Everyone at Hash has jumped on the TWO animating bandwagon. We talked about it in the "Fellows" area for some time before deciding to devote 1 hour every day to animating. We get an assignment from dotProject every Monday, and we're supposed to post our previous week's scene on "TWO:Animating" before we start. Every part of the animation is supposed to be done before posting: lip-sync, FACE, secondary motion, anticipation and follow-through... All there for peergroup critique. For most of us, this will be the first time we've put anything out in public - just like you newbies!

These postings have all been moved from a private "Fellows" thread. There were a lot of messages before this, and many from other TWOers who started out with us, like Nancy Gormezano and Kevin Waldron. If you would like to join us, simply post to this thread.

Everyone is invited to post into this thread.

Martin, I think that this exercise is exactly what is needed for you, for Hash Inc, for TWO and for all the community. I commend you for taking this step and look forward to seeing what it produces. It all looks very promising!

I haven't said it for awhile but... Hash rocks!!!

Now ya tell me.

I like the idea of posting when one can't think of anything more to be done.

And I like the idea of getting a new assignment every monday - and letting go of the previous week's garbage...er...umm, I mean...oscar winning 2.5 seconds masterpiece, which will undoubtedly carry the whole movie.

But when does the feedback & cleanup come in?

I posted early -as I didn't realize we were supposed to wait - and I couldn't think of what more to do to make it better - not cause it was perfect - but because I was at a brainblock. Luckily this resulted in good helpful feedback, and has allowed me to tweak further before my next assignment (for good or evil).

Here's the plan...

We will all get new assignments for 4-5 weeks... Then on week 6, scenes that need a "little work" will be reassigned (2 or 3 at a time)... Probably not to the original animators (unless they ask for their own back). New eyes and additional experience may help polish up those beginner shots. After that, every 3rd week will be a batch of "clean-up" assignments.

okey dokey, we'll see how the plan goes

I think I would like to still troll for feedback on each week's assignment. As well as give impressions, to those who might want it.

Seems we're all qualified (as a viewer) to give our impressions of the scene - maybe not how to fix it (as Robcat & Rhett & others are).

Getting & giving feedback helps me to learn for the next time. And hopefully my impression feedback might help others.

I welcome anyone to post WIPs during the week as much as they wish.

Day 14:
Everybody is rendering out their semi-completed animations. We will probably all post after tomorrow's session. I can tell right now that I'm tired of working on this shot and looking forward to next week's assignment... Why? Because I don't know what to do to make mine better - in any sense of the word: technically, artistically. I just don't have enough time behind the curtain. Will I be good enough in 5 weeks that I'll be looking forward to "cleaning up" someone else's scene? I don't know: it's all a grand adventure. Are those of you who started with us feeling similar thoughts?

I went back and looked at the channels created by Steve's Hand Gizmo. I played with "zero slope" some, and I copy and pasted keyframes. I also deleted a lot of keyframes, and moved some too.

Will Pickering is an antomater now, (he saved his first shot).

Ken Baer is so happy with his shot he's strutting around here like king cock. He halfway deserves it - his shot looks pretty good, (for a beginner anyway).

Martin,

Now that I'm a part of TWO I have to say, yes, it's definately an adventure! Hey, just a month ago I was a guy who thought the Timeline was kind of a mysterious thing. Now I'm doing blocking and setting Hold interpolation on keyframes. It's a rollercoaster ride, but it's a blast!

-Jim

Yup, me too - forget all that garbage I said previously about wanting feedback.

Day 15:
Woohoo. We all posted our first scenes, nasty as they may be. This involved finding the correct render settings, "commit"ing to SVN, updating dotProject, and posting a thread to the forum.

I never crashed once in 5 days! Neither did Bob. See, us programmers may not be very good animators but our psychic computer energy is amazing.

New assignments from Rhett are supposed to be out by Monday.

The critiques on the forum towards this beginner's effort were very nice. I don't think other newbies have much to be embarrassed about, so I want to see everyone who's going along with us posting over the weekend.

I just found the FACE interface - well actually it was there all the time - but I've just now tried using it - really really nice - I will definitely be trying to use it for next assignment.

I had avoided it at first because I wasn't feeling very comfortable with all these new controls & how they interact with the sliders.

And I also had been afraid of the rig in general - but it's really amazing - I'm in awe. I just wish I understood it a bit better (in terms of knowing where the bones are & the differences with using some controls versus others) - no squish-squashing for me yet - as I need to get the basic movements & timing down first.

