Has the virtue of being symmetrical horizontally, though not vertically:

4. No slit, just an open circle in screen and no movement of screen in MUFOOF frames; moving artwork between frames.  Has sweep but no acceleration:

I wanted to try one more effect before giving up on finding a symmetrical set-up that would give dynamic acceleration — rotation of artwork 360 deg around the z-axis during MUFOOF frames, moving artwork left to right between frames, and using the open circle shown above.  This idea went down a whole new rabbit hole where I spent several days, but it led to what appears to be a generalized solution for simulating slit-scans that create dynamic motion.

Initial results looked very strange.  Then I realized that as the animation progresses, the artwork moves left to right as intended but the rotation point travels with the artwork and rotates it out of the camera FOV.  After thinking about that problem, I decided the solution might be an additional bone to rotate the artwork (which I named Pivot) while the artwork itself is assigned to a child bone of the Pivot bone.  That worked and the result has dynamic acceleration.  A still from the final part of the movie:

Here is the movie:

https://youtu.be/aD8xUaaGIF4

Here are files for the open circle scan with pivot rotating the artwork 360 deg during each MUFOOF frame, artwork movement Left to Right between frames:

circle-no-slit-scan-MUOOF-backward-mandelbrot1-rotateArt360-sys3.chocircle-no-slit-art-sys-MUOOF-backward-60sec-rotateArt360-sys3.actcircle-slit-screen-backward-artwork-moveL2R-sys3.actcircle-no-slit-screen-art-mandelbrot1-system03.mdlcircle-no-slit-mandelbrot1-rotateArt360-sys3.pre

Mandelbrot artwork appears above.

But wait, there’s more.  After successfully moving the artwork in relative space using the parent Pivot bone and then moving it in absolute space using the child bone in the second action, I realized this approach could be used for any slit scan animation, including the original 2001 project.  Proved to be a bit more complex than that simple statement.  I revised the 2001 slit-screen/artwork model with a new parent bone (Pivot) for the Artwork child bone.  Now the slit would be stationary, the artwork would move 6” during MUFOOF frames, and the artwork would be moved an absolute amount between frames.  Test renders did not look right.  

In the old method, the slit-screen element moved and the artwork was stationary.  In the new method, the slit-screen is stationary.  Where should that slit be located?  For simplicity I decided to try changing the camera location on the x-axis.  Eventually I found that moving the camera +3” on the x-axis gave test renders that were substantially similar to the previous 2001 slit-scan results.  However, the image did not reach all the way to the center of the screen.  Time to modify the model and MUFOOF action to allow for further experimentation.

I added a new bone (System2) to the slit-screen/artwork model to be the parent of all model elements so I could move the whole model during the MUFOOF action. At action start, the model was located at -3” on the x-axis (and the camera was returned to zero in the cho).  I experimented with end-of-action values for bone System2; eventually +3” gave the desired result — these are the same values as in the original move of the slit-screen element, except now we are moving the whole model during MUFOOF frames.  This model move is analogous to panning the camera slightly during its travel down the track which Trumbull mentioned.

Here are revised 2001 slit-scan files using the new method:

soft-slit-scan-backward-2001artwork-60sec-PivotSystem2.chosoft-slit-screen-2001artwork-system2.mdlsoft-slit-screen-backward-2001-artwork.actsoft-slit-screen-MUFOOF-backward-60sec-movePivotR2Lsys2L2R.actsoft-slit-artwork01.tgasoft-slit-scan-backward-2001artwork-60sec-PivotSystem2.pre

Here is the movie created using the new method which is substantially similar to the demo movie of the soft-edged slit-screen in the 2001 post:

 

As the I Ching says, persistence in a righteous course brings reward.

1. Since my reference images from books and the Net only have a few readable dimensions I have to make a lot of "looks good to me" guesses.

2. The amount of detailing required for a 100% accurate copy is too staggering so I've simplified it while trying maintain a similar look.

3. The section of the building where people board a train is called the Concourse. While it was a spectacular work of architecture, it was essentially a large room where passengers would congregate before descending down stairs to tunnels in the lowest level to board coaches pulled by electric locomotives. To me that's a subway station not a rail station. So my Concourse will be a complete fiction but it will have steam locomotives.

Here's four views of the real thing.

Our character had to dive into a pool.

I found this one quite grueling. It's not much but at least he got off!

See it on my Showdown page

(QT Sorenson 3 - 148K)

I didn't do as well on this one as last week's but it does have a few more poses.

I've re-rendered it as toon here to get better compression.

Choke! (QT Sorenson3 165KB)

Never had time to show how that thing got in there!

