Paul Forwood

A little too much like a bloated body. Not pretty but maybe useful on a less realistic model.

Great work, Noel! This plugin will make it possible for me to try the Squetch rig on models other than Scarecrow. I'm sure that I wouldn't get far without it so a big thankyou to yourself, David, Mark and anyone else who has been working on putting all this cool stuff together!

That is just amazing, Stian! You have achieved so much in one year! I don't know if CG Talk accepts demoreels but if you can show it over there it will certainly catch a few eyes and sell a few copies of A:M. Here's to the next year! Cheers!

Ha, ha. Well it looks consistent to me. Good fun, David. Thanks.

Stian, that turned out beautiful! I love how the only critisisms that people on cgtalk can throw at you have nothing to do with your work or A:M but are only concerned with the placement of a light switch, curvature of your monitor, etc. Things which you have taken the time and care to replicate precisely. Excellent work as always!

Interesting objects. Beautiful, fragile and perplexing. I don't know what he calls them but it looks like 'conception' to me. Does that big blue one have a light inside it, John, or is it purely sculptural?

That was excellent, Shaun! I think that is the best display of A:M hair that I have seen up to now. Did you hand animate the falling lid, the one that bounces at the back-left of the screen, or did you use Newton on that? Brilliant! And the sound track! Did you do that too? Excellent all round!

That's beautiful, John.

Brilliant news!!! And as a plugin too! Perfect. Go for it Noel! This will really make this rig accessible to alot more people, speed up the process and cut out the likelyhood of introducing errors.

Thanks, Dagoos. No problem, David. I'm going to wait for an automated re-parenting method for this rig. I think that I have introduced errors in my effort to install it. You are doing a great job, David. More power to you. Thanks for the confirmation on those names.

Ken, Ed, Ododg2020, Mr. Jaqe, Kattkieru and teh1ghool, thank you all for your comments! Kattkieru, thanks for the pointers. I agree about the anticipation and the unrealistic exercising motion. Sounds are going to be pretty basic, just grunts from the character and clanks from the weights. Maybe some drum and bass. I have just tried constraining the hand controls to the weights and it didn't work out as well as I had expected. The hand controls and the weights just pull away from the character's hands. Maybe I need to constrain the hands' geometry bones instead of the controls. I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes.

Can anyone tell me how to drag and drop more than one bone in the PWS?

Exactly what I was thinking. The naming convention that David has used seems ideal for self directing a bit of code to sort the bones into the correct hierarchy. You could probably do it in a decent text editor with a script to direct the operation but a plugin would be ideal. It's too long since I did any coding to go down that road right now. It just looks like David had it it in mind when he built this rig. Oh yeah? I'm capable of anything! ___________________________________________ EDIT 1 : I have come across a possible mistake in the path name which follows the INSTALL tag in the left forearm installation: left_forearm_FK comes as the child of a bone called left_forearm_INSTALL_base_bone/hips/chest_and_arms_to_chest_target_SQUETCH/left-shoulder_FK/right_bicep_FK Surely that should read left_bicep instead of right_bicep? ___________________________________________ EDIT 2 : Another thing that has me puzzled: I have just about finished moving the bones around in the hierarchy but I am left wondering where 'left_finger_index_1_IKFK' has gone. The path given is ' model_bone/left_hand_IKFK/left_hand_carpal_index_IKFK/left_finger_index_1_IKFK but perhaps I have accidentally deleated it or buried it elsewhere in the hierarchy. I am trying to install left_finger_index_3_IKFK and left_finger_index_2. Note that the path currently refers to model_bone rather than base_bone. David, there is a bone called left_finger_right_1_IKFK and I wonder if this is the bone that should be called left_finger_index_1_IKFK Is there a way to search the PWS for a string of letters? I would like to make sure that I have not buried any INSTALL bones.

I am still installing your rig, David, and I am getting very edgey about it. All that moving of bones around in the hierarchy, scrolling up and down the PWS to find the right bone to drop it on, unfamiliar paths to remember and did I forget to attach that bone to it's parent? ... I'm sure I must have made a mistake somewhere along the way. I just wondered if there are any plans to automate this part of the installation? This is a job for a machine! I am not a number! Set me FREE! Ahhhhggggg.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying, David.

David, thank you for all your hard work over the past few weeks, bringing us what promises to be an amazing leap forward for A:M rigs. I am still a big fan of Anzovin's TSM2, and will continue to use it, but now it looks like I'm spoiled for choise. I am installing your rig in a version of my old Woot model as a first test. I have a question regarding the green carpal bones in the hands. I have thumbs which are modelled with a 45 degree rotation along the z-axis. I have set up the white thumb installer bones at 45 degrees but I am unsure if I need to do the same for the green carpal bones of the thumbs. Anyway, thanks again and looking forward to a good squetch.

Yeah. Keep it going, Shredder. That is alot to get together in one week so pat yourself on the back and then go back in and refine it. A couple of fixes that you could do: Watch out where your models are penetrating other geometry such as the figures in the vehicle and feet on the ground. Switch OFF the constraints for the gun, when it is floating around in the air, and animate it by hand so that it doesn't match the movements of the character. Well done.

Thanks, Dhar! This is the same thing but from a different angle and without the camera motion. Edit: Oops! I just noticed the dodgy left wrist and the lingering shadow. And the dynamic nose needs less freedom.

Thanks! I made a big boo-boo with this version by constraining the weights to the hands instead of constraining the hands to the weights. That caused alot of problems that could easily have been avoided. I need to sort out his right leg too. I will redo it sometime.

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Ken Baer and James Hash when they were in London for MacExpo. They mentioned that they are always looking for more promotional material so, when this came to mind while I was playing with some Loons, I decided to just do it. This is pretty rough but not bad for just over a days work on the animating. I hope to refine it, get rid of the camera motion, and add another 5 seconds at the end sometime. And of course there are no textures yet, except his eyes and eyebrows. The attached movie file is pretty low res.

Yeah! Well done Gary! Shame about the BBC competition though. I thought that I had already posted a response so sorry if you felt that no one noticed. I agree with Robcat. That's alot of work to put together in six weeks. Keep it going.

Beautiful, Stian!

Wow! Is that the answer? Nanoradiosity! I love the results that people have been getting with radiosity but I have been put off experimenting with it because of the long render times for each test render. If you can shrink render times to 22 minutes for an image with this many components then I am going to have to give it another go sometime. Soon, I hope. You could render 2 seconds of animation in one day from a single machine with render times like that! What are the trade-offs when using very small models instead of large models? Nice results! Thanks for posting.

I'm saying, 'WOW', way too much at the moment but that is such a cool solution I've got to say something. That's amazing, Anders!

Here is the link for Butterfly Ball incase you missed my edited post above. More illustrations