Paul Forwood

Nancy, thanks for your input. There is already a skydome in the choreography, though it is obscured by fog. There really is nothing moving that I can find by scrutinizing the scene from multiple views in wireframe or shaded modes and I haven't been able to find any errant keys in the timline for any channel. I'll keep looking and start deleting stuff. Mark, thank you also. Yes I am using fog but it is not animated, The emitter is one separate model with two unconnected sets of patches. Each set has it's own, different, particle material assigned to it. I am going to turn these into two separate models to see if that has any effect. I think that the problem with not being able to make the emitter geometry transparent in a final render could be something to do with having three separate sets of properties, ( the particle material's emitter properties, the object's emitter properties and the set in the choreography that is being animated). I need to take a screen grab of each of them and compare them side by side so that I can see if something is being overidden that shouldn't be. I'm wondering if there is a conflict between the emitter opacity,which i believe should just affect the particles, and the emitter geometry's transparency, which should just affect the geometry of the emitter and not the particles. I love a good puzzle but not when it breaks the flow of what I was doing for too long. I will give it one more day and then, if I haven't solved it, I'll try to get back to where I was, pre-particles, and find another way to make a splash.

No. Sorry, I don't know any A:M users in China.

I have tried everything except deleting. I have scrutinized every channel on every frame but nothing is moving or changing. I haven't started deleting things though I will tonight or tomorrow. The rendered effect is reminicent of the problem that was occuring when rendering hair against an empty background. I believe that was related to a problem with alpha data. This may be the same as it started when I added the cookie-cut, all-alpha decal to the emmiter. Nancy, the water is just a grid with a cyclic action and the bubbles are particles.

Strange happenings! I have been going around in circles trying to get a particle emmiter to remain transparent in a final render. After a great deal of testing it turned out to be a problem where having object collisions turned on in the emitter's properties causes the emitter to show up in the render. Nancy suggested applying an all-alpha image to the emitter as a cookie-cut patch image to make the emitter transparent. Thanks, Nancy! I forgot to apply it as a patch image and applied it as a cookie-cut decal instead. It did seem to work but as you can see in the render below something is now affecting the lighting. Actually I don't think it is the lighting. You can see that the water becomes divided into two separate tints, splitting horizontally around the centre of the screen. It starts just as the character's hand grabs the fishing float. I have checked everything in the choreography but there is no sign of anything wrong occuring in any of the channels. The lighting has not been touched. This is all in A:M14c so it may have been fixed in A:M15. ThingFloat_A07_e.mov I've spent so much time trying to solve this that I haven't got back to tweaking the particles yet.

Just run A:M again, so you have it running twice, and set the new instance to render a different sequence.

I love the models. They seem to have an anime'/manga influence. The proportions and the attention given to her costume are excellent. One thing that I would like to see is just a blink once in a while, and perhaps some eye darts, just to liven up her face a little. Otherwise great! Personally I would be tempted to add some birds, falling stars, etc. to this number.

Here is a very rough example of a simple guitar rig. Obviously you would still have to tweak the poses and add all the finger animation. This just demonstrates a simple rig that you control with the guitar bone, the pivot bone and a few sliders. The pivot bone is the root and should be constrained to your character's chest bone, or where ever you like. The left lower arm bone of your character should have a kinematic constraint to the GuitarNeckSlider bone. The right upper arm, (elbow), should have an "aim at" constraint which aims at the elbow connector on the guitar. You animate the hands and the lower right arm yourself. TestInAction.mov SimpleGuitarRig.zip

ThingFloat_A03_.mov I'm not finished tweaking this guy yet. His mouth needs a lot of work, and so do the rig and the maps, but I think I will play with some simple splashes next.

Yeah. My jokes aren't getting any better are they? Noah there not! Enough. Nice work, Gene.

Yes, if you create a bone which extends from your characters neck, (the point where the guitar swivels on the guitar strap when fully extended), and which finishes at the body of guitar you can constrain the guitar to that bone which will allow it to rotate around the neck. (This pivot bone can be moved around to suit your characters body shape and guitar moves). You then constrain your character's hands to the guitar neck, as Robert said, and let IK do most of the work. Many complex moves may require different approaches so you may have to use different setups for different sequences.

Thanks, Steve. The faeries are certainly more alluring than this fishy fiend. I like the green backgrounds but I will probably have to change the colour of the character to give better contrast and separation. A red background would work but not what I was imagining for the scene that includes this character. It will be moonlit so I want dark blue or green backgrounds and yellow from the moon. The water must have a slight blue or green glow to it. Here is a blue one: Thing360_A14_.mov The moire patterns are really bad at this resolution and completely hide the real texture on the fins so I will try something less busy.

This project is looking good, Gene. I'm just waiting for you to get to the animating so that I can say "watch your arcs".

That looks terrific, Mark!

Thanks, folks! Yeah, thanks, David. I'm going to replace all of the single skinned parts and also adjust the back half of the model so that he looks less like a three layered cake.

Well, he floats! Thing360_A07_.mov I'll fix the water and change all of the fins later.

That's a great idea, Mark. I'm guessing that each tree has it's own surface pointer so you would still be able to adjust the position of individual trees if necessary?

A little progress: Thing360_A04_.mov

Heh. Well, he found his car keys but he's still not going anywhere fast: TrafficBVH__A00.mov Thanks, Spleen. Kat and Myron, you seem to have picked up the same rhythm. Are you dancing? Myron, don't get too excited but I made a start on this: I don't know what it is but man it put up one heck of a fight!

Nothing special: Monroe_A09.mov

There are a few A:M users in the UK, though many of them have moved on to other software. Some, like me, still use A:M and frequent these forums. Not sure about any A:M users in China. Are you a Chinese A:M user living in the UK or a Brit abroad?

I'm not completely sure that I understand what you are trying tp do but you can import animated sequences and then lay them out in a Choreography.

Cheers, chaps!

Myron and Nancy, sorry for the long delay! That model was going to be Beyonce but I haven't worked on it since I posted that WIP back in February. ------------------------------------- Some old tests of fairy landings: Landing_D06_comp_00_c.mov LandingStanding.mov I was searching for some old WIPs of fairies in flight and found these tests for landings, (both unfinished).

Funny, I was going to say, "Who wants to be Ray Harryhaussen then?", but I thought I had better not. Do you plan on extending this into a full story or was it specifically for your showreel?

Ha ha! : A great B movie in the making. The alien creature could be more focused on what he is doing but I think he's probably not the sharpest tool in the shed. He could have shredded Barbarian guy when he first leapt out, but he seems more focused on making a hammy entrance and his eye left his prey as he searched out some theatrical photographer in the audience. Well, that's what I see in there. (heh) That's a nicely choreographed sword fight. Did you use a reference video?