MJL

You are insane! (But in a good way. )

Thanks Nancy and Gene, I took my idea for the background from the early Hollywood days. I made a cylinder, put a jpg on it and rotated it during the chor. LOL the bee never really moves.

Just to finish this off, I finally got the action to work by adjusting the settings. Not completely sure what I did, but its working. But now that it is, I'm not happy with the wings themselves. Gene offered to pull the wings off his fly and let me use them. I may take him up on that. When I do, Gerry, I may try your suggestion, your wing action looks great! Flapping_Stinger.mov

thanks Paul, I am using version 15.0j. I down loaded some of the other upgrades but was having glitch difficulties., so I went back to this version and have just stayed. Here are those screen grabs. EDIT: Here is the clip with motion in the background. You can see that the dynamics are working, but are too stiff. Still haven't got the wing flapping action working yet. zStinger.mov

Thank You Very Much! I backed off on the stiffness for the dynamics on the antenna and that is working well, it looks like. But before I re-rendered that little scene I wanted to add some wing flapping. I made a 1 second action. key framed to go from open to closed every 5 frames. I dropped it onto the bee in the chor. I set the repeat in the "shortcut to wing flapping" properties to 4. But it is not doing anything. If I open the edit window it works fine. but not in the chor. I closed and re-opened A:M but that didn't do the trick this time. I could key frame the wings separately through the 4 seconds, but I would rather make the action work properly. Any Suggestions?

In the chor, when I hit play, the antenna moved, but not much. when I rendered it to movie form I don't see any dynamics at all. Maybe I need to back off on the stiffness now. but I do have four seconds of basic animation. xStinger.mov

I have implemented both suggestions, but haven't tried them yet. Thank you. I made several pose sliders to assist with animating. and all but one of them work as expected, but the one of does not affect the model in the chor. the others do. When I select edit expression for that pose slider, the relationship window comes up and the slider works in that window. then I save the model, close the relationship window but it still doesn't work in the chor? EDIT: I solved the problem by saving and closing the project and restarting A:M.

HAPPY JULY 4TH EVERYBODY! thanks Mark! I did as you suggested. I applied a dynamic constraint to the last bone in each antenna. These are screen captures of the first four frames. I adjusted the stiffness to 95% and there was no difference. Obviously, it is more movement than I wanted.

I'm self unemployed, so I get to be employee of the month every month. It get's old after a while.

Thanks Paul, I actually feel like I'm beginning to connect some of the elusive dots. After making the euler constraints pose suggested by Mark. I made the wings, gave them bones and put Translate to and Orient like constraints to the chest bone and saved that pose. I now wish to put orient like and translate to constraints on the base antenna bones (to the head bone) and put a dynamic constraint on the ends of the antenna. Here is my question: Can I select the "edit relationship" option after right clicking on the "Wings Constraints" pose and add the antenna constraints to that pose? these are all on/off poses. EDIT: The answer to my question is: "YES I CAN" I AM finding that I am able to find my way around deeper layers of A:M. AND IT MAKES SENSE!

Got it, David, thanks.

You are most likely right, David, but how do I avoid that? Do I reclench the hands, by hand in the take off pose? How would I use the clench hand pose in the take off pose otherwise?

If I should move this to WIP someone let me know. While the rig is far from perfect, at this point it is, functional enough. I've been trying to work with poses (percentage). I got right and left hand clench poses. Trying to make a Taking Off pose that includes both hands clenched, but something isn't jiving correctly. When I start the taking off pose, the two clench poses are at 0%. then at Taking Off>100% I set both clench poses to 100% also. But then the percentages in the pose slider window go screwy (-110% -300% ). Any body have some insight?

Thank you very much Mark, I think I have it done. do I just name that pose "Euler Limits" and ignore it in the user properties? I also think that that is as fancy as I'm gonna get for now. I may revisit rigging this guy at a later point and give him an upgrade, but he's good for now. Spent a couple of hours weighting cp's. gonna make some fist clenching poses and a "Smooch" and "play harmonica" pose and he'll be ready to roll. PS. oh yeah, and a stinging pose?

robcat I've been experimenting with CP weighting and it seems to going well. itsjustme I'm not planning on using the mirror bones plugin, but just in case I changed the "L" & "R" to "left" & "right" mtpeak2 Mark, assuming that what you meant by "whole body bone", the mid spine bone is then a child of the null as well. I think I have accomplished this part. I'm not quite sure I understand the next part, could you possibly give me a little more on that? Then I may be ready to get fancy. Paul, I like the idea of the dynamic constraints on the antenna, and wil implement that once I get there. (and study up a little) Thanks for all the help and encouragement, folks. I kinda like the little guy myself.

Thanks Guys. Thank You for all the help. Good suggestions, all. I will experiment with the cp weighting, the dynamic chain, and of course watch the always brilliant video tutorials done by MR. Holmes Bryant. Will keep you "posted". I'm helping Gene in another video for my friend, Franco Paletta, to follow up the "Baby Won't Let Me Ride" video. Here is a shot of the Logo and slogan. Thought the bee could "Be" an interesting addition to the project, or even try for a short animation of the logo itself. Can't help the Spy Vs. Spy thing. In the immortal words of Jessica Rabbit: "I can't help the way I am, I'm just drawn that way." or something like that.

I have made a new character. As you can see he is fairly simple, having no legs. I know that there are a number of rigs available complete with installers, but I thought that this might a golden opportunity to learn in more depth, step by step and rig this little guy from scratch. I have made the necessary bones and assigned the cp's. What would be the next step? CP weighting? And what about IK and FK and that Chain Thing?.

Happy Birthday, Fucher. And Yes! thank you for all you do.

Happy Birthday, John!

You, sir, are a talented man in every aspect of animation.

Happy Birthday, Laddie!. Have a taste of the Laphroaig.

Steve, You may already know this, but in case you don't, I thought I'd chime in. Changing the scale of a Darktree material works best for me as follows: On the shortcut to "material" for a particular group, click on the white triangle (properties, I think) and open it up, then open up "transform", then "Scale" and adjust your percentages. ( I go up to 500% sometimes) Click on the white box with the plus that is to the left of the shortcut and open up the Simbiont properties and adjust your bump scale there.

thanks Paul and Mouseman. As I stated on my FB post: Ok, last time I promise. I wanted to make this image into a "non-info" "Art" poster, but there was just too much unbroken black. so I played just a tad bit more. I'm done now.

Thanks, folks. I just LOVE what you can create in this program. My FAVORITE artistic tool. (well, next to my guitar, of course.) Here is the final poster:

It seem like forever since I've had the time to play with my favorite program. One of these day's I'll get to try to animate. Here is an image I created to make a poster for my friends Blues Jam.