|
|
My first 7.6 animation
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
My first 7.6 animation // Image Gallery
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 2, 2008, 7:57am
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
Greetings folks!
Firstly a wee gripe - I'm constantly frustrated when trying to upload large files to these forums as they always seem to time out on me.
On a more positive note: I've just finished my first tS 7.6 animation which you can view by going Here (http://www.4shared.com/file/57511955/b6056bc/ButterFlys.html).
Please DL the file and watch it on your windows media player rather than just watching the lo rez preview that plays at this link.
Some production comments: Software used was MojoWorld (for background plate), tS 7.5 for the character who was modified, re-rigged and weight-painted in tS7.6. Morphs added, walk cycle heavily modded from one of Mr Bones's BVH files and embellished with additive keyframed clips created with Forward kinesthetics (I still haven't figured out how to use IK locks and handles).
Everything else was made in tS7.6.
The building geometry: I started with an old mesh I'd made in tS 6.6 but when I looked at it I was not at all happy with the mesh. I tried to fix it and found out just how robust tS 7.6 Workspace is with PE on dodgy meshes!! Mark me down as very impressed! Eventually though I decided the original mesh was just to rough to repair and so I remodeled it, again using workspace PE.
The fire: Big thanks to Noko for this - I swapped some of his textures for some of my own and added extra 'firelight' by copying what he had done. This leads to my first question - in realtime the flames flicker nicely but in the anim they seem to go too fast. Is there some way to sync the material animation with the anim frame rate so the "render to file" captures the same flickering speed as the realtime display - or am I just going about this all wrong?
Secondly the camera seems to 'shudder' a little as it pans around toward the fire - is this expected behaviour or did I get something wrong there?
Next - this is for the developers - please, please pretty please can we get spline based animation paths in a future release?
What else? Oh yeah, the butterfly textures came from somewhere on the net, the textures on the planet came from Celestia - and yes that is Planet Earth even if it looks unfamiliar to you Northern Hemisphere folks. We're looking at the Southern Hemisphere here - the big brown blobby bit is Australia;):D (You can wave to Burnart and Transient if you wish!).
2D textures work otherwise was done by me using the GIMP and it's excellent Normal Map Generator plug-in. The finish on the building walls is from a photo I took of my own house:).
The only time I used the Bridge was to 'bend' the text around the planet in Model side.
Sound FX: I just Googled sound effects to find what I wanted - squeaky door, crackling fire and modded them using Audacity. Guitar music by me, voice by me.
Everything was compiled using Sony Vegas Studio and there you have it.
Again, if you are going to look at the Animation please download the full resolution version (8mb) rather than judging by the crappy preview that streams from the link.
I would appreciate all and any remarks about this project - animation is still largely a hit and miss mystery affair to me so any feedback is valuable. Any suggestions for avoiding the shuddery camera movement and for improving the (ahem) dodgy lip syncing would also be valued.
Ah... I think that's about it apart from the apologies for the long post.....
Thanks in advance
Stephen
W!ZARD
Edit: PS, the theme is intended as a sort of thank you to Caligari form me to express my appreciation for all the work and effort that has gone into making tS7.6 the wonderful thing it is. |
Post by frootee // Aug 2, 2008, 8:12am
|
frootee
Total Posts: 2667
|
Hi Wizard. You can upload compressed .zip and .rar files, up to 20 MB here. That just requires the user to have a decompress utility like winzip or winrar.
HTH!
froo |
Post by frootee // Aug 2, 2008, 8:16am
|
frootee
Total Posts: 2667
|
That is a very cool animation too W!zard. Did you do the voiceover and music yourself? Looks good.
Froo |
Post by Jack Edwards // Aug 2, 2008, 8:21am
|
Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
|
I think the character animation looks much improved Wiz. :banana:
Is the stuttering showing in the stills or could that be caused by too heavy a compression setting during encoding?
To sync the fire to the frame you would need to have it use the current frame instead of system time to advance the fire animation. Might not be that big a change in the scripting since we can read the current frame value now via script.
