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- Yesterday
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Terry Q. joined the community
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Thank you for all your efforts Robert! To address your comment in the video about using the translate channel (or any other channel) as the source of our motion data in the conversion to the controller, this is exactly what I planned to do if there was not an easy automated way to get there with pose sliders. The 0 to 100 values, and the small size of an action file with the ability to parse out the channels from logically named pose sliders was nice. I can get to the 0 to 100 values in other ways with constraints, but when parsing the data it requires more effort due to the duplicate naming. Search a project file for "matchname =Z" and see how many hits you get I had played with some of the text editing solutions to transfer the channels as well. I think you have definitively shown that I need to stick with our first version of the tool that pulled from a position channel.
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Stitch in a loop from which a wing will be extruded... I added a couple CPs near the front edge so i can define the shape of the bone inside the skin better... Now I can extrude that loop out to make the patches for the wing... This theory of the wing flap is thought to be inaccurate today, but I'll do it because it's iconic... extra CPs for knobbier joints...
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aw88wins joined the community
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Versions I & J can't load Enhance AM atx & trb
robcat2075 replied to R Reynolds's topic in Animation:Master
Steffen seems to have fixed this. I was able to load and render with the two sample plugins you had in the bug report. Keep your eyes peeled for v19k when it becomes available. Thanks for discovering the issue, Roger! -
Try this... clip4900BoneMotiontoPoseSlider.mov
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Tchotchkes
- Last week
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It is a tool we wrote internally. It is a separate app that we wrote that is a basic converter to translate to the controller hardware we use, and we added some features to help with the real world issues of acceleration and deceleration limits of the actuators. I hope to at some point develop this stuff into an A:M plugin(s) that allows me to see in realtime on a timeline an overlay of an acceleration curve with the current position over time spline. This would allow me to animate to the limits preset into the plugin and make sure that nothing is moving in a way it can't in reality without having to save out and bring back in. When we did this during our first tests we just created an Excel project that did all of this conversion.
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What is the origin of the tool you use to extract Pose slider data into a format for your "actuators" to use? Did you write it? Someone in your company? Is it a plugin that works in A:M or something that works on a saved file?
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Robert, This is getting so close to where I need to be. But yes, getting the pose sliders to record key frames would be ideal. I came across another issue I overlooked as I was working through this with you. In my other projects because of their simplicity, I can just use key framed pose sliders in an action, export that action, run it through the filtering software to refine any acceleration or deceleration issues, then import that edited action file back in to A:M, drop it on the model and watch the play back to visualize the changes. This ability goes away to some degree with the expressions. What I think I need to do is build an animation rig and a separate playback rig if I continue down this path.
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I tried that and sent an EXE to someone but they couldn't run it. Turns out, Grandma was running Linux. D'oh! Once she got her Windows virtual machine running it worked OK.
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Robert, Instead of running in Debug mode change to Release and that will build the executable.
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Paul, I have a C++ program that runs in Visual Studio. How do i create an exe from that that i can give to another windows user and it will run on their computer?
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Absolutely interested in that! Before I was in my teens (over 40 years ago) I was a walking dinosaur encyclopaedia. Now I'm just a dinosaur. Couldn't find an install disk other than A:M 97 so I applied for the trial period just to see how much A:M has changed in my time away from it, but nothing came of that. Does the trial period even work?
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scenes from un-aired pilot for a TV series starring William Schallert and trouble-making cartoon character named "Philbert." This was primarily a project of Friz Freleng. Live action directed by Richard Donner, later of "The Omen," "Superman" and "Lethal Weapon" fame.
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w88winsnetthai joined the community
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Charles, The above technique causes the Pose slider to move with the bone motion but it doesn't create an actual data channel of key frames for the Pose slider. If that is a problem, I have a solution.
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Prehistoric! Image Contest! Deadline Nov. 30!
robcat2075 replied to robcat2075's topic in Animation:Master
Still two weeks to go for Prehistoric! Here is another Prehistoric tip... -
Indimeric joined the community
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kattyu joined the community
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try this... clip4894GimbalExpression.mov
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Yeah, looks like it needs to be higher up with a more pronounced curve to the neck...
