MJL

ng. Hi Rodney I've been helping Gene on this project, modeling a few props. Spurred on by your comment that this looks to be a straight forward task, I thought I might give your suggestions about changing the decals a try. I opened the TGA's in Corel Photopaint (which you use) and was going to change just the colors to start with. Some decals had masks & others didn't. I copied the tga's to a separate folder to revert to. I then tried to alter the originals, thinking that that would change the color of the model. My attempts to change the colors were less than "pallette-able" and I have now officially "Baaaaalllked" at changing the chicken. I know that time is a rare commodity for you, but perhaps you could walk us through a step by step of this process. Then we would know how to make the models on the Extra's CD our own. ( I seem to remember something of an army proverb about volunteering)

I started to put this in the help wanted forum, but I wasn't sure it qualified. After 40 years in the music business, I’m making a stab at becoming an overnight success. It’s too late for me to do it by being young and pretty, so I’ll have to rely on bullsh*t and trickery. One arm in my multi-pronged attack on the American Psyche, will be revamping my website. www.myronleroy.com. I would like to have some unique and interesting background images, with different themes. Which brings me to the reason for this post. I was wondering where to find that imagery, when it dawned on me that I have already been obliquely associated with some folks with incredible imagination and talent at creating visual imagery. Each image used will be used on the web site only, unless other arrangements are made. I’m not asking for anyone to make any new images unless they feel inspired to do so. I am a musician after all, so it will come as no surprise that I have no money to pay for these images that I so desire. (What do you call a guitar player with out a girlfriend?. . . . . Homeless!) I will, however, try to make it worthwhile in other ways. If I use an image of yours, I’ll send you a digital copy of my CD entitled “Nice Rack”, when it’s finished, hopefully this fall. Each image used will have an {“Image by:YourNameHere”} button that will expand to give your website link or other info that you wish known. Categories: Art Neuveau Celestial Antique Grateful Dead Sepia Jungle Misc In the immortal words of Bartles & James: “Thanks for your support.” Myron

That Dollar is worth a heck of a lot more that a Buck! Great, Great Job.

He's gonna have to flap those wings pretty darn fast to get off the ground.

Great Character development, Zaryin.

Add my thanks to the list, Robcat is usually one of the first to the rescue. Thanks Rob. EDIT: OOPs, wrong thread, sorry.

Is this what you're talking about? I leave for work in 15 minutes, will check in later

that change was strategic, Steve. I t made a world of difference.

Your work is incredible, Mark. I love your trees. Bonsai was a hobby of mine for years. I'm still learning the basics in A:M. I hope that someday I could put an entry into a thread like this, but until then, this will have to do.

Thanks, Steve, and thanks again for your help. Robcat, Like the golf instructor told his student: "I can tell you're getting better, because you're missing the ball closer than you used to!" My progress in A:M is in baby steps. there are no fan bones or any CP weighting, just painstaking placement. In the hose, each bone is a child of the previous one with the nozzle being the last. That bone has IK Lock turned on. The pump motion was done with a pose slider. The bones in it were put there for constraining to if used in a future project. Could I have made any easier to animate with, without CP weighting or fan bones? I just downloaded Largento's Comic tute on CP weighting from the Godzilla thread, so I'll play with it some more. Glad you didn't think it "stinks"

Mark, Dagnabit, I thought I had all of your wonderful tute pages rounded up and held in a place of honor in my A:M Tute's Folder. This must be new? Regardless, keep them coming. I LOVE these. thanks, Myron (And now back to our regularly scheduled program)

Steve, sorry I couldn't get back sooner to post but your first post gave me what I needed. Thank you so much for your effort with the screen shots but moving the keyframes proved pretty easy. This proved to be a valuable exercise. It's only 3.5 seconds but I've gone from silent films to talkies. Well sound, anyway. Maybe for my next epic I'll shoot for a little more sophistication. Pump_Action_Movie.mov

I've made a small model and made 4 second movie with it. I need to shorten it by about a second or so, (actually speed up the action) but the place where I need to make the adjustments is in the first half of the movie. It's short enough to just redo, but I figured that this may be an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of some of the "mechanics" of A:M Thank You in advance for any insight. Myron

No one is disputing the fact that you're an odd cookie, Gene, we're just trying to figure out which flavor!

Ahhhh, but how well can she sing?

Lotta character in that one, Gene. Could be a 50's crooner.

I wanna live there.

I, too, like the toon version. I'm not sure if it's the lighting or not, I just think that it give them a distinctive style.

Susan Boyle?

Excellent! I think I caught a trout there once.

Good Job Gene! Excellent use of a talking tree. I like the way he wipes his brow a la Louis. (By the way, my main computer is in the shop, I'll get it back tomorrow)

Happy Birthday Fuchur ! It is our good luck to have you here on the forum.

Thanks everybody. Good eye Zaryin, the juncture between the head stock and the top of the neck fought me greatly and I've settled for now but will go back and tweak it when I get a second wind. Nancy, when I get a better handle on bump and displacement maps I intend to put in the string windings, but seeing as how this is a steel string guitar and not a classical or nylon string guitar I'll have to save the transparent and translucent attributes for another time. This has been my most ambitious project thus far in A:M. Because I intend to use this model in an animated guitar instruction DVD I'm being pretty "anal" about it. It's gonna get a lot of use. I've put bones in each fret and am putting bones in each string at the frets hoping to create actions for proper string movement for each note fretted. Which brings me to a question. Can you use multiple actions on a model at the same time? For example to "play a G chord I would need 6 different notes (one for each string) could I use 6 actions simultaniously or would I have to make a separate action to show the 6 strings vibrating at once? Thanks again for the positive reinforcement. I'll get it tuned as soon as I model an electronic tuner.

Imaginitively conceived and Artfully executed!

I got it finished tonight. All I added were the strings and bridge pins but it really made a difference. Here's a couple of photo's and the final turn around movie. Final_Guitar_Turnaround.mov