Rodney

I'm pretty sure you are thinking of Marcos Rezende's Smartskin-influenced Decals. (He's known as 'Xtas' here in the forum) The main tutorial is on his website but you'll find interesting information and commentary and such from the usual suspects here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33460 A direct link to the tutorial: Using Smartskin to Animate Decals

Mike, I guess I've already said hello in a way via commentary on your TaoA:M exercises but this'll make it official. With your experience with After Effects I hope you'll take advantage early of A:M's ability to render to image formats with Alpha Channels (TGA, PNG etc.). There is a whole lot of power to be found there. In short, leveraging A:M with After Effects will serve you well! Welcome to the A:M Forum.

You are a Modeling Master Al. ...and those renders convince me you form and refine these objects in plastic and modeling clay instead of virtual space.

Fantastic! I love it!

Looking really good! (That one of the slickest versions of the 'Take a Walk' exercise I've seen too!)

If you are interested in the MatCap images they are attached here.

Here is a quicky MatCap texturing test... The blue... lapis lazuli or whatever it is... is growin' on me!

He looks great. I'm not thrilled with the blue for some reason but hey... its your art. All that gold makes me think you should try to get that MatCap shader working on the gold inlaid parts.

Hmm... I don't think so. Installing the Ensharpen codec has always worked. I'm wondering if there is a way we can update/convert the tutorials and share them with a new generation of A:M users. I'll check and see if I've got the same videos handy here.

Here is the color map also used as a displacement map (from 0 to 600+ percent). Minor artifacts seem to indicate a few trouble areas in the color decal image. displacedcloth.mov

As an example... Here is a substitute Displacment Map image (everything is mid gray) yielding no adverse effects.

From what I can tell, the problem is in your second image in the decal. Adjusting that will resolve the uniformity problem. At a guess I would suggest the image isn't a proper Normal Map. Changing the decal type from 'Normal' to 'Bump' 'Displacement' considerably lessens the adverse effect. Edit: Displacement can produce some pretty interesting cloth effects. The artifacts point back to problem areas in the image.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your specific criteria I'd say the key to CP alignment for you will be to use Scale. Try it with a simple test model until you get a good feel for it. Create your multiple CP splines. Select those you want to align. Whack the S key to engage the Scale Manipulator Rotate the manipulator as needed Scale Manually or via typing in the Scale into the onscreen Manipulator Properties dialogue box. (Hard to imagine all of this via text so will try to post a video tutorial later) Edit: David's more concisely worded suggestion should work well in the majority of cases.

Thanks Mark! Anyone interested in rigging their characters needs to download and walk through this PDF rigging instruction. There is a lot of great insight into the process to be found in this Step by Step tutorial. (As Mark mentioned it's in his first post... HERE.) Great insight into the placement of character bones!

I always enjoy your insider looks and previews Mark.

Can you 'Consolidate' and share an example project file with us?

That's really nice! You should get bored more often.

You guys make me feel old.

Go for it and good luck!

Sure did. Nice touches throughout too. Santa been nice to someone this year.

Another classic for sure. Start planning for the sequel next year!

Walt Disney would be proud. Nice work Will!

I'm getting a server error (probably something broken on my end) I'll keep trying.

The current dictionary file is dated Nov 6 2001. This however doesn't mean others haven't updated it. I seem to recall several updates in other languages and Marshall Hash reportedly was updating one years ago.* *Edit: Found a reference to Marshall updating the dictionary.dic file for the TWO movie. I'm not sure if the update was ever finished/finalized though.

Sweet. You make complex things look simple. Color me intrigued!