Paul Forwood

This is great news! A big thank you to Raf! Robert, is your reference to hidden powers something to do with scripting?

You could use a sine wave expression to generate the undulating waves or you could create a simple looping action.

Well done, Dailan1! This looks like an excellent model indeed. I'm not sure what you want to do with the hair but you might try making the hair geometry transparent and applying particle hair to it. In this way you can shape the style with geometry and rig it for animating. Turn collisions off unless you really need it.

Yeah. Cory is brilliant. He has also been working hard on Dusan's "Coffee and Chicory".

Hybrid cat ladies?

I found this gathering dust today. Just another Zign Track test. Ain't... animated.

Al, I am watching with great joy. This model smacks of the 50s-60s era where just about every teenager in North America was into customising cars. Hotrod magazines were in every bedroom and barbershop and old rusting hulks were lovingly restored and given new super status. If you couldn't get into the real thing there were always the plastic kits as a source for creating amazing Frankensteinian fire spitting roadsters. Jacked up suspension, chromed V8s with outlandish scoops and headers, Hirst shifts, etc... The grease-monkey's alchemy. Maybe this stuff is still popular out there, I don't know, (gasoline prices and ecological awareness have probably written the epitaph for that era), but there is more than a little of that old magic in this thread. This model is going to be great and I like the way that you are making it customisable via pose sliders. If I had the time I would be tempted to jump in and do a Model "T" pickup right now.

I haven't tried it but exporting from the choreography will probably export everything in that choreography as a single model.

Right click in your model window and select Plug-ins>3D Studio to export as a 3DS file. Max will import it. The obj format seems to be a popular format for transfering between apps and you can definitely export an obj file from A:M that will load in Zbrush.

There are ways of doing it. It only takes someone with the vision, the programming ability and the drive to make it happen. I think that we will see more and more automation coming into the rigging process in 3D applications over the next few years but learning to build your own rigs can be very engrossing. It is a challenge and it is very satisfying when it all comes together but for the average person who got into this in order to animate it can be an unwanted and frustrating distraction. The artist is the customer and the customer is always right.

Break the jump down into it's extremes. Find the key poses and set them up a few frames apart on the timeline. Too start with just set up a neutral pose on frame 0, a crouching pose on frame 3 and 6, a stretched out leaping pose on frame 9, a landing pose on frame 12 and a recovery pose on frame 15. Show us the results and then we can help you tweak it.

They may be far enough back that they won't be part of the facial animation, in which case they should be okay. I just avoid hooks where ever possible and restrict them to areas that are either hidden or won't be animated. Anyway, you will find out when you rig him and can make alterations as neccessary.

This is brilliant! If it is really your first 3D animation then it is just amazing! I agree on the points already made and I'm sure that the next version will benefit from the lessons learned while making this. I like the pirate laughter that you are using for your credits at the end. That made me laugh.

Looking good but do you really need those hooks?

Very nice! I did write a full critique last night but then my connection to the Hash forums was severed so I lost it. I like the Warner Bros type of intro and the music sets a light and jovial mood. The presentation is very good. A few things that I noticed: -The left thumb penetrates the left leg at around the 18 second mark. -Perhaps Rubberguy could fly out of frame completely before cutting to the splat sequence? -You might want to try changing the lighting so that it illuminates the other side of the street. This would create a better silhouette in the sequence where he is flying towards the camera and would also add more contrast to the final "splat" sequence. Just a thought. I like the thought bubble. Did you do that in After Effects? Very good all around! I hope you keep these going.

Wow!

This is looking great, Dhar!

You are doing so well on this project and watching your progress is a real treat. Sorry to hear about your grandmother, Mark. I hope that she had a long and happy life. Peace to you and your family.

That's the stuff, Masna. The more of your own characters that you do the more freedom you have to use them. Mimicking the Patapon's world will be a very good execise in developing skills and ideas for this style of animation. That was great fun being able to work at such a pace and much more spontanious.

I had to try something with this 2D method so I modelled and animated this simple scene in about two hours. Flat World #1 : I kept the models very rough on purpose for simplicity and to give it more of a handmade look.

This is very inspiring! I hadn't heard of the game before so I Googled "Papapon" and found some examples on YouTube: Keep expanding this, and maybe introduce some of your own characters later. Good work!

Oops! My fault! Sorry!

I haven't looked at the Squetch rig in quite a while so I decided to download this update and have a play. I look forward to seeing what you guys have been doing. David, I thought that you might like to know that there is a copy of the "13s_posable_squetch_rig_installations_03_12_2008" zip file within the zip file of the same name, which probably doubles the size the download. Anyway, I'll play later. -------------------------- Edit: Oop! My error. Sorry!

Oops! Sorry! I should be paying more attention. I have just checked and I am using 7.1.6 too. It must be a firewall issue on my side. Thanks.

John, I can view your movie if I download it rather than trying to watch it over the internet. Nancy, does QT 7.1.6 play nicely with A:M now and are you still forced to install iTunes?