Meowx

Ah ha! That's what I'm after. And that's why I asked before filing a report, lol. Thanks, Nancy!

Just wanted to verify that I'm not doing something wrong here before I throw up an AM Report. I'm using the Mac version of v16 and can't get spring systems to work. In an action, selecting "simulate spring systems" does absolutely nothing. In a choreography, the option is grayed out. I hopped back to v15 (same project, same actions, same chor) and "simulate spring systems" works perfectly fine in both acts and chors. I also tried creating a brand new action in v16; same result. Anyone else have this issue? Thanks!

A little more tweaking in After Effects got me more what I'm looking for: shouldertest_2.mov

Thanks all! Working on textures for another character; did a quick test render for some sprite particle and animated decal fx on the shoulders. Decal is a bit bright, but turned out ok. shoulder_test.mov

Pretty simple really, just make the final ring inverted (obviously this falls into the "doing it wrong" category): or really really small: Here's the model with the final ring really really small, but not quite inverted: Model2.mdl

I'm also curious about its effects on renders. And yes, in my experience, over-scaling the last ring (or sometimes even just scaling it really really close) produces rendering glitches.

Excellent, thank you. I hadn't realized 3 points were as sensitive as 5 points when it comes to curves, but I suppose it only makes sense!

Alright, kinda fundamental modeling question here. Typically, when modeling something round that needs to be capped off smoothly (and no hole/point from lathing), I'll do something like this: Unfortunately, this always seems to create creases - particularly in the three-point patches - that no amount of bias tweaking gets rid of: I've included the model in the screenshot; it's just a 2-second deal with no polish or anything. round_cap.mdl Is this just a fundamentally bad way to model stuff, or is there a way to get rid of these creases? Thanks!

Congratulations! It's always great to see a project finished, and even better to see it win some recognition!

You could count me in.

What exactly are you trying to do that you're having problems with? I downloaded the project, but not much is embedded in it. The chor is a sphere slowly drifting to the left for me.

I'll just leave this here

Tahoma and Verdana are my current top choices for professional, readable type. The old standards Arial and Helvetica (or Helvetica Neue) also work nicely.

While I'm not sure about v16, v15 should run fine on Tiger.

One thing I'd do for sure it ditch the bouncing words/letters at the start and end. A simple fade in/fade out is much more clean and professional looking. (Could be worse though, at least you're not using Comic Sans!!)

I honestly liked the first walk you posted (post #3) a lot more that this one. Sure, it had some technical points to work on... but it was a lot more expressive.

Alright, with the help of Mark and David, got the rig and dynamics in my orc guy flipped and functioning! A few keyframes later and here's a quick test of the motion of his armor: Untitled.mov He'll be performing Swan Lake in no time!

Ah, that did it! Thanks!

Great films, David. I'm having some problems getting this to work, though! First, it would boot me out of the equation when I clicked on the PWS - gave me a "The function is missing a required parameter." error. I've got my PWS on a second monitor, and in your video it's part of the main bar. So I dragged the PWS into there on the main monitor and low and behold, it stopped booting me out of the equation. Now, however, I can't figure out how to select the X value for the controller bone. I have "show more than drivers" activated, but I don't get a little triangle to view the properties like you do in your video.

Actually, the channel surfing idea could work quite well. Intro with Thom sitting on the couch flipping channels, zoom in on the screen, 15-30 second clip of commercial, parody, whatever really; kscchh (staic), next clip!

..and then forgot about it in the new ones! The ridiculously clean cut look of the cities and costumes in ep 1-3 had me thinking of Star Trek all over again. But yes, one of the first things I learned in 3D is this: there is no such thing as "mint condition" when you're modeling.

There's some glitchy stuff there with the Mac version. If you can't click on dialog buttons, apple-tab to another program and then back in to A:M and you'll regain control of the buttons. (If you've got multiple dialogs open, you may need to completely hide A:M by option-clicking the desktop or what have you and then tabbing back in to regain control.) As for files crashing on render like that, first, make sure any old copy of the rendered file is deleted/moved; if you try to render back over the old corrupted one it will corrupt and crash again. Go in to your render to file settings > format > Quicktime Move > and then go to the "Save Options" and click "Set." Change the compression type to something else, it doesn't matter what. Hit OK. Now go back in and change the compression back to whatever it was before. Hit OK. Your movie should now save without crashing.

Cool! Good to know for future projects.

ha ha, yeah, found that out first hand.