Rodney

I have a vague memory that Bitmapplus was coded around the same time that the old bump maps were replaced with the new displacement. This may be related to what you are experiencing. I'd guess more but it's been too long since I played with Bitmapplus to be sure. Do you have the option to select Legacy Bumps or Displacement? If using displacement that setting needs to really be cranked up. Edit: A quick refresh by checking out the settings suggests... no.

Oh yeah. That's got the squetch going on. The difference isn't very noticeable until comparied with the original you posted. That subtle emphasis on the contact where there heel of the shoe gives way really helps a lot whereas there was no sense of weight before. Rockin'! Because I know you've got a lot more of this in you I'll call that one Yellow. IMO to get to Green you've only got to see the results of the final rendered shot! I think this is one reason why it's usually best to exaggerate our Actions/Poses at the early stage as they will always undergo change, be desaturated, watered down, and smoothed over later in the work. The strength of a shot is most often captured in the initial idea and that raw roughness needs to get locked hard in that first stage. Exaggeration will do this. Better to over exaggerate the shot then set it aside and later return when that shot can be viewed in the light of the entire production. We can always scale something back in if it works against the over all performance. If we are too conservative at the beginning we'll still be tweaking and refining the minute details when we should be polishing for the final presentation of the work... determining if our message has been received and determining how the audience is affected by the work. We tend to be conservative because we are too close to the work. That's only natural of course when the work is so personal.

Thanks Serg, I guess Emilio never released that program beyond it's initial test phase? For completeness's sake here is a link to where Martin asks Emilio why he needs to program the Set Bias plugin. Emilio responds and explains about the ability to access the In and Out of both the Alpha and Gamma settings, whereas in the properties panel we only have access to one of them. Martin sees the utility of it and thanks him for his efforts in creating plugins for A:M. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7989

Just viewed the turntable animation. Out of this world Stian. You've still got the magic touch! Do you have a final patch count?

Serg, Does that plugin still work with A:M? (Was that the Wave plugin?)

I rediscovered the information Emilo Le Roux had posted regarding the reason why he programmed his Set Bias plugin. It seems that in A:M doesn't give access to both In and Out Alphas and Gammas in the CP/Bias Properties panel. In the image attached he suggests that to create the outer bending in of the umbrella we have to select the CPs individually in order to type in each parameter. Using the comma to select the whole spline will adjust all of them the same (when the opposite values for each must be input in order to obtain the symmetrical curvature. I've added the umbrella model where I typed in the Alpha and Gamma settings manually. I think I got them all... The sad thing here is that I still don't fully understand the nature of Alpha/Gamma setting with respect to Bias. The same settings that would push a spline outward with -15 would push it inward as I went around the circumference of the umbrella. I never purchased Emilio's Set Bias utility so I don't know what all he incorporated into it. UmbrellaTop_BiasTesting.mdl

'The Curious Candle' is now playing at the top of the forum.

That definitely reads as having more contact. I like that! Without examining some video reference myself I don't know what other suggestions to offer. My thought is that for just a moment (during the moment where the weight is on each foot) there should be some obvious pushing down at the heel... with only about three frames to work with that's not an easy thing to show. If I were trying to accomplish it I would try to keep the contact line of the heel on the concrete while pushing the top of the shoe's heel downward. It might be easier for me to draw my thoughts. I think that is a wise call. If we were to use a three color system to indicate if this as a 'final' shot that is good enough to go into the final production I'd color this one Red (good enough to go forward but still could use some additional work). Then if time allows you to return to the scene you could strive to move it to Yellow or Green as the final goal. The important idea being that you could spend too much time in this shot when another shot is more deserving of the time at your disposal. Hope that makes sense. If you have time near the end of your production... who has time... you could always revisit the shot and exaggerate the weight more. What I've been finding in my little tests is that when I tweak I tend to hold back and only incrementally correct when major change is really called for. Animation is the medium of expression and clarity often follows after we register what has been communicated via exaggerated poses. I'm working on this whole idea myself and I've got a long way to go! In the end it's generally better to over-exaggerate because you can always soften that back if it reads (to the audience) as overdone in the final results. One element I'm trying to get locked into my pea sized brain is that each action/shot must carry a primary message. Looking at this one it seems to be 'the weight of the world'. To that end anything and everything at your disposal should be used to convey that otherwise why bother doing it at all. Ultimately, if the shot works... conveying YOUR intent... it works. Onward!

