The back story...

About 4 years ago at Dragon con. The guys at the booth were saying I could work the videos lessons & be ready to make and animate a character in one weekend . I liked the lip sync set up so I handed over the $200 ( I mean really the lip sync plug in for max is $300 by it self ) but, 3 days later before I could start learning the program I got a job using 3DS max . well the franch bought that company just to close it down.

Any way, to skip to the point. I drug out my old lap top with Animation Master on it and I'm about to see if I really can learn it in 2 days.

Welcome to A:M!

Two days is a bit steep, but a super-focused person could get a simple character going in a few days.

Keep it simple to start off. If you have questions, ask!

But definitely do the tuts in TaoA:M first.

Yes, you can learn basic lipsync in 2 days.
You can learn it via A:M's dopesheet in less than one.

You can certainly get a good feel and move characters around in a weekend.
Moving things around from point A to point B isn't animation though.
But I know you can get 'er done.

Do yourself a favor though.
Upgrade to v15. (websubscription to full version for a year is $79)

well it looks like Animation masters lip sync works just like in 3ds max's but you can type in the morphs . Much faster than setting them by hand.

does Hash have a whats new guide some were. because I may pay Animation Master 79 bucks to get up to date . but there is no way I can pay 4 grand for my own copy of 3ds max.


well i got to get back to the videos , time to make an airplane.

The what's new guide would cover a lot over the past four years.

Upgrading to v15 is really a no-brainer. Hash Inc developed a lot of really great things for us over the past four years.
If you left off with A:M four years ago I'll assume you currently have v11.
Here are some of the documented changes since then:

In 2004 A:M saw a major improvemet in stability as Hash Inc focused on that and the TWO movie.

2004
2005
2006
2007 <start here! (links at the bottom of the will take you back to previous versions.

In 2008 we saw the introduction of Baked Surfaces for texturing and we've seen additional improvement with it as well as support for the Space Ball Tracker (3D Mouse) this year. You can see the technical data on changes and bugfixes in the Lastest Info forum area. We've also seen a flurry of activity from Steffen Gross with improvements to many of his free plugins (most of which are integrated into A:M) this year.

Activity for 2009 thus far has is still being collected here.

The links Rodney gave you may have a problem so:
Get rid of the "/index.htm" and they will be functional again.

2008:
- Fluids
- Particle-Baking
- Surface-Baking
- NLE

2009:
- SpaceNavigator-Support (3d-mouse) (it is actually a 2009 feature)
- Bake surface was improved with more controllabilities
- a whole lot of Bug fixes

Many smaller features and improvements where made too.
*Fuchur*

Thanks for adding those Fuchur.
I wanted to check before I typed in any misinformation.
I haven't used Particle Baking yet and don't own a Space Navigator but they sure sounds handy.
I've only test Fluids once or twice so completely forgot about that!!! (bad Rodney)

The link with and without the /index was taking me to the same place .
I'm not sure why it wouldn't work for everyone but I removed it just in case.

Well--I would recommend spending a few days/weeks learning your way around with the version that you've already bought. Ask questions, learn to animate first [every newbie to the program seems to want to start by modeling the cast of their epic movie!], then move on to other areas.

Don't start lusting after cool features (feature orgy), just get the foundation first. Later you can upgrade to a newer version--when the benefits will make sense for your projects.

I'm up to lesson 13 on that video disk . so far it's pretty close to the editable patch setting in max. so adjusting to animation master is going pretty fast. just got to learn the AM names for thing and were they are at.

Some of the other things I've noticed so far about 3DS Max vs Animation Master are

1. Dope sheet , bones , key frames , morph targets , vertex points all are pretty much the same as max but cost about $3700 less

2. Max and AM both have a hid button but is much faster to use on am.

3. The AM dope sheet has the really cool thing were it will play just the audio inside the word/morph brackets . max does't do that.

4. I've noticed with the splines in AM I'm useing a lot less vortex points than with poly modeling.

5. (this one is a big one for me.) I AM I can scale a character WITH OUT re-skinning !



Well I'm going to take a brake from the videos and just play with the program for a bit.

WOW! Can we use you in a commercial? Those are all good points, I appreciate knowing what else you notice for better or worse between the two programs.

You can even scale a part of a character and not need to "reskin"

You can't do that in the other prog? well it just goese to show how much unapreciated a lot of things are .Iv never used any other 3d prog so only know what AM has and Im pretty glad about that

I would also suggest to study what doesn't change with the Applications. Animation itself. AM is really the best to bipass all the technical hurdles in order to focus on character performance.

There are some awesome riggs already there at your disposal.

