Anim8or Community

When learning Maya, I found it very intuitive at first. Coming from a background of things like photoshop, illustrator and flash. But before using it or Max for that matter I tried AN8 and even with the entire manual for it printed out (it big enough to be a weapon) it took years to fully understand how it's set it up in comparison to those programs that I started understanding the first day (and I'm STILL struggling with the user interface even on my best days). Like I said once you figure it out you can use it to do many things but when you have to click like 3 or 4 buttons to do simple things it becomes a really inefficient. Also considering that the language and interaction used for some features differ in comparison to some of the professional programs it's only going to add to confusion when going from one to the other. (for existence I dont think the word vertice is used ANYwhere in the program).

I don't deny that the basics of modeling a figure (extruding, faces, edges, polygons, etc) dont change I agree but when you cant figure out on one program how to do the same in another there's a disconnection in learning that stems from the difference in the interface and become compounded by the lack of features. You might sculpt a fully photo real human in AN8, but you can't take that to a job interview with a company where they use the professional programs because when they ask you how long it took to do, it'll be irrelevant because you're not versed enough to do it in the program they're using. Sure if there were companies out there that used it for a professional tool it would be a useful skill to have but the lack of updates on a regular basis would keep most companies from relying on it. That's why I refer to it as a hobbyist program.

Really useful! thnx!

You might run into issues importing models from other sources. Creating a character in AN8 is probably your best bet. If you're starting out I'd suggest building your person in parts then you can combine them into a single mesh later with Build>Join solids.

Either way forces you to reposition either the gun or the flash which gets excessive the more a character moves around. For example just having a character pick up his gun and fire from cover would have you plotting about a dozen points and then having to re-angle the gun on every one of those points and you'd still see frames of it clipping through the hand. You'd probably end up having to key frame every frame of the movement, that's way more work than it needs to be for such a simple action.

Seems to me it'd be easier to keep the weapon in the hand and just have the flash free float and appear in front of the gun when you fire. this way you only have to reposition it when it fires. It doesnt solve the problem and is still an annoyance, but after looking at any other ways of doing it it seems the lesser of the two evils unfortunately. AAARGGHH!!! Frustrating 

You trying to make a muzzle flash.

The light you create at the end of a weapon is just going to be that, light. It will have no physical existence. so you have to create the shape for your muzzle flash with polygons, place it in the scene in front of your gun and turn off the "cast shadows" then for each frame of the flash you have to turn on and off not only the light but the visibility of the polygon.

That's how I understand it. Kinda makes things difficult because it means if your character/weapon is moving as it fires you have to re position the muzzle flash and light for every frame that it fires as it moves.

what is the file extension of the sounds you're using? what are you recording them with?

I've been using anim8or for a long time but because of the nature of it being a hobby for it's creator, I never committed to learning it full time. So I skipped learning aspects that had no direct baring on my projects. This particular character wasnt designed with a mouth because voice acting was a low priority over things like moving a shoulder or a leg.