@Frootee, usually the connection will time out before you get to 20MB unless you have a VERY fast connection and the TS server can keep up. Maximum I've been able to upload is around 14MB and I have a fast connection. |
Post by Breech Block // Aug 2, 2008, 9:12am
|
Breech Block
Total Posts: 844
|
Hi Wizard, thanks for sharing your animation. Overall I was very impressed. I particularly liked the quality and mood of the lighting. I was also taken back by the quality of the actual film. For starters, getting a starfield to even register on a rotating camera can often be quite tricky; factor in file compression and sometimes the stars can disappear completely. Yours looked beautiful however. Your film also lacked the "texture rippling effect" that often occurs when you track with the camera. Is this down to your particular techniques, Sony Vegas or a bit of both? In addition, the music, voice and sound effects complemented the piece and did not jar like most "bolted-on" sound fx. So, like I said, very impressive.
:banana::banana::banana:
However, there were 2 parts I didn't particularly like, and please forgive me because I'm really, really nitpicking here. The first is the movement of your characters hair when he does a double turn of his head during his speech. I don't know if this was a deliberate\character thing, but it would have been nice to see the hair's movement a bit more flowing as opposed to 2 separate and distinct "bumps". The second part is when the camera pans from your character's face to follow the butterflies and show the ts/globe, your character seems to just stop and stare aimlessly forward. IMO, since he has been talking into the camera from the beginning, his face/eyes would still be tracking the camera's movement until he was "off-camera". But, like I said, I'm really nitpicking.
HTH. |
Post by mrbones // Aug 2, 2008, 10:28am
|
mrbones
Total Posts: 1280
|
Hi Wizard,
Animation looks much improved.
My opinion is that the camera should always be slow moving or zooming never stopping,
I like the details! |
Post by jhowell // Aug 2, 2008, 12:42pm
|
jhowell
Total Posts: 400
|
Hi Wizard. I loved it! Love seeing Truespace animation work. What caught my attention as mentioned in this thread was the MOOD of the animation. I got caught up in the MOOD and in the colors. Neat that you used a bvh clip. I just used one just now on this animation I just did CLICK HERE. (http://www.blip.tv/file/1139356) I have a long way to go to get up to your expertise. Anyway, hope more people will be able to see your animation in other parts of the forum. :jumpy: |
Post by trueSpaced // Aug 2, 2008, 12:52pm
|
trueSpaced
Total Posts: 544
|
I think the animation is absolutely amazing, especially for your first done in TS 7.6 (even though I'm sure the animation part of 7.6 isn't much different from 7.51; idk, I don't play around with it; too complicated for me :D).
All around great animation W!Z :)
-TrueSpaced:banana: |
Post by noko // Aug 2, 2008, 8:04pm
|
noko
Total Posts: 684
|
That is real nice W!ZARD!
The fire: Big thanks to Noko for this - I swapped some of his textures for some of my own and added extra 'firelight' by copying what he had done. This leads to my first question - in realtime the flames flicker nicely but in the anim they seem to go too fast. Is there some way to sync the material animation with the anim frame rate so the "render to file" captures the same flickering speed as the realtime display - or am I just going about this all wrong?
You are most welcome. Also very cool! You already figure out how to key frame the TSpecial-E shader. To sync so keyframed animation matches real time animation actually turns out not to hard to do. Ahmm if I can explain it that is ;).
OK, this shader is setup to sync by seconds so that what you see on screen if using the Timer Event Time output attribute is what you will get when keyframed.
Now some clarification maybe in order dealing with the Timer Event object which I will call Timer seen below. The Time output of the Timer is basically the time the Timer is running in seconds. How often this Time output gets updated is controlled by the Period setting which is in milliseconds. For example if Period is set at 1000 you will see the Time output update every second. Setting the Period to 100 and the Time output is being updated ten times a second but still only counting actual seconds and you see clearly now changing decimal numbers counting up to each new second. Setting Period to 33 will give you roughly 30 updates a second. The animation rate will not change, it will stay at same rate but with less updates if Period set to higher numbers like 100 or above, output will start to look jumpy but yet each new second in time will be the same position or visual from the shader. The animation rate of the effects by the shader is controlled by the shader controls when using the Timer Time output since it is always counting real seconds.
This is important because conversion to keyframes becomes rather easy to do. Setting up the special effect in Real time can be duplicated by keyframes with the added benefit of higher resolution, larger textures when ready to render plus many instances of animation effects could be used which maybe prohibited in real time but so easily done by rendering to file and rendering the resulting frames into an animation.
How to convert:
Keyframe the first frame of the shader to 0 or any starting point you want (The Shader Move X and/or Move Y Hookup input attributes). The example sceen has these hookups already exported for easier keyframing example in update to docs.
