I couldn't decide if I should release this version of the animation since I plan to do some more things with it. You know it's hard to rerelease something like this. I decided I can post this version on the forum and the "final" version on AM Films or Youtube or both. I need to add some missing sound effects, there are two, short, very funny scenes I want to add that I didn't have time for.

Click to view attachment

-vern

That turned out great Vern. Looking forward to seeing the final version.

I have to go change my pants!

Ha ha! BIG applause from me!
That was hilarious and very well put together.

Looking forward to episode 2 now.

That's wonderful Vern!


two things...

-The colon in "Animation:Master" is missing. Even if those signs don't really do colons you should stick that in.

- you need an establishing shot at the VERY beginning of Thom walking up to the first sign. Then the long shot of the signs moving past the camera will seem like it's Thom's POV as moves from one to the next. Did I just dream that you had a shot like that before?

-when the giant nozzle points at Thom I think he flinches too soon.

ok, that was three things.


But i really like that Vern!

Robcat,

I will fix the colon in A:M. I use ellipses on the signs so I can easily create a colon.
Yes, he reacts too soon to the first deluge. I thought I fixed that but it could be that I was editing the wrong version of the action or the final project didn't have linked actions or something. I did a lot of emergancy funky things at the last minute.

About the sign opening credit sequence...
The signs in the beginning aren't suppose to be part of the "show" anymore. I decided not to have them be part of the demo "world" or Thom's "POV" but just a stylized interesting animated credit sequence that is part of the "theme".

That is another thing I plan to change in the final version of this animation. I'm going to put in a nice colorful background behind the signs, a sort of radial blur/glow gradation so it doesn't appear to be a specific location. Where I think the fix should be is when the view cuts from Thom to the "close up" of the sign that he is reading. That view of the sign should look different than the opening credit signs. It should be at a different angle, have different lighting and a different background that ties it in to the setting that Thom is in. I think maybe even an over the shoulder view with thom visible. A few times while working on the final video editing I got confused by this cut myself but didn't have time to fix it.

I don't plan on doing this for episode 1 but I would like to have "people" passing back and forth in front of the signs in the credits with some crowd noise to establish the "convention" atmosphere. So people would be seen passing with some motion blur and dof to hide specific details, then a person would pass close to the camera filling the view and the sign would change... sort of like a wipe or transition. I really like this idea but will save it for Episode 2. This will REALLY tie in the concept of a crowed convention for when Thom walks up to the Hash "booth".

I want the first view of Thom to be after the credits. I don't want to break that flow of the story by cutting from him to the credits.

--------

p.s. Hair is going to be episode 2. Hair specifically but with a side dish of materials and maybe SSS. This is going to be the one with the spray bottles, a variation of my original idea for doing SSS but the demo will be for hair specifically. I have had trouble with SSS and need to play with it some more. This one will be WAY easier to do than physics or cloth and it's all stuff I already know how to do. Plus it will be really cool to play with hair materials "sprouting" all over thom. Give him different funky hair styles etc.

-vern

Haha thats good Vern well done

Great Demo Vern!

I think that you could alleviate the need to retime Thom's first anticipation (the one Robert mentions) just by bringing the music to full stop. That'd cue Thom fully in that something is going to happen. In effect Thom is catching up to us.

Thom is then reacting to all the verbal and nonverbal cues, the pipe, the loss of sound and his own imagination (which is our imagination) when he reacts. This'd also give a nice anticipation to the music as it'd start back up immediately upon the deluge hitting Thom.

Right now the music doesn't support that anticipatory pause.

A thought.

That's great Vern. I really enjoyed it. You put a lot of work into that thing.

The music is all screwed up. I had it timed with organ flairs and such to the actions and reactions... but... in the editing process everything changed and I just extended the music to match the length and went with it. Originally the music went to just the drum track and was subtle, when the objects hit the music cuts back in with an organ flair. That still doesn't really give any clue to the objects coming.

