I accepted my first SO assignment.
It is definitely different the second time around.
First I got my assignment emailed to me from the Scarecrow of Oz himself
It is a long shot, about 725 frames, 30 seconds (but the last 265 are just a camera pan of the scene without cast/animation)
And it already has camera work and major keyframes for the characters in place.
Here is how it looks at start.

Click to view attachment
(editted attachment - even at 1/2 rez and mpeg-4 it is still large)
changed the run cycle a bit

Now, where to begin...
I'll post my progress weekly.

Is that 41.6mb? Wow. I didn't think you could attach that big a size! To save server space, you might just link to the animation on svn......which is available to all anyway. Anyway, good luck with the shot!

Yikes! You're going to need to pick a better CODEC. Get that file down to a few megs at most.

I would move the camera change sooner to frame 194 to void such a closeup of Captian Bill goods. That wave file for Captian Bill I can not make out the work Trot I know that is what he should be saying but it's needs to be revisited in the recording stuido IMHO

oopps! Sorry about that.
I didn't even think about it and just rendered a quicktime.
Is there anyway to remove or replace the file?

Can you "edit" your own posts? If so, click the delete icon next to the filename in the list of attachments then re-add. Otherwise, just post a new one.

Yes....if you "full edit" the post. The master camera should have been using the mpeg4 codec. Did you change it? Or maybe that's not saved with the camera?

I'd have to agree with Mark on the camera change CB's run looks a little fast maybe...T's run looks great!

It is actually closer to 1565 frames ... but don't let that distract you.

Wowsers! That is probably more than all I did in TWO
One foot in front of the other...

That's one of the benefits of having a "Key Posing" stage. You don't have to do *everything*. Just pick out a few choice spots that would really benefit from extra attention and focus on those. You don't have to fret over the entire 1565 frames.

Weekly update...

My scene is actually 7 seperate shots, at about 2000 frames.
I concentrated my efforts this week on the first 2 shots. (they're short)
I had a poor start this week but a much better finish. I hope to do better next week.
It takes some getting used to working someone elses shot/work flow and getting back into the groove.
And my computer isn't that great so I had to remember to hide almost everything in the scene that I wasn't working on to help.

Shot 1...has Trot running into scene.
(It didn't look quite right. I am not sure I would have used an action. It makes it hard to add little things like a jump onto the rock, etc. I also had some problems getting it to blend into the following chor action smoothly. This is one area I need work on.)

So, first question. Can we change the actions that are in the characters actions folder?
Of course, I don't want to mess up anyone else's scenes who use the action as it is. So probably not.
Of course I didn't think of that until I reworked the action a bit and moved a lot of the keyframes to nearest frame numbers, ect.
I may have wasted some time there. I saved mine with a different name and reverted back to the old one. I'll re-visit.

Shot 2...has Trot looking into the water for SC and CB running into scene.
I did Trot's animation and CB's. Unfortunately I had problems with CB's animation (I think it was mixing his run action with the chor action and getting his running action to slow a bit) I'm going to have to redo CB's animation as you can see.

Click to view attachment

Any advice/comments are welcome.

When you fix those blended Actions, tell us how you did it?

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you need a new action, copy the one that's similar to it and save as another name. Then you can change all you want.

Animation looks good mostly. Trot probably just needs blinks and she's done. And maybe to look more startled.

CB's worst bit is his transition. The run doesn't look too bad. In the transition, you'll need to obviously fix the popping and don't forget some overlap on his hand ie we should see some palm as he puts it on Trots shoulder.

Keep it up!

To fix Bill's blending issue, try setting the run action's Blend Method to "Blend".
Make sure the run action is above the next Choreography Action in the PWS.
On frame 197 set the Blend Ratio to 100%.
On frame 209, 12 frames later, set the Blend Ratio to 0%.
If you haven't radically altered the chor you started with, I think that should help Bill transition from his run action to the next chor action.

Unfortunately, I tend to suffer from this and I end up wasting a lot of time and end up with work I don't use/save...

Click to view attachment

It didn't take long to actually fix the blending. I did as homeslice suggested with the blending. But, I had made a mess of the chor action and had to quickly redo the final pose and then work back. (The other problem I was creating was while blending from FK to IK to get Bill's hand to rest on Trot's shoulder) I found it really helped to work backwards to the blend. And I made sure to keep note what frames the actual blending took place. I had some thumb glitches/popping that just could not be explained but I got it to work.

Do you feel like you're smoothing out your work rhythm? Can you tell if you're improving your animation speed & quality?

p.s. Shot looks good.

Hey that looks great Toby!

Two problems...

I tried to start the next shot to find I somehow deleted/cut the rest of CB's chor action out. (I don't know how I did it) I have to find a way to revert the chor and then add back in what I've done. Shouldn't be too hard though.

That said I'm still having problems updating.
I would update a bunch of files and then get



so I had to keep restarting the update to completion. But now I can't get any files to update before the error.
Anyone?
I'll keep trying.
(I didn't have these problems with TWO)

Try using the clean up option in tortoise svn?