Also love Steve's hand gizmo - excellent -

In general, this rig is really terrific. And the rigging job done on the characters is also amazing. I had been afraid of it - thinking it was too complex for me - but one can deal with it simply at first, and then learn the complexities. I really would like to learn how to install it in my own creatures - but it's still a bit overwhelming.

I am looking forward to trying the next scene. The shortness of the cuts makes this feel manageable to me & less intimidating. And I'm also liking spending just 1 week, and then coming back to it later if required (fat chance it wouldn't be). I get really sick of the same dialogue over & over

More! Gimme More!

Nancy, we're thinking about a posable rig, fitting the rig with pose sliders (translating, scaling and rotating the install bones of each side at the same time) in an action and exporting the model. This would make fitting the rig a snap.

Day 16:
Well, today closes the whole process into a circle. I received my new assignment from dotProject, and I "Updated" SVN before starting... 130 Meg of updating! This is in 1 week. There sure is a lot of data being created for this movie.

I had to wait until late evening before I could actually begin animating. Nimmie Amee is supposed to "fall down." I watched the animatic, and a shot that someone else had done last year. I moved some bones around and made some keyframes... Hmmm... This may be difficult. Bob Croucher said he had a video camera at the office - I think we'll video someone falling so I can use that as reference.

There were 23 people who posted TWO animations last week:
Toby Kamp
David Horbach
Ken Heslip
Paul Daley
James Pappas
Rodney Baker
John Kuepper
Nat Iwata
Rhett Jackson
Mark Allan
Holmes Bryant
Nancy Gormezano
Rich Jackson
David Seymour
Heath Hash
Jason Simmods
James Hash
Bob Croucher
Noel Pickering
Martin Hash
Ken Baer
Steve Sappington
Yves Poissant

I'd love to see that number increase. If anybody else would like to sneak in, we have openings for newbies.

I would sure like to give it a go ,something on the simple side would be good if theres anything
Steve392

Day 17:
Took a video of myself falling down while lifting an axe. Everyone laughed, (not in a good way... kind of a nervous laughter). Loaded the video into Mediaplayer and stepped through the frames to determine the timing. I'm not rotoscoping. Nimmie's movement is much different but I am using the timing: 24 frames to lift the axe, and starting to fall 20 frames later.

Tried to switch from IK to FK and back. Ummm... Gotta learn how to do this right. Tomorrow.

This is weird - isn't Ken Heslip doing a shot where Nimmie lifts an axe & falls ?

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=200728

Are you doing 2 different shots?

I think it's that you guys just like to see her legs.

Maybe she needs to be bouncing on a trampoline while swinging an axe for some variation ... (hee hee)

Hmmm... Same shot. We definitely don't have the luxury of duplicating effort. Ken, you go ahead and I'll take another scene. (Mine was better; nah, nah, nah, nah.)

No, no, I had moved the camera. I'll put it back and then the fall will be seen in your shot. As you were. Though I hope her pose in each shot match up.
(we'll see if your shot really is better; nah haha ha)

I came back to work on my shot tonight. I'm posting this entry so other newbies can get a feeling for how much time I'm fumbling around playing with the controls on a complex character before I do any real animation. In this case, about 30 minutes.

I played with FACE and Hand Gizmo. Nimmie's fingers are not updating with the Gizmo controls and I have to advance frames to see the change. I don't know if this is a bug in the rig or the software?

With very little effort I can get Nimmie's face to look acceptable but I don't know where to look to see the channels for the motion?

Also, during this time I had the Community window open and I was chatting with someone about their animation.

I watched Robert Holmen's critique of my first animation... It was quite embarassing. I sure am glad I'm doing this with a bunch of other newbies.

Words cannot describe the relief I felt when I didn't see any animation of mine in Roberts critique.
Of course I would have to actually post some animation first to be critiqued.

I'm seeing some excellent beginnings and some excellent critiques.
Better animators is sure to be the result.

Hackfest is fun stuff.

What happened here? I thought we had established long ago that
Nimmee Aimee wasn't going to be seen in the first act?