At first the reason thom reacted early to the tube is because from his view point he could see the objects falling out of the tube. It doesn't really work watching it from our view point. Plus I changed the shape of the tube and I don't think he could actually see the objects falling in time to react. It shall be changed. It always bugged me which is why I "fixed" it once already... <sigh> I bet I have that fixed action in one of the dozens of versions of that chor and forgot to export it or something. It's a tricky one to fix because that whole sequence is made up of about 4 or 5 chor actions. I have to make sure they all match up again if I change one, and also slide the falling object keys as well since they need to hit at the same place. I have to be really careful now. I can't "redo" any of the physics because so many things are "keyed" to how objects fell in a specific way.

Maybe if I add the ominous rumbling of the falling objects in the tube and quiet the music like you suggest, that would be enough to justify the early reaction?

p.s. Speaking of "stopping" the music as if to give Thom a clue to what would happen, I originally planned to have the ENTIRE stage collapse including the front surrounding portion around the stage set. When that part fell the music would stop and the band trio would be revealed. A drummer, keyboards and bass player. They would look shocked and stunned then suddenly start playing again to cover the disaster. I even have that folder in my models folder with all the instruments ready to go. I just never got around to it because I knew it would be a ton of work.

p.s. Yesterday was the Comic Con. I was suppose to catch a train in NJ to NYC at 7:35 am which meant I had to leave at 5:30 - 6 latest. I missed that train... and the next one. But I caught the 8:37 train... with a DVD and data CD still warm from the burner. Got to NYC at 10 am on the dot. Someone asked me at the show if they could watch it online. I told them I only finished it that morning.

p.s.s. I only used 2 passes due to time constraints. It looks pretty dang good for only 2 passes.

-vern

Very nice Vern!

That was great Vern you really know how to put on a show

Congrats Vern! This was very entertaining. I especially loved the traffic cone

That was great!

Thanks guys!

After watching it for the 500th time... does anyone else think the sparks at the end should be white and "blueish" or "purpleish" instead of red? Electrical sparks aren't usually red are they?

I wish we could animate streak color over time. I would like to go from bright white to blue. I bet I could fake that using a "matching" image/sprite emitter with animated transparency and color. If the settings were identical a sprite emitter could "colorize" the streaks at the end of their life. I have to check in AM again to see if maybe transparency of a streak can be changed over the life of the particle. I could have a darker blue identical particle that is only visible towards the end.

Can't seem to turn the tweak section of my brain off. I think the switch is broken.

-vern

Yes. The sparks caught my eye as being a little too dense, if you know what I mean. Too much of a thick, soft cluster of raining, hot particles rather than a few particles and LOTS of energy. Just a change of colour might help. What is missing though are the flashes of light.

For the electrical flashes you could try inserting a blank white frame at the peak of a discharge but even better might be an intense white/blue bulb light, on the end of the wire, which switches from 0% to 100% intensity at the peak and then fades over one or two frames. This would light the room from that point of interest and cast some very interesting, though brief, shadows.

Another thing that caught my eye was the lack of a shadow for that thick smoke. Turn on shadows for that smoke!

Have you tried using sprites for the sparks instead of streaks? Sprites offer fade over time, scale over time, spin, tint, additive colour and you can add several different sprite sytems, with different property values, to the same area to add variety.

Great stuff Paul! Thanks!

You are absolutely right about the sparks. They seem.... odd to me. One of the problems I had at the last minute was scaling issues. I have the sprite emitter as a separate model that is constrained to the cable. this was just easier. I ended up having to scale the cable/spark group. However when you scale the model the sparks stay the same size. That is probably why they got so big and dense. I also had trouble tweaking the "timing". For goodness sakes electricity is FAST! I couldn't seem to get that real fast "spark" timing. I need to fiddle with it. I think if I change the color add in the bulb flashes, fiddle some more with density and emission and size it will be an improvement. And of course, a light on the end of the cable. Good grief. I should have thought of that. Shadows for the smoke... got it.... writing this down... shadows for the smoke...

Yes, I tried using sprites but no go. I couldn't animate "tail length" or "thickness" over time like with streaks. Streaks are PERFECT for sparks. Streaks should be called "Sparks" they are custom made for that kind of effect . Sprite emitters don't have scaling in one direction. It's proportional only. I made a spark image for a sprite and tried it but it just didn't work for me... meaning I didn't like it.

