Paul Forwood

Rigging, huh? What a nightmare! I would love to use the squetch rig but I just can't get my head around all that re-compensating and not being able to make adjustments afterwards, due to the complexity. I think you have the stamina of a bull, Rusty. David, I think you should find a programmer to help make the installation a little more user friendly and then start selling this rig. I want it. I want it bad! But I don't want to spend days just installing it. Maybe I should have another attempt with the updated re-compensating instructions. Sorry. That didn't help anyone did it.

Superb work and a great tutorial too!

Shift/8 or drag the particle button onto your tool bar. You will find it in Tools\Customize\Commands\Draw and it looks like a bunch of vertical black lines.

Heh. I'd love to but I don't really know the character. The rigging looks like it might be a challenge too. You've done an amazing job on him, Lee. Well done!

I just reported this to A:M Reports and it's status immediately came up as "Aknowledged"! You can't get any faster than immediately! I will be using A:M hair on these characters eventually. The shell hair currently implemented only has dynamics on the strand at the front. The rest is not rigged at all at the moment. Once I have his body working alright I can finish rigging his face and then do some texture maps. I probably won't get around to the hair until then.

Well, I haven't fixed it perfectly yet. There are three central CPs that are a real "pain in the butt" when he goes into an extreme bend. I can probably get away with using him without fixing them pefectly but I don't like to do that if possible. I'll come back to them later but I need to do something about those shoulders when the arms are raised. I think Rusty's shoulder thread has arrived just in time. I noticed a dynamic constraint problem. If I turn on "Object Collisions" the dynamics don't work in an action so I turned them off. Now his lock of hair just whips straight through his head. I do in part. I have partially storyboarded it and the rest is in my head. It will be very short, probably no more than a minute ot two but I have started working out the story for episode 2. We'll see how this one goes first though.

I managed to just about sort out the problemo de la posterior without adding any geometry. I just added another bone to look after the three troublesome CPs and weighted them. Also started weighting the back.

Amazing work, Lee! I would love to see him move too but all in good time.

Thanks, Arkaos. Of course but that was just an experiment to see how bad it would look using just one cycled action on a path. The action wasn't made for rock hopping and the follow through is wrong for this purpose. You will see dynamic hair later but not for a while yet. For the moment he is just wearing his proxy shell hair so that I know who he is. ---------------- Here is an example of the dreadful results that I am getting with the rigging at the moment. I keep moving things around and changing the weighting to try to find the sweet spots but I don't think I can avoid adding more splines now. I have been trying to keep this guy as low as possible, and at 1833 patches he is not too bad, but I think it is time to change the splines on his chest and buttocks. Also need to move his ankles and wrists. His shoulders are a constant battle at the moment. What I don't understand is how I can have perfectly balanced and aligned CPs on opposite sides of the model and yet they react so differently. I'm refering to his exploding backside. Maybe I'll take one more look at those bias handles.

Awesome, Matt!

Wow! Excellent! Top splining and beautifully animated. It is so good that I don't really want to criticize anything... but couldn't help noticing a CP or two, on his posterior, that might benefit from some weight adjustment. Would you mind revealing what the patch count is for this guy?

Interesting! That chain looks amazing except that it passes through itself. Did you have self collision detection turned on? Nice work, Rich!

Thanks, Nancy. I can't answer your question at the moment but you will find out at the end of this WIP. Thanks, Ruscular. Not a complete waste of time then. Thanks, Mike! Have you been reading my script, Jeff?

One action cycled on a path: I'm working on the rig and the weighting at the moment and created a hurdle action to test the deformations as I apply the weights. I thought that I would try cycling the action along a path and this is what it looks like. A bit silly really. Much too repetitive and jerky to use but a fun experiment. The action was meant for a flat surface and wasn't intended to be cycled like this but to tag on to a walk cycle instead. As you can see I still have some way to go on the rigging and weighting not to mention animating.

