TNT

I have the plugin now updated, so it's measured also the curvature distance between 2 cp's . PERFECT! That is exactly what I was looking for. Now I can use that to get a good idea if I'm changing the splines length when I move a CP such as during smartskin. Thanks for doing this Steffen

That is really great. 48 year old kids love it also. One of the best I've seen posted. So what's next?

I think you are right. A bone chain would probably work best. Also, good lesson about the in betweens. I didn't consider the interpolation between the poses. Makes sense once you think about it. I am always amazed at what I learn in the forums. Thanks,

Thanks Vern I'm following the TaoAM tut for modeling a flower. It kind of lays out the way they want you to make the flower handle deformations. I think a couple more bones in the leafs and petals would work like you say and I thought about doing it but I decided to try to make the tut work the way it was presented. The tut has just one bone for each petal. There is no way to make a realistic bend I can find without the smart skin it instructs you to use. As soon as you start pulling the CP's to get the right look you get the petal changing length. I thought knowing and maintaining the spline length would make it pretty simple IF you could measure it. The TaoAM stuff is really good and I am not knocking any of it. I'm really glad I started stepping thur them. I am learning a lot. Thanks again,

Thanks, I loaded the plug-in you mentioned. It does return a linear distance which could be helpful for some things. What I am looking for is one that measures the spline length between two points taking the curvature thru any CP's between them into the calculation. Maybe it is more correct to call it curve length.

Didn't know wheather to post this here or in the TaoAM. I guessed here. I'm working on some simple smart skin for a petal on a flower. Is there a way to measure the length of the center spline before smart skinning and then while smart skinning so I can make sure the petal maintains its length? Seems like it should be simple but I can't find how to check a spline length between two CP's. Thanks,

Thanks Gerry, I'll try that.

Two quick things i notice... -his trailing foot isn't really doing as much to push him forward as it could. It's getting pulled up before it gets a chance to extend more to push off on the ball of the foot -seen from the front, his upper body is almost floating between his two feet. Walking that slowly he'd have to be transferring his weight between them more. I saw this mentioned in the tut's you told me to reference. I do see what you mean about the transfer of weight and the need to feel he is pushing himself forward more. Cristin McKee also mentions acting out your animations to get the secondary movements correct. I don't have a video camera but I bet I can find some references online. I'll try to get the feeling of weight into it. This is great help I can use. Thanks for taking the time to critique my work.

I used the "copy" and "mirror paste" to do the last half which added a lot of keys on every channel. It did not do the mirror perfectly and I had to do a lot of adjustments to get it back. I think I need to clear the extra keys to help smooth some of the motion out. That may be part of the arm problem. I understand what you mean about the rotation and foot slippage and I'll fix that to. This is the kind of help I needed.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you are saying that the left and right foot control bones are the bones to set to "peak" when they contact the ground? Do I just "peak" the "Y" channel or all the channels for the foot control bones? Sorry if this is obvious but this is the first real animation cycle I've tried to make.

I just went and downloaded them to my tut directory. I'll give them a watch and see what I can learn. Was there anything in particular that looked out-of-whack that you would target fixing? I'm green at this and would appreciate the critique.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I have a wooley skin for him to wear that hangs on one shoulder. My rev 14c blows up every time I try to do a cloth sim though. I have a bata version of 15 that works so I have to do all the cloth simulation testing in that. I was having some trouble with the fur on his clothes wanting to almost glow for some reason. I set the surface color to black from white and that made the brown not glow so much. I don't understand it but it worked. Christin McKee's CD's are good. I also got Justin Barrett's "Animate a Face" and Raf Anzovin's "Rigging a Face". I hope I can put them to good use when the time comes. I figure I'll get the body and some basic animation cycles down and then try to finish rigging and animate the face.