Are you using TortoiseSVN?
Windows XP or Vista?
I've never seen that error.

I am using the latest version of tortoise SVN on an XP machine.
I don't remember the error with TWO but as soon as I started SO...
When I first had the error I researched/googled it and found lots of others with the same error/problem.
The only solution I found that came up again and again is to restart the update again and again.
It has worked up to this point.

(Clean up didn't help) I'll keep looking into it.

Are you cutting off his head or purpose?

This is how it was done in the animatic and how I believe, it is meant to be. The next shot is a wider shot.

I am having problems fixing the chors I messed up however. I thought it would be simple cut and paste but AM doesn't let you do that between chors or I'm doing something wrong.
Does anyone know the trick???

You can try rotating the camera up near the end of the shot so that it includes Cap'n Bill talking.

Yes, we can move an action from one character in a chor to another character in another chor. I'd do it now, but I don't know if the chor on svn is your latest version. Have you committed it yet?

In a nutshell...

I have two 02_04_04.chor files
one is exactly what is up/on svn
the other has the work I've done (keys/changes in the chor actions for Trot and CB but CB's original animation/keys past frame 222 are gone)
So I am trying to add back the keys I deleted somehow from the original chor. And I don't want to commit anything and mess up the original until it's fixed.

Basically I keep messing myself up and making more work than necessary.
I'll figure it out eventually.
Thanks.

Commit your new chor as 2_04_04_temp or something and we can see what can be done. But even if you commit it as the original name, we can still get back to the previous version/save the previous version as another chor.

To clarify...

You can commit your new chor (missing the frames) and we WON'T lose the previous one - it will still be on SVN. We can recover any previous commited data, as far back as the beginning of the project. You can too - it's easy with SVN!

This is frustrating.

At this point I just want to either...
find the secret I'm missing to putting these things together (I added a temp chor for 2_04_04) or
just start to redo what I've done (it isn't too much and should go quicker the second time around)

Tomorrow is a new day.

Do you have skype loaded on your computer would you like to load skype and we can talk if you have a head set with mic on it my skype name is PF_MArk or if you are in north america? I can call you E-mail me your Phone # and maybe I can talk you through these troubles? you can E-mail me through forum and give me what time zone and a time range I could call you.

Been there know how you feel. I wish my friend Robert was working on SO

Did you save that chor to desktop first and then put it into the svn tree? When I try to open it, it doesn't know where everything is which makes me think it was saved in a different tree path. I can't link to everything to open it. There's no reason to re-do this work.

The irony is if you'd been committing it regularly, we'd probably be able to get back to the chor before the keys were deleted. D'oh!

Edit: Later on in the shot, SC comes out of the water. He has some flattening poses on him if you want to use them. I would think he's loose some straw from being in the water.

Toby I've been there too.
I think you might actually save a little time and frustration by going back to the original chor and starting again from scratch. This time around, you will probably only spend a day getting back to the place you were right before you got into trouble.

Thanks everyone.

Instead of trying to add part of a chor action to another, I found I could get it to work by just keeping both, seperate, and adjust the blending between them (essentially turning one on and one off when needed)
I've committed the chor if you are interested.

PF_Mark - I tried to get Skype up and running but that's another issue... it would never connect (after installing and uninstalling and messing with the firewalls, etc, all day) Thanks for the offer though.

Back up and running...comments? crits?

Click to view attachment

Looks great Toby. You are up to the point where SC flounders in the water. Can't wait to see what you do with it

Thanks for posting. Seeing other peoples' work keeps me encouraged.

Some points....

Bill goes from having his hand on Trots shoulder to standing to kneeling in about a second. Maybe he wouldn't stand and would go straight to the kneel?

Trot's feet look a little awkward when she's kneeling. They probably should be rotated back so the toes are pointed behind her.

Looks good Toby! I like Capt Bill's pose on one knee. Like Ken, I would see some hold before he kneels to break the action a bit.
Maybe, stay still one second, just moving his head, looking at Trot, then down and further away as he kneels. The kneeling itself
works very good. The way they move there heads is a little distracting, I think they need to show more intention, and anticipation.
Very nice start.

Michel

Thanks everyone for your comments/help.
I moved on to the next shot and planned on adding the suggestions in a second pass.
The next shot is Scarecrow coming to the water's surface. It isn't coming out as I'd like but here it is.

Click to view attachment

Nice swimming/bobbing action.

I haven't seen all these separate shots combined together yet but it seems to me you've been hitting your stride.

As for not getting everything you hoped to in the shot... I think you are too hard on yourself. Looks fine from here.

When I act it out, my head tends to bend back in an effort to get air as soon as possible. Then it stays like that in order to not get water in your mouth. SC has some flattening poses in him. Maybe he'd have lost some straw from the water fall?

I think the facial expressions will add alot to this shot too.
Nice work so far.