markw

No scroll-bar Fuchur (not that there should be, there never was before) The icons are there in all the previous 17betas. I'm on a Mac and I've tried a reset and a reinstall but still getting nothing showing up

Is anyone else missing the little icons from the right hand side of the PWS in the new v17? As you can see the relevant boxes have been tick as always but I'm still getting non of the relevant icons.

I believe Keekat uses a trick to have non-spherical eyes that can still rotate the pupil in different directions. Basically, it's modeled and rigged as a sphere but then the eyeball and bone are scaled in one axis to flatten the whole structure. The pose that does that can only be active in a Chor or Action. Ahh, interesting. Can't say that fully makes sense to me right now. But I'm sure once I'm more familiar with Choreography and Action, it will. Will be a cool "a ha!" moment when it clicks. If you have the Extras DVD and are curious, there's a tutorial on how those types of eyes are done in there; Extras DVD > Tutorials > Bootcamp > Eye Tut.html If you don't have a copy, its well worth getting one as its a veritable goldmine of info and will repay the time spent in exploring its hidden ways and secrets.

Great stuff all round there! Hated having to chose just one though!

Yes Robert, that's about the same on Mac's. Any actual changes to the time line display are more accidental than planed! Yep, that's what we'r talking about Mark. But its when you switch out of the curve editor and are looking just at the Keyframes that it can be a bit tricky to see.

Sadly Simon, I don't think we can change the colour or the contrast of the greyed out areas in the time line. I have often wanted to give it more contrast as its often near impossible to see. I would also like little slidey markers up there that you can grab and move similar to setting the In and Out points in a film editors timeline. For me it would be quicker than typing in numbers. Humm… that's maybe a feature request.

Hey good to see you back thumperness Can't say I'v ever had this problem but it sounds like A:M can't write the MasterPrefs.ini file to the A:M v17 folder. So it may be a permissions thing with the folder. Use; 'Get Info' for the A:M v17 folder and set all the permissions at the bottom of the Info window for the folder to 'Read & Write'. See if that dose it.

Uh...he?...Ruzzle...ahem...is...um..ah...a She. And she's supposed to be a raccoony-ish type. A master gardener, opera star and flamenco dancer on the side. The middle character Nummi (a he), is supposed to be a hedgehoggy doofus. Smitten by Ruzzle. Anyhow that lets me know that Ruzzle needs more work to make it obvious that she is a raccoonette. She's still in progress. Thanks for the feedback, it's good to have fresh eyes... Well, if I might make a suggestion Nancy about Ruzzlezini too. As she is an opera star and flamenco dancer, I think maybe she needs a bit more "décolletage" like the Peacocks in your last post. That would definitely solve any uncertainty's about gender!

Try this;

That's an interesting idea there John! I'm about to have another go at this Dynamics thing soon, so that's a timely suggestion, thanks

Well, I'm at the seemingly endless 'tweaking' of things stage, before trying out some final renders...

That's frustrating Gerry! Is this happening when you save the Particle Systems inside of Projects and/or Chor's? Just a thought but have you tried saving the Particle systems as separate Material files on their own outside of any AM .prj or .cho. After swapping computers and starting up the project/chor on the other computer, reimport the Particle Systems from those separate files. Do they still revert back to defaults then?

I only knew him through his posts here. But as you can see Josh, Paul touched the lives of many people across the world. He will be greatly missed.

There's a 'smoother wizard'? Pray, tell us more. I noticed some odd artifacting (is that a word?) with porcelain in 17beta's around some hooks in the mesh and also when I used it in conjunction with another material I used for the skin colour. But as yet I'v not looked deeper into it.

Welcome to the joyful world of rigging Simon! I'm always so grateful to the likes of Mark, Nancy and others here for their help and patients with us lesser mortals in this field!

Hi Simon, I'm not a fan of animating with 2001 rig either. Sadly TSM2 is not an option for us Mac people though so I can't say what its like to use. But when they're correctly installed the Literig and 2008 rig are good to animate with. There are some things I would change in both, just for my own preferences in animating, if only I had more skill with rigging but sadly I don't. It's still my least favorite task.

And to Nancy, "No, No, No…" Thanks for the clarification Nancy. That was a disaster narrowly avoided there! "For the 2nd case: If 1) you are scrubbing thru the timeline, AND 2) you have NOT baked your dynamic systems then you will definitely see different results depending on how fast or slow you are scrubbing. See for yourself. Try scrubbing back and forth with your mouse very slowly thru a range of frames, and then very rapidly through the same range - and yes you will get widely different dynamic motion (if unbaked)." Yes, this is definitely what I see too. "…repeat ad nauseum." Aptly put, I'm about to embark on that now. I like your idea of a master bone for each chain too. As I said in reply to Robert I'm afraid the only project I have at the moment that I could post for what I think is happening for dissection by more learned minds on the forum is my bit for the community project so it may be a little while before I can see if its replicable in another project. But I will be coming back to this to prod and poke it some more.