Last night I tried the trick of using a sprite that changes color over time to "colorize" the spark streaks... didn't work because of the additive color nature of the sparks. The blue color over the sparks didn't have enough effect to change the color.... but... I'm not done fiddling. I think I made a mistake there... it just popped into my head... d'oh! I made the sparks WHITE and the sprite "overlay" white to blue. Well that isn't going to change the color of the sparks. Additive blue over white is just more white. I should make the sparks dark blue and do the color overlay of the sprite as white and just fade the alpha over time to reveal the blue sparks. Then I get a big white "glow" on the initial burst and it fades to a light blueish color at the end. I think this will work. Yeeahhaaaa! Must test this soon.

Thanks for all the feedback. I love this stuff. All these great ideas.

-vern

Yes. It's a shame that there is no way to add tails to sprites.

I had a few minutes to continue experimenting with "colorizing" the "life" of a streak last night. So far no luck. Using a sprite wouldn't work because it shows up against the background. I can't get the sprite to "colorize" the streaks.

However, I am going to do it anyway. I plan to use AM compositing to pull this off. Another "feature" to add to the list used in this. I can very simply render the streaks as white, then overlay the colorized "blue" sprite animation against black. I should be able to make the sparks turn blue at the ends without effecting the rest of the scene by using the white sparks as a mask or alpha channel. I was thinking as well with that technique I don't have to use a sprite for the blue at all I could just have some spherical object constrained to the cable in the same place as the sparks that fades to blue at the edges, maybe a spherical gradient. It would be "on" the whole time but the sparks would always turn blue as the reach the end of their life or the outside of the object.

I have to do this now because my tests with the "white blue" sparks looks so sweet. So much better than the red. I will post results in the other thread to continue the production blogging.

-vern

You can pretty easily change the color of streaks over the life of each particle. The process is described on the very last page of this tutorial:
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=249011

Any of the properties of a particle emitter's Surface Attributes can be animated over the life of a particle. That includes Diffuse Color, Ambiance, Transparency etc.

I think that is "over time". Not "over life". In graph or curves view in the time line window, properties that can change "over life" have percentages at the top of the time line instead of time values or key frames. This is different than time. Like changing the thickness of hair to make it taper to a point. It doesn't matter how long the hair is it will taper proportional to its length. In that tutorial the color will change at the same time in relation to the life of the streak so.. if the life is 60 and the change is at 30 then it is roughly 50%... BUT if you increase the life to 120 that color change will happen way sooner and be completely different.

I tried and tried to see if I could get that percentage to show up when setting streaks properties but never figured it out. If you know a trick about that let me know.


-vern

Vern That was just way to cool, loved it!

Well now I'm not sure what you are asking for. Here is a simple project file where the particles change color over the life of the particles. Are you wanting something different?

Kind sir, I stand corrected.

I was using the SHADED PREVIEW as my guide which isn't accurate and of course the silly help and reference SAYS RIGHT THERE that the preview isn't always accurate.... <sigh>. It would seem that color can be changed over the life of the streak... I'll be danged.

It just didn't make sense that the color value was in units of frames or time. So if the life of the streak was 60 and the color changed at 30 and you made the life 120 in the chor action... you would think that the change in color wouldn't "scale" like a percent value... however it does scale just like a percent value... I'll be danged.

Learn something new everyday. I will play with this now with my streak sparks. Huh... weird. I could have sworn I tried this before. I bet it was the silly streak THICKNESS that wouldn't animate over life and I just made the ASSUMPTION that the color wouldn't either... we all know what happens when you do that, you make an ass out of you and UMPTION.

-vern

Me again. Still not right and here's why:

In the chor I set the life expectancy for the streak from 40 to 300. This would increase the LIFE of the streak and should stretch or move the starting point of the color change and yet the color change is in the exact same spot because the key for the color change is stil at 25 or 25 on the time line. It starts at the same spot no matter what the life span is. If the color change were over the life of the streak or a percentage value it would move closer towards the end of the streak in proportion to the life's length. Do you follow me?

It's not a big deal I just want to make sure I'm not insane... which is highly likely.

