m:studio 2.4d in use on SA Sports Hall of Fame

#241

Once I found something that worked. . . I never bothered trying anything else. .mpj seems to do the job.

#242

Motion Blur in Messiah isn’t that great. Its similar to Lightwave’s most basic multipass but doesn’t seem to do much in terms of edge AA. Side by side comparisons with things like Mental Ray really show its weekness. I tend to just not use Motion Blur at all. Kind of like my solution for large images. :sad:

#243

Heheheh - yes, you should maybe call that the “©®William Workstyle®©”.
-> Sell it together with messiah licenses as a superbundle >LOL<

But seriously, I don’t think this is addaptable to a broader range of users/studios…

Well, I gave Motionblur a try and it works … somehow.
What I found:

  • Motionblur works for object and camera motion, so at least that is fixed.
  • It depends completely on your AA Level -> higher Level = more steps inbetween = smoother look.
  • I don’t understand what the MotionBlur setting does:
    With a setting of 2 and AA Level 3, it renders 8 passes and combines them in the 9th pass.
    With all other MotionBlur settings I tried it does exactly the same - so for now I assume that Motion Blur is just a switch - 1 is off and 2 is on???
    Idiotic to say it politely. :banghead:

An AA Level of 4 does 15+1 passes, so I guess this thing is using the square of your AA Level for passes.
The more useful way of doing it would be to use AA Level * Motion Blur setting, so the user has finer control…

The quality is only good if you render so many passes that the strobe is invisible - like Wegg said, there is no AA for the motionblur passes…
If your scene is rendering fast or doesn’t have too many frames, it may be no problem, since those passes render rather fast.

The Blur Fraction value seems to be in frames, centered around the current frame. So a value of 10 gives you a blur over 5 frames before and 5 frames after the current frame.

P.S. When MB is combined with sampled Depth of Field, you can ease up on the very visible steps between the passes since the DoF is rather grainy and creates fuzzy edges. Maybe for your timewarp DOF could be a nice effect anyway?
Sure it is the usual tradeoff between sharp/clean and stepped and more natural but grainy…

Automatic camera focus on a null or an object can easily be done with the “Dist” expression:
Dist(Camera,Null,NOW,NOW) applied to the focal_distance channel of the camera…

But maybe better do it in post … :wink:

Cheers,

#244

Thanks for testing and posting motion blur info, Thomas. :slight_smile:

For now I have other problems. I’ve been using FlexMotion to create a basic rig that attaches a ribbon to a ring to a stopwatch. The ribbon lifts to pick up the ring which in turn picks up the stopwatch. I did a basic setup and uploaded a 2MB quicktime movie.

As you can see there’s a lot of axis flipping carrying on and no amount of digging on old threads nor the tips in the docs took the problem away. I did find many people with similar problems in the past, though.

My rig uses a 4-point curve with 3 springs. The 1st spring is set as the start. The 3 objects are simply parented to the 1st 3 points via nulls with expressions targeting them to the next point so that they follow the dynamics action but remain rigid. The idea is to later replace the top object with a soft body ribbon, but that’s irrelevant right now. There’s no collision detection going on.

Could I set this rig up using different dynamics technology that helps solve this axis flipping? Perhaps bones only? Or would this flipping problem be present regardless?

If all else fails, could I bake out the simulation and then manually edit the keyframes, getting rid of these spontaneous flipping mood swings?

I was so excited about how easy FlexMotion worked until this flipping problem appeared. Strange thing is that it was NOT flipping from the start. My initial rig was flipless: I could jiggle the thing around in real-time, key frame it and press play and it all worked flawlessly. I just changed some damping, strength, and weight settings.

I’ll try to do a fresh rig and keep it uncontaminated from tweaks and hope this flipping problem does not show up. But any help or insight into the problem would be appreciated.

#245

OK, found the problem: I had removed the tree structure of my 4 curve points.

After re-parenting them to one another in a tree, I immediately regained stability regarding the flipping problem. However, My animation key framing is now thrown out, requiring a fresh keying, but that’s no big deal. As soon as I have it nailed down, I’ll post the results and perhaps a project file for those interested.

I must say it’s awesome to press play, jiggle the start of the spring string thing around and then see the objects react in real time. Of course I do play back using the PlayFrames feature to make sure the simulation plays out properly with nothing skipped.

There’s a trick I used to get the watch lifting off the table while maintaining perfect registration and without using collisions. I credit my wife with the idea. Switch gravity off at the start of the simulation and in that way the watch does not drop through the table, but sits still (if you pull the spring carefully enough). Then as soon as the spring starts lifting the watch, I quickly animate gravity back to 1.0 and the whole lot dangles rather nicely.

#246

In the Motion Dynamics Springs block where I have to hold SHIFT + select the objects forming part of the spring system (using Make Branch Springs), the resulting spring usually ends up as a mess. I see John Riggs’ motion dynamics tutorial video on pmG also demonstrates this problem.

Problem: when selecting let’s say a curve point, any other object in the immediate area also gets added to the list. So instead of sitting with 4 curve points, I end up with nulls and other stuff also mixed in there. It requires re-editing the spring system list, cleaning up unwanted springs and checking each start and end point manually.

Is there a way to make this selection from the item list where I can simply and discretely select each item once without confusion?

If not, why on earth not?

#247

Cool you got it working.

