TheToadStool

Hi I just want to say thank you again, Rob, for entertaining my questions. I get kind of worked up if I spend too much time trying to figure something out. It's better to ask, sometimes, than get into that frenzied state. There are some problems that are unsolvable, like graphic card incompatibility for example, but most problems are user error or lack of knowledge. I am working on my .bvh files as usual and trying to tailor the constraints to make the model work fluidly with the motion capture. I am cleaning up old models and realizing that I know more about troubleshooting rigging than I did before. I just enrolled in a college course here in Portland for Motion Capture so I will likely be talking A:M with industry professionals in the area! I know bvh is outdated supposedly but it seems like a good premise to work from. As far as constraints go, I'm not sure what causes certain bones to fall off the 'target' list but keeping constraints 'on' while rigging seems to cause problems sometimes. I am going through the old A:M cds and starting to study the different rigging methods with weighting and nodes. I just made some victories with cloth and hair so things are looking up. thanks again, community! love, Adam

yes indeed. I turned off the constraints and then was able to access the target bone. Still struggling with the rig in general and hoping for a breakthrough! Adam

Is there any OTHER reason besides parenting hierarchy why one might not be able to choose a bone applying constraints ? I'm trying to rig a model and the right arm bones are not appearing in the dropdown nor can I apply constraints to them. I have tried moving them around the heirarchy and am pretty certain they are correct, yet I cannot associate anything to them, specifically translate/orient. I am tearing out my hair just trying to get this simple thing done yet I cannot see the bones in the dropdown no matter what I do. What am I overlooking? Please help ! adam

fortunately for me, I have A:M on a PC with a different license. I'll probably move some of my operations over to there while I figure this out. Thanks again for all the suggestions. What an obscure problem ! Adam

It looks like I solved the problem simply by reinstalling. I forgot the whole, "Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again" routine. What's weird is that at first the "Import as an animation or a sequence of images" box disappeared but then it reappeared (after re-install). I know this might be a very unusual or unique problem to have but I am wondering about that little box in particular, why might it disappear at all? Oddly, when I used to use v16 that box did not exist for me but that window seemed to just know to import an image as an 'image sequence' so the little box wasn't necessary. When I installed v18, all of a sudden I had to specify again (using the little box) that I wanted the whole sequence. I found this to be redundant seeing as how I already chose to import a sequence rather than an individual image. So, I believe that me having to somehow switch back-and-forth between v19/v18 a few times last week to get my project situated (had to trash v19 due to aforementioned graphic failures). Anyhow, not to be a complainer, just to report bugs/anomalies and yes, I understand that somehow I was cursed with a Nvidia graphics card from a 2012 version of mac which seems at odds with Animation Master. I am wondering, could a setting on the OpenGL3 part of the 'Options' window offer a solution? I don't rightly understand this window and never touch it! It seems like it might have some useful options. thanks for entertaining this rant, Adam

Hi Rob, that is a great suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't work. What a weird predicament ! Any other suggestions? thanks, Adam

I'm not trying to be a negative complainer, that is not my purpose here. Perhaps I should have got in on the beta testing. I'm not sure what that is or what it entails. I wanted to mention that I am back to using v18 for the time being but now I can't import image sequences. Not at all. The option to import an image as part of a sequence has just disappeared. Right clicking on images and importing an image sequence/animation does nothing. Is there something I turned off somewhere? Can someone help me re-establish the ability to import image sequences? thanks, Adam

I just loaded another model into my v19 and am having the same problem with the decals acting erratically

sorry for the late reply on this, I'm still experimenting with it. I think I had a crash at some point and I had to add the roto model again, delete it, and then reload a roto by itself to work again. I'm trying to stress the system so it will reveal its limitations. More on this later. I'm just glad as hell I got it to work using some form of voodoo. It's a great thing having a roto to work off of, never take it for granted ! * I wanted to say that I *did* have a major graphics meltdown the other day that was a terminal flaw. I have been working on a particular model for quite some time and in v19, some of the decals just failed at one point. They were decals on the eyes, they just partially disappeared, but what was weird is that it invalidated the geometry, hair, and decal on the geometry behind it so all that was visible was a partial decal and the blue background behind the model. This I could not fix. The decal file was still in the correct folder, I even replaced it with a different version of itself in case the targa was corrupted in some matter. I could not fix this and was temporarily devistated that a model I have poured so much time in now had a fatal corruption about it. I fixed the problem by reloading the model into v18. I'm not sure if this problem is unique to v19 but sometimes, A:M will not acknowledge decals that are properly in their folder. This is a very bad problem and it just happened randomly and would not reload the proper decals.. If/when this happens again, I will take screen shots and see what other info I can provide. I hate unsolvable problems. Adam

thanks! I'm always looking for an easier way to rotate images so that the motion is fluid. It seems like it would be such a simple task but it gets me every time ! adam

