itsjustme

Watch every tutorial you can, Steven. It will help a lot. To start, do all of the tutorials in "The Art of Animation Master" book that comes with the software. The video versions of those tutorials are located here, so those will help give you an idea of workflow. Visit Jeff Cantin's site (the "Basic Splinemanship" tutorials will help you avoid a lot of new user mistakes), the ARM, the Tutorials section of the Forum (especially the Useful Links), watch the Tech Talk's and the Technical Reference. Hope those help.

Very cool, Tim!

The only differences between the v11 and v12 versions of the rig have to do with the IK/FK switching, so the arm and leg IK/FK poses aren't interchangeable. Other than that, you can safely transfer any of the other poses and it should work. I'm still making sure I've got my ducks in a row, so I'm reluctant to post the rigs until I'm sure I've got everything straight. If you still need the five fingered version before I get it posted, PM me your e-mail and I'll send it your way, Drvarceto. As for the installation rig tutorial, I'm hoping it will encourage more people to make rigs and rig add-ons so that we'll build up a decent library of doo-dads. Any rig that anyone has built at present (as far as I know) can be made into an installable rig that uses the plugin. I tried, but may not have succeeded in making the process clear...sorry if I didn't hit the mark.

Welcome on board John and Don! Be sure to check out the videos that correspond to the tutorials in "The Art of Animation Master" located here.

I'm in the process of making a Squetch Rig installation tutorial that includes FACE, Jeff....I'll PM you.

I think you covered all the bases, Rodney! Thanks for your help! Also, thanks to Mark Strohbehn for reviewing the material for me. Oh, in case someone isn't familiar with the plugin, it's located here.

If I remember correctly, the older versions of the characters don't have the problem and can be downloaded...if it's the same problem I'm thinking it is. If you do a search, there are some threads on the forum that answer this, I think.

Have you watched any of the films at AM Films? There are films made by AM users of all levels of abilities there. For the kind of thing you're looking to do, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this all have something about them that I think would apply to what you're asking about. Hope that helps.

That's the error you get if you don't right mouse click and select "save as". If you can't get it, I could e-mail it to you. Just leave me your e-mail address as a PM.

Not a problem, Drvarceto. I'm sorry it has taken so long to get to it. As far as updating a previous installation, it would depend on which version you have installed. For v11, if you have the latest posted version installed, it would just be a matter of replacing the "left_leg_FK_IK", "right_leg_FK_IK", "left_arm_FK_IK" and "right_arm_FK_IK" poses and resetting the compensate on any of the poses that need it...which would more than likely be in the legs. As long as all of the bones are the same, it should work. The latest changes that I haven't posted affect the method of installation and the FACE controls.

For a video screensaver in Windows, I use AVISaver...it's free and very good. To download, right mouse click on the download link at the bottom of the page and select "save as". When I just clicked on it I got an error. Hope that helps.

Very cool, I'll see how fast I can get the tutorials done...sorry it has taken so long so far, it has been very hectic for a few months.

Okay, give this one a try. I think the culprit was a constraint on the toes.

Hmmm, I'll see if I can find the problem, Drvarceto. I thought I knew what the problem was, I'll do some experimenting.

Just an update so that the v11 users know that I'm making some progress. What I've been doing is rigging Tinman's face for TWO, adding the FACE updates and face rig from Tinman to the v13, v12 and v11 installation rigs (after running it by Mark Strohbehn), updating the installation methods in those rigs and now I'm going to start on the installation tutorial videos. Here's what the v11 rig will be like (minus FACE) in Squetchy Thom. Initially, I was going to go with a different IK/FK switch on the arms and legs, but doing it this way will make it easy to upgrade a character that has been rigged to the v12 or v13 rig. Which means that the IK/FK switch on the arms and legs are on/off switches and there are a few bones that serve no purpose. It also means that upgrading the rig would just be a matter of changing out four poses and re-adjusting the compensate on a couple of constraints, which is about as painless as it can get. Anyway, v11 users, give this a test run and if you have a problem with something let me know. I'll put out the installation versions when I get the tutorials finished.

I think that if you watch the tutorials here, it will give you more information on which to base your decision. Hope that helps.

No, there were several that were begun in v12 and added to in v13...so I don't think that's the problem. I have QT7, it's probably my provider...things like that have happened before.

I got an error while downloading....are you using the Squetch Rig or something else, Paul?

Very cool! I'm looking forward to the animation.

Not a problem, T. I'm always learning something new, so, I'm not at a level where I would agree with you on the "master" label. I'm glad the tutorials are helping you though. I should have a few more tutorials finished in the next few weeks if all goes well.

You're probably not doing anything wrong, but the enforcement defaults to a "hold" type of interpolation. All you should have to do is to select the constraint in the pose, open the timeline (Alt+2), select the point at zero on the graph, right mouse click and select the "linear" interpolation method. Hope that helps.

Let's say you have the left side rigged, you can save a copy of the model as something like "right_side.mdl", select the base bone of the model, hit "S" for scale, scale it to -100 on the 'X' axis and save the file. Close AM, open the "right" model in a text editor and do a search and replace making "left" change to "right"...you should have named your bones with left or right in the name. Save the file as an "MDL" file, not a "TXT" file. Then, open your original model, import the new model and then delete the secondary bones that usually occur in the center of the character, like the head, spine, etc. Save out the combined model. Looks good so far, Robert!

The FK/IK switch was developed in v12 (in December, so even in v12 before December it wouldn't work), so you would get circularity errors in v11 since you wouldn't get anything baked to prevent those kind of things. What the v12 & v13 rigs do is to have bones that control in IK controlled in FK by the bones they were controlling in IK and the bones that control in FK are controlled by the bones they control in FK in IK (I hope that is a clear explanation). The euler constraint also had a problem until sometime in December that made the leg and arm chains unable to fully extend when being manipulated from the end of the calf or forearm. The installation plugin was coded using v12 methods and won't work in v11. So, that's why the v11 version of the rig has to be different. The only way it wouldn't be different is if Hash went back and put out a new version of v11 with the fixes necessary.

Sorry it's taking so long, Sharky. I actually have three or four things in the works right now, one of them is the v11.1 of the rig. I'm hoping to kick out several things all at the same time...maybe not everything at once, but that's what I'm trying. There are going to be a couple of differences in the v11.1 version that can't be helped...the IK/FK switch on the arms and legs will be replaced by a percentage pose to transition from IK to FK and back, the FK will not be able to follow the IK's positioning and the IK will not be able to follow the FK's positioning, the euler limits on the arms and legs won't play nice in v11.1 (I haven't decided what I'm going to do about that yet) and the installation plugin won't work in v11.1, so you will have to manually re-parent the bones when installing. Look again sometime at the end of the week, if I'm lucky I'll be done by then.

She looks very cool, Jeff! The only thing that is bothering me is the base of the neck...I'm not an anatomy expert, so I may be way off. I would make it more abrupt than it is at present...a less gradual transition from neck to torso by keeping it thinner until closer to the torso. Like I said, I could be completely wrong.