Rodney

I would suggest selecting the area you want to work on... Then whack the period key to invert the selection... Then press the H key to hide the rest of the geometry. This will allow you to see better what you are working on. The splines themselves I would rotate into place in the front and stitch in other areas as needed. If you want to go above and beyond you might copy and paste the cockpit area you have now and adjust it as a separate piece. You'll have to break the splines in the body of the aircraft of course.

Hang in there! I was going to quote from your last post but realized I was going to have to quote the whole thing! Very profound words. I think most of us struggle with similar things and have similar aspirations. You certainly have our support. Like you I feel very awkward when commenting on the work of those obviously more talented than me. Unlike you though I haven't the talent to rise to their level. We all do what we can. Take care of the priorities and basics of life first. Getting and keeping a good job is important. Take whatever time time you need to get that done. Then the animating will be all the more rewarding.

I'm glad it helped. As you find time post the results from your Darktree related work or point others to this topic if they have questions. That way we can all benefit from use of Darktee Simbiont materials even more. We have a lot of valuable resources available to us. Good luck with your project!

Once you have the DTS material container in A:M look for the option where you click to open your Simbiont material. Browse to your material and... done!

A quick way to check to see if your Darktree Simbiont plugin is installed is to look in your v15 folder. If you see a folder named 'Darktree' then you should be good to go. Of course just because you have a folder doesn't mean the plugin will work. So... To access your Darktrees you use the same method as accessing other material plugins. Right Click on a new material's attribute node and drill down to the plugin menu. There you will find your DTSimbiont plugin.

I'm curious. Why is the barrel facing north?

I know the whole movie hasn't been rendered yet so I'd guess the server just doesn't have anything to send out at the moment or its down for maintenance or its offline or... I'm sure it'll be back up and dishing out new frames to render soon.

Yes. Those geniuses at Hash Inc made adding resources to Libraries really easy. I think you may have stumbled onto an enhancement. I'm not sure who is responsible for that particular coding but they done good. Real good. There was a time when people would often report they couldn't copy their resources into their Libraries and a read only CDRom was generally the culprit. I'll credit Noel as he's the one responsible for improving a lot of stuff in the Libraries over the years. Master Chief, Hope you had success in getting your textures into the Library.

Matt, My only critique is... TOO SHORT! I wanna see more! Love the sock critters too.

Is your marble texture a Material or an Image? If its a material drag and drop it into a folder in the Materials tab of the Library. If its an image drag it into a folder on the Image tab of the Libary. If you don't care to Drag and Drop you can Right Click and Select 'Create Shortcut' then browse for the material and grab it. Warning to the uninitiated: You cannot save things to the Library on the A:M CD as it is 'read only'. You can only save things into Libraries on writeable media. You are welcome to test this theory.

No Ma'am, not at this time at least. Having the ability to customize those tabs would be optimum. (If interested I hope you'll submit such a suggestion to A:M Reports) There is already a lot you can do with Libraries and I'm confident that in time (and with more interest) we'll be able to do even more.

Matt, There is certainly more powerful stuff there than I can begin to understand. I can't articulate what I know enough for anyone to understand. But... all that for another discussion.

Thanks Caroline. You're the best!

I'm sure there are a few more ways to get images into A:M but those are the ones I could readily think of. Ah yes... here's another. You can drag and drop from a folder on your harddrive into A:M as well. IMPORTANT NOTE: This is probably the easiest way to get resources into your Libraries too. Especially as you can entire collections of images into your Libarary all at the same time.

All of these methods focus on images for use with Objects. You can perform similar processes in an Action window or Choreography. If you Drag and Drop an image into a Choreography A:M won't know exactly what to do so... it will ask you: Note: In this case I've dragged a Sky image from my Libary into a Choreography window. The dialog box pops up and I'm going to choose 'Rotoscope'. I could just as easily select 'Layer' but I don't need that much flexibility/rotation etc.

A fourth way would be to create a New Layer. When you create the Layer it will ask you for an image: Once again you'll see the option to choose an available image or search for a new one.

A third way would be to Import the Image as a Rotoscope. To do this you need a Rotoscope of Course: Note: For almost all the methods I'm listing images that you've already imported into A:M will be available to choose from in the dropdown list. If those aren't what you are looking for choose 'Other' and browse to the desired image. Once you find it select it and it will be imported.

The next way is related to the 2nd method but you are assigning the image to the patches manually. Right Click on the Group and select 'Add Image':

Okay... There are a lot of ways to import images so it took longer than I thought! First is the method I mentioned above. That is the surest way to Import an image into A:M. Next might be to Drag and Drop from your Library onto a Group. The group will automatically be textured with the image. Down side: If you don't have the image in your Library you can't do this. Upside: Its really quick and easy to do

There are other ways to bring images into A:M too of course. This is only one way. Decals When creating a New Decal an image will automatically be asked for. You can then Browse to where it is and grab it. Patch Images When you select a patch or group of patches then Right Click you can assign an image. Select Add Image, browse to the image's location and grab it. Not easy enough you say? Any image that is in your Library you can drag and drop as a decal, apply as a patch image or import as a Rotoscope or Layer. (Images to be uploaded soon for your viewing pleasure)

I think you are perhaps not looking in the Project Workspace? (Thats the list on the left) See attached: Those steps again: - Open the Project Workspace - Right Click on the Image area container and Import your JPEG

Drat. I almost had Caroline's Project file.

A lot depends on what you are trying to animate of course and what level of control you find necessary. Animating without the Timeline -visible- would be ideal but as far as I know its unheard of in professional circles. There is no talent or interest in it. Who can animate without a timeline!?!?! Who would be interested in it? More from the historical aspect... Martin Hash created A:M in such a way as to hide the technical aspects of animation just below the surface so that animators wouldn't be overly concerned with the technical side of animation. They could then instead concentrate on animating their stories. The timeline is always there even if you never use it/edit it directly. For those that need to see the physical aspects of the timeline however those are there too. But its just a mangled mess of lines and curves if we don't understand why we use it. Somewhere the computer gurus got it wrong when they translated paper timelines to computers. Its the Timeline that is suppose to drive the animation. Not the other way around. Its generally a good idea to learn the basics before eating the horse. (and in many cases you don't even have to eat that poor horse!) The basics (oversimplified, incomplete and in no particular order): - Staging / Appeal (Character / Personality / Conflicts etc must keep the interest of the audience) - Animation (Pose to Pose / Straight Ahead / Combined Method ) - Timing and Spacing (Walk Cycles are often considered the means to master this in character animation but anything on a Path works great too.) - Ease (The illusion of Speed / Weight / Force / Resistance can be created with ease.) - Arcs (Motion through natural Paths) - Squash and Stretch / Exaggeration (Historically demonstrated by the Ball Bounce for simple objects and the Flour Sack for character animation) - Anticipation (Best illustrated via things such as Bow & Arrow / Jumping / . The general concept: move in the opposite direction you want to go first) - Clarity / Secondary Action (All elements must support the central idea) - Follow Through / Overlapping Action / Holds (Everything moves in a particular direction until something interferes or changes its course) The Timeline gives us access to planning and controlling these.

I like that Caroline. Can you share the project file?

Thats a fun execise Geoff. Something of interest to me is that each of these characters look like they would weight different than the other. This provides for a nice example of the principles of animation in action. Add some more anticipation and exaggeration in the squatting positions and you'll have established some really nice weight to the characters. Something to look at should you refine further is to break up the asymmetry a bit too. For instance, if you were to have one leg leave or return to the floor a bit earlier than the other. Very nice thus far. Can show us this jump from the side?