For a 30 FPS animation, count the number of frames and divide by 30
The number calculated is the number that will match the real time display rate. Key frame that number on that frame for the shader input
For example, a 600 frame animation at 30 fps. The first keyframe for input to shader value let say was seleced as 0. Take 600 and divide by 30 and you get 20. Go to frame 600 and input and keyframe that shader input.
For 25 fps you only have to divide by 25 vice 30 to match real time display if animation in Animation prefs is setup for 25fps.
This doesn't limit ability to vary the animation rate by changing Keyframe values but it then becomes harder to get real time feedback when setting up the special effect. Keyframing shader values is recommended in this case since you will be able to see more easily what effect it will have.
Sorry for the length of feedback and I probably need to show this better. Thanks for asking W!ZARD and let me know how this turns out if you get a chance. Thanks. |
Post by Emma // Aug 2, 2008, 9:07pm
|
Emma
Total Posts: 344
|
very well done !
- there is only one thing I would change, the butterflys:o
- movement of their wings looks as if birds are flying
Step out in the garden and watch some buutterflys, you will notice that they clap their wings together above their heads. This is different than birds are doing it because they can not bend their wings much above their "shoulders" because of their skeleton. If you don't see butterflys in your garden take a look at the Peach slice video I put in Wip thread and see how the butterfly moves there.
You can forget all above if you wanted it that way because it is a fary tale you are showing and wanted the effectt of flying birds:) |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 3, 2008, 2:35pm
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
At the time of writing this I see this thread has had 216 views, that the animation itself has been viewed 51 times and that 8 people have commented.
To those 8 people, thank you very much for commenting, to the 51 who DLed the anim I hope you enjoyed the show and to everyone else....er... have a nice day!;)
To the 8 commenters thanks again - your assistance and input is invaluable to me.
@Froo - Yeah, I did the music and voice over myself - my wizard has a distinct New Zealand accent - do you think I should have put in subtitles? ;)
Re uploads to the forum - my DL speeds are as fast as my line can handle but my Upload speeds are choked at 128kbps (I think this is a move by my ISP to limit the use of VOIP so they can still get revenue from toll charges). I think the largest file I've been able to successfully upload to the forums is around 4 mb regardless of whether it was zipped or not.
@Jack Edwards - thanks Jack. Yes the stuttering is in the stills and occurs in the uncompressed AVI I made from them. The anim is at 25 FPS (PAL is the standard in this part of the world) so I wondered if the stutter was some sort of strobing effect caused by the frame frequency and the speed of the pan. I also wondered if it was caused by computing bottlenecks as the software worked out the animation and the fire effects which were running in realtime.
@Breech Block - Cheers BB - Glad you liked it. The quality of the film is solely due to the quality of the DX9 shading. I've met the twinkly star field syndrome before with regular ray-traced animations but DX9 handles this really well (even though some say the RT renderer is not a REAL renderer ;).
Also, thanks for your nitpicking - that is exactly the type of feedback I am after. Both your comments are noted - the hair movement is morphed and I'm still learning how to get the best from that - the blank face thing was an oversight - I originally had the camera panning away sooner so the face wasn't seen at that point then I changed the camera timing at the last minute!
Mr Bones - Thanks - re the camera always moving - thanks, I take your point. I actually found the camera moves a little tricky to set up so they ran smoothly. I would love to see spline path animation for this in later additions. The Fcurve editor works well for this but being able to edit a single spline path for the movement rather than TX,TY,TZ, would be helpful I think.
@Jhowell - Thanks man - I'm glad the mood came across - I wanted it to be magical and otherworldy. Re BVH clips - I have Mr Bones Story Bones pack and I've found using BVH compatible skeletons and using a BVH clip as a base starting point and then using FK additive clips works well for me.
@trueSpaced - yeah Animation is complex - learning to animate is a skill set all of it's own but tS makes it easy. I'm no genius and I can figure it out!:D Yes there is a learning curve but it's a pleasurable climb. tS7.6 animation is similar to tS7.5 in that it uses the same basic approach but 7.6 is Waaaay easier IMO. The bones tools work far better the weight painting tools are superb and the PE tools are far more versatile too. Then there is the morph system which is very simple to use. All I can say is give it a go you might be surprised at just how user friendly the anim tools are.
