gazzamataz

As some of you might already know I have been re-working the project I created in AM back in the 2000s (Bella Bear). It didn't make any headlines other than a nomination in the International Festival of Cinema and Technology animation festival in 2007… But it was fun to do. Anyway, I kinda stopped using AM and setup as a freelance 3D Artist/Animator in 2010 and used various other 3D software since studios in the UK tended not to use AM. Recently having decided to re-visit my project I have been converting it all over to other apps and found that my knowledge of AM is VERY rusty… One of the things that I am finding is that although other 3D apps have better render engines .i.e. GPU rendering, AM is still surprisingly great for character work (which I feel that is what it was intended for anyway). The whole concept of having choreographies, actions (especially using stride length) and models all separate is something I still value today and so innovative. Also the way you can do lip-syncing without other third party plug-ins is so easy. I wish my current app had those features since it would make it quite a lot of what I do easier. It is a shame that the render engine doesn't support GPU rendering but even though AM is now over 20 years old it still has features in it that make it shine. Just my two penneth worth

I think I might go down the extended licence route which I have heard about. Thing is my system is seven years old now but pretty much does what I want it to do. I am in the very nice position of being semi- retired and not needing to do so much paid work. So I don’t need a sooper dooper machine although the Cinebench single core processor speed is 60 whereas a new Ryzen 9750 would give 135 over twice the speed…

Rob, the base speed of my processor is 3.5ghz with a boost speed of 4ghz. When I built my system back in 2018 I deliberately choose the 1920x over the 1950x since I wanted a higher clock speed which is more use when animating. Unfortunately now it is redundant since it doesn't support Windows 11. So I either lumber on with unsupported Windows 10 or buy and build a new system. I do have a Mac mini M2Pro which is twice as fast on the single core front which makes animating much faster, not so many previews! I am very tempted by the M4 Mac Studio but they are expensive by the time you have spec'ed them up…

Well I thought I would have a go, takes me back to the good old days of running an Athlon Thunderbird processor My report: Version of A:M: 19.5e Render time: 1:54 CPU Brand and model: AMD Threadripper 1920 Actual CPU speed in GHz: 3.5ghz How many cores A:M is using: 12 cores RAM: 64gb OS: Windows 10 Pro Not too sloppy... If I remember correctly when I was using AM 11 and my Athlo Thunderbird if your machine took a minute or less to render the benchmark file that was good. No GPU rendering here yet then?

My apologies to Aldrich and Mark for not seeing their posts back in June, I guess I was busy with work and updating my Bella Bear project Thanks chaps for your replies they were very insightful, not saying the other posts here were not! @Aldrich I would love to know who Dylan Perry is - never heard of him? Is he an AM man? @Mark do you still use AM to create your animations? I have been having a lot of nostalgic fun going back over my project in AM now that I have bought a subscription. Some of the shots don't work (joints going wonky) but that is to be expected after nearly 20 years since doing them. I have found it quite amazing (not trying to brag) at the amount of work and time I put into creating the characters and the three stories I did, even if they where on the basic side. The only reason they where a bit basic is because I like that look and it was quicker to produce. I always had the idea that some company might come along and make it look better who had more time, money and experience than me since I was doing it all in my spare time. And looking back AM was great for character work back in the 2000s. I started on C4D but that was useless for character work and then tried Maya and that was a bit overly complicated. I now use C4D for my work since it got better for doing character stuff… I am a bit of an oddity using C4D for character work since most character animators use Maya and it seems to be the industry standard. I would post some of my updates here but I might get kicked out since I didn't do them in AM

Gee fanx Rob! It was the latter… The fire and smoke coming out of Witchy Peg's broomstick. Going through all the files and renders I did on this project makes me realise how long I spent on it - months! But it is like going down memory lane it's all about 20 years old now I can hardly believe it…

I am looking back at my 'Bella Bear' project I created back in circa 2006/7 so the files are old… I am having problems scrubbing through timelines using the latest version of AM. I keep getting 'Computing Dynamics' popping up and slowing everything down. Can someone tell me how to turn this off?

@Robcat Thanks for you input m8 - much appreciated. I guess you are right a lot of people get into 3D because they have ideas/concepts of their own that they want to run with which I did. I would say that only a tiny number ever achieve commercial success. The actor Roger Moore said 'Getting into acting is 99% luck 1% talent' sorta… Working on my Bella Bear project was a launch pad for me into a career as a 3D artist since that it what I have been doing since 2010 after doing the course at Animation Mentor which I know that you did too. And I have worked on a big film and a few shorts as well a a TV show and loved every minute - mostly I don't look at my project as the next 'Harry Potter' or 'Wallace & Gromit' but more just fun to get a bit or recognition for and entertain people. If you have ideas and are creative you want to create after all. I think I will just rework a few of the flicks I have done and bring them up to date which will be quite satisfying. I have already done a couple but outside of AM and reworked two of the characters. Wagons roll!

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my pondering post - much appreciated! @Rodney HR Pufnstuf! OMG now you have jogged my memory! I remember watching this as a kid but I can hardly remember it - although I do remember Witchy Poo I think a fair bit of my project does stem from childhood memories, for me The Wombles and The Clangers whom I absolutely loved. I think my work is defo in that sort of arena. Whether it is still popular today who know but they have made a 3D version of The Clanger recently - I think. Funny thing is as I was writing this post I thought 'I think I will just do an update here and there rather than the whole flick I made'. I will take some of the short animations I did and revamp them with the animation skills I have acquired from my training at Animation Mentor and work I have done since. I also remember talking to a publisher and they said I think you should change the main character to the fairy 'Hannah Bannah' and have 'Bella' as here side-kick but I thought 'Nah!' not having none of that, they are the dynamic duo @Roger Interesting what you say about posting the stuff on YouTube, I did start a Facebook page for this stuff recently but it hasn't really moved much… And only this morning I was looking at adding a couple of the new flicks I have created. As for having time to do all this I am self employed and almost semi-retired so I do have a fair amount of time free to work on this. Trouble is the wife is always finding things for me to do and the grandchildren are very demanding LOL!