The Lip sinc tool is great, but remember that most animation takes place in how things move inbetween the keys.


AM is a very capable AP.... certainly the best for the price.... and it has many many many strengths over others.

William

With utmost respect to Will I must disagree.
I fully understand your reasoning.
I completely agree with your assessment of feature orgies.
That's one of the reasons comparisons with competing products aren't allowed here.
They end up getting us nowhere quickly.

We could do a lot in older versions of A:M (people have created high quality films and launched their careers in animation with those things) but there are too many reasons to delay moving into to the current version of A:M. At a cost of $79 a year? Are you kidding me!?! Most artists and animators will spend more on tutorials.

Ease of learning is important. If you are using the current version you'll be using better tools and talking the same terminology with other users. When told how to implement or fix something you'll see what we see.
You'll have the full support of the A:M Community (this forum)

Can you do well in earlier versions? Most definitely!
But you'll be able to do it better with v15. (If you've got a version that doesn't have stitching... its still a great program but... good grief!)

....and Hash Inc will appreciate your support as you move to the current release.

Here is my 2 cents.....................
I bought my ver.15 back in November.
And in one month I made my first film short.
8 months later I have made over 12 shorts and am entered in one film contest.
So yes I think the learning curve is very easy yet I still have tons to learn!
This program has yet to hit a wall, whenever i think it cannot do something, someone on these forums
shows me different.
You will do fine if you put in the effort.
Gene

I agree with all the max comparisons. I think the big thing for me is how there are separate areas with different functions in AM.....ie action/bones/chor/model windows. It makes things simpler on many levels. No other program has that as far as I know.

Oh and another reason to upgrade is the that newer versions are steadily getting more stable.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with AM since you already have 3D experience. You're right....AM doesn't need nearly as many vertices/cps. Yet more simplicity.

But while you are using the old version make sure you get the last available update for whatever version you have.

ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/


the version on the CD is typically not the last release.

The 1st day is over and it looks like that 2 day thing may be true . only thing is I'm having trouble keeping things smooth. I couldn't find a turbo smooth like function in the help files. Is there some tipe of auto smoothing plug in for Animation Master?

No, not really. You have to follow the "flow" of continuous splines. Dead end splines will make things not-so-smooth.

If you post an image of what you mean (with wireframe & shaded - "0") we can usually help.

Coming from a polygon background, you may be somewhat stymied by the apparent lack of "CG smoothness" in patches & splines. This is because they are more accurate. (What You See is What you Get.)
Newer versions of the software (yes another reason to upgrade, and no, Hash doesn't pay me) is that shading normals are now calculated averaged for a more CG-smooth look by default instead of the more accurate (and finicky) perpendicular normals like older versions. There is also a button to switch between the two.

(yes, "Normals" still exist in Patch-land. They are intrinsically linked to 3D rendering.)

Aha! you found the one catch in all this A:M wonderfulness... you do have to model with a bit more care and forethought. An edge that is an afterthought in polygons should be planned in advance in splines.

The ideal is to use the fewest possible splines to describe your shapes and to connect them with proper "continuity".

Actually there is a smoothing plugin of sorts by steffen gross, but it can't correct the really classic splining errors.


The "Modeling" section of the tutorials page in my signature has some brief discussions towards better splining and there are many others to be found on this forum.

There's also a porcelain material which can smooth. But it's the lazy way.

Show a screenshot and we can help more specifically.

Rodney, you've been exploring the features of A:M for several years (I see that you have over 15,000 posts about it). Every release adds to A:M's capabilities--it NEVER ends!

My point (which the thread owner seems to be doing) is that he should spend some time getting familiar with animating in the version he owns, rather than rushing out to buy the latest version.

Let's say he follows your path: He plays with the program, learning the features of version x...before that is completely mastered, it is time to upgrade to version y....now there are a bunch of really cool things to learn and play with!....Pretty soon, it is time to upgrade to version z--after all, version z now has _____!!!! After several years of this, all he will have done is played with the software. That is just a hobby.

I agree with you Will.
Its good to lock into one version as often as we can.

I do think it would be in his interest to lock into v15 versus v10/v11.
Does this not make good sense?
Would I not be doing him a disservice to recommend he stay where he is?

One of the reasons A:M is extremely stable right now is that new and dramatic features that have a tendency to break old features aren't added every day like in the past. For many potential users (those who feast on features) this is a bad thing. For those of us that crave stability its a very good thing.

As for me exploring features and amassing posts, that just comes with the territory.

Actually there is an autosmooth-plugin (look at sgross.com) but it will although change the shape.

Smooth can be handy anyway.

