TNT

I like him! I'm working in v14. It does more than I know how to use. I've been toying with the idea of a series type animation to motivate me to learn all the steps of animation: "Gorloc the Inventor". A kind of Tim the Toolman Taylor caveman with great ideas and bad execution. Solving the day to day problems of 2000 BC with todays solutions that just didn't quite have all the kinks worked out. Don't know....just a motivation to keep me more focused.

and maybe one axial rotation 45° in each direction that would be for the "upper arm." I believe it can all be in the same smartskin. One key in each direction but all in the same smartskin. You'd probably do a separate SS for the shoulder bone (called "arm" in TSM2") if your CP weighting doesn't fully fixx the motion it does up and down. But the shoulder moves so little that CP weighting might do it all. Yes. you might do one at 90 forward, 45 forward if needed, 45 outward (probably excessive), and some small angle backward... 30? I'll give it a try. thanks again

I didn't make the iris decal. I believe I found it on the internet at a sight on eyes but can't remember. Here are all the files for the eye the way I learned to make one that was pretty real. It could still use some veins for more realism and bit wetter look. If you get those let me know. eye_ball.mdl Eye.prj Black_Gloss.zip

I thought about that. There is nothing set but the diffuse color on his underlying clothes surface. Any more possible goofs I've made?

you can put anything in a Zip and post it closing tip... it's better to not up load movies in "Animation"codec (that's the default codec in Quicktime settings only because it's first alphabetically). It makes the file size so enormous that most people won't try. It eats up server space too. You can reload animations into the images folder in A:M and resave them with better compression (Sor 3 or MPEG4) if they are big. But i downloaded it. sorry about the file size. I thought it was huge but didn't know what I did wrong. I guess I learned more than I meant to. The forums are great. I found the codec settings and I will make the files smaller from now on. I am following Caroline's tut and being sure to do everything in the order and way suggested. It is very easy to follow so far. Since I am applying the principles to a different model I just needed to know if I was getting it. Thanks for looking at it for me. I will continue to follow Caroline's tut to smart skin him. Just to be clear, you are saying I should need 4 smart skins, one near straight up, one near straight down, one forward, and one rotated back maybe as far as the arm would bend that direction? I assume the same principles apply to the hip? Thanks,

No rule of thumb really, since each model is a unique case. SS should be your last resort after you get as close as possible with fanning and CP weighting. You might show a mov of one arm doing a sample move on each axis and someone might pop in with suggestions. edit: and render it in shaded wireframe so we know where the CPs are. My first guess is that the hair "color" has a gradient inadvertently set on it. you could post the hair material you created and get feedback. OK, here is the render and screen grabs of the materials. It seems you can't post the .mat files here. The head hair does have 3 emitters. They are all identical except the color to give a bit of highlights. Maybe there is too much difference in the 3 colors. I worked with the fur and it does not glow quite as bad but it still glows too much for me. Any ideas? I hope I made a good enough render to see the troubled spots. Thanks in advance for any help. TSM2ARM.mov

Thanks, I've been watching your post too. Lot s of stuff there for me to learn from. Can't wait to see your character finished. It seems to me that designing a great body is harder than the heads. Bodies are as unique as faces but I'm not as aware of how to characterize them. Maybe I need to develop more of an artists eye for the rest of the character. One thing at a time I guess.

No rule of thumb really, since each model is a unique case. SS should be your last resort after you get as close as possible with fanning and CP weighting. You might show a mov of one arm doing a sample move on each axis and someone might pop in with suggestions. edit: and render it in shaded wireframe so we know where the CPs are. My first guess is that the hair "color" has a gradient inadvertently set on it. you could post the hair material you created and get feedback. Sorry for the long delay. I have not made many renders before either. I am just trying to learn as I go. I have a movie rendering to show the arm movement with the splines. I will post it with the material for his hair and the fur I used for his clothes as soon as I can. It looks like about 2 more hours till the render will finish. I have also downloaded the 2008 rig as suggested. Maybe I will have time to play with it a little also. Thanks,

Hello, I thought I would take a chance and show a model I have been working on. I'd welcome critiques on his appeal and the modeling. I have been working to rig him with the TSM2 rig. I am referencing Caroline's tut on the TSM2 rig and it has helped impove my previous attempts. I am still having trouble at the shoulder. When I move the arm forward the chest wants to push in a bit too much but looks pretty good when moved up and down. I have not tried smart skin yet. How much smart skinning should be required if I have the fan bone and CP weighting right? I'm having a hard time knowing how much of each solution is the right amount. Any opinions and critiques are appreciated. Also, I used the "fur" material on his clothes but it seems to almost glow. Not sure how to fix that either. Glow is not set.

I have only had TSM2 installed for a couple weeks and have had one small issue as you have seen here, but, I am running A:M ver 14c and all three pieces are available in the wizards. I did have to tell it to put it in the ver14 install of A:M. I purchased it after reading in the Forum that others were running it with 14 and 15. When I looked it up at Anzovin.com, I found TSM2 and Weight Mover for $60. Had to try at that price. Thanks again everyone for your help

I think it's pretty safe to say that something called "knee control" is the knee control even if it appears in slightly altered form. It does turn the knee control bone on. At that point I would have said "mission accomplished". that's what "strings" are in computer lingo. Just text. In the case of the thom you posted, the missing texts would only say "Relationship1". (or Relationship2...) All the important labels that say what the constraints are and what bones they do appear correctly. All the constraints seem to be working. As far as I can tell everything is working as it should. Remember you have to turn "TSM constraints" ON. This is really a bug that has been introduced in A:M. I say that, knowing that TSM2 has not changed in the last 2 years but A:M has. Some detail that read those strings properly in A:M before does that no longer. Fortunately it's not a catastrophic problem. Go forth and rig in peace. Thanks I feel much better about ignoring what looked like errors now that someone with experience using TSM2 has looked it over and still feels all the function is still working. It's hard to tell everything is working right when you have never worked with one without the problem. Thank you again

Here is the Thom with the basic TSM2 Rig. I think I may have figured part of this out but I would really like the opinion of someone who has used the TSM2 with success. I think the Knee "On/Off" that I saw in the tutorial has been changed to a slider that works like the "On/Off" did when moved to 100%. I think the "Error Loading String: 50021" may just be that the TSM program can not read in the "Name" string for the constraints. It does apear that there is still a constrain defined below the error in the list. Is this possibly what is going on? If so, am I missing a dll or something the TSM program requires? Thank again to everyone for the help. BonelessThomTSM2_Rigged.mdl

I am using TSM2 2.0.7 Unfortunately, I do not have am earlier version of A:M such as v13.

Thanks for the reply. That got me closer. I saved the file. Closed the file. Closed the Project. Closed A:M. Reopened everything. And it is now not showing the same way in the list but the errors are still show up under User Properties Relationships > TSM constraints Relationships The knee control does not have the "On/Off" functionality in the Pose Sliders that is shown in the tutorials. Other similar functionality is missing and yet much of it is there. Any more help will really be appreciated.

I purchased TSM2 for A:M a couple weeks ago. I am running A:M 2007 ver. 14.c Everything seems to work great with TSM2 until I run the rigging. To eliminate the possability that my model was the cause of the error, I used Bonless Thom and rigged him. I attached a JPEG of what I see in A:M when the rigging is finished running. Any ideas what wrong? I have seen elsewhere on the forum that TSM2 is compatible with ver14 and 15. Much of the rig works but much is also missing such as the knee control. Thanks,