Pokintail

Thank you so much, RobCat2075. I watched your tutorial and did just as you advised on the Yama model and animation, and it turned out wonderfully. I'll be sure to keep it in mind working on any similar projects in the future. Itsjustme, thank you as well, though RobCat's advice turned out to be simpler for this particular project. Should I ever be modeling extra-limbed characters again, though, I'll be sure to do as you suggested. Again, thank you both. Hopefully the completed animation will be on the A:M Films gallery soon--it's part of a larger project being done for the Bali Street Dog Foundation in Indonesia.

Thanks for the suggestions. I watched the IK Legs tutorial and tried applying it to Yama's arms, but when I constrained the biceps to aim at the nulls I created I found that they became locked into place. The biceps wouldn't move at all, they'd just stay frozen there, pointing towards the nulls. Is there a way to copy the bones in the original arms and reassign them to the extras?

Changing the Chor range changes the chor length as well.... so, I can get him to amble along the path... but it's a 15 second animation not a 3 second animation. Somewhere else, I got a suggestion to turn stride length off and just do repeats... tweaking the number of repeats to get hime to complete the path. that works... but still see slippage and can't seem to get 4.5 repeats only 5 or 6 (Don't know if only whole numbers are allowed). Elsewhere someone suggested setting the ease at 0 on frame 1 and at 100% on the final frame... that didn't do it either... sometimes he steps-skates-steps or else he steps-steps-steps then skates. Thom is doing some very odd things when I get ahold of him. I'd really like him to resolutely "amble" around this figure-eight over 3 seconds. All of this said, I know the answer is right in front of me. I have had him do exactly what I want. I cannot get him to repeat that. So I ain't gettin' it. Your help will be appreciated... and I promise to turn it into a wink tute or a PDF or something else useable once I "get it" with your assistance. I know the problem exactly, because I've had it too. This is what you need to do: have a shorter path. The original action is 1:10 seconds, but when applied in a choreography it will speed up or slow down depending on the length of the path. If you have a character walk a long path in a short amount of time, the only way it can accomplish the task within a set stride length is to take faster steps. Lengthen the animation, and shorten the path, and your problem should disappear.

I'm almost sure that the problem is that I left something out, but I'm not sure what. You see, I didn't create the original skeleton, I just added arms to it. The skeleton I used was "2001 Skeleton.mdl," the one included with the Animation Master program (at least, version 10.5, which is the one I'm currently using). As best I can tell, the two arms included with that skeleton feature five bones: Bicep, Forearm, Hand, Arm Steady, and Arm Hinge. The new arms feature Bicep, Forearm, Hand, and Arm Hinge, and are located beneath the original Shoulder in the heirarchy. I'm not sure exactly what Arm Steady does, as my only real resource in this is the tutorial book that comes with the package and, needless to say, it's missing a lot of key information. In this post I'm including a picture excerpted from the animation (with bones visible), with the character in question Yama speaking to another character, Yudisthira. The upper arms are the ones where I added bones. Just as a side note, all of Yama's body parts are two-dimensional, except for his crown and sarong (clothing). This is so as to replicate the look of a Balinese shadow puppet show, which is what the animation in its final form is designed to resemble.

Hi, I'm currently working on an animated story based on a Hindu myth, and one of the characters is a deity named Yama. To be consistent with how Yama's traditionally portrayed in religious art, I added a second set of arms to his body, and a corresponding set of arm bones to each consisting of a Bicep, Lower Arm, and Hand. Here's the problem... When I try to animate the second set of arms, they flop all over the place. The original arms (I'm used the standard AM skeleton) move steadily, that is, they only hinge in one direction, and when I move one bone the rest move realistically with it. What exactly are the settings used to make them move like that, so I can apply those settings to the extra set as well? Do I need another bone, or is there some special constraint, or what?