pixmite

Fellow AMers: I’m building a model of a WWII fighter plane and I’ve run into a decaling challenge that I didn’t foresee with the canopy. The plan was to use a simple spline geometry for the canopy shape, apply a glass material to the shape and then add a detailed decal to represent the canopy support structure (frame) on top of that. It appears that the frame structure decal is adopting the transparency of the underlining glass material, which makes the frame almost completely transparent. I can see that this would be a good thing in most cases, i.e. making sure that the decal has the correct surface properties, but this there a way to turn this off for the transparency attribute? Short of adding all of the individual detail of the cockpit frame to the model as splines, is there a better way to approach this? Perhaps a simpler question is; if you were to add an opaque decal to a glass material how would you do it? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Pixmite P.S. Anyone know what happend the AM, 11.1, 12.0 forums? I cannot see them in the froum menu anymore.

Thanks for sources and the tips. I didn't think about editing screen captures. Pixmite

Fellow AMers: I'm looking into creating and Anime style character, but I'm having trouble finding a good source of Front / Side head shots of the same character and of the same scale. can any one point me to a good reference material? Thanks! Pixmite

I should also state that since my propeller bone what I constrained to aanother bone that was rotating at a constant rate, I only experienced a slow down in rotation. The the prop never actualy went backwards. Pixmite

So what I'm hearing is that I should limit my rotations something less that 30 RPS. I would agree that would most likely fix my slow down issue, but limit the depicted RPM rate to about 1800 RPM. Then the next question becomes how would one simulate RPMs greater than 1800? An idea I can try: Create a pose to stretch the propeller blades to make them wider (in the arc of their rotation) introduce a bit to transparency and pull back on the throttle pose slider to give a bit of Nyquist effect. Any other thoughts? Pixmite

Fellow AMers: Well I got the Throttle control to work… Well sort of… using the indirect method of using a pose to adjust the enforcement of a roll like constrained propeller bone to another bone with a constant rate of rotation set up to do so with an expression Rot.Z = GetTime()*16200. What do I mean by kinda? Well, as I increase the enforcement of the pose over time in an action the prop does accelerate nicely, but then slows down and speeds up several times as the pose enforcement increases to 100%. My guess is that something about this set up isn’t linear mathematically or that since the final RPM is well past the Nyquist rate the rotational vales are jumping so far ahead that when MODed by (360) resulting values make it spin at a decreasing rate. Any thoughts on this? Maybe I should set the max RPM to be at the Nyquist rate? Pixmite

mtpeak2: Yes, I was trying insert a user imposed/controlled variable in to an expression directly, i.e. a pose percentage. I like your idea of getting around this indirectly through a pose to set the roll like enforcement percentatge. Its ashame that one cannot do this directly, maybe in the next version. I try out your solution and see if I can tweak it for the RPM settings I'm shooting for. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction (or should I say twisting me?) Pixmite

Doug, Here's a crash course in using an Alpha channel as part of a decal: I'm hoping you have a copy of Photoshop or some other program that allows you to create an Alpha channel for your decal. In photoshop you click on the channels folder. If this in not visible, pick it from the windows menu. At the bottom of this window there will be a icon that looks like a dogeared piece of paper. Clicking this will add a channel called Alpha 1. The Alpha channel works like this: areas in the channel that are completely white will let 100% of your original picture through. Areas of the channel that are completely black will let 0% of your original picture through. Areas that 50% black, i.e. grey will let 50% of your original picture through. Think of white as being clear, back as bing opaque and grey being half way in between (kinda like Sun Glasses). So how do you use this to solve your problem? Add an Alpha channel to your decal image. Using the lasso tool in photoshop - or equivalent in another tool - select the area that is outside of your eyes/mouth in the layers window. Go back to the channels window, select the Alpha channel and fill this area with 100% black. Select the inverse and fill this area with 100% white. So when you're done your alpha channel should kinda look like a negative of your original picture, i.e. white eyes/mouth on a black background. Save this file as a 32bit TGA image. This format will retain the Alpha channel transparency information. Apply this image to your model as a decal in place of the old one. What it will do is only apply the portion of your decal where your alpha channel was white, i.e. eyes/mouth. The remainder of the decal will be blocked because the alpha channel was back in those areas. Hope this helps, but if it didn't, try searching forum on Alpha channel use. They are powerful tools when you get to know how to used them. Pixmite

Have you tried to use a decal image with an Alpha Channel to block everything except the Eyes/Mouth etc? Pixmite

Looks nice! perhaps you could add a Dragon roost on your mountain top. Pixmite

Heiner, Thanks for the pointers

Second Question: What was the final number of hair control guide CPs that you used?

Question: Are you using a decal to control either the direction or length of the hair on this on this model?

Nerrazzi: I too am working on a very muscular character with a lot of detail and there is one piece of advice that has helped me that you might find useful. Try to keep in mind how the muscles contract/relax as you character moves. Planning ahead and experimenting with how they animate as you model will help you decide where to best place the CPs for detail and animation. A good place to start might be to slap a bone that great shoulder of yours, rotate it through range movement and then watch closely where each of your control points go. There is a good possibility that you will be able to slide your detail enhancing caps along their complementing splines to help simply your Fan-bone/cog/smartskin set ups while still maintaining the detail. It will still be a huge undertaking but I would be very interested in seeing you post your shoulder animation solution. Good luck.

Looks great! Certainly a lot better than my first models. A couple of suggestions if may though. If the character is eventually going to have a head its neck seems to be a bit long to me. Secondly, from your first image it looks like your character could use a little smart skinning, fan boning or cog assistance in the shoulder area if you haven't gotten to it already.