markw

HeHe, Liked the Gum one You should work on that some more!

¡Feliz Cumpleaños! As we say here

I, like Rodney, would do it manually, especially as the rest of the model is done and you don't want to disturb other parts by accident. The "Twist" Bone is at the end of and "inside" the Forearm Bone (see snapshot) CP's in the forearm should be weighted to it and the Forearm Bone (the ones I'v circled in blue). CP's close to the wrist mostly to the Twist Bone and those furthest from the wrist, more to the Forearm Bone. Some experimenting will be required to get it right!

Hum… I might be wrong but I don't think you should need to reinstall the rig to fix the wrists as all you are doing is putting in some more spline rings. The new CP's will just need appropriate weighting to the different bones i.e Hand, Forearm Twist and Forearm bones.

Hi Simon, Although I'm no rigging specialist I might take a stab at this and I'm sure others will have better ideas, but looking at your screen shots I think you are asking rather a lot from not very much model geometry! (I've scribbled some first impressions) Whilst keeping the patch count low is generally a good thing, for areas like joints more can sometimes be better! Whilst a lot can be achieved with good CP weighting some Smartskin will also be needed to pick up the slack as it were. Its also with considering with things like hands, feet & heads do they need to be all modeled in one continues geometry? A separate hand pocking out of a shirt sleeve is free to rotate without twisting the arm mesh at all. If I may, I might link this to your other post on project management. When planning a character always ask yourself what am I going to want it to do? and can it do it? This doesn't just apply to complex movements but also to the seemingly simple ones too. Extending this further, conversely don't spend time in making a character capable of things its never going to need to do.

Lots of good advice coming for us all here Simon. My small contribution here would be, no matter how you organize stuff on your computer NEVER be tempted to make a folder called "Miscellaneous", it will just turn into a black hole sucking every thing in! All things have their proper place! If something could go happily in more than one folder then this is where using Aliases/Shortcuts back to the original helps so that it can appear in more than one folder. On your Mac you can colour code your files too for example any assets that are currently "in use", for example in a Chor, I have as Red just to remind me not to tamper with them. And as with all things; "Research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless and add what is uniquely your own". Bruce Lee.

Got an email today from the ever industrious Steffen saying that as of v17c when it comes out, A:M will accept 32bit .wav files

Do you mean selecting a bunch of CP's to remove from a group of previously selected CP's? Holding down either 'alt/option' or 'cmd' as you select will let you do this on a Mac in A:M. Mac users though may be more used to using the 'cmd' key when doing this, I certainly am, as outside of A:M say in a Finder window only the 'cmd' key will let you subtract from a group of selected items.

Also, if you are making sounds to load into A:M, DON'T make them 32bit! Currently A:M will only accept; 8, 16 & 24bit .wav files.

Happy birthday Steffen Thanks for all your work pushing A:M forward

Hi purplegirl, Can I ask did you embed your project before posting it here? I only ask as there are 5 Actions showing, presumably the Smartskins? but there is no rigged version of Thom for them to work with. There is a Model1 but that appears empty. With the faulty project open, go to; Project in the Menu bar and chose; 'Embed All' then Save and re-post the new embedded project. That will ensure everything that you were working with in the project is kept. Then I'm sure someone here can help.

So v17b, is there a problem with the EXR.iio plugin? I get a warning on launching A:M that it won't load. If, as I have, I swap the plugin for the one from v17a it launches perfectly.

Thanks Fuchur. Time to play

I see we are being tempted with v17b now but the link for it's not working

Hi Simon Be very careful with the treeez plugin! The first time I used it I wanted to make just one tree and then found I had spent a whole Sunday afternoon tweaking things and making more and more. It can be addictive!

Hi Simon One thing you can do yourself to check for signs of potential infection is to have a look in the following place on your system. Remember you are just looking, don't go moving or deleting anything! On a healthy system you should be able to navigate this path; /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.xprotectupdater.plist If the .plist file at the end is missing then that might indicate a problem. And have a read of this http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57403...alware-in-os-x/

I think as far as the links Rodney provided go, you are safe. Just visited them myself and wasn't asked to update Flash and it played just fine on Firefox and Safari. The latest Mac version of Flash is 11.4.402.265 You can check yours by opening System Preferences > Other (its the section at the bottom of the window) > Flash Player > Advanced.

Thanks yet again Rodney. Another quick reply! Just found it is consolidating them. But it confused me a bit with how it dose it. When you consolidate A:M makes both a zip file and a folder where you tell it to. The folder is full of other empty folders and sub folders relating to where your assets were. Now the zip, when you open it makes another folder with the same name as the first folder but with everything in it. I had a 50/50 chance of going to the right folder and lost! Still, might ask Steffen if A:M really needs to make that other empty folder... As for ziping, Macs by default use something built in called 'Archive Utility' unless you want to use something else.

And another thing... I'm on a Mac here and A:M will not Embed nor Consolidate any sound file's that are used in a project. Can others confirm this? Is this normal? Should I A:M report this as well?

Humm, proxy sound files you say… Will have to experiment with that sometime and see what the effect on real-time playback is like. Just did a quick experiment and A:M will accept 8, 16 & 24bit WAV files. It's just the 32bit ones it refuses. A small detail perhaps to include in an update of the TechRef when that day comes? I must confess apart from "Keep a Secret" and some experimenting, I've not done much lip-sync. Apart from dialog, which has to be in there before animating, most any other sound I've always added later to the rendered movie in a video editing app.

I've just found that A:M only supports 16bit WAV files and not 32bit ones. This was after 10min of head scratch as to why it kept telling me I was trying to load an invalid file! I wonder are there technical reasons for A:M not handling any other depths or formats of sound files?

Thanks for the info fea_alba. I routinely have active projects baked up on Dropbox. Could I just email you the link to my segment when its ready for you to download from there.

That might be me... There are no built in Help files for us Mac people like there is in Windows We just have to look in the TechRef PDF. But the good news is that v17 now comes with A:M Answers built in Its early days yet for it but who knows, eventually we may not need the TechRef at all.

That's looking much better now. Yes, still more tweaking to be done but its getting there. Maybe look at the feat next as there's still some slipping going on and look at the hip null too. Hard to tell in wire-frame at that angle but it looks like it stops moving forward at one point (I could be wrong) but it shouldn't, in a normal walk it should always be moving forward.