Vance

Much improved; you're getting some character into the guy. And I love the specatator. What still bothers me about him is that his swaying left and right seems almost a greater distance at the shoulder than the distance his feet move forward. For me, this makes it look like his foot movement is an artifact of the swaying rather than the swaying being an artifact of the foot movement. If you are going for a silly cartoony look this may be OK, but I think he would be more believable if the largest motion in walking was the foot movement. Also the swaying seems a little mechanical, so perhaps you can have it lead or lag the other motions a bit to loosen it up. Keep up the good work! -Vance

I heard from a friend that Kraft was having a contest for 15-second commercials, and decided to do an animated one. I heard about the contest very late, so I didn't have much time to put it together. You can see the results at: Vance's Happy Sandwich Video All comments pro and con are welcome. -Vance

I'm working on a 5-minute short, and here's a look at one of my characters. I'm still revising the decaling and some of the splinage, but this is a very rough idea of where I'm going. He is composited with a real-life background, as he will be in the short. In the picture above he has on a t-shirt (better decal to come later) in an unsuccessful attempt to cover up his "property of" stencil. The short is about a couple of sandbags who run away from their jobs (keeping the NYC subways from flooding) and come out to California. Here they are back in NYC (in a B&W flashback): All comments and suggestions welcome! -Vance

It's really come a long way! Congratulations. The cloth still looks just a little bit too springy to me. It has a little bit more bounce than real cloth does unless it contains rubber. Other than that, it is really getting there! -Vance

Yep, back before envelopes with adhesive, you just folded the paper, dripped some wax on it and pressed your seal which both sealed the document and affixed your seal to it. In any case, sealing wax, once used, was the most useless stuff on the planet. It was a little blob of melted wax you had to throw away. In both songs it is mentioned to show the triviality of the stuff the person is concerned with, in one case to show his sense of the wonderous, and the other to show how small-minded the guy is. -Vance

Good work! The one suggestion I have has to do with the eyes. If you look at real humans, you almost never see the top of the iris. It is almost always covered by the top eyelid, though you can occasionally see the bottom of the iris. The fact that we can see the top of your digital analogue's iris gives him a slightly psycho look. This is fine if that's what you are going for, but if you want to present yourself in a better light you might look at changing this. -Vance

Very nice work! I particularly like her mouth opening slightly when the other character turns around. It sells the idea that something is going on in her head. -Vance

Thanks for the info that TSM works in 13s! That's what I'm using. What I've found useful is to sweep the balance pose slider to quickly simulate a character trying, unsteadily, to find a balance point. I agree it is not very useful as a general way to keep a character balanced, but sometimes controls are good for something other than what they were really intended for. Thanks for the hint about how it is implemented. -Vance

Thanks, David. I don't mind at all that you are sharing the secrets of the squetch rig! I just haven't had a lot of experience with it yet. This looks like exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I'll post once I have a chance to go through some of it. It's wonderful to get help from the developer of an extremely popular and powerful rig. -Vance

I'm trying to learn to do rigging on a simplified object, no fingers or feet, but I am interested in doing the more sophisticated kinds of things like switching back and forth between FK and IK on a particular limb. What is your suggestion for the best way to set this up? Do I make my geometry bones completely separate from a set of IK bones and a set of FK bones, and then enable and disable constraints to make them active? Or do I just use one set of bones and enable and disable locking to convert an IK hierarchy to FK? I've used the 2001 rig, but I was really wowed by TSM rig. (Too bad they've dropped support.) I'm interested in also adding some of the squash and stretch that TSM rig has as well as weight balancing to my rig. Any hints on where to start will be appreciated! -Vance

I sent an email to Frank Silas and it seems that his Los Angeles HUG has been defunct for a few years. If you are interested in one in Los Angeles, I'm considering putting one together. If you are a San Diego person willing to drive up, you are also welcome. Email me at hugla@vancesoft.com if interested. If I get enough interest, I'll set up a meeting. -Vance User since the Playmation days

You were, of course, right. I went back through the tutorial and there was a step that I missed. Thanks for your help. -Vance

I'm doing something similar, and this information helped me to get one particle emitter behaving correctly. When I put a second copy of the particle emitter into the chor, I have not found a way to make the second copy of the particle emitter object's sprite emitter "rate" value change over time. I tried doing what I thought I did the first time around, changing it in the shortcut to the particle material under the original particle emitter, not under the shortcut to the particle emitter in the chor (the latter shortcut doesn't have anywhere to change it). This changes the value, but does not create a key, and the new value is constant for the entire chor. I have clicked on the little lock that comes up when you change the value and I selected the clock icon (change value over time), but it does not make the value change over time. I've also tried changing the value under the Driver hierarchy, but this does not help either (under the driver there is no lock to select change value over time). Of course I can create several separate particle emitter models and set each one up the same way, with only one of each in the chor, but I was curious if I was missing something that would allow multiple copies of the same emitter. Also, I don't fully understand drivers. I looked in the tech reference and did not find much about how to create and use them, except as an artifact of other operations. I also searched the Tutorial forums and did not find anything that really goes into detail. Is there anyplace else I should be looking to dig deeper? Thanks! -Vance

Ken, if you are doing A:M classics, it might be fun to also post "Gecko", which I think was also Allan, in light of the popularity of the Geico ads. -Vance