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[Familyman]

here are two little clips from somethign I am working on, tey still need a lot of work, and I mean A LOT!!,,
but I thought I would post what I ahve so far...
Thoughts and comments please..

[hihosilver]

That's a nice start you have there.  I like your use of terranim8or (I assume).

So here is what I think you could do to improve this:
In the first scene, the movements are smooth and nice, but they're a bit too uniform.  Perhaps the radar should stay that way, though perhaps you also want it to rotate slower.  The turret I feel should move a bit differently.  Perhaps not just side to side, but up and down as well.  It would be nice if they didn't necessarily move in unison as well.  It's very obvious as a viewer and takes my attention away from the full scene.

As for the second scene, I feel you could speed up the spaceship a lot.  I'm not sure what exact effect you're going for, but I doubt the ship would stay flying if it was going that slow.  Next, the turning still needs a little work, but it may also be the camera.  If you set the camera to have the spaceship as its parent, it will move the same as the ship, but also remember you can stray from this so that it doesn't follow it exactly (once again, following exactly behind would look strange and unattractive to the eye.  Right now you have some good smooth camera movement, but it doesn't sync very well with the ship.)

As I said, this is a decent start.  I look forward to seeing what you can do!

[thecolclough]

...hihosilver just said almost everything i was going to say...

my only other crit was, maybe it would look a bit better if you thinned down the wires on the radar dish.  i think the whole cage structure on the front of the dish looks a bit chunky at the moment, but that might just be me, being fussy

very good start, though

- colclough

[ENSONIQ5]

Great work (how cool is Terranim8or, huh!).  Couple of suggestions:  Maybe it's my monitor but both the vids appear a bit washed out, too bright and not enough contrast.  Not sure why this would be, but the starfield background would look much better with higher contrast.  Also, the panoramic background seems vertically stretched (or horizontally squished).  Maybe fiddle with the background parameters, in particular the High and Low settings (which are reversed in V0.95 by the way, a minor bug.  High actually sets the bottom of the image, and Low sets the top).

Other than that, I agree with Hiho and Colclough.  It's an excellent start, and I particularly like the Flash Gordon style ship and the alien terrain.  Very cool!

[Familyman]

Thanks for all the advise guys,
The ship flying through the landscape needs a lot of work, I am not happy with the first turn that the ship makes, it is very blocky, as for the camera following I will try making the ship its parent and see what that looks like, I was trying to get the feel of the veiwer following the ship not knowing which way the ship was turning so the camera isn't following exactly.

Yes Terranim8or is great, after playing around with it a few times I figured out how to make a trench exactly wher I wanted it to go and it worked perfetly.

As for the Igloo and Radar, after reading your ideas and suggestions I agree that the gun and radar shouldn't follow exactly the same line, The effect I was trying for did't work, so what i am doing now ( I will post a link later) is hving the Radar scanning moving left to right AND up and down now (thanks for the idea), then once the radar has locked on the gun turret moves and locks on to where the radar is aiming.

As for the scenes looking a littel washed is because there is a fog on the igloo scene and that is making it look thatway. I am playing with that a bit, I am wanting to give it a foggy cold wintery feel. Plus with a fog setting the Snowflake look better,, I am finding that without a fog on some frames the light seems to shine and show up the transparant edging of the snowflakes..
I didn't notice the back ground was streched or squoshed but I will change that.
Thanks again to everyone. And stayed tuned...
Glda you like what i have so far and glad you liek the ship.

[Familyman]

ok so here is another render of the igloo with radar and gun turret..

[thecolclough]

as Captain Jack Sparrow put it: "much more better!"

the colours look waaaaay better in the new vid, and the re-animated radar and gun-turret are much improved.  i kinda liked the sideways-blowing snow in the old vid, but the more detailed flakes in the new one are nice.

- colclough

[Familyman]

Ok so this took 10 hours to render, it is only 300 frames (has sounds as well), the total scene will be 800 frames once rendered, Not sure yet how long the whole Animation will b, but it is going to be big.

