Hutch

Sorry if I was overly critical. I wasn't trying to beat you up. Since Nancy had already answered your question about the rig I just thought I would bring up those issues to hopefully make it easier on you down the road.

I took a quick look at your model, here are a few things I noticed: The normals on both hands and the left boot were pointing the wrong way. The right hand pinky's bones had their roll handles facing the wrong way which makes them go wrong with the gizmo. I would put a fan bone in each knee and elbow and re-arrange those splines a bit (See right side of model I attached). You could carry on with what you have and fix everything. However, I think you will be making life harder on yourself because the model is not symmetrical. That means you will not be able to mirror smart skins or muscle poses (if you even use any). You may be better off either re-copy/flip/attaching most of it or using a plug-in like mirror splines. It isn't too hard to re-rig and it gets easier every time you do it. oldman.mdl

Only one bone can be attached to a parent. For example if the forearm bone is attached to the upper arm bone (bicep) then an elbow fan bone cannot be attached also.

Ha! I love the elephants.

What you have is a four point point spline circle with corners peaked and four other splines attached at the corner. Select a cp and press the comma key. Yours do not make straight lines. Instead, yours are all 'L' shaped.

How did you make this? It must be one spline that makes each open end. A spline that attaches back on itself will not make a patch.

That's pretty cool!

Good Question. handlebars maybe? The real question is............ Where would he be steering to? Away from the sharks? Or toward where the bird comes back from with a twig.

Will you be adding a steering wheel?

Is the second fan bone giving the bicep flex? How is that weighted? It looks very nice.

I am not sure about sss but the skin shader doesn't seem to work with AO. I think maybe the shader uses ambience which the AO cancels out. Maybe sss is similar.

Good looking test. When you start the simulation, is the arm shrunk so it's not contacting the sleeve? Not shrunk but there is no contact at the start. Both arms are the same at the start but the left sleeve sort of got stuck a few frames in. I didn't render from frame 0. I wonder if it may have something to do with my earlier question about the multiple cloth drivers. Maybe there is some sort of conflict happening. I think I will delete all those drivers and see if it still happens.

I may take you up on the offer later! I have one more character to make and polish them all up a bit then start on my set.

You have to change the global ambience type to global color in the choreography properties, then set your occlusion rate in the area that will open up under it. Set it for 80-100%. You also have to turn on multi pass and ambient occlusion in the render settings. You can leave the AO settings there at their default.

Thanks nino. Thank you for the feedback too Matt. I see what you mean about the hammer. I originally had only animated until the hammer came down but when I added the snap back it seemed like it gave it more impact. Actual animation is something I have only done in short tests like this so I have a lot to learn. I had so much trouble maneuvering the hammer and keeping the IK arms from doing crazy things I sort of got to a point where I just said good enough for now. I would be glad to hear any thoughts on how to make it look better for future reference! Darkwing, I didn't do anything special with the matcap shader. Just slapped it on a group. I wonder did you make your character move its limbs or just move the model around? I think if I just left the raven in one pose and moved it the shader would not change regardless of the lights. I have a question about cloth. In the process of getting my cloth to work I had to change things around several times. Like adding and removing splines from groups and changing the mesh. I was saving the project a lot and now I notice my models drivers folder is loaded with repetitions of my cloth and deflector groups. Is there any harm in deleting all those drivers? It seems like if I keep saving projects while simulating cloth that folder will become huge.

Thanks everyone. I have been doing my renders with AO and a key light set for diffuse and specularity only and no shadows. However, I just found the MatCap shader and threw it on my raven with the cannonball sample those guys generously provided. I already like it better than what I had from just specularity on it. I am going to play with it some and see if I can't get a sort of fake AO on the other characters. If I can it will really speed up my renders. matcapraven.mov

Well, animating this guy swinging a hammer was a lot more difficult than I expected. I did it just to test the rig and his cloth and hair dynamics. The sleeves turned out to be a real pain and I think I may make them a bit shorter. Not sure what the deal is with the left sleeve but I can live with it. I am pretty happy with how the hair acted in this but I think I have too much specularity on it. I will also need to make a decal for his scalp. Oh by the way he has a whole new face. The old one was a recycle job but I decided it didn't quite fit. hammertime.mov

Thanks Holmes. I think I have it working pretty well now.

He looks good. I would be surprised if you don't have to add a spline or two in the front leg. I am interested to see how those hooks work on his back hip too.

What is the best way to rig a big ass two handed hammer? The way the hands grip the handle would be similar to a baseball bat. The left hand would mostly stay in one spot on the handle but the right hand needs to slide up and down the shaft. Should I put a couple target nulls in the hammer for the hands to translate to and use IK arms? If I go that route is there a good way to make the target nulls only translate in the Y axis on the handle?

Cool! Good job with the animation and some pretty interesting cuts. Are the sounds final? The voices were mostly way lower than the rest. I had to adjust my volume quite a bit to hear the speech then I would be deafened by some sound effect. Overall very inspiring though!

Looks good!

The Popeye forearms bother me, but I like it none-the-less. Now that you mention it, they do look a little big. I will see how the look posed. I may have to alter them to get the forearm twist right anyway. Thanks Javier and Gene

Here is another character for this short. I will start rigging him tomorrow. Will probably need to work on his hair a bit more too. He will have cloth sleeves, shirt tail and cloak.

Hi guys. I had never seen any of your shorts before today. After the plagues I think I watched them all. Great collection of work! Fun stuff and good music.