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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

pixmite

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Posts posted by pixmite

    Realistic Hair Settings

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    Calling all Hair wizards:

     

    I’m attempting to teach myself how to create a simple head of hair for my female character. Based on some of the postings I seen already, some folks have made some very impressively realistic hair models using the new hair features, alas I have not been so fortunate. So I have a couple of questions for those of you who have had success in creating a realistically styled head of hair:

     

    1) With the ability to groom hair now was it necessary to use a directional deal to achieve good results?

    2) Was your length controlled by deal or hair guide spline length?

    3) How on earth did you control the Stiffness? (My biggest problem I think, as of ver 11.0a for WIN/XP my hair system doesn’t contain a property setting for “Stiffness”, but it does contain a super set of the “Dynamic” parameters that are documented on the Hash website under 2004/Hair features). :blink:

     

    Since there are so many parameters to play with could one of you possibly give me a head start by posting a snap shot of your Hair System/Emitter settings?

     

    Thanks in advance for helping me wean myself off of helmet hair…

     

    Pixmite

    What inspires you?

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    For me it was the historical modeling that I saw on the discovery channel and others. Those 3rd renderings of what the great pyramids might have looked like the day after the were finished or what the diasouars might have looked like.

    propeller update

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    I know from reading some recent airplane things that people are wanting to start targeting a bit lower RPM more like 2000 since the noise is much lower.

    You are right. Slower turning popellers are in because they don't make as much noise, however if you're try to model a WWII aircraft, they have RPMs will over 2500. In fact the Hawker Tempest had an emergency power setting of 3700 PRM!

    Propellers

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    One way I can think of is to change your driver type from Quaternion to Euler. Quaternion always seeks the shortest path between two orientations (so if you key 0 and then 359, quats will just go backward one degree). Euler angles can store larger values than 360 if I recall - quaternions are always normalized to a single rotation in each axis. Well, kinda.

    Some additional pointer please. How does one change the driver type? I was un able to find it with advanced properties turned on. Also where do I apply an acceleration expression? My guess would be that it would have to be in the chorography so that you progressively shorten the length of time that the chorography has to complete one rotation cycle.

     

    Pixmite

    Forum posting tips!!!

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    I to am getting a code execution time out errors may times when I post. The last one was for my propeller question which lead to my accidental dual posting and may have contributed to the spawning of this thread.

    Propellers

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    Fellow Animators:

     

    I have a propeller question for you. I have an airplane that I would like to animate the turning of the propeller from a dead stop all the way up to take off RPM. Getting the engine started through idle is easy, but my challenge is when propeller needs to spin faster than the ½ the frame rate (the Nyquist rate, I think).

     

    As the propeller increases beyond ½ the frame rate I would like it to appear to blur and then go through several cycles of appearing to turn backwards and forwards as it reaches 3700 RPM. –> A Hawker Tempest. Any suggestions of how to achieve this effect?

    Variable Smartskin

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    RJ:

     

    Another good suggestion, however, when I set the smart skins for blend the and try to create a new action the software crashes. Unfortunately I save the change before I tried to create the action and now AM crashes when I load the project that contains the 2 smart skins.

     

    Pixmite

    Bone influence?

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    Ken:

     

    A different approach....

     

    You could set up additional bones which originate from the same place your #1 bone does and fanning out to the reaming CPs. You then set up orient like constraints to your #1 bone with whatever percentages you like. (Make sure you have compensate mode on when you set them up though)

     

    Pixmite

    Action to Pose

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    Once you have the action the the way you want, click on the Action menu then hit "Create Pose". To test it, clear the action and open the pose sliders.

    I got this technique to work as long as the Action was limited to CP movement. After I executed the "Action to Pose" command all other pertinent channels showed up under the pose relationship in the PSW.

     

    When I attempt to do the same with an action that simply changes a color attribute, a relationship is created but contains no surface color attribute channels. Consequently the new pose does not work. I even tried to copy the key frames into the pose relationship after it was defined and is doesn't work.

     

    Can anyone verify that the "Action to Pose" command actually works on a color attribute change only action? (I'm currently using 11.0 Beta 6 - maybe it works with older versions)

     

    Pixmite

    Morphing a character into another using poses

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    Hi,

    Trying to make 2 smartskins sound complicated, but if it can be done; excellent!

    I for two would also be interested in how Javier's morph came to be. It looks quit marvellous.

     

    cheers,

    Arthur

    Arthur:

     

    Creating 2 smart skins is not all that complicated. You just turn one off while you're working on the other. Additionally in the case of our Hulk like character you can temporarily use your character morphing poses while you define the smart skin and then delete them from the relationship. This way you define both sets of smart skins as if you had two separate models.

     

    Pixmite

    Action to Pose

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    I was afraid that what the answer was going to be based on the lack of suggestions from this post. I guess it has now migrated from a technique request to an AM feature request.

    Morphing a character into another using poses

    in (2003-2004)

    Posted

    This is exactly the character challenge that I'm working on and I have had some sucess so far with help of other from this forum. Here's my current approach:

     

    1) I'm starting with the Hulk character first, so I'll know exactly how dense my mesh needs to be for both extremes.

     

    2) I'm then setting up fans/cogs for the joints for the Hulk character.

     

    3) I created what I'm calling "Reduction" poses to change different body parts from the Hulk to Bruce Banner and viceversa.

     

    4) The secret sauce - Setting up 2 smart skins per joint (1 for the Hulk extreme and one for the Bruce extreme)

     

    5) Then in an action I'm using the "Reduction" poses to morph character from one extreme to the other while adjusting the enforcement percentages of the two joint smart skins to be consistent with the state of the transformation.

     

    6) I will create a Bruce Banner type character with a simpler geometry for all scenes prior to the transformation - I haven't done this yet.

     

    Comments/suggestions on this technique are welcome, and yes it's a lot of work.

     

    Since it applies I'll ask the question here as part of this thread. I'd really like to transform all of my morph related actions, i.e. color change, smart skin enforcement etc... into poses but cannot convert the time dependency inherent to an defining an action into a pose with any technique that I tried. Any ideas on how I can do this? Is this possible? Or is it an AM feature request?

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