When I load Nimmie by herself, I don't have any delay in the Hand Gizmo controls. I'm thinking it's a memory caching slowdown because of all of the things loaded in the scene you are animating...but that's just a guess. At the moment, Tinman has a slowdown when using the Hand Gizmo without anything else loaded...I'm still investigating that one. If I move the Hand Gizmo in Tinman, it will update if I hit the spacebar, it might be a realtime issue. I thought it might be the extra bones in Tinman's face rig might be hitting a limit of some sort, but, TinGirl has the same setup and doesn't have the problem.



I'm probably not understanding this one...the channels aren't in the timeline?


------------------------------------
EDIT
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I made a version of the Tinman that didn't have any textures in it and the Hand Gizmo worked without a slowdown, so I opened up the textured Tinman and it didn't have the slowdown either...very confusing. It seems to be an intermittent problem, hard to nail down what is causing it.

Don't recall ever hearing that.
It'd be hard to do the flashback without her.
She's the idealized Nimmee Aimee the audience is journeying with our heroes to find.

Something that I did hear was that the witch was only going to be seen via only her eyes.
This of course makes no sense to me either.

Hi all,

So I understand,

Are people who did not complete the TAoA:M or the boot camp being allowed to participate in the TWO movie??

If so, are there limitations? Such as only allowed to model generic items and not allowed to work on animations, sets, etc.

I took a few months off but I'm now getting back into A:M as much as I can. I was going to continue my TAoA:M assignments right after I'm done the small CGI X-Wing project I'm currently working on but If I can jump on the TWO project, I'll start on that.

I have the Jeff Lew CD and I've studied it. I really like the realtime animation he walks you through step by step.

I also have V13.0j so I have access to the svn.

George

Frankly, we need all we can get. If you want to contibute, it'd be nice if you were up TAoAM standard or better, but if not, you can build your skills with background stuff. Jump on board.

Martin: I too experienced the hand not updating. I think it was something to do with also having an action window open (and making changes in it) at the time.

Sorry just want to be clear....

Does this include animating? Although I haven't completed TAoA:M, I have done a lot of self-learning.

My favorite thing is animation and I've learned a lot from the "door is stuck" assignment as well as from the tutorials, Hash CD's and as I mentioned, Jeff Lew's DVD.

I'm not an expert but I'm also not a complete novice and I think I have a good eye for animation.

You should contact Rhett. But I can't see how it would hurt.

I think the confusion is that if one isn't familiar with the rig it's not immediately obvious which bones/nulls are controlled by the FACE interface. There's a billion bones to search thru.

But to get a handle on it - one can just manipulate the FACE controls (in an action) and watch what nulls show up in the bones section



I don't believe this.

I just loaded up textured Tinman - the one that wouldn't work yesterday or ever for me - and his hand gizmo is now working in an action, without a delay - yup - seems intermittent.

I don't have any chor loaded - will try to see if it's the chor that interferes. Previously I had always loaded the chor that I was working with in order to get the tinman. It was then that he wouldn't work even in a clean action, even without any other windows open (I think?).

EDIT: just confirmed when I bring in the project/chor - and I have no other windows open and I start a new action - the Tinmans hand gizmo does not work.

Day 18:
Very productive day in the way of learning stuff. Noel's computer went kaput so he walked around and showed everyone else how do to whatever they were doing the "right" way. I happened to be trying to switch between IK and FK - Ended up not doing it but I got a lot of time watching how to go through the process and experimenting. Then we worked on Nimmie Amee's FACE, and I really got a lesson in "Make Keyframe" and reading channels.

Noel recorded the odd Hand Gizmo refresh situation. With only a single Action window open, it still doesn't work.

My animation doesn't look any better but it doesn't look any worse either, and maybe tomorrow I can polish it somewhat. I still do not have enough time in that I feel comfortable inserting intermediate keyframes to control the timing better.

Still haven't crashed.

Hello.

I'm pretty sure Steve Cleary's hand gizmo uses Expressions. He told me he was going to use Expressions to refine the gizmo, back in 2003. Expressions are susceptible to screen refresh issues. I reported a similar problem back in July (Bug Report 0003465). In the interim, as Dave Simmons mentioned, you can continue working by keeping a thumb on the spacebar, to manually refresh the screen, right after you adjust the gizmo.

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

PS: Don't be ashamed of your animations. I think it's a fine thing that you are actually using the program. It's a great program.

Day 19:
Ha! All of my work for the past 3 days has been for nothing, (learning experience only). I had only partially updated, and did not have the correct layout, so I was a free spirit out there. (The bad kind of "free spirit" - not the good kind. Men know what I'm talking about.)