Gerry, I'm going to guess the rig doesn't allow for any toe movement? Personally I don't think you need a toe bone but just a little bit of movement (particularly squash and stretch) will sell this one. You can probably get this done in short order just by creating a Pose slider and adjusting the mesh to give a sense of weight by pushing the CPs/splines downward and outward. This character has the weight of the world (literally) on his shoulders so the contact with the ground... the ground doesn't give way but the shoe will... that contact is important. Edit: If you can render that without the background (make the background invisible) that Squetch can be animated/adjusted in post to demonstrate. I did a quick test manipulating your animation on a grid... harder to do without inadvertently changing the background.

Have a great day... relax and enjoy it! Happy Birthday! (And thanks for all your years of support!)

There are no autoriggers headed for v17 that I know of, perhaps in v18 or so? Does anyone know if some of the code from TSM is available to explore? There was an effort to build a node based rigging system outlined elsewhere in the forum (If I can find it I'll move it to the Users Development forum) If you've got specific ideas you definitely should share them as they might provide a missing element to something readily implementable. A:M Reports is of course the best place to launch a new feature request but if you are simply wanting to develop the idea there is the User Development area also. There we can collect a treasure trove full of ideas awaiting that inevitable day when A:M has an army of programmers at it's disposal. I'm trying to understand how locking of Bias would work (not how it would work in the interface... got that... how it would work with adjacent spline continuity). It seems to me that the act of fully locking the Bias (too where the adjacent splines would not be effected) would create a situation where the remaining CPs could only be adjusted vertically and horizontally. This constraining of the movement of CPs is already available via shortcut keys. Could you possible 'fake' a video that demonstrates your desired goal? There is no doubt that every CPs Biases could be locked but it's not clear what that effect would have on the rest of the model outside of options already available. If this is the first time you've opened the Properties panel and adjusted Biases there I'd recommend some further experimentation as you may already be able to accomplish your goal through a change of workflow.

Progressing very nicely... and quickly too! You are a natural at this splining thing.

Congrats for getting to the semifinals... almost there! I don't know who Jubal1 is but he votes at every level and the one he favors has won every time (he voted for you too of course). The semi finals pits you against another video he voted for in the last round. The suspense is building... Building... BUILDING! Who will Jubal1 vote for??? No pressure.

What's especially cool about watching someone else is that even when you know something thoroughly other people have a way of demonstrating a method you've never seen or heard before. The benefit some of the old masters (Eggington, Avalanche, Anzovin etc.) had was that they were often in a place to look over other peoples shoulders on a daily basis. You might just be walking by and see something cool and say, "Hey, how the heck did you do that?!" and they'd show you. Online its hard to determine what we already know... harder still to imagine what we don't know. Also, we tend to forget a lot of things too. I had a vague recollection of adjusting Biases in Action and Choreography windows but trying again just now... it didn't quite work as I recalled. Over the past few years local User's Groups have died off a bit... everyone is busy and it takes time to get together. Those are always great events to share ideas and workflows. We are always looking for good excuses to promote users Groups here in the forum so if anyone is interested in that angle just say the word. Meeting in person is always ideal but these days we do have some pretty amazing tech at our disposal that might also work. User's Groups have historically been location oriented but online it seems to me that 'theme or area of interest' might be the primary motivators. For instance, there is no reason why someone couldn't start up a Modeler's Group. Next year I'll be back in the states so... look out John Lemke... Milwaukee/Chicago needs a Users Group! v17 is on it's way... I know I'm excited about it!

I wish I was smarter when it came to knowing the ins and outs of the modeling tools we have available to us. Your discussion reminds me of Emilio (the guy who programmed the Sweeper plugin and another plugin called Set Bias). When it came to Bias tweaking Emilio was fearless and with that he had an incredible confidence that allowed him to create shapes in a matter of seconds that frankly I don't think I'd ever be able to make. The sad thing is... for me... the tools he used most often were the exact same tools we have available. When struggling with Biases its often good to know what your workflow is because that alone might be enlightening. We should share our workflows more often here in the forum because I know we'd learn a lot. That's the closest thing we have to sitting behind someone who is a real master at these things. As I recall, Emilio would almost never grab ahold of a Bias Handle with a mouse, rather he would type in the Bias settings in the properties panel... arrowing around the interface and using shortcut keys like crazy. In the end all of his surfaces where super smooth and his shapes approached perfection. It just left my head spinning, wondering how in the heck he learned to do what he did. If you are not using the Properties Panel and Named Groups to organize your Bias Manipulations I recommend looking into that. Also, if you've got some area of your mesh perfected lock that to prevent inadvertent changes.

