Ganthofer

a couple of suggestions- -his belly should sag with each foot fall. maybe a little bounce like. -more hip movement, twist, right hip forward as right foot moves forward. -his whole body should drop a little with each foot fall and rise to lead his next step. -exageration ... lifting his foot is slooow, putting it down is faster. -a little slower or maybe a bit of a pause before he lifts his foot for the next step. It's a lot of work moving that body around.

Don't want to add a ME TOO post, actually I do want to add a ME TOO post. Love the format!

John, The view from the loft needs to have some reflection (and/or shadow) on the floor, similar to what you can see beneath the table to the right of T-rex. I think this will make his feet less floaty. Also it looks like most of the light is coming from behind him, so I'd darken the side away from the large glass area. Probably render T-rex with the light source from the perspective of the Glass wall. The edges might need to be a little less sharp and/or the the rest of him a little less blurred (could be my eyesight on that one though ) I think he fits much better here than in the Front office.

Jeff, I think what Yves is noticing and what Jim mentioned in his first reply about the chest cavity being sunken in too far. In profile (with breasts hidden) from the top center where the collar bones meet to the end of the sternum, it appears to curve into the chest cavity, while in real life it usually curves outwards. I really like the economy of splinage and the form. Glenn

John You might set the hats a little lower, they feel like they're floating. Maybe try moving the hat to one side on the Heart and angled. Might have to tilt everyones hat then to balance it out.

Just my 2cents. I would definitely reduce the spline count on the sphere. Maybe try it with a 16 or 32 ring sphere. you could probably get by with 3 vertical splines forming the mouth, unless it's going to make really complex lip shapes, as you'll have the 2 corners of the mouth and 3 points along the lip to shape it. So since it has six right now, that should make it possible to at least cut the density of the sphere in half. Keep on splinin'

At least in my experience (not extensive by any means) displacement maps are great, but require a dense enough mesh to give high detail results. It does prevent you from having to model the detail. I believe it only works for detail perpedicular to the surface of the patches ( no under cutting or over hangs). For what you are doing, take a look at this thread, http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6476&hl=rivet R Reynolds has a 4 patch rivet using 100% normal averaging that looks quite good and would decrease your patch count on rivet by more than half. he also supplied a zip of the rivet model.

Just some thoughts that might help, as I am not a professional or an expert on A:M. it looks like the picture was taken from slightly above the pictured persons height and slightly angled down. I would position the camera in A:M to mimic that angulation. There is a dark shadow under the rim of the tower on the left side, but from the look of the shadows (what little there are) the sun was to the left and close to overhead. I would place a light in the approximate location of where you think the sun was on that day based on the orientation of your back yard and the time of day. Fishman make a good point that the color is quite bold. With the lighting in the picture, even if you had a freshly painted Red barn, it would not be so bold. I think lighting in the Chor will be able to correct that. Did you render the tower in a Chor or in the modeling window? The one other thing that I think will make this look more like it is physically in your back yard, is to match the Sharpness( or blurrinesss ) with objects the same distance from the camera. In this case, the person in the picture (who has slightly fuzzy edges) and the trees in the back ground that are more out of focus. You could try playing with the Depth Of Focus option in A:M or maybe some A:M post effects like blur, film grain. This could also be done in a photo/image editing program. keep postin' and show us what you come up with

The scene is rendered from what ever view you are in (pressing 1 on the numeric key pad shows you the camera view). The camera could be constrained to "Aim At" the ship and can be constrained to a path (or path's). Paths don't have to be 2 dimensional, they can also have height.

Bill, This technique gives you just the lines, in any color you want. BUT , it uses transparency and that's set on the Model level (not on the group level) so you would have to attach the ear model to the rest of the model in the Chor and that will take some funky constraints (although I have some ideas on that - constrain a bone in the ear to a dummy ear bone in the model to orient like and translate to. move the dummy ear bone and the ear should follow). Depends on how animated the ears will be. give this a try. Group the ears and set the color (also you can set ambience, Line width and glow) and render as lines. in the model, set the transparency to 99. The only other way to get the mesh ear look (that I can think of) would be a transparency map and applied to the ears.

