Anim8or Community

I only used shadows a few months ago and I'm forgetting already!

Yes you can have shadows using scan line.  The light needs to be set to casts shadows  and to "ray trace" in advanced properties, the objects' properties need to be set to casts shadows / receives shadows. 

There's lots of info in the manual chapter 7, scene editor.

I think that scanline shadows are more versatile than ART.

I searched the asl spec like you and didn't find it.  It says struct shape can contains a mesh or subdivision shape; the mesh struct is described but I don't see a subdivision struct.  So my guess is that a subdivision cannot be manipulated in asl.

Maybe Steve can confirm one way or the other when he sees this thread.

I had problems with the link

I think I created a discord account first and the then used the link - I can't remember for sure.

I'm putting together my entry for the Other Worlds 30S animation challenge in the facebook group.

The story line is a cooker, called Other World 44, blows up and ends up in Orbit, meets some satellites, then falls back to earth.

My animation will be built from 4 sets – Kitchen, Outside house, going to Orbit, In Orbit

Kitchen is coming on but there are loads of objects to make for the introductory visual explanation:



The automated stirring contraption gives OW44 arms that I will use later:



Outside the house (very short scene) I haven’t started but I’ve got idea for what it will be.

OW44 going into Orbit (very short scene) I have a rough sketch

In Orbit - very few objects to model but more animation and interaction, OW44 will interact with 2 satellites although there are 6 satellites in total:



Test render of the opening in Orbit scene:

Hi Raxx and all texture animators

This is a really clever script, I’m using it in my animation challenge in the facebook group.  Thanks so much.

I had a couple of random problems –

• it would not animate (no texture was shown)
  
• when the an8 file opened it complained that the texture file could not be found and it removed the material

I’ve found 2 causes for these issues:

1) If the path anim_controller (multiplier) value goes negative and the an8 file is saved, the texture file name is saved as (example) file0000-3.png.  I know I shouldn’t let the value go negative by setting a nice linear gradient in the graph editor (BTW excellent video tutorial) but it took me a while to understand what was happening.

I changed
// Round down to the nearest frame when the multiplier is applied
   $texFrame = floor(max($controllerAnimFloat,0) * $numFrames + 0.5);   

Of course there is still no animation while the key is negative but I don’t have to redo the texture as a result. 

2) This is still puzzling me; I’ve got a work around but don’t really understand the root cause.

When anim8or builds the texture file name, sometimes it prepends the full path to the project dir and with my relative path script parameter of ./sprites/anim1 the texture filename path becomes

C:\pathtomyproject\ ./sprites/anim1/file0000.png

Which anim8or doesn’t complain about but does not appear to load.

Other times anim8or prepends .\ and with my relative path script parameter of ./sprites/anim1 the texture filename becomes

.\ ./sprites/anim1/file0000.png

Similar problem.

When I started play with the script I had a relative path of ./sprites/anim1 and it worked just fine so there must be a third variant (the expected path result), but I can’t recreate it now.

I’m puzzled because I can’t work out what causes each of the different path variants? (I’m on win7 x64)

My work around is either

Use an absolute path C:/pathtomyproject/sprites/anim1/ as the script parameter

Or (this is what I’m using at the moment, EDIT: didn't stay working at file open, but worked while editing / rendering)

"Sprites\\anim1\\"  as the script parameter

Hope this helps others that may have similar issues. If its not working the place I look is the object material definition to examine the path to the texture, it should be a valid path to one of your texture files, the file number is approx the last frame you viewed in the scene + starting animation file number.

@Raxx, Thanks again for a great script 

A

@itsstillthinking

I thought your file posted in ongoing anim8or development as an example of a hair pin on the camera path was empty but then I realised the camera is moving

You have 3 keys in the time track and you want the camera to move from the first to the third with the second as a corner, no looping like a hairpin as the camera moves through key 2.

(@All, please jump in and correct me if I get any part wrong.)

The camera follows a Bezier curve (or similar) path from key 1 through key 2 and on to key 3.
Key 2 is a “smooth” key.  From the manual section 8 Animation:
http://www.anim8or.com/learn/manual/8_animation.html#animation_with_key_frames

There are three kinds of keys: corner, smooth and step. Smooth matches the direction and speed that the value changes as it passes through the key. It is what you usually want when you are animating and is the default. Corner keys can have different incoming and outgoing speeds and directions. You would use this where a bouncing ball strikes the ground. Step keys are like corner keys but allows the value to change abruptly. You would use this to make a character suddenly change positions.

You need to double click on the middle key (2) on the time track and change its type to “corner”.  This means that when you open the graph editor you can change the speed and direction of the path through key 2.
 
Open the graph editor, it shows the current path taken by the camera. If the camera position controller is selected in the time track, which it will be if you’ve just changed the key type, the graph editor will open with the camera position key selected on the left and the path shown on the right.

On the left of the path is key1, middle is key2, right is key3. If you double click the middle key on the Z path, its properties will open, close the properties dialog and you will see two handles attached to the middle key. If you left click & drag these handles you can change the shape of the curved path, even make it a corner.

It that what you meant?

Yes this only happens when using the OpenGL render.

I'm wrong about fast select always being on - it works fine.  (Don't know why I thought for a while that the selected items appearing in the render was related to fast select.)