edlundart

Not sure if that worked. Here is a zip file. edlundart_model.zip

Here is the model, minus her head... it's not a totally finished model, I have some tweaking to do, but I started rigging in test files to see how it would work. In an action, grab her left leg (the one you see on the right in the front view) and translate it up as high as the hip bone. You will see distortions in the chest as well as her right arm. Any ideas? woman_forum_review.mdl

I just tried that, and the CP weighting looks normal (100% to the bone that is logical). Going to try to rebuild the arm over the next couple of hours and see what happens.

As I was smartskinning my model the other night, everything was looking good with the shoulders and I decided to move on to the legs. In an action, I then discovered something very odd and very frustrating. If I move the left leg up a lot, the geometry on the character’s chest and right arm gets distorted. Basically, several select CPs move slightly as though they were connected to the leg bones. However, this is not at all the case! I see no logical reason why some CPs in the arm would move around when I lift up a leg, since no CPs in the arm are assigned to anything but arm bones! Tonight I am going back through my 250 saved files to see how far back in my project this problem occurred. I don’t know if it’s somehow a result of smartskinning or if it was a problem even before I started working on the smartskin. The problem only reveals itself when I move the leg somewhat drastically high up. I’m also wondering if maybe I can fix it by deleting the CPs in question and then re-creating the geometry in those areas. Has anyone seen a similar problem, and does anyone have any advice about how to avoid this? As it stands right now, I can’t see how this is anything other than a bizarre bug. I'll post updates if and when I figure this out.

Hah, that worked like a charm! Thanks! I had been trying to alter the settings, it hadn't occured to me to just delete the whole thing. Thanks also for your hard work on the squetch rig and tutorials. You are an amazing resource for this community.

Hi, I'm working on rigging my first character, and I'm using the 2001 rig as a basis. However, my abstract character design requires the elbow joint to be a ball joint as opposed to one that is limited to only bend one way. Basically, I can rotate the bicep bone exactly as I want; in all directions -- but I need to be able to do the same with the forearm bone. I'm pretty sure this is a matter of changing some settings for the forearm bone in the PWS. Could someone please try to explain how I would go about making the required change? I am suspecting it might have something to do with euler limits... but please specifiy exactly where and what I need to change. Thanks so much!

i think that's quite good, it has some very smooth motion. one thing you might consider (though this is coming from someone who has yet to create a single second of his own character animation in A:M) is to add some weight to each step -- right now if you watch the head of the character, it weaves up and down smoothly, as though he is skiing or something. this could be totally fine as a stylistic choice (i actually kind of like it that way), but if you want more realism, i think you would time things so that each step had some impact. so the movement would be a bit more "jarring" and "jagged" and uneven. but, like i said, i rather like it as it is, it's a stylized motion and it works for me.

Thanks for the advice, both of you! Rodger, I had been thinking about trying hooks. I think I'll give that a go tonight. I was advised against it by others when modeling this, but it does seem like it might avoid the creasing in the torso and might also help out with a more subtle issue up in the chest area. Your attached image is appreciated, I'll study it some more tonight. C-grid, your approach is an interesting take, and sounds really great if I wasn't going to animate this. But since I am, wouldn't the frontside extrusion method result in too few CP's to use when rigging, considering I want each leg, for example, to bend smoothly? As for the bias adjustments, I think those would result in edges that are somewhat rounded (good), but flat surfaces that are somewhat curved rather than straight (not good). But I am new to the program and might be misunderstanding what you're saying. If anyone has further thoughts, please feel free to share!

I'm working on this very abstracted female model. I'm beveling all the edges. The problem I'm having is that, due to the beveling, I've got some spline "rings" that are very close to each other, and they're creating subtle bands in the surface of the model. In the attached image, you see an example right where the left leg joins the torso. Is there anything I can do to avoid this? I am aiming to animate with this character. I guess I could get rid of it if I peaked everything, but then I don't think I'd be able to smoothly curve things when animating (right?).

I extended the splines all the way through to the top of the model, which ended up being easier than I thought. It's not perfect yet, but I think it's getting there. Thanks everyone so far, I'm sure I'll post further problems as I stumble upon them.

Well, I figured out what I was doing wrong with hooks, though they're leading to other problems at the moment... Barry, thanks for your input. Here is a larger picture. Basically I'm trying to model figures in the style I've developed over the years as an illustrator/fine artist (edlundart.com). Now that I want to animate them, I am trying to add rounded edges to everything so that the figures' edges will catch the light in appealing ways. Aaaaanyway... the screenshot:

It's a possibility, but the shape gets more complex up there (outside the frame of the attached picture), so it might not be an elegant solution. I'll do it if there is no better alternative, but I'm hoping for some other tips. Thanks for your response!

Hi everyone, I'm just starting to do my own modeling in A:M, and I'm trying to close up the "hole" in this shape. How should I go about doing it? I was wondering if I could just extent the splines from the bottom up to the horizontal spline at the top of the hole and attach them as hooks, but it doesn't seem to work. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'm successfully creating hooks. When I see pics of people's hooks, it's just a spline leading into another at a 90 degree angle, but with no control point joining the two. When I do it, I get a control point... what am I doing wrong? Or if hooks is not a good solution here, what would you suggest? Thanks for any advice you might have!