Anim8or Community

Cheers daniel99.  There's a lot to not like about Carrara, there are some things that are just plain weird, but I guess I'm familiar with it by now so it no longer bothers me too much.  When I do a project purely in Anim8or I am always impressed by the excellent workflow; the ability to create multiple Objects, Figures and Scenes within a single project is just excellent and I really miss this in other packages.  If the render speed of ART could be improved (most of my renders need reflections and other tricky stuff so Scanline is not really an option) I would love to work entirely within Anim8or.

Is an animation anywhere to be seen, yet?

Also, what external app do you use for rendering, if you don't mind me asking?

Thanks!

Cheers wolfsong73 and daniel99.  This is from the webseries Mission Backup Earth (http://missionbackupearth.com/) which is a zero-budget production based mainly in Berlin but involving 3D artists from all around the world (I'm Australian).  The image is a frame from an animation, though I don't recall which episode it appears in!  One of the earlier ones I think. (EDIT: It starts at 4:53 in episode 1 of the prequels here: )

The render was done with Carrara which is similar to Anim8or in that it is a comprehensive modelling/animation/rendering package, however it's not free or open source.  Its modeller is kinda terrible to be honest, which is why I still prefer to build in Anim8or, however it has an excellent renderer that is able to make use of multi-threading and network-rendering.  If I engage both my i7 machines that's 16 threads of rendering power, which equals speed.  Since I'm mainly rendering HD1080 at 24 fps, speed is essential to maintain workflow.  While the sample image above could absolutely have been rendered with Anim8or (in fact, ART renders look nicer than Carrara's in my opinion) it would have taken many times longer to render (2-3 minutes per frame in Carrara, possibly 20-30 minutes or more in Anim8or depending on settings).

Carrara's renderer also has a few cool things like light cones, lens flares, secondary illumination etc. which could all be done in post but it's cool to have them there.  There's a few other things Carrara can do that are yet to be added to Anim8or (eg. physics) but since Steve has been releasing updates the gap has reduced considerably (eg. inverse kinematics - something that has been on my Anim8or wishlist for years . I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but plan to asap).

While loath to invoke the name of Blender as I have no interest in starting another Anim8or vs. Blender thread, it does have a pretty awesome renderer and is, I believe, approaching the power of Maya, 3DS Max etc.  However, it's interface is almost the antithesis of Anim8or's, being one of the nastiest GUIs I've ever had the displeasure to work with.  There are also a few stand-alone renderers out there such as Kerkythea, some with steeper learning curves than others.

I will continue to work with Anim8or as long as I am able and will continue to sing its virtues whenever I get the chance.  As an introduction to 3D animating it's hard to beat, and as a basic modelling toolbox I'm yet to find its peer.

To my way of thinking (with minimal print experience) there's two ways to define the resolution of an image:

1) Specifying the size of the image (in mm or inches) and specifying a DPI resolution; or
2) Specifying the number of pixels in the X and Y dimensions.

The DPI figure is of no value if referring to the image by it's X/Y pixels, it will be determined by the printed/displayed size of the image (ie. DPI = X/W where X is the width of the image in pixels and W is the width in inches).  Conversely, a printer requesting a certain DPI makes sense only if the printed size of the image is known, so if you need a 5 X 8 printed image and the printer needs 300DPI you'd need to render an image 1500 x 2400px.  Or am I missing something?

Love your work, Cori.  Excellent concept and quality-wise it looks TV-ready to me!  I'm more of a lurker than an active member these days, projects keeping me busy, but always great to see what folks are up to.  Good luck with Galacticats

Like all things, Anim8or is easier when you know how.  There's a wealth of information online and this forum is a great place to ask for help, but I would recommend giving the manual a once-over and have it handy as a reference (manual available here: http://www.anim8or.com/learn/manual/index.html).  It's short, to the point, and covers all the basics.  This particular function is explained in section 4 - Object Editor Point Editor: "Applying Multiple Materials" (http://www.anim8or.com/learn/manual/4_object_editor.html#object_point_operations).

Owl, think of the parent as the child's 'zero' location, and the child's position as being relative to the parent's position.  So, if you move the parent only, the child moves with it since its location relative to the parent hasn't changed.  If you move both parent and child in a single frame you are moving both the child's reference AND the child's position relative to that reference.  Any movement of a parent will result in movement of a child, but the reverse is not true, as RudySchneider pointed out.

One way to visualise parent/child relationships might be to think of your arm.  Your fingers are 'children' of your hand, which is a child of your forearm, which is a child of your upper arm, which is a child of your shoulder.  If you move your upper arm, your forearm, hand and fingers all move too since they are 'attached', even though you haven't flexed any finger, hand or elbow muscles.

Setting a skeleton in Figure mode essentially constructs a parent/child hierarchy, but for non-organic things (ie. meshes that don't deform) such as a robot arm you could assemble the parts in Scene mode using a parent/child relationship without using Figure mode at all.

My desktop machine will stay Windows 7 for the foreseeable future.

Ditto.  Until I see any benefit in upgrading I'll be sticking with W7.  Good to know Anim8or runs on W10 though.