@Noko - You are the man! I love your Tspecial-E Shader. Thanks for the brilliant explanation of the syncing to Key Frames - I suspected it would be something like this but had'nt quite nailed it in my mind - I've got it now thanks to you. And what a great tip about using larger textures when Key Framing the effect shader.
@Emma - Danke! You are correct about the butterfly animation looking too bird-like. I did them early on and hadn't yet figured out the FCurve editor interpolation setup. I should have set the translation interpolation to Linear rather than Bezier. This would make the butterfy's jink and jerk more convincingly rather than swooping along like birds.
Thanks again friends - with great feedback like this I can only get better as I go!
With great appreciation
WZRD |
Post by roman // Aug 3, 2008, 3:10pm
|
roman
Total Posts: 320
|
Add my post to well wishers:) I do not have specific comment other than it realy is worth to download original 8MB file. And that hair animation is a bit funny. Overall though I like the feel and the lighting of the shot a lot. |
Post by kena // Aug 3, 2008, 4:12pm
|
kena
Total Posts: 2321
|
I was going to make a comment about the fire being too fast, but you already mentioned that yourself and got help. Like the animation and lighting. |
Post by JPSofCA // Aug 4, 2008, 4:19am
|
JPSofCA
Total Posts: 300
|
Very cool animation. Love the facial expressions. Like others have said the lighting is really good too.
It makes me want to finish putting the quad-core together that I bought last Thanksgiving before it becomes obsolete so that I can play (more freely) with the new tS.
Great stuff! |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 4, 2008, 4:38pm
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
Thanks for the support guys - Roman, nice to see you being able to spend a little more time on the forums. |
Post by Igor K Handel // Aug 7, 2008, 5:25am
|
Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
|
Wiz I'm just running out of hours in the day man :D . So much to learn I am nearly busier than when I was working lol
So now finally I can comment on the vid which I watched some days ago.
Well don't blame me for not posting .... if you do inspirational stuff, then what do ya expect I go and be inspired and spend time trying to learn so I can catch up with ya lol.
It's true, I even show your vid to the missus. And then to my daughter :D
But so stop trying to hold me back from getting good like you lol all this posting is learning time lol.
OK OK it was inspirational.... I told you that already but since you moan about lack of response I will pamper to ya lol.... Stop moaning and do some more inspiring for me !!!
The Butterfly bit could be elevated with some sorta smoke/ particle vapour trail from the hand? Make it a more magic moment? Is that a celtic cross in the background... Is Wizard Celtic, or is St Patrick buried around there somewhere? :p
As ever your work keeps me pushing forward so stop writing long posts n get inspiring :D
Yours as always, and in good humour
IK
Noko... man that sounds great, but it's a bit over my head... Any chance of a vid tut? |
Post by noko // Aug 7, 2008, 7:34am
|
noko
Total Posts: 684
|
Yes, very much so Igor and thanks for asking. Some things maybe easy once you get to know them but getting to know how something works can at times be very hard so hopefully I can show this in video for all. |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 10, 2008, 6:36pm
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
Igor! There's a certain irony that I moan about people not responding and then I don't reply when they do respond!! Sorry about that - I somehow missed your post.
Better late than never!
Thanks for your kind words.
re "So much to learn I am nearly busier than when I was working lol". Man I can SOOO relate to this! I really have no idea how I ever managed to fit a 40 hour a week job into my life before I discovered 3d!!:D
I hope your missus and daughter enjoyed the vid - and I also help it went some way to explaining to them why you spend so much time on your computer!!
I had originally intended to add some more 'magical' effects on the appearance of the butterfly's but this eventually fell into the "to hard" basket.
Re Celtic Cross - apparently my ancestry is a mix of Norman and Scots via a set of Cockney grandparents so somewhere amongst that lot there must be some Celtic genes. I love Celtic designs and music and have always preferred the Celtic Cross as a metaphysical symbol to the more usual crosses (which seem unbalanced by the lack of a circle component) - but don't get me started talking about symbology or you're likely to end up with another long post which represents time I could be spending making more animations!;) |
Post by Igor K Handel // Aug 12, 2008, 8:37am
|
Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
|
Yes I certainly said to the missus, look at this..... that's the sort of thing I fancy being able to do.
er I also said that I'd seen better Lip sync in spagetti westerns lol .....
oops am laughing here, i Probly should have left that bit out.... But heck you know me :p
but it did make me laugh though .cos...... it was........ well just not your usual very high standard... I refer only to the lip sync not the rest of the anim..or artwork!