Well thats interesting Robert. I just tried your baking test and A:M runs through it, baking as it goes, at more or less the same speed as just hitting the play button. And you would have to be super picky after baking to try and find a fault. In my Rear Window chore when you bake, it runs through it baking at maybe half speed at best, possibly less. This could be because there's more information going on for A:M process? And there's a noticeable difference between pre and post baked DC's. This is why I want to try and make a more complex version of your test with lots of other things for A:M to keep track of as it runs through the chore baking. And yes, normally putting together an example .prj for others to try out is the first step with these things. Sadly I don't have one just yet. Its a question of available time for me at the moment to experiment with this. I still have much else to do on my bit for the Community Project and at the moment thats the only project I have using DC's that I could post as an example. But I would rather not make that readily available for general downloading on the forum just yet.

Yes, I remember there used to be a substantial difference. markw, what version are you using? I set the Dynamic Constraints and started this animation in 16b but all the Dynamics baking has been done in the 17beta's. I want to try and replicate your test there Robert at some point, maybe in a more complex set of motions as I still think I'm seeing something different. It seems to me that A:M is doing more than as you say Robert "… does the simulation calculations to get the object from the last frame to the current one, throws a picture up on the display and then waits until it has to do that again." and that it is somehow applying the rate at which the next frame has to be shown to the degree of motion applied to the bones. And because it bakes at a slower speed than normal play, a lesser degree of motion is what is captured. Another possibility, which has just occurred to me writing here and possibly more likely?, is that when working in the Chor maybe the Dynamic Constraints that we think are at work in fact are not! Or at least not fully in that the % values are not being applied. But it is only when we go to bake that the various settings we made for the constraints when rigging are actually getting applied. Thus giving the illusion that its the baking that's wrong in making things appear too slow and stiff. When time permits me I think this will need some more looking at. The motion we see in the Chor should be the same as we see when baked and finally rendered otherwise we are left with trying to second guess when animating what the software is going to do to all our hard work later. This is definitely one of those times that I wish we were all in the same room with our computers and could actually see whats happening on each others screens! As to my current animation, are you all saying that I should go to each of the Dynamics keyframes and reposition the bones by hand? Thats a lot of keyframes! As that's going to be a long job even on this short animation I think first I might try Johns idea of dropping the stiffness etc... of the Dynamics settings and see what that renders like (Humm... this might actually tie in with my earlier idea above).

Sorry all but its me again with more questions. The model I'm working with at the moment has a few short chains of bones in the hair and breasts with Dynamic Constraints to give it some "free" secondary motion as she moves. This motion is determined by A:M based on how fast the model moves in real time. Faster, more motion, slower less. Just like in the real world. To capture this motion for NetRender to use, a scene needs to have the Dynamics baked first. However when baking, A:M plays through the scene, making keyframes for the Dynamics as it goes, much slower than in realtime. And it is at this slower speed that A:M now calculates the amount of motion on any bones with a Dynamic Constraint, resulting in rather minimal and stiff looking motions after baking when played back at the correct speed. Any tips for avoiding this slowdown or workarounds? Should it be reported?

We could break it into two shots, divided by a reverse angle shot of the observer putting the binoculars up to his eyes. ? Humm… Well I would really prefer to keep it all as one shot if at all possible. I'v done the camera moves as though they are hand held and was anticipating having the binocular mask applied to it from the very beginning which would really help sell the effect. Do you still have the sample .cho I sent you when I had problems with the rig in Niki? Thats still more or less how the camera pans and zooms or I could send you the camera moves as an .act file.

I've never worked with the stereo setting before and I'm having difficulty in deciding where to set the frame distance thing. I'm zooming in from the wide angle at the beginning toward the back of the set, some stuff happens there then its to the centre of the set more or less, for some more stuff to happen. After that the camera doesn't move much. So, in order, what looks closest when viewed through the camera would be; Front corner of the penthouse, then the back corner of the penthouse and then about the center of the picnic table. Any suggestions?

Yeh, they go all the way back to some of the earliest mammals. Sad story, they belong to a group called Thylacine's and managed to survive all the world could throw at them for millions of years, until we came along, with guns. Tricky to evolve a satisfactory defense to bluets in just a few years

Well what do you know, looks like you could fly all along! Didn't need no parachute after all Glad it all went so well for you

To your first question Robert, yes it is; Step forward one frame, wait 2 minutes watching the little spinning beach ball of eternity that the cursor has just turned into while A:M thinks and then I get the next frame. Actually, I'm beginning to suspect that it might be Niki that's causing it to slow up. Without her in the sprite tests I made all is well. Seems like she and sprites don't get along so well… But, no time to investigate that further for now. Your idea to bake now, even before needing to render, helps a lot. I can scrub through now, note what to change, unbaked, alter, re-bake, check again and repeat as necessary. Still involves some waiting around, true, but I can post things here while I wait