Our characters had to carefully get down from a high spot.

I had the character animation going at four hours but the version you see here adds three hours of work to animate the boxes all the way to the ground.

QT Sorenson 3 204KB

GetDown30.mov

Tuckertown is a project (of sorts) meant to be a drawn comic strip set in the late 1800s. The characters seemed to translate fairly well into CG so I may press further with modeling them. If nothing else it'd be good to build sets, props and characters for reference.

The (partial) models here are proof of concepts to see how difficult it will be to actually model them with the goal of proper articulation. Not all of the characters are fully designed yet so I've been splining and experimenting all along the way. Characters attempted thus far:

-Fudley

-Eda

-Daisy Lou

-Betty Lou

-Cindy Lou

Main Characters to go:

-P.T. Boombottom

-Louis

-the animals

And of course, the complete set/stage for Tuckertown!

Will I continue to explore Tuckertown... I dunno. Probably.

But I've been sidetracked modeling robots and Kirby-krackle lately.

One of the real challenges is to deal with tall and short characters within the same shot/camera viewing area.

I may have to rethink that aspect. Having all characters look like they belong to the same universe is an important consideration as well.

The edge where a gear tooth will contact the tooth of a neighboring gear has a special curve called an "involute," designed to allow the gear teeth to smoothly slide over each other as their gears turn on their axes.

This curve varies depending on how many teeth a gear has (and other factors) but the tooth overall tends to have six landmark points that are easily distinguished, which I have marked in red...

A spline made with six points per tooth can approximate this shape. Here I have fit six points to one tooth and used the Duplicator wizard to copy that around the remainder of the gear...

The resulting A:M spline shape closely matches the intended contact interaction..

Possibly a wizard could be made to create proper gear outlines (for any size gear and any number of teeth) in A:M for 3D printing projects. I realize dedicated CAD programs usually have some tool for gear design but it would be fun to be able to create working mechanisms with native A:M models.

The topic was "a rough landing."

(QT Sorenson3 143KB)

rough_landing320.mov

Thought i start a new thread so as to not hi-jack another. I've always used decals to kind of make material for my models.

This is what it really looks like 

this is what i've done so far. I havent been able to find a Tee shirt type material. I tried looking in the darktree materials but i couldnt find it

Any pointers or tutorial you can point me to

Thanks

G_shirt2.mdl

any ideas?

Im using version 19.5a

I've been working on a personal project (Dark_Jedi is also slated to start on this) lately that involves creating TONS of Star Wars character at medium detail as photo-realistic as possible. (Sorry Colin, no Lost World entry yet) All in all, there are about 30 characters that need to be modeled.

Here's my old work (about 6 months ago) for the project (they're animated):

I'm not 100% satistfied with these and I might go back to them

New stuff:

This project involves a lot of "speed modeling" which I LOVE! This guy was done in 3 1/2 hours:

Newest WIP--one of my favorites

I'll post as I get more--hoping for a character every 2 or 3 days depending on their complexity. That may be a stretch for the last guy.

If you would like to post crits, that would be great but I might not have the time to do them unless they're REALLY good.

Thanks-Lee

P.S--if anyone using V13 or higher is interested and thinks that they can make realistic movement for these guys and animate them (Oh, and rigging too, lots of quick, messy rigging. In fact if you're interested and capable of creating photo-realistic models too)--PM me

Hi Guys,

Modeled these wicker furniture items for a project a few months back
but thought would be cool to render together in a little scene.

Cheers.

Chad

if anyone would like this model, let me know and I will get it packaged up in a zip for download.

I'm going to attempt Fett with the new cloth system to do his clothing.... here is his helmet so far....

hey..

any ideas of getting a really nice metal finish to the areas that are worn off?

Example PRJ:  LetterTransform.zip

Live Answer Time session:

Demonstration begins at 23:25

I want to start the animated card out with the letters of our names individually fading onto the screen. I thought that I had done that before, but I'm having no luck with doing it now.  I also created clothespin caracatures of the band members and will animate them eventually. 

I would appreciate any suggestions as to how to get the indiviodual letters of our names to come to visibility in the chor. 

Thanks, Myron

A couple centuries later they reversed that to do "red figure" where they used the black to cover the negative space around the image they were making.

After seeing examples of this work at a museum I wanted to try to recreate some of that look, including the numerous fractures they tended to have after being buried in a dump for 2000+ years.

Thom is a cylinder wrapped decal. The break lines are a combiner material.

A new time-lapse video to share.
Many bowls of Lucky Charms were consumed in the making.. for reference purposes 😉

Cheers 

This fly-thru is rendered with radiosity...