CRToonMike

Nice exercise, Muff. As far as distributing it goes, I feel that any "mod" falls under the 'derivative' work clause in the DMCA; and because of that it's still copyright infringement, imho. Although I'm not a lawyer, my attitude is when there's some question, don't do it. To my eyes, it looks like this figure is based on the Aiko Model from DAZ3D. While you (as an individual) can mod something you purchased (again, if the licensing agreement allows) and use it in a animation/still. But as far as distributing a derivative work, you'll have to get permission from the owners of the model/object. As you wrote, it takes as much time to modify an OBJ as it does to create a new model in A:M; I would just create a series of drawings to use as rotoscopes in A:M and make a model from those. And since that model will be based on your orginals, you can do with it what you please. I don't mean to shoot down your good intentions, but I don't want to see anybody get into (possible) trouble. Again, I am just an artist who has studied copyrights and am not a lawyer, so if I'm offbase, I apolgize in advance.

It does help a lot, thanks again David. I did alter the Y and Z axis for the bones, thank goodness I have a version saved before I did that.

David, thanks a million for this rig. I've watched your video tutorials more than the TIVOed Hero episodes, and it's a bit intimidating, but not impossible. Any way, I noticed that in the videos the figure is posed in a straight "T" pose. If legs on the model are spread (inverted "V") and the arms lowered -- will that affect how the rig works? I'm using the rotate/translate/scale manipulators as per your instructions and adjusting them for the additional angle of the legs/arms. Just wondering if my modeling a "semi-relaxed" figure rather than the arms out at attention figure would be problematic. Or am I just over-thinking stuff... thanks.

Yeah, Dhar, one Terrabyte. Back in the day 40 mb hard drive and 4Mb Ram was awesome. Times change. Anyway, been using A:M 13 universal binary on my new Intel Macintosh and it screams. Very stable. Neat version. So I've been modeling and getting back into the A:M flow of things. First off, the joints set-up tute by 3D Artz is worth every penny I paid for it. The best part about the tute is that the entire use of a mesh is concidered. It's helped me be a better modeler in A:M and (hopefully) make things nice when I rig the characters. Here's a set of 5 screen captures of the Nophia Character. Just the basic body and eye (looks too goulish w/o the peeper, y'know) for 1/2 of the figure (will cfa when I'm happy with the mesh). If anyone wants to, tear apart the mesh. I intend these characters to be animated, so critique with that in mind. If the mesh is too messed up, go ahead and tell me, I want to be a good modeler with A:M and if re-doing makes me better, so be it. The screen captures are a bit large, but that's so the details can be captured. If there's any thing else I can post (like close ups of areas) let me know, I'll have it up asap. Thanks everyone, for taking the time to look at this. m!ke

Great Movie, Dhar! I am simply bowled over. Great angles, cutting and wonderful use of the shagster!

Cool characters. A couple of comments... On the green guy, it llooks as if he could use a few more rings around the mouth area. There's some pinching going on that could look better with more cps. On the Stop guy, maybe the shape and color will be enough to convey he's a personification of a sign. By dropping the text, you gain the ability to do eyes and maybe even make this series more "global" with no english titles? And it would help to keep some aspects of the characters simular, so they all look like they belong together. m!ke

What a cool character. The hat and shoes are what really makes it very cool. Would be great to see how this character emotes and acts. Great work!

Great work Rusty! I get a real good "hard" sci-fi vibe from the ship. It's a ship that Heinlein would feel at home on. I also get a slight feeling of the battleships from Babylon 5, but your ship is it's own thing. What a beast. Looking forward to seeing how this evolves! m!ke

Been way too busy, have to get a table of contents out for the book I'm writing and some school projects. But... I'll be getting one of them there Mac Pro towers on Monday (3Ghz, ATI 9100xt whatever card, 1Tb of HD space, yadda yadda). So I think that next weekend will be a time of a bit of work. Thanks for the comments everyone!

Hi all! This thread will, hopefully, document the development of my series that I've been working on for years and years. I've been drawing these grape characters most of my life and I had a storyline that I tried on many occasions to draw/model and animate. As hard as I tried, nothing really "clicked" with me. Until two weeks ago. I was sketching a grape character and suddenly had a Breakthrough moment when I adjusted the porportions of the generic grape person and had a drawing that clicked with me. And then I had a rush of inspiration of the world that these characters live in and its history.It was as if all these ideas were just under the surface and waiting for the breakthrough character sketch to come forth. It's often said that when designing a character, the artist should know the character's history and personality. When that happens the character becomes real. That's just what happened to me with this latest incarnations of this world and its characters. Attatched to this post is a character line-up where some of the major players are shown in context with each other. I'll be developing the individual character sheets in the days to come. I'm working on concept design and the storyboards/script for the first installment and will post progress as it happens. In this thread I'll be sharing the visual development and modeling/rigging/animation of this series. I welcome any and all suggestions, comments and especially criticism. I hope that by maintaining this thread, it'll give me motivation to make consistent progress with this project. One last thing, the character Nophia does have hair. I just haven't decided on a style yet. This drawing (and other 2-D drawings/sketches) was created Manga Studio 3.0 from E-frontier ( the peeps who bring us Poser). This is a comic creation software that I've found to be not only easy to use, but works excellently for character design and concept art. thanks for reading and don't hesitate to comment, Mike

Great rig, David! Thank-you for all your hard work!! Just a heads-up, I was told by tech support that the "installRig.hxt" Works only for A:M 2006 (v.13), not with any earlier version. On my set-up (Mac os X 10.3.9) running A:M v12 I get the "not able to install..." error msg. So maybe the hxt file could be dropped for the v12 squetchy rig. mike

Actually I live in Walnut Creek, but still tour neighbor. Good to be back

Hi everyone, My Name's Mike Rhodes and I am yet another "re-animator", meaning I'm back to using A:M by choice. I was using Carrara, but it seems like it's going to be forever before they get some decent character animation tools and I don't like it that it was bought and what the new owners did (and that's an entire topic by itself). 'nuff said. I have to say that Martin's comments, on another thread, not to give up on A:M struck a chord with me. I will hold Martin personally responsible for all the fun I'll be having! All the agony is obviously an user error and doesn't count I'll be going through TAoAM, already up to excercise 4. This book is a great way to refresh one's memory of this awesome program. The shiny new certificate will look oh-so-nice next to my Plaque I got from Trinity college for a BA in Graphic Design ; and the best part of that worthless plaque, is that my former boss paid for it. So it's worth exactly what I paid for it, iykwim -- diploma mill. I'm a cartoonist and currently enrolled in a BA program of Animation and Visual Effects at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts, just an incredibly short distance from the Pixar campus Good to be back! m!ke

Inspirational work, Mr. Sutton! Beyond the economy of spline, you really captured a character in the modeling. Hats off to ya, buddy! There's art in dem dare CPs! And in a eerie coincidence, today Faye Wray died. Cue twilight zone music "It was beauty that killed the beast." Faye Wray's obit in CNN.Com

Oh, I see it now. It's like how officer rank goes in the Air Force: gold bar: luientant, silver bar: first louie, two silverbars: captian, gold maple leaf: major, silver maple leaf: lt. Colonel, silver eagle: Colonel, stars: general... and so on... Think you have a good solution to this in the way you're doing it. I would only up the contrast between the ranking colors. But that's a quibble. Now get off this forum and get to work mister I wanna see more!