pixelplucker

Sometimes it can get goofy. What I do is select all then control click one of the cp edges that are parallel to the x axis and avoid selecting any cp's that are on the extremes.

very nice texture

Try making a twister with that affect yet?

Finally got a chance to look at the file. I re-saved a previous version out replacing the one that gave me fits and it seems to be working fine. Something got goofed but all is working now.

Bones are there, the relationships are gone and the tsm2 poses were gone as well. Been really busy here last few days, I'll look through and maybe to do a clean install of AM.

Great Job! Love that chicken hehe

I probably need a nice clean install of AM again. I went through the rigger, saved the mdl file as flytsm2rigged Made a new project and imported the fly and the rig isn't there. Some reason it isn't being saved. Once it is in the project file and I run the rigger and all works fine. Dunno...

Seems to fall apart when I import the mdl into a project file. If I build the rig within the prj I have no problems. Somethings goofy and it could very well be the user! For now I'm not fighting it.

One of the big programs used is called Art Pro. Took me a bit to remember but what it does is compensates the art for distortions. This makes the prepress very brainless considering the plate bounce, stretch and all the other nasty stuff that goes on in the flexo world. Occasionally I have to distort art but that is usually for tapered mugs that use printed inserts, For the most part that can be achieved using envelope distortions, I use Canvas for most of the tough stuff, Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark for the rest. If you do tons of vector work like I do, check out Canvas. Much of my work is fixing other peoples Illustrator CS files

Usually you do the art flat and undistorted as you like. There is specialized software for the flexo industry that will distort the art to correct it on the package. The factories most often have templates that you work in.

The errors as I posted don't seem to be affecting the rig. I do have to do the build within the project file I am using since it doesn't get stored in the mdl file. Not a big deal, but finally got a chance to figure that out.

All that did was replace the text in the properties field so now it doesn't look so scary. Still have some issues with the rig but going to take a closer look tomorrow if I don't get too many interuptions. Work is starting to pick up again which is a good thing.

That would fix it? I'll try it on a backup, thanks!

I can't update to f because I'm one of those lonely CD guys. I do have a full save prior to the tsm2 builder, don't have to smack me upside the head with a 2x4 twice

Very nice work, I did notice a couple flipped patches on the forks though, can see them from the images you posted. Might be 5 pointers that are flipped.

When I use the builder all works out spiffy, all my weighting done and ik/fk working fine. Soon as I restart AM and try to make a new action I get error 500## (## are sequential numbers that follow). I'm using 15d not sure if that is an issue.

How did you do the tires? The tread part of the wheel as once continuous spline object or are there many aligned on the surface?

Can get some nice effects in Dogwaffle, I dabble in it just a bit and is pretty cool. http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/free/

Posted the image here because some may be just as lazy as me and not look in the other forums

Awesome! Just downloaded the tuts. I should probably post the fly and textures for people to used with the tutorial Of course I pick a really awkward character for my first tsm2 attempt Thanks

Really coming along, if your not doing super close ups you could skip the welds, or cheese it out as a separate object that you could use where needed. Something like a torus thats been squashed with a nice ring bump on it might do the trick

You can make one model and repeat it in the choreography. I would make it somewhat modular so that you can mix the building clusters so they don't look too repetitive. There are is a plugin called multiply that you will find handy at http://www.sgross.com/plugins/index.html

The welds you could do by blending your patches and maybe toss a nice bump map for the weld ring pattern. Most of the time I use a 4 segment lathe, rarely need more than that and makes aligning the handles much easier. Your top frame bar could probably be made with a 5 cross sections lathe and extrude the profile out. There are tons of splines that can be removed on your model but looking really great so far. weld5_4.mdl

Rob is right that the decal is being applied at an angle. If you picture that decals are frontal projection maps, you should align the model to the your view as flat as possible to minimize distortion. I find the patch selection tool very handy for selecting just the surfaces I want decals on. Select the patches and hit the hide button. Next you can rotate and or orbit around the patches to show them as straight on as much as possible. For trickier decaling, you can make an Action and in muscle mode actually distort the model and sections of the model to flatten as much as possible for applying decals. The action can be deleted after your done and the model isn't destroyed.

I jumped back to 15d here, I had too many issues with 15e. If you are on the cd version like me try a clean install of AM and use the d upadate. I believe it is this one ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/windows/old/AMCD.exe They said they were coming out with F for the cd people, I would love to have that update but I'm sure they are super busy (cookouts, pool parties etc) since it is summer time :0