I assume you have checked out pamela and magpie? Not looked at em for years, so not even sure if they were 2d or 3d,,,, ah the mind goes fuzzy round the edges at this age lol. Morphs should make things a lot easier now for lip action.... LOL that sounds like some sorta teen slang.... fancy some lip action babe :D or some similar doomed chat up line
Actually now you bring it up (and I never lay in bed even once and thought about this :p).....(strangely)...... the circle on a cross does kinda..... well... round it off. that's very observant of you.
Nomans, Scots, Cockneys... Lucky you never turned out a crazy mixed up kid. You could have been a one man ethnic minority :D
Ok I gotta dash have a skeleton in the oven.... I mean ... well he's nearly ready.. Hmmm wonder why I assume it's a he? Sexist skeleton builder seeks work lol Wonder when Heidi builds a skeleton is it automatically a she?
I'm outta here
Keep inspiring... your getting the hang of it rightly :p The inspiring I mean
(not the lip sync....rofl)
IK |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 13, 2008, 3:28am
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
Lip Sync - yeah well it works beautifully in the Japanese language version!!;)
OK, yeah guilty as charged. In my defence I have to say that this was my very first attempt at animating mouth movements and clearly I have a long way to go - hmmn, perhaps I should go to the library and see what animation reference material they have? At this stage it can't do any harm!!:D
Re the cross - apparently the Celtic version is much older than the Christian version and represents (much like the Taoist Yin/Yang symbol) the union of male and female energies - the cross being linear and outgoing represents the fundamental Male Principle and the circle representing the feminine. Most religions express the idea of balanced dynamism between male and female principles in some way, with the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism) being notable exceptions in that they focus on the idea of a single masculine god. (Interestingly enough the moon in the Moslem Moon and Star symbol represents the feminine principle as does the promotion of Mother Mary in the Catholic faith).
Meanwhile, I can't seem to get my mouth working right! |
Post by Igor K Handel // Aug 13, 2008, 4:37am
|
Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
|
Actually Wiz I had this sudden thought on a long drive I was doing today...
The Recent tut on building trees using alpha planes.... For the butterfly from hand arrival bit.. avoiding particles... What about making loads of small alpha planes with the "particles" substitute painting on em. Place em in the shape of the final "particle" cloud arrival effect. Then KF animate the visibility of em to give the illusion of movement/ cloud expansion? Just a thought, not sure how convincing it could look.
For sure you are a sophisticated rhetorician, enebriated by the exhilerance of verbosity and communication through written word.... lol NB I changed that a bit from the origonal quote ;) and the origonal had all the words spelt correctly DOH :p
Do you know I never knew that about the symbology of circle and cross. Learn something new everyday...
IK
PS Aidan and I got the realtime screen streaming and voice experiment I mentioned in last PM, working really well last night... strangely no-one but us seems overly excited by the possibilities. Am starting to wonder if I am from another planet with completely different perceptions of what is useful and what is not. lol |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 13, 2008, 6:21pm
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
Hi Igor - I think the particle option may be available in Model/LW side - you can use trueparticles and then once set up you can swap the particles for other objects IIRC. This would involve using the Model side animation rather than the workspace - which so far has no particles.
Actually the butterfly's were something of an afterthought - the animation was really more about me learning to use morphs than anything else (and yes I've still got some way to go there!).
I like your quote - Churchill? He had lots of polysyllabic reparte.
Re: "Learn something new everyday... " - the best way to avoid becoming an old dog is to keep learning new tricks!;)
Re your collaboration experiments with Aidan; I have a theory about the entire collaboration/shared spaces thing. It basically involves new ways of communicating with other people - and one of the beauties of email, IM, chat groups etc is there is a certain degree of safety and anonymity involved with these types of (typed) communication. We are forced to converse more slowly and (hopefully) with a little more thought.
When speaking person to person - specially someone you've not spoken with before - the interaction is a bit more immediate. For anyone who is shy, or awkward with spoken communication, perhaps lacking a little in confidence the Shared Space/VOIP thing may well be a little intimidating at first.
I know I was hesitant about going to my first Shared Space meeting. Silly I know but we all fear the unknown to some extent. My theory is that this is what limits the enthusiasm of some (or even many) people when thinking about shared space/VOIP.