Ok, I think I got the TSM2 rigging problems worked out on the caveman thanks to this forum. I have added the CP weighting and some SmartSkin to clean up the joints. I wanted to give him a little test drive and try my hand at a Walk Cycle and rendered him without the hair and clothes to better see his movement. I used the TaoA:M "Take a Walk" tut and the "Animate! with Cristin McKee" series. The walk is a little slow and labored and the hands jerk a bit on the extremes I think. I hope to get some critiques on what I have so far. I would like to develop maximum appeal in this character. I was thinking of calling him Torlak. Any thoughts? Thanks to all, Walk2.mov

I will try to post one later today. Life stops my animating some times. My idea is that for a very course mesh with lots of possible bending (torso), I could keep surfaces from folding in on themselves at almost any pose. By centering CP's between CP's I am driving the changes thru the surface and not bones or multiple smart skins. I was thinking that under SimCloth this would help the cloth know how to deform without being to difficult. Once a formula was created it could be duplicated to other CP's. I am not too concerned about the formula aspect as my day job is engineering and I have a pretty good ability with VB. That said, if there is a better way, I am happy to learn from the masters. Thanks, OK, After looking at some fan options I believe you are correct. I was heading down the wrong path. Seems I can do what I needed with a little more fan work. Thanks for the reality check.

I will try to post one later today. Life stops my animating some times. My idea is that for a very course mesh with lots of possible bending (torso), I could keep surfaces from folding in on themselves at almost any pose. By centering CP's between CP's I am driving the changes thru the surface and not bones or multiple smart skins. I was thinking that under SimCloth this would help the cloth know how to deform without being to difficult. Once a formula was created it could be duplicated to other CP's. I am not too concerned about the formula aspect as my day job is engineering and I have a pretty good ability with VB. That said, if there is a better way, I am happy to learn from the masters. Thanks,

How can I write an expression that will keep the "Y" position of one CP exactly centered between two neighboring CP's "Y" positions? "(Y1 + Y2)/2" I want to try to control a few individual CP's so that an area will not crease. Thanks,

He also has a pretty good general interface setup tut. Have not tried the tank yet. http://www.patchwork3d.de/html/deutsch/wha...w_interface.htm

That is a really great tut. I was looking for better specularity and surface settings. I know when I was making an eye model it was difficult to find an iris decal I liked. Recently I found some on the net and thought I would make them available if anyone would like them. The zip file contains 21 different iris'. Most were found on these two sites. www.amazingincredible.com/show/82-the-incredible-human-eye and wwb.pdx.edu I hope they are helpful to someone. iris.zip

I tired grabbing the body bone and running MirrorBone from bone mode. It did flip everything and weighted it properly also, just as it should. Next I ran Mirror Constraints w/o a problem. TSM2's Rigger, however, did blow me clean out of AM when I tried to run it w/o first running TSM Flipper as mtpeak2 suggested. Maybe I was reading something into Caroline's tut (the PDF version) that was not there. As I understood it, I selected the right half of the model's CP's in model mode. I then ran MirrorBone by right click on the selected right half of the model. This is how I got the spine but nothing else to mirror. I think now everything is working as it should except the user. If I can do anything else let me know. I do appreciate all the help guys,

Thanks for the help. I never would have got this one on my own! I removed all caps from all the bone names including the fans. I ran TSM Flipper and got all the bones as you suggested. I then ran MirrorBones according to Caroline's tut and presto! the whole thing worked. I have not ran TSM Rigger yet but I figure it will work now. Thanks you both mtpeak2 and robcat2075,

quote name='robcat2075' date='Dec 23 2008, 12:33 AM' post='289641'] just wondering.... what's the stuff with "FIN..." in caps inthe bone list? It the way I named the fan bones so they were easy to tell from the rest. Is that a problem for MirrorBone? [

I first posted this in WIP but then thought this forum was more appropriate now that a problem has developed. I have hit a wall trying to rig the caveman. I have followed Carolines tut and think I did everything correctly.???? I made sure the bone names had "right" in them with no capitals. I grouped the entire right side and made sure its center splines were on "X0". With the entire right half of the model selected I ran the "MirrorBone" wizard. This is what I get. I even went back and deleated the left half and redid the Copy/Flip/Attach to make sure everything was symmetrical. I tried to select the "arm" bone and run "mirrorBone" on it. If mirrors it but with bad CP assignments. I am running AM version 14c. Do I need AM15 to make this work? Any ideas?

I have hit a wall trying to rig the caveman. I have followed Carolines tut and think I did everything correctly.???? I made sure the bone names had "right" in them with no capitals. I grouped the entire right side and made sure it certer splines were on "X0". With the entire right half of the model selected I ran the "Mirrorbone" wizard. This is what I get. I even went back and deleated teh left half and re mirrored it to make sure everything was symmetrical. I am running AM version 14c. Do I need AM15 to make this work? Any ideas?