Paul Forwood

To make the vest you can make a copy of your character's chest area and edit the copy into a suitable vest. If you know the tools maybe you can follow this example of a simple waistcoat that I just did:

Oops! Use the path that I described to import a 3DS model that is editable but will not have continuous splines. (not very pretty) Use Luuk's path to import a 3DS model as a prop, which you can't edit in A:M. Useful as a ... um ...prop.

Sometimes it is just a refresh problem. Saving and reopening the project might put things right.

Assign the CPs to the same bones as the underlying body. If the character is going to wear the suit all the time then it usually better to delete the parts that won't be seen.

3DS models can only be imported as props. You will need to export in the older 3DS format from 3DS Max and then import to A:M. Right click in a new model window and goto Plugins\Import\3D Studio Don't expect to get low patch models though.

Thanks for the comments, guys! I don't really know the history of the Penguin character though I have just found this gallery: Penguin I had assumed that the picture that WarioLoaf posted was from the 40s or earlier but I see now that it was from th 90s. Yeah. Maybe. Hmmm. I see that now. It's not too late though. I can see that he also should have legs that taper more, pointy shoes and eye liner. I am very tempted to deviate and make my own version of Penguin but as that wasn't the aim I will finish this version first.

I just threw a quick TSM2 rig into this model but I haven't finished rigging him, hence the flat hands, lack of facial expressions and other rough stuff, but I wanted to see him move. I will try a penguin waddle next time. He has some way to go yet.

Stian, I love your work but I have to agree with what Charlie is saying. A little, (or alot), of grime would push that action image to a new level. I second that! Maybe you could add a tub of wax polish and a cloth to explain the lack of grime. I think you should have your five image contest wins painted under the cockpit too.

The reason that the cloth is getting stuck to the cylinder is because a CP from the cloth has penetrated the cylinder wall. Careful alignment of CPs on the cloth and cylinder will help. Also increasing the number of substeps and playing with small adjustments of the collision radius may help. The sim looks good though.

The title says it all really. I just wondered if there has been any advancements which make the re-compensating stage avoidable? I haven't got past that stage yet. Cheers.

Try the settings shown in this post: Cloth Settings

I started to do a Wink tutorial for modelling this guy but with just modelling the coat and trousers the movie was around 40 MB. Having started him I felt obliged to take it further. Things that still need doing: 1) Improve the overall shape of the face and body, particularly the nose, and the fitting of the clothing. 2) Add shirt cuffs and add pockets and tails to the coat. 3) Fix some bad modelling on the lapels and finish the hem and sleaves. 4) Adjust the hair so that it doesn't penetrate the hat. 5) Model his umbrella and add a cord to his monocle. 6) Give him eyes that match the reference picture. 7) Texture everything. 8) Rig him. Total patches = 1653 Hmmm. Didn't he have a cigar too? Or is this character not the Penguin? If and when I finish him you can have him.

Yeah! Much better.

I would try to keep the wooden handle looking like wood by making it bow but not bend. Make the rubber end do most of the flexing and get the handle to over-react to these movements. You may need to increase the number of spline rings and bones up the shaft and rig them so that they rotate a small percentage of a single control bone. Just the way I'm seeing it at first glance.

I don't have the Extras CD, so I can't answer that question, but I did submit some models for inclusion which included one called, "boy", or, "the boy", or something like that. If you post a jpg of the original I can tell you if it was mine or not. Cheers.

Superb! Especially for your first A:M model!

I had the same problem the other day. I had to do the grab and slide from the other side of the model for some reason.

Go for the the most up to date version, unless there are alot of posts warning you to hold back. The current version of A:M13 is "t", I believe, and A:M14 beta is at "version5". I have seen a post in the forums tonight regarding taking A:M14 out of beta now so I expect that another update is imminent. A:M14 beta 5 download page It only takes a few seconds to download the installation file, unless you are on a slow dial up service, installation only takes a few seconds and you can have A:M 13 and 14 both installed on your computer. You can even have them both running at the same time. So what are you waiting for? Well... you might want to wait until tomorrow incase the official launch of A:M14 goes ahead tonight.

Well, it looks like dynamic bones on a path constraint work very nicely! Thanks for the input, Rich.

I couldn't get it to play for some unknown reason.

Nice cloth there, Robert, and the button test was quite a success. If the dynamic bone works that will be quite a step forward.

That sounds well worth trying. Good one, David!

Yes. It works in A:M14 too.

Nothing particularly good to report on that one yet, Matt. I did spend quite some time trying to get cloth to work well as a shirt or jacket material but my best results came from using dynamic bones with a very reduced angle. I do intend to revisit this problem again though so maybe I will have better luck next time around.

Thanks, Nancy and Holmes. Holmes, I'm not using the "attached" setting and sub groups and all that. I couldn't get my head around it. I don't know if I'm doing things the right way, just testing stuff, but here's how I did it anyway: ------------------------------------------------- The skirt in these examples is actually part of the character model, though not attached. All the CPs that make up the skirt are assigned to the pelvis bone. Ensure that all of the "cloth" CPs are moved away from the pelvic area and away from the legs. Try to imagine where the CPs will fall and arrange them so that they will collide close to a CP on the underlying body. This is just to reduce the chance of a CP colliding in the middle of a patch and being missed by the collision detection. I haven't tested this enough but I think it does help. 1) Create two simcloth materials and change one to "deflector". Set deflector to 16 subdivisions. (This may not be neccesary but my thinking is that more subdivisions means more testing for collisions across a surface and therefore less chance of cloth penetration). Set the other material to "cloth" and set up it's properties. 2) In the model window of your character, create a group for all the patches that will use this cloth material and call it something obvious like,... "MyCloth". I included all the points in the skirt except for those that form the waistband. 3) Create groups of all the patches that will act as deflectors. Call it "MyDeflector" or whatever you like. 4) Drag-drop the cloth material onto the MyCloth group and drag-drop the deflector material onto the MyDeflector group. 5) Start a new choreography and edit the ground object so that it is made from a grid of smaller squares instead of one large patch. (I went for 1 metre spacing). Make a group for the ground and drag the deflector material into this also. 6) Drop your character into the choreography, add some actions and slide them along the timeline so that you have at least a second of lead-in time before the first action starts. (This is just to allow the cloth to settle. The demands of each shot will dictate how much time you will need for this "pre-roll". You may not need any. 7) Mumbo-Jumbo and superstition: When you have your animation set up click in the choreography window and then tap the space key a couple of times. This is something that I do every time before running the cloth simulator, and other stuff, just to make sure that the choreography updates and includes any changes that you just made to your settings. (One day all the update issues will have been fixed and I will be stuck with this habit). 8) Right click in a clear space in the choreography window, or on the choreography icon in the PWS, and click on Plug-ins\SimCloth Simulate. The plug-in will start calculating all the motion of the cloth and may take a few seconds or a few minutes depending on your settings and the complexity of the interactions. If you see a problem while it is constructing the simulation you can stop it by pressing "escape". When the simulation has finished play the animation to see if there are any problems. If all is good then render your choreography else go back and find what caused the problem. -------------------------------------------------- Sorry. This is not very clear, is it? I will try to write up a complete tutorial sometime but I must get on with the testing and then back to my project as quickly as possible.