There is a big difference between sitting quietly and listen to music while I type and actively participating in a real-time conversation. To a certain extent I spend time on my PC to avoid actually talking to people - people rarely listen to other people and if you try it you'll see why!:D
Typed and written communication accesses a different part of the brain to spoken communication which may also contribute.
Anyway that's my half baked theory of the week - I think as soon as people get more accustomed to real-time shared interaction the general enthusiasm will take off. |
Post by trueBlue // Aug 13, 2008, 8:25pm
|
trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
|
Very cool animation here W!zard! I... like it. :)
Here is a pair of Render to Texture Glasses for your Character.
Try them on for size. You will be able to get real time reflections. |
Post by Igor K Handel // Aug 14, 2008, 12:07am
|
Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
|
Hi Wiz
To me the model end of the prog is "The Dark Side" lol. I am working on the premise that Workspace is where it's at and where it's going, so am concentrating all my efforts there. I just use the model side as the worlds biggest Obj. importer lol.
Yes I believe it was Churchill, not 100% though.
Re Learning something new everyday. On a personal level I live to learn, it's just the way I have been built. Seems to be some sort of implant I have been programmed with :confused:
Interesting theory on the collaboration. Very close to the reality of things I believe. I agree that a first online collaboration meeting appears before hand to be daunting. But thanks to the warm TS users welcome and acceptance, the reality is a very enjoyable and comfortable experience for anyone.
Perhaps there is also an apprehension that publicly sharing 3D skills may prove to be embarressing experience, and private confidence evaporates when the actual availability of sharing realtime warts, mistakes and all is just too far out of peoples comfort zone. Personally I just shrug my shoulders and think stuff it there will always be others with greater skills and others with fewer. So I my quest to improve over rides any potential embarressment etc.
I tend to write as I speak, partly to save editing times, but also as I believe the immediacy tends to get across the enthusiasm I feel for something, perhaps subconsciously in the hope of this becoming infectious. I am atrocious at writing "formal" letters etc. Downside is the length of texts and lack of focus for the reader. Writing an instruction manual for me is an Alien artform:D
Agree on the option to use PC/hobby as a way to get some peace. Though even in shared space no one is forced to text, voice or anything but watch if thats what they prefer.
As an aside I sometimes wonder whether living in Ireland for 40 years as I did contributed to the way I communicate. Irish people tend to be very welcoming enthusiastic about everything and communicate much more openly and with great passion than here for example in England. Here in England things, to me anyway, seem much more reserved, much more low key... almost like living in a library lol
Keep inspiring
IK |
Post by Ambrose // Aug 14, 2008, 12:09am
|
Ambrose
Total Posts: 261
|
I totally missed this one?
Anyway great, looks just like one of these television 3D's :banana:
Great work and very nice flow, everything just about right.
One can allways improve but this is good so no need to try to find faults ;)
This is totally television :D
SeYa/Ambrose... |
Post by W!ZARD // Aug 14, 2008, 2:00am
|
W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
|
@trueBlue - Realtime reflections? That would be cool - thanks trueBlue I'll check these glasses out. I must confess I looked at the glass shader that comes with tS (in the scene with the wine glasses) but it looked a couple of notches too complicated for me!
@IKHandel - I learned 3d using tS 3.2 so I'm fairly familiar with the old model technology however it's increasingly becoming the Dark Side for too. I'm just totally loving the character animation tools and PE tools in the Workspace and I'm comfortable enough with the flow now that doing anything complex in Model side seems really stilted by comparison now.
Re learning - it's one of the greatest pleasures in life for me. I'm a compulsive reader and just love "knowing stuff" (It's a Wizard thing;)).
Consequently I have no shortage of interesting theories about all manner of things ;). You name it and I've probably got a theory about it and if not I can usually whip one up fairly quickly.;).
Your comparison of living in Ireland and England is interesting. Here in New Zealand the further South you go the friendlier the people are in general.
Your comments about living in a library made me laugh. 30% of NZ's population was (like me) born in Blighty - and many of them (unlike me) tend to be almost super-English (specially in Christchurch where I currently live). There is nothing wrong with this of course but they do seem to emphasize the infamous British Stiff Upper Lip thing. The net result of this is that when I returned to England I was surprised by just how unreserved most of them were.
Of course I theorise that there are as many regional differences in temperament as there are in accents. I was living in Kent (near Nez and MadMouse) and found the locals to be very friendly.
@Ambrose - thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed my little animation.:cool: |
|