But... Life is good, and my animation skills have improved considerably (from below sh*t to plain sh*t), so I was able to do a new, better shot tonight. Watch out Mark Allan, I'm gaining on you.

There was no cloth sim today but I plan on doing it tomorrow. I still plan on delivering a shot tomorrow.

Will Pickering became an anitomato today. Now, only Heather and Marshall are left to save their first keyframe.

Still no crashes.

Then I shall double my efforts he he he I can just see it Animations Showdowns Ok then name your scene and due date we can have an Animation show down

Day 20:
Submitted my second animation and posted to "TWO Animating." It's not quite as embarrassing as last week.

New assignments come out on Monday. Make sure you "Update" your TWO SVN database before starting. (It takes a long time to update so start this weekend.)

I'll be sending out emails to everyone on the project Saturday and Sunday. If you do not receive an email from me then I must have the wrong email address or there's some other problem so you'll need to let me know if you don't get anything.

I need to ask Mark Skodacek if he'll populate the 1_04 set with foliage, and find somebody to light it so we can do some test renders.

I'm looking forward to my next scene.

Or use tortoise (or svnx on the mac) to get just the folder that contains your scene (and possibly the models in your chor if it complains on load). Then while your getting started you can start the full update.

Martin, you're not going to get any glamour shots from any of the foliage sets til the hair image shadow problem is fixed, I'm still waiting. That's why you haven't seen any new renders of the Ku-Klip exterior set.

As for populating 1_04 set, you need to give me which scene and what set, if there is one.

We need a small U-shaped clearing around the "Chopping Stump" for 1_04_11 through 1_04_16a.

Ok, I"ll see what I can do. Camera angle is the same, I assume?

Day 21:

Got our new assignments this week. This one I had to do the layout and blocking myself. It's Ku-Klip in Act II, but his FACE rig had no poses set. I don't know who was supposed to pick that up? Ken Heslip? Yeah, I think he had a TWO A:M Report in about "SmartSkin mirroring." Bob got that in the last Update so hopefully Ken can pull those poses off tonight.

In our morning meeting, we discussed TWO reports. There're 3 or 4 mean ones that need fixed - the others are not show stopping.

23 people delivered animations last week (14 of the original 20 hackfesters):

David Horbach
Ed Lynch
John Kuepper
Toby Kamp
David Seymour
Nat Iwata
Mark Allan
Stephen Wolke
Paul Daley

Hackfest
Rich Jackson
Bob Croucher
Ken Heslip
James Pappas
Martin Hash
Noel Pickering
Jason Simonds
James Hash
Will Pickering
Heath Hash
Holmes Bryant
Steve Sappington
Nancy Gormezano
Ken Baer

Ku Klip had his poses done. He just didn't have his phoneme poses done. It was just a matter of moving the nulls to get the phoneme shapes.....easy. But he's ready to go now.

Hi all,

I really would like to get started with participating on the TWO movie. I posted my Dot Project access request last Saturday morning and I'm still waiting for notification for my level to be raised. I'm assuming I can't download any assignments till I get the Dot project access password?

I'm not sure who to talk to, to get the approval (I think Noel) so I figured I'd just post my problem here.

I want to work with animation if possible. I've been working with the animation part of A:M more than anything else (modelling, materials, lights, etc).

If possible could I get the access by the end of today so I can start to get assignments tonight? I want to start on this ASAP!

One more question, when creating animations, can we use all the different animation tools (I.E actions, layered choreography actions, action objects, etc)?

Thanks,
George

Whatever floats your boat. I would advise though that dialogue is done in a separate action so that if you need to delete all your chor action, you don't lose that work.

Day 22:
I got a 1st pass of my new shot posted to the forum so I could incorporate the feedback before my Friday due date. I'm finally to a place where some portion of the feedback MIGHT help. Frankly, I still don't quite know what to move or how to move it, so most people's suggestions are just wishful thinking, however, if I can accomplish just ONE piece of feedback then I'm on my way.

Thanks, Ken. You're a machine.

I'm actually looking forward to my big email blast on Saturday. I'm really enjoying looking at everyone's work and hearing back from them. I would be so cool if a couple dozen of us could hang on all the way to the end.

You're all set with dotproject. Now see step six on the svn walkthrough to get your svn password setup.

What time on Saturday does the email blast start in EST?