Interesting. I didn't think I had enough time still allotted to vote again but I just managed to get another one in. Might be something to do with the time difference here... Good Luck Gene and Myron!

...and if you've never seen Greg perform one his magic tricks... the guy is jaw dropping amazing at that too!

I had some uninterupted time to work in A:M today and I'm posting this mostly as a reminder of some of the things I learned/relearned today. Not much to look at but there was a lot of experimenting behind the scenes. - Modifying characters (I've long wanted to set up a short tutorial/exercise on modifying one of the standard A:M Characters and believe it or not I started modding a cat based on Thom (I was going to call him Thomcat). He started looking a little like Andy Mulia's character from Werewolf and Firefly so I went in the direction of a wolf instead... I had fun thinking about Andy's characters again) - Rigging (I broke a lot of things in an attempt to explore the idea of a minimal rig for ultra-simple cartoon characters... the goal being to pose/animate a character just by moving Nulls around the screen. I had two minor successes... mostly accidental... and hope to continue pursuing the idea.) - Animating ( I did a lot of animating while testing/retesting bone constraints... fun but nothing worth sharing here. It was fun seeing Wolfy's Right Arm and Legs move to where I wanted them to be just by moving a Null around the screen). David and Mark would laugh at my ignorance here. Someday I'll rig something! - Matcap Shaders (It'd been awhile since I played with them... I think the sketchy shader was one of Robert Holmen's) Be careful... that shader stuff can get addicting... - A:M Composite (the Compositor did not like me very much today. I was obviously trying to do too much too fast and not waiting for the Compositor to process the images... never a good idea) - Lighting (I Tested out a lot of different things but the use of Rim Lights was something I'd never spent much time on and I like the effect it had on the fishibng pole's string). Other stuff I can't recall by looking at the images... The idea of country critters and going fishing was somehow appealing to me. I don't fish... I figure this guy (wolfy) does. I should take it up because even the thought of it is relaxing. All in all, silly stuff, but it's always fun to play in A:M!

Thanks Robert. Nothing seems out of place there but I'll keep looking around. This may just inspire me to move me toward implementing a Netrender workflow so that may work out for the better. By the time I get there this problem will probably have fixed itself.

On this laptop I'm running Windows Vista with (I think) 2 cores.

I may just be trying to run too many things simultaneously but I don't recall experiencing this before. When I start a render and then open another window (such as for browsing the forum) A:M appears to stop rendering and waits until I return to start rendering again. Looking closer, the renderer doesn't seem to be completely stopping but seems to slow down considerably. I'd guess I've told Windows somewhere to give the active window full priority but... not sure where and when I would have set that. Any leads will be appreciated.

That really looks great Gerry. The result is as you say 'spectacular'. I hope you can keep that reflective look. I don't want to send you off too far afield but perhaps applying a Matcap shader to the Sax would produce the same or similar effect without the hit on the raytracer?

That looks like success to me!

The specific spline ring you are working with might make for a specific approach so if you can share a screen capture (or file) with what you are looking at that will help. As near as I can tell there are two issues that you are raising (one in the title and one in your topic): - Spline Alignment - Evenly Spaced Control Points (CP) For Spline Alignment in a straight line (or any set of CPs all desired to be in the same plane) most will use the Scale Manipulator to realign the splines. Generally, you can select the spline hit the S key (or select the Rotate Manipulator) and either scale the spline or type in zero (it often works better with 1!) to align the splines. To even out the spacing of Control Points most often you can delete the CP that is uneven and select the Y key to place a CP exactly half way along the selected spline. Note that while this will make your CPs evenly spaced but depending on your end goal of where that CP should be it may not properly align them. Using A:M to lathe a spline with the proper number of CPs will both align and space a spline ring for you. So in some instances where precision is desired it may be appropriate to lathe the shape with the desired number of CPs, extract the desired spline ring and stitch that into place in your model. You can also type into the properties the exact location in 3D space you want a particular CP to occupy. Can you share an example of your specific spline ring?

The concept art is a great way to move forward. I'm really liking what you've posted. It helps us to see more clearly where you are going. Perhaps you can pursue some of that style via your renderings!