thefreshestever

heres another one with no ground model and gravity set to zero... btw, the middle force and the middle sphere are not constrained to another, so the that sphere can float around within the negative force. i did not know newton objects work with forces, this is kinda fun! i´m afraid i don´t quite understand magneticspheres_0gravity.mov

newton seems to work for this. i constrained forces to the spheres, the one in the middle with a negative magnitude, the others with a positive. but if you want to achieve relatively accurate results to demonstrate something it will get very very exhausting tinkering with the settings. magneticspheres_low.mov

you can avoid that by doing the weighting in an action.

thanks mark... yes, this is exactly the problem... it´s the bias... closing, opening, and not touching anything before rendering seems to work. just figured that out a couple of minutes ago i usually use the squetchrig, but since i had to rig a bunch of characters and the job isn´t paid very well, i used the lite rig, because its much faster to install. i´ve only used it once before on a robot-like character with no curved splines at all, so i wasn´t aware of the problem. in general i like this rig, but it has it´s flaws... i don´t think i will use it again in the future. i created the project in v16, but also tried v15 and v17, same results in all versions.

i´ve rigged a bunch of characters for a current job with the lite rig and i already animated half of it, so i don´t want to re-rig. the problem is that cp-weights get messed up when animating. the weighting itself isn´t actually messed up though, it just looks like it (knees and elbows occur crooked for instance). when i select the cps for let´s say the knee ring and click edit cp weighting, the values for the weights are fine, but i have to hit apply again to de-crooke the knee. after that i save and hit the space bar, and everything else also pops back to the way it´s supposed to be. but: if i have multiple characters in the scene, every time i fix one, the other gets re-messed-up. this only happens with the lite rig, is there a way to fix this permanently?

in my experience mirror bones never works correctly the first try... play around with the settings, it takes a bit of trial and error, but i always get it to work. maybe a few cps will have incorrect weights, but that´s easy to fix.

happy birthday!

i like it! but: i´m missing some shadows behind the wooden elements, and the blue comes a little bit agressive to my eyes. if i´m on a comic-page where i want to concentrate on the content, the bright blue background is a little bit distracting... a little bit more desaturated blue would work better... just my opinion though...

haha... lion in a leopard suit

this is great!!!!

nowadays you can learn almost everything all by yourself, all the information is out there, and it´s completely FREE. it´s a little bit more inconvenient than getting everything fed to you by a teacher, but on the other hand you have full control about what you want to learn, when and how you want to learn it. i´ve had a bunch of interns a few years ago when i still had my office, most of them were studying communication design at college. most times when they told me what they learn at school i thought "oh my, what a waste of time"... when i finished my alternative civilian service i wanted to go to college, but i couldn´t, because i had no money and had to pay my rent... so i started working in an advertising agency, started as "girl for everything" and made my way up to becoming art director. after 3 years i started my own business. looking back, i´m glad i did it that way, in the 3 years in the agency i´ve gained far more applicable knowledge than i would have at college.

for a jeans i would go for a decal as well. jeans are quite easy to do, because you can create one decal for the front, and one for the back, and you won´t have to worry about seams, because jeans do have seams on the sides if you want it to be seamless anyway and just use a small tileable image, i´d go for a bitmap plus material.

very cool, david. i still can´t see much difference, even side by side. when are you going to do auto-animate?

happy birthday

looking good so far... you might want to change the arms to ik, as soon as the hands grab the edge of the wall.

thanks to all, very encouraging.. rob, you´re right, but i´m not sure if this is that easy to fix for me. if i´d change the "master shot" angle, i wouldn´t have the cafe in the background anymore and it´s necessary to show the cafe in the background i think. if i´d change the camera angle of the other shots i´d have just the cafe in the back as well, which would be a little bit boring. of course, i just choose those angles because of the more cool backgrounds i could create viewing through those angles, showing the street, the city, mountains and sky in the background. i don´t know if it´s that bad in my case not following that rule. i don´t have any action going on where the change of direction would be confusing. at the moment i can´t think of any satisfying solution. i want to show the cafe, but i want to show the city as well, and the street, and definitely the car... i´ll have to think about that. i´m not too sure about rules in general, there´s a lot of design and typography rules which i break on purpose every day, but i´m more confident in design and typography as i am in filmmaking

what´s your problem? robert was just making suggestions and writing his opinion, same as you did. i don´t see any difference. and certainly no need to be rude. regarding the 4-hour rule: i like the concept, but i don´t think it´s enough time for beginners to animate something like a character climbing over a wall in that amount of time.

nice! cant figure out much difference either... but i guess that´s how it´s supposed to be i think automated shoulder movements can be very helpful in a lot of cases. i suppose there´s an on/off switch for that? or maybe even a slider? a slider would be cooler i think, so one can control the intensity and smoothly fade it in and out when needed.

hmm.. i think i´ll try that. and you´re right, it´s supposed to be some sort of staring contest, but maybe it´s too frozen... thanks.

thanks... tiny little update: fixed some animation issues, repositioned some lights, added dynamic constraints to the hoodie laces. nupreview_low.mov

oh, it wasn´t clear to me that he got dumped... i thought he was just hitting on her and got rejected.

i´m not sure if i get it... what´s the story? just a shitty day? if so, i think the end needs some sort of twist or point to it, maybe he´s transported in an ambulance to the hospital, and the nurse is the girl from the beginning or something like that. right now the first part seems a little bit disconnected to the rest of the story. at the beginning, at second 57, there´s some background popping happening, the scene where the clouds are rising up could be a little bit shorter i think (there´s also some cloud-popping happening at that part). in the scene after that, from 1.18 to 1.23, what is he doing? is he throwing the flowers away? if so, it isn´t clear to the viewer, maybe you should use another camera angle, a closer one. i really like the camera move in the scene after that, from 1.25 to 1.35... looks very dramatic! but what´s causing those weird lines? when the lightning strikes the rock, it glows for a few frames, i´d keep that up much longer, so it´s really clear it´s hot! maybe ad some slight flickering to it, too.

some of the little bit more recent cartoons i liked (about 15-10 years ago or so ) were those weird ones like cow & chicken, johnny bravo, and 2 stupid dogs. they were all kind of retro regarding the look, though johnny bravo was one of the cartoons that inspired me the most to get into animation, i always enjoyed those fast moves with long stylish posed holds... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnGnl-UElVA

looking good! i don´t know about the theory with the already existing characters, though... i guess it depends on what you will be applying for with that portfolio.

what if rob wins?