He looks friendly.

Porcelain is a material so you would have applied it to a group. When porcelain is applied to a suface any patches with inverted normals show up as dark patches, like in the image that you posted. To turn those dead-end splines from a simple attached CP to a hook you need to do the following: 1) click on the dead end CP and press Shift/K to disconnect it. Move the cp slightly so that you can see that there are actually two CPs there. 2) Click on the other CP to select it and press delete. 3) Select the other CP again and drag it to where it was previously connected and, without taking your finger off the left mouse button, press the right mouse button. The spline will connect seamlessly with the crossing spline. You will probably find that the connection is not exactly where the previous connection was because hooks connect at specific locations along a spline. I think it works on quarters so you could connect at one quarter the way along a spline or half way or three quarters of the way. Once you have created a hook you will instantly see the difference between a hook and a standard connection. You cannot drag hooks around. They will maintain a balanced distance between the two CPs on either side of them. Hope that is of some help.

Interesting texture. Is he a shark man?

1st class, Stian! The attention to detail is always there in your work. The chopper looks like fun.

Thanks, Ken. Dynamics are definitely turned on! This model was started in A:M 14 beta 9 and is now being further developed in A:M 14.0. Also I noticed that when I tried switching to different types of constraint A:M didn't just overwrite the keys but it produced new keys at some very high frame number. Is there a reason for this or is it a bug? --------------------------------------------- I have found two instances of the spear in an action objects folder, which is buried deep within the choreography, but can't delete them so I have just made one inactive for the moment. I have also reset those dynamics keys, shown above, so that they are on at frame 0 but still no dynamics showing up in any window. Notice, in the last screen grab, that the highlighted "Shortcut to Spear" has a "3" after it? Looks like there are actually three spears hiding in there. I think they might be from early failed attempts to constrain the spear to the hand but I'm not having much luck finding them.

This is a bit worrying! It could have dire consequences for the survival of the species. I opened the choreography and there are now two spears showng up. One constrained and the other not. There should only be the one that comes in with the action. It is an action object. I guess I can just delete the spear from the action and re-constrain it in the choreography but surely action objects should not act like this. Should they? It must be something that I did wrong. I'm also having trouble getting a dynamic constraint to work. (The leather tie on the end of the spear). The dynamic constraint is set in a pose and the pose is set to ON in the spear's object properties. In the choreography the chain of bones remains stiff. I don't know what I have overlooked. Any ideas?

Yep. I'll be pushing it in all directions before I'm finished. This will form the starting point for several different members of the tribe. Thanks, Rusty. Thanks, Jay. I haven't done any texturing on him yet but he will most definitely be getting his designer stubble. Yes, you are right. It looks exagerated here because of the domed surface that he is walking on but I will definitely fix that. Thanks, Fuchur. ----------- Edit: Fixed the toes but haven't fitted them to this domed plinth. Cheers.

Absolutely! I often lay out all my vowel shapes on one slider. One thing that you must bare in mind though is that as there is a transition from one pose to the next it will cause any poses that lay between those two poses to appear in your animation. If your poses aren't showing up press the space bar a couple of times. Save your project and open it again. Check if they have been set. Sometimes I find poses and constraints go missing and I have to redo them. I don't know what the cause is but rebooting A:M seems to clean thing up and after that the keys set properly.

Lots to fix yet but you can have a peek anyway.

Thanks, Zaryin. I agree on the shoulders. They will get tweaked later today, (hopefully), and the tops of the legs need work too. Cheers. ------------- Edit: Fixed the shoulders. A couple of Cps were assigned to the wrong bones.

Thanks, Arkaos, John and Ruscular. I hope so. Yes. There is a bit of an Incredibles look to the skinny alien's body. I'm still working on getting the rigging to work properly. Not my favourite passtime. Here is a first pass at a walk cycle for the skinny alien: Still a bit stiff and jerky at the moment.