If you haven't gone through the online videos that come with The Art of Animation:Master book you should begin your journey into computer animation with Animation:Master there: The Art of Animation:Master Video Tutorials

You can work through these exercises alone but it's always better to seek feedback.
To help you there is a dedicated TaoA:M forum and also a chat window right inside Animation:Master where you can discuss all the latest and greatest progress you've made and seek assistance in real time. If you ever login to chat and no one is there just drop a note here in the forum to let others know you are looking to chat!

And don't forget to download the PDF versions of TaoA:M and the Technical Reference.
Even if you have the hard copy books you'll find these digital versions useful... and easily searchable!

wait...there's a chat here? wow, three years of being here and I didn't know we had a chat

A:M Community is a part of the A:M Interface.
Part of logging in to the community is chat.

To reopen the panel for login select View / Community (Shortcut key: Alt 6) in A:M.
When you need to get back to work a quick Alt 6 will close the panel as well.

Thanks for the reminder! It works GREAT! Just had a little impromptu chat with Rodney... I'll be checkin-in there more often!

It was great to get caught up with you Matt.

As we see more User Groups get active that may encourage more people to dive into A:M chat.
...and in 2010 there is sure to be a lot to chat about!

Lest ye forget to SIGN OUT when ye are done (Don't just close the chat window) or you will continue to hear the chat indicator bell.

This could not have happened on a worst day. But the router to A:M chat had to be replaced and now has a new out bound IP the only way that they gave us to keep the same IP was to clone the IP of the old router and other then in wireless network broadcast I'm not a fan of that. it may take some time for your DNS to cache the new IP but it's back up and running on the new IP have tested it.

Sorry for this, It's going to be a long night.

Keep at it J! We are all behind you! Don't drink too many RedBulls...have an apple instead.

Sorry to hear of the troubles Jason.
Looks like things are working fine here.

Concerning that Bell.
There is an icon right above where you type in your chat-text (looks like a bell).
Selecting that will toggle the bell chime on/off.

You can also change the size, type and color of your text/font. (please don't get too crazy with that though as it can be hard on the eyes!)

A minor goal for me in 2011 is to log into chat as often as I can. (We'll see how that goes)

Here are some recent activities in chat:
01/24/2011 11:44 AM - Charlie D. said he had a question but didn't get around to asking it.
01/28/2011 3:41 AM - Lycan05 offered to answer it.
01/29/2011 12:54 AM - chucky dropped in and revealed he was trying to create an animated bike chain
02/02/2011 3:16 AM - Lycan05 offered some useful suggestions.
02/03/2011 1:41 AM - PaulNyssen suggested posting the question to the forum
02/03/2011 7:13 AM - chucky thanked them for the tips and added that modeling a chain was easy but the rigging of it stumped him.
02/03/2011 7:14 AM - chucky also related some issues with pasting material attributes and a problem with rotoscope folders propagating themselves.
etc.

...and so goes the chat.

As we move toward the new ToaA:M we may be looking to promote a weekly chat.
If A:M Community itself can't handle the volume we'll look for other options and hang outs.

What preferences in days and times does everyone have for chatting?
Way back when we use to have a Wednesday chat.



BTW: Liveimpact posted the following via chat a few months ago and it seems like a neat tip so I thought I'd post it here:



Thanks Liveimpact!

Wednesday it IS then... for the sake of trivia! Let's say... just after TEA?

In a perfect world... to accommodate everyone I was thinking along the lines of running a 24 hour event.
(think beyond chat here... an A:M TV channel... live... with commentary)

In theory, a 24 hour event would allow international Users/Users Groups to take charge of a specific time slot and push areas of interest to them specifically.
No one has to stay through the entire event and should there be enough interest, portions of the event (i.e. demos) might be recorded for posterity.
As an incentive to those working behind the scenes they would have access to the schedule and any resources well in advance of the event.

I'm thinking long term here.
The 24 hour event might um... best be scheduled bi-monthly or quarterly at the beginning.
The bare-bones'd Wednesday night chat would still be weekly.


Note: We would likely ask A:M Users to make their officially public announcements and releases of their films on Wednesdays to hype up the event and really make it worth while to attend.

Rodney-- I think the idea of community chats would be great to boost excitement for AM and help in the learning process and to build an even better community. I support this initiative completely
Rich

Thanks Rich!

Now... all we have to do is find another person that wants to chat too.

Yes ----smiles ----maybe if a suggested topic or wip or whatever was hinted to be a topic then more folks will get onboard. Certainly if a new TAoAM is done that could be a weekly chapter or chart session for sure and I would hope would get new users to participate in. I think that really makes it easy to participate in...If you have a chat session on advanced rigging topics for instance I for one would probably be lost and even if I joined would probably not say much-----smiles....but if i worked on a chapter of the new TAoAM I would almost certainly have things to say or questions to ask. So for me newbie subject matter makes me more participatory. As a suggestion --since I am and surely other newbies may be interested now in getting to be able to model and texture --It would be helpful to have like a small forum project to model. Then have the new folks try and model it the item and have some of the experts give some pointers or helping hints. Especially focusing on good practices and techniques.

Rich