Here's that animated Tank Tred Tutorial - http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/search3.asp?So...sc&keyword=tank

The models are coming along nicely. I know there is a tut on animating a tank tred. can't seem to find it at the moment, it might be on the ARM . The HASH A:M site has the basics and then check the ARM for specific tutorials. As for rigging, the vehicles should be fairly simple as they don't appear to have to many moving parts. For the Pilot, you might try the 2001 rig that comes on the CD. You could rig it with just minimal bones if it's not going to be fully animated and in a lot of animated closeups. If it's heavy on the physical action, you'll need a fairly good rig so you don't have to tweak all the kinks out when the arms and legs twist and distort due to a simple rig. For the acceleration problem, have you tried creating an action for the acceleration and using a constrain to Path in the Chor? Just start a new action, Set the time to say 3sec (300) ,move the ship (for simplicities sake) in the x direction the distance you want it to travel from Zero to Max velocity (say 1000 cm). Now expand the Action in the PWS down to the Transform.Translate.? (this may be X,Y or Z depending on how the bone was oriented when you set up the rig) under the short cut to the model>Bones>"bone name". What yo will see is a (red/green/blue) line going straight from 00:00:00 (0) to 00:03:00 (1000). This is linear and if played back it will have a constant speed. What I do is turn on the SHow Bias Handles and in the PWS channel for the axis in question, left click on the point and you should see the bias handle show up. It will be in line with the graph. Make the Bias horizontal. This will give you a smooth acceleration. You can play with the bias handle length to change how quickly it gets up to speed. The trick is to match the ending slope of the channel to what your constant speed is going to be after the initial acceleration.

How do you pronounce that "Pzu"? I think he's been out in the sun to long. Kind of matches the parched earth in the last pic. But Seriously, great looking charater. Any reason he has no nostrils? Love your work

The site Chris linked to doesn't allow direct links to images. Got to http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/pets/ click on zena and goto page 7 of 10.

Did you create it in AM? Did you try something you haven't before? Looks like toon render. If you learned something or just enjoyed making it, it's not useless. Keep on Animating

Very creative merging of Human and Bird. Others have commented on the legs being small. I disagree, heron's and cranes have very slender legs for their size. The upper thigh might be a bit larger. The torso on up while basically human in form, has an aquatic feel to it (IMO). The rib cage sort of gill like and the ridge on the head like a dorsal fin. The color and texturing may greatly change the impression. The ridges on the back seem a little out of place (IMO) as I can't see a purpose or structural reason for them and the rest of the model is relatively smooth. From a believability aspect, the waist dose seem a bit to small. Barely enough room for a spine and the muscles to hold it up (IMO). I don't find it overly detracts from the imaginary creature though. Looking forward to more

Looking good. Yet another very creative use for hair and well done. Have you animated it yet?

It's the ambiance color (and intensity) that make it glow. He set the ambient color on the Hair material. If you set it on the Object it to will glow, and no light source required.

Love the way the torso flows into the horse. What's the patch count on it?

Thought I'd drop a line here. I down loaded the project back when you posted, but hadn't gotten around to looking at it. Saw Rodney's post and thought, "let's just make the time and take a look at it", so I did. I've not worked much with constraints yet, but it seems they can save you a lot of work if done right. Interesting piece of rigging. Not sure what situation it would be used in, but none the less, just seeing how the relationships are setup and being able to follow what's happening (without having dissect a complete rig ) has been very enlightening. For those of us, OK just ME , that have only use simple bone structures ( parent - child ) and very few if any constraints. Aim At, Translate To, Translate Limits ... seem like fairly simple things, but figuring out how to combine them together to achieve a control is at times confusing and at other times beyond comprehension. Enough babbling. As much as I like figuring things out for myself, I don't think life's long enough to do that with everything. Thanks for sharing, and as far as I'm concerned, keep it coming.

With the info you've given, I'm guessing the settings under Tools>Options>Rendering. There are choices for All views and Non-camera views. Under advanced you can configure the settings for wire frame, shaded, shaded/wire frame and final. In the image, (version 11.0?) it looks like you have decals turned on, this also configurable as well as polys per patch. That's just my guess. Can we see a pic from the camera view?

Can't comment on if you're using Skycast right, but it look's good to me. It has a very realistic appearance to it. A little to clean to be mistaken for a photo. I really like the cardboard box. One comment on the Truck Movie. You can see right through the grill and out the wheel well. Might I suggest a few splines and patches inside the engine compartment to block this.

Cool little guy you have there. The two on the left (with the meshing teeth) look like they could get nasty. The one on the left looks like a good buddy of mine.

The animated globe is great. It was probably the electronic/electro-mechanical side of my brain seeing something that needed to be fixed since that's been my occupation for the last 15 years.

Very nice, only one question. What's with the conduit and wires hanging down in the upper left. If it's there to draw one's attention to it, it worked on me. Just seems a little out of place. Curiously Glenn