Day 23:
After reading the feedback on my 1st attempt of animating 2_07_53, I decided to try a whole other approach. First, I started a new Chor Action. Then I turned the original Chor Action off. (Luckily, because Ken Heslip had recommended it, I had done all the lipsync and FACE animation in a reusable Action, so I didn't lose that). I did copy the placement of the base bone from the 1st Chor Action so the character would stay in the same place. I then made 5 new pose-to-pose keyframes of Ku-Klip clapping. Somehow, I just couldn't get the second clap to work out but my hour was up so I didn't post anything.

Day 24:
Today was very much like what a typical A:M customer might experience.

I wanted to post my second attempt at 2_07_53 but before I did so, I wanted Ku-Klip's 2nd clap motion to be more symmetrical: "this would be a job for <Action Paste Mirrored>," I thought. I was using the Timeline, so the idea of using the "Copy Keyframe" menu item never crossed my mind. Instead, I was grouping Keyframe nodes and pressing <cntl><c> and <cntl><v>. But it wouldn't work right! At first, I was going to move on but then I thought about what we would ask a typical A:M customer to do... We would ask them to post an A:M Report! So I quit whatever I was doing and proceeded to download the most current version of the software (V13l), check that the error was still there, then exactly recreate the steps that caused the error, and submit an Error Report. Two Error Reports! By the time I was done, my hour was up and I had posted nothing! I still feel like the day wasn't wasted though.

Day 25:
An action-packed powerhouse of a day... First, Bob and I spent a half hour discussing "Paste Mirrored" operation and how it's implemented in the software. There are 2 ways to think about it: "manifestly evident" or "consistency." Bob's consistency argument was a wee bit better, so we'll be leaving "Paste Mirrored" alone.

Bob fixed the bug I reported yesterday about Copy/Paste Keyframes in the Timeline acting odd, (that's how I knew I wasn't making a "feature request," because it was actually trying to do something). This single fix was the solution to 2 other problems in the Timeline, so it made my research yesterday (my whole hour of animating missed) pay off.

I crashed for the first time in 25 days while I was experimenting with Copy/Paste this and that, but of course I was 100 steps in and couldn't repeat whatever it was I did. I'll keep my eyes open in the future when I'm doing some of the wilder Copy/Paste operations.

I used my newfound Copy/Paste expertise to create a second version of 2_07_053. What I posted to the forum was pretty rough, but I experimented with all kinds of things that either contributed nothing or made the animation worse. As I become more familiar with the tools, I'm sure the animation will improve.

The rule during the Hackfest is to turn something in at the end of every week. Anything. We must get in the habit of making deliveries - no excuses accepted (except gone for a show).

I've been keeping track of all the people on the project, and what they've been doing. Below is a "role call" of this week's contributors. If you post before Tuesday, I'll add you too. It would be fun to see how many weeks each of us can get something posted. Knowing me, I'll probably have some kind of silly prizes at the end of the year.

26 Animators
Dhar Jabouri
Marshall Hash
Nancy Gormezano
Rich Jackson
Martin Hash
Mark Allan
Nat Iwata
James Hash
Holmes Bryant
John Kuepper
Heath Hash
Bob Croucher
Steve Sappington
David Seymour
Ed Lynch
James Pappas
Paul Daley
Jason Simonds
Ken Heslip
Yves Poissant
Toby Kamp
Ken Baer
Paula Waslen
Stephen Wolke
Noel Pickering
David Horbach

10 Modelers/Texturers/TDs
Jesus Marino
James Glover
Steven Shelton
Torsten Thuenen
Stian Wahlvaag
Jeff Bolle
David Simmons
Mark Skodacek
Jason Hess
Rodger Reynolds

Total SVN update for the week: 200 meg

Day 26:
I was a machine. I had my new assignment loaded and was animating in a matter of minutes. Very efficient, no wasted mouse moves. Still don't know "where" to put the keyframes but I'm learning "how" to put the keyframes. I haven't used constraints yet, (practiced a little the other day but no "published" animation use). Posted my WIP after the 1st hour.

Checked out some other people's animation WIPs. Yep, I'm the worst one... That's strategic, you see? How can anybody complain that they can't participate in Hackfest because they don't know what to do, or that they don't have any talent, when there's me around? Anybody who wants to be an animator, and is not doing Hackfest, gets no sympathy from me. I'm still an "anitomato" but I bet I get an acceptable performance before 6 months are up.