This is short and sweet, if you have any questions you can post them here.

Oh I didn't kno you could do that ,thank's Jason thats informative

I'd been wondering about the nle references that have been popping up
Rudimentary but effective, and a useful step to include in AM for those who don't want or can't afford a standalone program.
Are any other features planned for the editor?
Thanks Jason.

Is it possible to create a dissolve by overlapping two clips and animating transparency?

NLE????? Whats that??????????????????????

NLE = Non Linear Editing(or Editor)

That´s great!!!!!!

Im using the video sequencer of Blender for non lineal editing and composite.

I need a native NLE in AM to forgot changing between aplications.

Bravo!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry my english.

Neat.

I always wondered if A:M would have an easy to use editing feature. Is there animated alphas for transitioning so we can get some star wipes, or George Lucas diagonal cut transitions?

Possibilities of a NLE editor can be infinite:

-Native transitions and third party plugings for transitions.
-Separate Shadow, Reflections, Specular, etc... render maps for mixing in NLE.
-Animated text transitions.
-Various mixing types of layers: add, sub, multiply, etc, etc...
-Parameters layers (brightness, contract, saturation, rgb (with curves)...)

..these are suggestions.

Sorry my english.

Cool! But, could'nt all of that have been done in earlier versions of A:M as well?

Most definitely.

There are other bells and whistles that have arrived with the advent of A:M's new NLE. Most of the variables you have available via a rotoscope you also have with patch images, decals... any image related feature. This can yield some interesting effects and transitions.




A:M's Rotoscope feature has always had good ability to edit images together. What arrives with v15 is the ability to animate images over time via the Timeline. This we could not do in earlier versions.
Sound is also being integrated more fully where there were very limited capabilities before.

There is some work to do yet and I've crashed on a few occasions while trying to sync larger sequences with sound. If I would have saved prior to rendering I probably would have been okay. I still have some display/realtime issues with my graphics card and Windows Vista.

One of the things I am enjoying the most is the ability to coax different performances out of characters and retime animation using available footage. You could do this before with rotoscopes but not with the flexibility. Grabbing a spline and adjusting it in real time to get lipsync exactly positioned to the sound has been a treat. I was quite happy when the rendered version of the sequence turned out to be just like the one I was working on in realtime.

For many, having such capability may not be needed.
There are other programs available for editing films together on the cheap. For the in-A:M solution though... this is sweet!

Now... to read this tutorial to see what I'm doing wrong.


Edit: That's a nice introduction to the feature Jason.
I've been having trouble editing the sound so will try again with your instructions.

No this will not work in older versions of A:M Noel has added a lot of code to make this work(ask anyone at the Hash Bash).

nice feature

Hi,

This does look well thought out. I don't normally get too excited when I see a program try to do it all. Normally, to me its like seeing Adobe Premiere add 3D animation and modeling functionality. I'd never use that functionality because I have a program which 'specializes' in that end of the business: A:M. When I saw NLE offered within Softimage XLS to me it was just extra fat that I'd never use. I have Adobe software that specializes in NLE. Normally my take is that its a sin to dilute a program's specialization by adding functionality that will never be as good as a program that is "dedicated" to that functionality... that "specializes" in that functionality... I mean that's by definition, right?

But A:M is different. It has a client base that contains a large percentage of artists who wish to 'do it all' using just A:M all by itself. To this end it is a very good move. And also the way Hash is implementing it seems very good, well thought out and, hopefully, low impact.

Still, for myself, I'd rather see the time spent on AM's primary function; 3d modeling and animation (but I guess that's my definition LOL). I mean I'd be very surprised to see myself setting aside Premiere for NLE or, for that matter, Cleaner for mastering.

Just my 2 cents.

I recall one of the Hash people commenting before that NLE wasn't a major leap since A:M was already doing most of the component parts in terms of importing and playing back audio and video on the time line, so it probably didn't eat up too much development time. I don't imagine they'll make many other jumps outside of the main A:M mission, but this was a reasonable one since "How do i combine my shots together?" is a FAQ around here.

It may be rudimentary, but it sure beats having to render your entire movie from one project. My first A:M movie that I ever did (never published) was by moving the camera from scene to scene in one huge project file. It worked, but the large size of the project file made it prone to get corrupted. Having a separate project for each scene and then combining the rendered files later on in NLE is the established method of the industry and I applaud Hash for providing this standard. It's a move in the right direction. A mixer plug-in for fade-ins, fade-outs and disolves would be welcome

Agreed. For the most part, NLE was already possible in AM. This just formalized it. With Composite and the wide range of output formats, I can't think of anything else that's missing... no big holes I can see anyway. Perhaps transitions and titles could be formalized. Hm.... not sure about audio... don't use AM for that myself.

r

Without seeing it, sounds like A:M could be a great storyboard tool. Just need the ability to add fields to type text into.
Certainly less expensive than Frameforge. Using models, camera angles, even basic animation (another sb tool has that, but forgot it's name). hmmmm, interesting. I have a scifi project I'm starting work on...

I ran into a snag, and wonder if I am doing something wrong or settings off. But using v15 and bringing in various clip to composite together I am not able to see the clip in shaded mode. I am doing layers with alpha to composite with other clips. I am not able to match up the clips with the layers underneath if I am not able to see the clip. I should be seeing it yes?