OK, one year later and I am posting again Some here might remember me from many years ago when I was using AM on daily basis to create my own characters and stories. Well I didn't get anywhere with my ideas other than a few smiles here and there. I tried publishers and some production companies to see if it generated any interest but never got much feedback so it was a bit of a dead duck. I did try the Children's Media Conference back in 2014 but again no interest and more recently another book publishers but that was a no go either. So my question or rather what I am thinking is should I revisit my project once more to see if I get anywhere with it or is the market for children’s characters and stories so saturated I should just tinker with my project for the fun of it? I know it is a question only I can answer but I would like to hear other people opinions since I know there are few people here who have done the same thing. Also with AI getting better and better the world of animation seems like it is going to get inundated with loads of stuff that looks all the same? Oh and here is the link to my project: Bella Bear. It's all a bit old now vintage 2006/7 but I think it could look a lot better. Looking forwards to other people's replies

Robcat I should have remembered that trick am putting it into action now. I have 12gb RAM so that should be 2gb per core which I think should be enough :-)

Thanks chaps! My computer is a six core i7 3.3 ghz jobbie 980x. I will show a version of the render later but I have noticed a few other anomallies like patches rendering black. It might be that I am running Windaz 7 and this version was designed for XP... I am intrigued by what Rodney means by from the old the new... Was 15 a marked difference?

Hi all! A very long time since I posted here :-) I am currently re-rendering my Bella Bear project at 1024 x 576 (16:9) HD ratio since it looks so dated in the format it is. I haven't done anymore work on the project but I just wanted to re-render it an familiarise myself with it again (all those hours I put into it). Anyway I have hit a stumbling block on one of the sections when it comes to rendering, I am getting perculiar shadows which I can get rid of using multi-pass but this ups the render times by a factor of four... I am using AM 14c, I know there is a newer version out there but I am loathe to re-render everything in that version since it might break things. I have rendered over a third of the project out fine until now so I wondered that if there was a newer version of 14c it would fix tis problem. If I remember back seven years I had the same problem then but cannot remember how I fixed it... Any enlightenment appreciated :-)

@Paul All I can do at this stage is point you at the website: Project Chapman 3D and say that the directors didn't want any Terry Gilliam style animations. The whole film is animation no real stuff and in a variety of styles, should be out in March. If you look at the website and the credits shoot you will see me prancing around there with all the other animators. Sorry if this is slightly off topic - back to Bella Bear :-)

I did :-) Robcat, do you know if it wasn't for you I would ever have done that course at Animation Mentor and learned so much about animation. This led on to bigger things to - thanks buddy Really starting to enjoy being back with my old project. With all the stuff I have learned I will be applying it and trying to finish this project at last...

After over a four year departure I have finally got around to revisiting my 'Bella Bear' project which some of you here might remember :-) I have taken one of my favourite shots from the short Bella Bear film I made back then and started to rework it following my spell at Animation Mentor and having worked on a few small film projects. Here is the original: Original And here is the newer version. Revisited It went a bit wonky at the end cos I added a refraction index to the glass on the spaceship of 1.4, but it is entertaining even if it isn't quite right. Better? I will be tarting things up to try and make it more showreel worthy over the next few weeks. It was rather fun getting to grips with the program again after such a long break - I felt like a beginner again…

Someone's enjoying themselves aren't they :-)

Darn it! That's just what I was going to say Ken…

Paul I like the set and the camera tracking is fun. As for the animation… well that is one fast rabbit, nearly faster than mine. But you need to add a lot more work to him to make it believable. Mind you you probably knew I was going to say that didn't you :-)

Nice work m8, but I wouldn't like too say much about the walk cycle, other than it is definitely robotic. Delve into the 'Animators Survival Kit' to get a few tips! Eggprops did indeed do a raptor and here is the link Eggprops Raptor. This was done many moons ago but is still a great model with nice texturing - they used skylight for the rendering in those days sigh! Looking forward to seeing some improvements in the animation, I know you can do the texturing

Dhar I was going point out a nasty CP on the characters face but it looks like everyone beat me Nice face there, although I wonder that that body it a tad too long? Coming along nicely, I'll bet your learning alot. I did with my first real model

Is Thom trying to skate? If he is that's quite a nice movement. And, yes you're right the arms do need a little attention

Nice splinage on that but the non-wire frame mode render needs to be a little lighter so we can see it better... Or did you render on a Mac? Never seen the show BTW so I don't have a clue how it compares...

It's not just the great models that Stian makes, it's the rate at which he seems to turn them out... I can't keep up. Do you have a day job? Or is that modeling in AM? You must have quite a powerful PC to model in such detail, do you assemble separate sections in the choreography?

I never thought that I would even get the half-flick done that I have Perseverance, patience and tenacity helps! Of which I sometimes lack - obsessions is better Thank you for your comment - I have never had one like that before. Things is I keep looking at other peoples work and all the texturing detail, AO and super lighting that are lifting there models and concepts. But if I wanted to do that I feel like I would be having to start again and it has taken me so long to get this far. It's like you get to the end of your race and feel that you have done well only to find everyone has overtaken you. Those other two stories are vintage 2004/5 BTW. Spent the first part of 2006/7 making the film.