I have just made the rotoscope a flat model with a targa sequence decal and added it to the action I am working on. This dragged my system down to a halt for some reason. I am using .bvh motion capture data so there's a lot of points on the timeline, so that obviously slows things down, but adding the targa sequence model to the action dragged it to a crawl. I removed this sequence model and reloaded the sequence as a rotoscope again and this time the rotoscope is showing up every frame. Perhaps the sequence is still in memory as it was when associated with a model. If someone can translate this into technical sense, perhaps it might shed some light on the problem. either way, I am having fun actually being able to rotoscope today ! thanks, Adam

Imac and macbook pro are self-contained. They are not like desktop Pc's with accessible slots. Again, why do most graphic functions work without a problem but these specific functions do not? Also, I have a built-in NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M card.

I use a late 2013 imac. I also had this problem back on my 2012 macbook pro as well. I will check the previous thread for advice on this matter. This problem doesn't seem to affect any of the other graphics in this process. Why are rotos and pre-decals different? adam

Rotoscopes and decals (that you are positioning) almost always look like they do in the above image. You have to render each time to see it. Sometimes rendering an entire sequence makes the images normal for a minute. It just has the feeling of being unstable and unpredictable. The other strange thing has been that the decals/rotos typically show image fragments from other files on the hard drive rather than the intended image. v18 was no better. I believe that one day this can be fixed. if other images show, these ultimately should as well. Also, the file menu still freezes until you cmd-tab out and then back in to A:M, but I'm sure that is still a known bug. If this roto thing could someday be fixed it would be great !!! -Adam

I'm keeping notes my experience using the new v19 for mac. My main problem immediately is still no predictable appearance of rotoscopes. I'm trying to compare my models movements to the rotoscope reference in the background and it can't be done !

yes! I just got it installed for mac. It is indeed v19 with the new mascot ! So far so good. Very exciting, thank you !!! Adam

I eventually had to call the mac store which I will only do if I really can't figure something out. They told me my model does not make use of SSE4.2. I know every time an update of A:M is released, this SSE business is mentioned casually and it has always confused me! Adam

thanks! that's helpful. Not at all. I looked all over the internet to see what the deal is with SSE4.2 and came up with NOTHING! I called the Mac store and they told me SSE4.2 pertains to solid state drives in some way and my mac was made just before that so they recommended the normal version. Again, is there a V.19 for Mac? The above link says V.18. If you are a mac user, you might find this clarification helpful. Adam

yes! Which Mac version should I download? I already use V18

I just recently used this thread to learn a fair amount about Motion Tracking! I have discovered all the issues that are discussed earlier, like why the Syntheyes export to A:M is very small, for example. Robcat, I did your method and I had some questions if you still remember! For one, I was not able to determine which trackers were important and which weren't so I added the translate constraint to each and every tracker (just to make sure). That's a lot of trackers! The camera flipped around, ultimately and my Scaler model floated at the top of the screen. When I scaled it, it moved toward or away from the camera. I may have done it wrong, I'm not sure. I'm also not 100% sure of the context other than it's difficult to work small. Anyhow, I just ran a render using the basic automatic tracking of an older version of syntheyes and I thought the results were a great start! This footage didn't make use of steadycam so it would have turned out even better if it had. I think this is an interesting topic ! Anyhow, here is a little something I did after discovering this thread. thanks! Adam https://youtu.be/Mj8IyLBHgzo

Fuchur, I just want to say thank you for sharing your knowledge on this. DarkTree is on my "to do" list. I would like to figure out all these things soon. I just thought it looked fun putting together materials with a graphic interface. Seems like it should be more of a thing Adam

so that app that allows one to make these materials is no longer available is my understanding

A friend of mine still had an old Dark Tree on His PC. As a Mac user I hadn't given it much thought but now I have access to PC for animation. Can this be made available again? That material generator looked like a hoot! thanks, Adam

Good work. Dream big !

Hey David, I did download all of the expressions tutorials some time ago and I have managed to use expressions to adapt a 3rd party face capture program to Animation Master : https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37735&hl=brekel&do=findComment&comment=409469 I know very little about this and am very interested in learning. I knew there was a reason I re-took Calculus a few years ago (mid-life crisis). I think part of the problem with the bones popping as I mentioned above may have been solved when I discovered the roll handles on various parts of the arm were not properly set. I discovered this while watching your tutorial scalene_arm_rig_tutorial.mov . Forearms rotate differently than bicepts for example (duh!). I'm hoping this gives a little fluidity back to the character movement. If not, I still have to follow the other tutorial you mentioned above. I would like to know more about expressions, at least examples of what they can accomplish so that I can get my imagination going on them. I'd be excited to see the many ways in which they can be applied. I just have to be patient and try and grasp the math. thanks, Adam