The flipping problem is basically good old gimbal lock, just in a context where it makes no sense. Most other software simply has upvectors to compensate for it.
Could be a solution in messiah too, with using expressions, but I had one project where I was going through massive pain with a shadow rig and what not to compensate for the problems with Flex/Motion…

I’m looking forward to your clip, really! :thumbsup:

Cheers,

#248

Ha - simultaneous posts :slight_smile:

Well, yes, that shift-clicking is a pain in the behind.

Why? Because a developer thought it would be a good idea. :shrug:
There is quite some other “goodness” in the dynamics system (missing restoring force, need for much better, calmer damping …)

I ended up hiding everything I didn’t need before assigning the springs.
I also seem to dimly remember that somehow I was able to better determine what will be added as a spring before clicking - was it animate immediate highlighting on all views? Doesn’t that tell you what you are about to click at?
But a system where you would normally select objects and then hit a button “Make spring” would be much preferable.

Cheers!

#249

Not more than I am, that’s for sure. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the encouragement.

Messiah really has a wealth of well thought-out tools. Naturally much more can be done to make those tools more accessible, simple, ergonomic and more functional. But despite the occasional frustration, messiah has been a pleasure to use in this project - really. I hope I’m not counting my chickens before they are hatched here (a common problem on forum posts), but I feel the past number of weeks have affirmed my decision to use messiah commercially. So far there were 2 occasions that made me sweat a bit: (1) HDR AA and (2) the light projector not using image sequences. For (1) pmG came through for me and for (2) I found a work-around which improved my product.

Many of my frustrations I wholly attribute to my own ignorance of the software, a lack of studying the docs in depth, and a lack of experience with messiah in the areas I needed. For these shortcomings people on this forum have graciously and generously helped. :wavey:

#250

After searching for a whole morning for the fault in a basic 3-spring setup, here’s what I found messiah kept on doing…

Spring 1’s rest length was copied to Spring 2’s auto generated rest length.
Spring 2’s rest length was copied to Spring 3’s auto generated rest length.
Spring 3’s rest length was not used since there’s no Spring 4…
Spring 1’s rest length came from where? I have no idea but i’ts not one of the lengths in my spring system.

I’ll not post it as a bug just yet, since I did not do clinical trials to reproduce it. However, I suspect that there are remnants of the originally created spring system still inside messiah, even though none of that is evident on the GUI. In other words, when I created the spring system and I selected all those other nulls and things (see 4 posts up) then messiah made some calculations for spring rest lengths which are still in memory but which were deleted as part of my clean up. I suspect that a reload of the scene may clear it up…wait let me check…yes, just as I suspected, reloading the scene fixes the problem.

However, before I knew this, and with the help of my TD in Germany, I used the Dist(Null_Ribbon, Null_Ring, 0, 0) function in the Command Line Interface in Setup mode. This returned the distance which I entered manually after switching the rest length from Auto to Custom and my spring rig was fixed!

A better way to not have this in the future is, and as suggested by Thomas, to hide all objects in the area before SHIFT+selecting spring points for spring creation. This will cause a perfect and clean spring system to be created from the start with no cleanup required and no rest length bugs. If you must do clean up, first reload the scene before animating.

So what’s the going rate for bug reporting? Does pmG pay out in $ or € and do they mind making transfers to non-US accounts? :slight_smile: Nah, just give me a good final product for my client and the bug reports are on the house :rolleyes:

#251

mother.gif800x400

My work was paused today. My mother died. I post this in my WIP to reflect this event, this pause, this time of reflection on a mother I desired would longer remain my mother and a grandmother for our children. You did not know her, but I did. A season has now passed. The seed she has planted will continually bear fruit.

#252

Sorry to hear this Paul. All the best.
David

#253

My deepest regrets and condolences PaulNewman. :sad:
I hope you find a way to deal with this big loss. If there is anything I can do to help you through this time, please let me know. You are a great part of this community and I hope to see you back soon.

#254

Paul I feel so sorry for you!
Take care of you and your family.

/ Svante

#255

I can truly empathize with you, Paul. I know … I know what you must be going through. :sad:

#256

May the Lord shower you and your family with peace in this sad time.

Sincerely,
Rick

#257

Sorry to hear this Paul. I hope to see you back soon.

Sincerely,
Agustin.

#258

Thanks for you compassion, David.

Thanks so much for your gracious generosity, AlexK. Your kindness is already enough! Yes, it is a loss, but also a blessing knowing where she is now.

Thanks for your concern Svante, much appreciated. This event has indeed deepened my concern for my family. A great realization of how little loving we really do in the time we have.

Gary, thanks for sharing in my grief.

Thanks Rick, He has, He does.

Thank you Agustin for your concern. Animation delivery pressure has me back already. Yesterday was a day of grieving. Now I must get myself free from this job. Then I’ll celebrate my mother’s life with my family.

Thank you, William. Thank you.

Thank you all for opening your hearts to my loss.

#259

Paul: Best wishes from us too.
From your words I understand that you had a good relationship with her.
May she be kept in such good memory by all who had known her!

Best regards, :bowdown:

#260

Thank you Thomas. Yes, as good as possible under the circumstance of her mental condition and some trying circumstances on our side. Better business choices would have freed me up more to spend more time with her before her time was up. Her life before her condition was incredible. I was just a young boy but I remember those days well. She was not merely a good mother, good cook, good hostess, and good musician, but also a missionary who shared God’s love in and out of our home wherever she went - a true example for others to live up to. How many people were touched by her over the years, none of us will know.