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I've always wondered if a:m could be used to drive an anamatronics rig. I'm working on building a finding Nemo seagull now in am and 3d printing it. I figured I would have to build my one controller and interface in either raspberry pi or arduino. But using am...now that gets me wondering what the workflow would look like.
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So to answer the first question, yes, expressions could probably be made to do what I want in this case. So the example you provided in the video was based on the "demo02" action I set up where I hand animated the actuator to match the gimbal motion. In this case if I hand animate the poses then I get what I need in the pose sliders and there is no need for a baking step. I placed this action in there to demonstrate the end result I was looking for. Look at the "demo01" action. You will see that the actuators are not moving. This is the where I would like to find a rig setup to automatically move the actuators to match the gimbal motion. Also, yes, it is true I can pull the translate value out of file and run that to the controller. It does create an extra step because I will need to process that separately from the other motions pulled from pose sliders. In fact our first version of the translation tool worked specifically on bone rotation values and not pose slider positions.
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Tell me if I'm getting this... clip4891GimbalBakingA.mov
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there should be a straightforward solution. i can almost taste it. To summarize: you want the linear motion of Act_Target_Left and Act_Target_Right to be mirrored in the motion of posesliders? Was doing that with expressions not working?
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I am going to go into more explanation here of my goal and issue so that it may help spark some ideas. Normally the animatronics we build have a single actuator tied to a single point of motion, usually a rotational axis, stacked on another point of motion. In an animation model and rig I build accurately to the real world items as possible. This usually results in a single bone that has a certain range of rotation applied through a a pose slider. Then in an action file I would animate to the prerecorded audio simply adjusting the pose sliders per axis of motion. This FK animation process work very well for the majority of the characters we have built. I would animate a neck rotation, then the head tilt for example, building each layer individually. All of these key framed pose sliders are exported in an action file to some custom software we created to run a filter through the channels to adjust the acceleration/deceleration profiles to match what the real world actuators can do based on load specs and so on. Then this is exported to the controller hardware. I can send this data both ways as well. Once the adjustments are made to the channels, I can bring it back into A:M to see how it may have changed and then adjust if necessary. One day i hope to just have this function in A:M as a plugin instead having to export and re import. So now this is where my current problem lies. We have a mechanical design that uses two actuators to control a gimbal. This means that there are some tricky rigs to emulate accurately. In most cases I would like to use a pose slider to control each actuator independently so I have recorded key frames on the pose channel. I can make this work now and is acceptable. However, this is a good case to look at using a more IK workflow where I am moving a single null and the pair of actuator follow and automatically record key frames to their respective channels. I don't spend quite enough time building complex rigs in A:M to instantly know the cleanest approach. I am attaching a stripped down model of what I am doing so you can look at it. This is to scale as well. There is a single null target that is essentially the nose of the character. This null is followed by a single bone using an aim at constraint. The base of this bone represents the gimbal. There is a triangular frame (the gimbal plate) that has two nulls used as targets to aim the actuators at. Each actuator has a pose slider that moves it 0 to 100% through its range of extension and retraction. In the Demo02 action I animated the head aim target, then by hand animated the pose sliders to line up with their respective targets on the gimbal plate. This gives me the ability to very simply perform the head, and then also generate the key framed poses specific to the actuators needed for export. So, this last step of hand positioning the pose sliders and generating those pose key frames is what I was hoping to find a way to automate. Am I dreaming? I have another element that would operate in a similar fashion, but has 4 actuators. A second pass by hand to set those key frames could be time consuming. Charles Gimbal Demo.prj
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Don't be sunk.... come to Live Answer Time at Noon CST on Saturday November 16! If we are lucky, Steve Shelton will be by with a simcloth project to look at. November 16 is the 226th birthday of Irish painter Francis Danby Francis Danby's The Deluge is 15 feet wide!
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It sure is a tiny body for such a large head. Now that i look at this I realize I've got the neck attached to the head wrong. It's good i didn't spend time trying to perfectly attach it yet.
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Do you mean rotation? If you just need to tie a pose slider to the rotation of a bone, that is smartskin. You can link anything that can be keyframed to the rotation of a bone.