*Fuchur*

I think porcelain is AM's auto smooth function. It is a material and you can adjust the smoothness by changing the normal weight values.

I think my biggest problem was having what looked like two splines crossing but was really 2 splines turning 90 deg. I cleand it up some but it still looks a bit ruff .


splines = http://twilightarms.com/vr/head%20test%20splines.jpg

rendered = http://twilightarms.com/vr/head%20testr.jpg


Odds are that I'm going to upgrade. but not right away . The company I worked for shout down so I'm shot on cash right now. but on the bright side I've got time to learn new software.

Thats looking real nice ,after 2 days hu would take me a LOT longer .Cant wiat to see your stuff afer you get used to AM lol

That turned out well!

Very nice splinage.

I look forward to seeing more!

(Cough. . Cough. . Blink,Blink. . . Sputter. . ) Mutter: All this dust. . . that was Scary. Who was that that just flew by me?

Two Days! Excellent work! (Heavy Sigh. . . )

I posted a responce earlier, but it seems to have disappeared. I can't beleive that's two day work. Just awesome. I don't know which version you are using, but I use the Porcelain material to get things really smooth. Nothing is going to be better than simple cp tweaking to get it as smooth as possible though. Although I still use porcelain ALOT! haha.

Well, the problem is the big five point patches on the cheeks. They like to be small and flat, so you'll have to re-jig the splines to get them over somewhere else. Have a look at donated models to get an idea how to do it.
But yeah, great work for 2 days!

ok I looked up Porcelain material in the help files It was listed under average normals " Visible: Sometimes" So, how do i make it visible?

also it's been two days and I haven't made and animated an actor yet . but i have mad and rigged one. It looks like the guys from dragon con were fairly close.

That's the way the documentation indicates that settings are available.
The Porcelain effect (that of averaging normals) will only be applied and applicable if and where you have the Porcelain Material applied.

thinks guys.

The animation part of it is so close to the other program that I was useing that I'm adjusting to it pretty fast. I'm going to spend a week or 2 just modeling so that i can get adjusted to the splines / patches system of modeling.

my original interest in Animation master ( other than the price) was for the lip sync I love being able to type in the morphs.

Now that I've played with it for 3 days I also like the fact that I scale a model after it's skinned , and as I learned last night I can also edit & map after skinning. It was a pain to do that in the program I was useing before.

I dunno: wow, what a problem - how's it going with learning the program again? It's been two days since your wrote, way past the weekend. Did you get a respite in your time limit to learn 3D in two days? By the way your spelling is atrocious and your English needs some work. I speak French fluently and know the kind of work it is to get a broad grasp on a new language. Please don't take offense. Did the French really buy Max. Well, Europe is the new superpower. The French also own Alpo, the dog food. Good luck with getting back to an infinitely noble program.
DF

He was not trying to learn the whole programm in 2 days... (this is very likely impossible)
He was trying to learn the lip-sync-features in two days... as far as I know he was satisfied with his affords.

*Fuchur*

Actually it only took about 20 min to get the jest of the lip-sync-features. but it took about 3 days to learn enough of the other parts of the program to be able to use the lip-sync .

btw , it is about 10 times faster to do Lip-sync with AM than the program I was originally trained on.

I would love to see and hear some work when you get it done

<object width="400" height="300" ><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/1344785588480" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/1344785588480" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="300"></embed></object>

Is this some kind of code ,cmon you got me inerested now

Take this part and you can see it!

http://www.facebook.com/v/1344785588480


I feel, there`s some teeth missing.

Good-looking toon character!

Thank's I got it ,yea real good and I liked the voice.Nice job

That looks nice

2 days or a week, or even a month for that matter, that is awesome. My first model took 6 months.
Great job.

wow. so its been a year,

1st off they are things that I have learned to love about AM.

1. the lip sync or more directly being able to play just the part of the time line that I'm working on.

2. how easy it is to scale things after they are rigged ,skinned , of have morph targets .

3. morph targets can include bones,

4. actions ( AMs bip equ) can include any thing that moves.

5. I can move and/or copy Lip sync from one model to another . with out taking all day.

but they are some things i don't like.
1. the bigest thing has nothing to do with the program itself . but is the lack of feature videos. and /or video tutorials. ( I'll take that into my own hands later).

2. no mesh smooth, There's a normal smooth but its not the same. i do mostly do cell style that does't effect me to much. but it's the way i had learned to work in max.

3. the UV maping could be tuched up a little.

4. luseing my CD . but it was 5 years old and time to upgrade any way.

btw. I'm replacing it as soon as I get the cash.

There's a huge bunch of tuts on the forum here. Ask if you're not finding something on a topic.