-vern

Wow, Vern this looks really good. Glad to see such a neat demo of physical simulations in action. As far as the sparks, what if you used sprites, and used an image sequence to animate colour/length over time? Several sprite system nodes with equal seed values and slightly varied velocities would make for motion-vector streaking, and sprite image-sequences allow for delicate control.
Also, if you attach a popping/flickering "lens flare" (no reflection, just some "cross-stars") to the end of the wire to flash as the spark rain down, that would help sell it. The initial arcing would blow out most exposures, and the flare will help sim that.

Nice work so far!

Excellent demo Vern. Personally I liked the opening credits- clean, fast, to the point, and perfectly tied in with the first part of the film. And the stage falling apart at the end? Fun-knee... (electrical sparks could be better...). Aside from some of the small timing issues, this was a great example of what A:M can do. It made me think of when I first saw Bob demoing cloth physics at the old office 4 years ago (roughly). Wow- I'm stunned.

I don't think you're insane Vern ... at least not in a bad way
If you are changing the Life of the particle to 300 frames, why don't you just change the color gradient to go from 0-300?
Or are you animating the Life of the particles ... can you even do that? I've never tried...

Yes I am animating the life of the streaks. I want big bursts of sparks that last longer and shorter ones that don't. I have this keyed in the chor action. If I use the above technique to change the color it changes too early for big bursts and too late for short bursts. Also what happens is that overlapping sparks cause the blue to show up in the beginning of the life of the streak. For instance if the change occurs at 24 a spark might be emitting at that point... and be the wrong color.

So yes, I could key the color change as well but that is what I was trying to avoid. I thought that if I had some other duplicated streak or particle then there wouldn't be so much finicky moving of those color keys.

At this point my flu is getting wose so I'm going to put this on hold until my head is more clear. I'm seeing tiny pretty, blue elephants sparkling around the ceiling... oooo pretty... don't hit the ceiling fan! Today I had a dream that I stole a rare white rhino and had it in a u-haul. Me and Bill Murry (in a cowboy hat) were taking it across Australia as we ran from the cops.

-vern

Well I guess if you HAVE to run across Australia in a Uhaul with a stolen rare white rhino, Bill Murray would be the guy to do it with...

VERN--- It turned out GREAT! Oh-So-Hilarioso! Get that baby up on YouTube! And Get well.

Thanks John!

The flu is a faded memory now (except for the people I gave it to of course).
As soon as I finish my current "real world" job I can make those edits and rerender. Then I will get it on you tube/AM films. My current job requires nearly full time use of my "fast" PC with another application. I have to have a of sound editing program open along with "another" animation program while also tapping away on a midi key board in time to some music... uh... don't ask. so I can't tie it up with resource gobbling AM at the moment <sigh>. I understand the joy one can get having a whole PC just dedicated to AM use. That would be cool.

It should take me at least a week to rerender. I plan to up the passes and go back to ray traced shadows on the lights instead of z buffered. I might fiddle with lighting since I will have some breathing room on the render times.

-vern

awesome video!

Does anyone know if Vern's project is available for study?

He did so much RND when creating this project. He learned so much and then just disappeared all his work for not.

I forgot he had been talking about having the flu prior to his disappearance... I wonder if that had anything to do with his departure.

He went over to some 2D Animation app it seems, Animestudio its called, I think, he probably tjhought, he could get faster results for him,
but maybe you can get a hold of him in some forum over there....

We've been trying... he is 'on the lamb' over there too. I thought I had found a twitter account for him... I don't 'tweet' tho... if anyone has a twitter account, look up Vernon Zehr from PA... see if you can get ahold of him. I fear he is ill or deceased.

I just did some quick googling - and found that Vern is associated with hubumedia.com - a website design company. Vern appears to be still around as of June 25, 2011, but is also quite silent on the website, as well as on hubumedia's facebook & youtube pages (Vern is mentioned quite recently in both places). I suspect John Hubickey would probably know what's going on with him. I too, hope all is well.

Great find, Nancy! I just wrote on their wall that we here at the Hash forum hope Vern is alright... maybe other Facebookers could do the same.