maskoon

I went back in and fiddled with it a bit more and got it. One of those many instances where something important is never mentioned in either the exercises or help files. Apparently the thing has to be in skeletal mode before all this works. Animation Master is, no doubt, a marvel of computer code, but like most other high powered applications the help files are written by knowledgeable people who assume a higher level of general knowledge than what actually exists.

Special animation tool "Paste Mirrored": I copied keyframes then paste mirrored at all the appropriate frames, then, at the end, I pasted the first keyframe. Problem is, there are no frames past 00:00:15, but the end frame should be 00:01:10. I got his little eyes bouncing around, his ears wiggling and his tail moving in such a way that'll drive all the little girl rabbits nuts, but I think I'm being shortchanged on my frames; I should have more. But then, that's what she said.

Yeah, that makes sense, thanks for the help.

I took time out from the exercises to read the help files start to finish, and now that I'm marginally less confused than before I restarted the exercises. What, I wonder, is this huge circular geometric thing that overlays the Choreography window called a Rim? I moved it here, then there, then did some fairly dramatic moves with it and it seems not to affect a thing. I suspect it's a lighting thing but just how and where the two are connected escapes me. Could some kind soul spend a few words and enlighten me?

Just finished my second session with AM and initial impression is it's gonna work, but there will be issues. Seems like I'm doing too much tech and not enough art. Things like moving the data library from the CD to the hard drive, as there were no models in the Models tab, and when I attempted to save I get this goofy message all about embedding and something about the project tree which I think I found but it had about a thousand items in it about which I hadn't a clue. I spent a few hours doing strange and wonderful things to the rabbit, and managed to save the project, but on reopening the program it flashed me a message about saving changes to the rabbit, I clicked yes and now my rabbit is gone. The other problems, like not being able to change the eye focus, lighting and camera angles I suspect I'll figure out over time, but the help files read like advanced Klingon so it will probably take a while. Bottom line it's going to be quite a stretch to master this beast, and it ain't gonna happen this week. And I really miss my rabbit...