[startrekfan001]

10 hours? WHAT? i thinkt you overpolied your scene dude! you should try to make your scene simpler. for instance, the mountains in the background can be rendered to an image, which you will set as background. nobody will see the difference, but you only had to render the mountains once, with same result as now. also, i hope you made the snowhouse and the connection so detailed using textures? cause it looks like you might have modelled all the carvings (the brick carvings, not the dirt.)

one last note: snow falls in the form of snowflakes, and much faster. these are crystals, thats impossible. just make little white dots falling really fast. thats more like a snowstorm.

otherwise, very very nice animation! nice improvement on your old one, too.

[almost cool]

ynow, you could make a whole movie from this.might want to uh... reduce the polygon count because about twelve seconds took 10 hours.maybe just make a movie of some sort and render overnight.a very long night.

[RudySchneider]

10 hours? WHAT? i thinkt you overpolied your scene dude!...

Actually, that works out to only two minutes per frame, which is not really that bad.  I've had animations that required individual frame renders of 20 and 30 minutes!  And really high-quality frames, with radiosity, can take FAR longer.  But, yes, anything you can do to simplify will naturally bring render times down, while sacrificing quality.  As the old adage goes, "Ya can't get sumthin' fer nothin'."

[ENSONIQ5]

10 hours? WHAT? i thinkt you overpolied your scene dude!...

Actually, that works out to only two minutes per frame, which is not really that bad.  I've had animations that required individual frame renders of 20 and 30 minutes!  And really high-quality frames, with radiosity, can take FAR longer.  But, yes, anything you can do to simplify will naturally bring render times down, while sacrificing quality.  As the old adage goes, "Ya can't get sumthin' fer nothin'."

Agreed.  So far my record is 55 minutes per frame.  Reducing the time would have involved either an unacceptable reduction in model integrity (low poly = game-like appearance) or the removal of shadows, also unacceptable for the particular video.

[thecolclough]

one last note: snow falls in the form of snowflakes, and much faster. these are crystals, thats impossible. just make little white dots falling really fast. thats more like a snowstorm.

ah, yes, but this is called artistic licence   the complex crystal thingies look cool, therefore they are 'right', even if not 'technically correct'.  i mean, when was the last time you saw a real igloo with a radar and machine gun on the roof, anyway?!! 

- colclough

[startrekfan001]

well.... i accept for my animations only render times of about 10 or 20 seconds per frame. with shadows, at MOST one minute per frame. AT MOST. there's ALWAYS a workaround to make the desired effect in a faster way. for example, some of my work, i merge with after effects. after effects renders effects much faster then anim8or (or any 3d program for that matter), so if i divide my render in layers and edit and compose everything in after effects, i could have a scene of 30 seconds, rendered out in maybe half an hour, given the average complexity of say, the video above?

anyway, i don't expect you guys ar using your anim8or in combination with a 2d video program, but i suggest you try it out. and be creative. Familyman, your work is getting better as we go. keep going. i'm expecting more from you

P.S.: Familyman, what computer do you have? that might explain a lot 

i have an AMD64 3700+, 1gb DDR RAM and ASUS motherboard.

[Kubajzz]

I like this animation, it's really nice beginning!

Don't worry about the render time... In fact 2 minutes per frame is pretty fast... As ENSONIQ5 said, sometimes it takes much longer Keep it up!

well.... i accept for my animations only render times of about 10 or 20 seconds per frame. with shadows, at MOST one minute per frame. AT MOST. there's ALWAYS a workaround to make the desired effect in a faster way....

I have to disagree. There's not always a way to render faster and get the same result. Especially when you are using ray tracing effects, soft shadows, high quality textures...

Why do you only accept render times of less than one minute? If you spend several days/weeks/months working on a project, it is worth to wait several days for the final render... I hate to say this, but if you never wait, you will probably never create a really nice animation...

One wise man said: "Beauty is hidden in details"
...unfortunately he was right Be patient, that's the point