Meowx

Tried that, no luck!

Alright, real simple. How do you view decals in real-time (in shaded or shaded/wirefreame)? I swear there was an option/key for this but for the life of me I can't find it. Or am I just imagining things.

Nice job! The feel of weight is excellent. The walk as he's stepping up to the weight and the way he initially bends over both seemed a little off. Other than that, fantastic!

You may want to consider using a bone or bones with pose rather than a smartskin. Letting a bone do the rotating will preserve the axis and keep you from having to re-position those points so many times. This blink pose is a combo of bone and muscle movement. I only had to adjust a couple points at 50% and 10%, everything else is just at 0% or 100%. blink.mov

Question about constraints. Can kinetic constraints not be used with limiters? Right now I have a "Constraints" pose which contains the Euler limits for all the bones. However, when I also turn on the "Leg Constraints" pose (which contains the kinetic chains and orient like constraints for animating the legs), the bones completely ignore their Euler limits. Is this because they're in separate poses, or does one overwrite the other? It's not a big issue; I haven't had any problems with the IK chain besides an occasional Z-axis spaz. Just wondering!

Default key to toggle perspective is the \ key (above return), you may have bumped that.

No, just this particular project. I've never run into it before.

Cool! Thanks.

Today's question: Can you change a bone to a null?

Say, what's up with 20,000 blank rotoscopes? As I'm working in a choreography, my main model just keeps piling on rotoscopes with no name under the actual rotos I've got in the model. I have no idea where these are coming from. Hell, I haven't even started putting decals on yet. This happens in every single choreography. Nothing life threatening here, but rather annoying.

Really? Here, see if you can use this. And I actually just found out that apparently I was lying - it looks like Sorenson Video 3 has been upgraded! At least in this quick test, it has noticeably better quality and noticeably smaller file size! So if you can't use Pixlet, who cares! Of course, if you can't use SV3, then you're stuck with (shudder) Cinepak. Animation File Size: Very High Quality: Very High Apple Pixlet Video File Size: Medium Quality: Medium Sorenson Video 3 File Size: Low Quality: High Cinepak File Size: Medium Quality: Low can_animation.mov can_pixlet.mov can_sv3.mov can_cinepak.mov

Yes, that's just an transparent "deflector" layer that surrounds the actual legs. The different layers of detail on the legs was making it a pain trying to figure out which parts should be deflectors... so I figured, why not just make some giant invisible sweat pants.

If you're saving things as a Quicktime movie (I don't know if there's a different default for Windows), there's a lot of different codecs. Here's the ones you'll actually want to choose from. 1. None. This will create a MASSIVE file. Only use this if you absolutely cannot lose any quality. 2. Animation. This will create a pretty big file, but much smaller than "None." You will lose very little quality. For final renders, this is usually what you want to use. 3. Apple Pixlet Video. This is a newer codec; if you don't have the latest version of Quicktime, it may not be there. Update! This is a fantastic codec. Think of it like a .JPG img - you'll get some quality reduction, but especially at medium to medium high quality settings, it creates a very reasonable file size. Great for test renders. At higher quality settings, you can even use this for some final renders. 4. Sorenson Video 3. This is an older codec, it has been replaced by Apple Pixlet. If you don't have Pixlet and can't update, this codec is very similar. The files are slightly larger and the quality is slightly less, but it still works pretty good. Oh, and 203mb for 5 minutes? That's tiny. To put it in perspective, here's the folder with all the raw movie data from a project I recently completed. That 1 gig movie file at the top is only 1 minute and 38 seconds long.

All right! So after working on this all morning, it seems that once again all I have to do is make a post on this board and then everything magically comes together. I made a couple minor tweaks to the deflector group near the top of the spline, but more importantly turned the tolerance down to 0.5 I hadn't realized it could go below one! Both of my test animations have the cloth working properly, so I'll just hold my breath for now.

Thanks for the help on face rigging! Now I'm running into some issues with cloth. I'm having to move the top spline of the cloth group WAY far off for the simulation to run. Problem is, it looks ridiculous when it's like that because the top spline doesn't actually simulate, it just sits there (which I assume is what it's supposed to do). (2nd image is normal, 1st image is "safe" area. When I have the spline moved way out there, it works just fine.) The "deflector" group is the legs. The cloth tutorial I've seen linked when I did a search is a broken .AVI link and a lengthy .pdf which is pretty hard to follow without the video (it looks to be just a word-for-word transcription of the video). Any helpful advice?

edit: actually, just gonna start a new thread since it looks like I can't edit the title of this one =D

The shading there looks fantastic, is Muhhair an addon or is it built into Hash?

They actually painted Jude Law's hairline in a harsh line for the movie AI to give him a more "artificial" feel. Odd example I suppose, because this is just the opposite of what you what; however, putting in a darker scalp with a more faded line will create an excellent look for under the hair.

Quick question (completely unrelated to face rigging) - I'm working with some cloth now, and the groups of the model I apply the "cloth" and "deflector" materials to get their group surface properties overridden, leaving them with the model's default. How do I avoid this? edit: nm, figured it out, groups in the bottom of the list have priority.

Alright, I haven't started on the face yet - I'm setting up the rig for the rest of the body first - but I thought I'd see if you guys have any comments. This will be my first full rig, and if you have any insight on face geometry, let me know! I've attached the facial geometry. I did set up a blink pose just to make sure it would work properly, but other than that the face is completely unrigged. Does the geometry look ok or are there going to be problem areas when I start animating? Thanks for your help! untitled.mov

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ This is one of the best sources for all things technical regarding the Star Wars universe. Pictures of pretty much every vehicle ever conceived and hours of good reading.

Hey, question on rigs. Is it best to go heavy on fanbones or is ok to have a simpler skeleton and abuse smartskins? Does this anger the program at all?

After looking at the last generation's mesh and pushing CPs around without the wireframe showing I got it un-creased again. Thanks again, this is one of the most helpful communities I've come across!

Hmm ok. Thing is, I can't really find much to play around with in terms of valleys. The CP in the first screenshot used to be a hook, at that point there was no crease. If nothing else, I can just go back to the hook, but having it as a CP does make quite a difference in the lip shape. (Crease looks fine from front angle, see 3rd shot for rotated version.) Would it help you if I uploaded the face as a model for you to better look at?

All right, new problem. The face has been shaping up nicely, but I've also been adding in more detail as the original was just a rough draft. However, as I'm adding some definition to the shape of the lips, I keep getting creases at the corners of the mouth. I'm not having much luck fixing this. Any recommended geometry changes or suggestions? Thanks again!