Mechadelphia

Thanks to everyone who took a look at it. I’m glad that you’re excited about it! Again, I hope that you find it useful. I did a minor update the rig: v1a: *Changed the heel and toe controls so that the cannot be translated by dragging them in an Action or Choreography. *Prevented the rotation manipulator for the toe controls from appearing by default in an Action or Choreography. These are things that I forgot to set before I released it. This is not major enough to reinstall this if you've installed it already. Steve: Thanks to you and Chris for keeping me motivated to finish it. Although I liked the Poker Rig I think that this one is much better. Gerald: Yeah… Thank you. This was done a few months ago but I wanted to finish the instructions and videos first before I released the rig. It was tougher than I thought getting it all together so that it made some sense. I’ve been trying to make it make sense for anyone that does not have much experience with rigging. markw: You’re welcome. I hope that you won’t need to come to grips with too much with this rig since there really is not much to installing it. The toughest part may be deciding which CPs to assign to which bones but you can experiment with that in an Action window like I did in the videos. Rodney: Thanks for taking a look at it and for posting a sample animation with it. It’s a pretty good feeling to see other people trying it out. I don’t think that I would have named have named this rig anything else… I’ve learned so much from studying those rigs that I wanted to let everyone know that they were the foundation for this. William: You’re certainly welcome! I’ve learned a lot from your work too. I hope that the rig finds a spot in your toolbox. Paul: Please let us know how that works out for you. Good luck! Matt: I don’t have any animations worthy of sharing (Unfortunately, I’m not much of an animator yet) but you are welcome to put the demo rig through some paces. If you (or anyone else) do something like that would you mind posting it here so that I can include that action file with the demo model? David: Thanks. I’d love your feedback on it when you get the time. I’ve commented all of my relationships in the rig so that you, or any one curious about it, can sort out how it’s set up relatively quickly.

Here's the link... I hope that it's working out well for you Steve.

Well… The Saucy Rig. It’s been a much longer journey to complete this than I anticipated but I have finally finished this rig. This is the finished version of the rig that I initially talked about in this post. It is designed for ease of installation and ease of use. There is a bit more to it than this so there are two separate posts on my web site about it. Edit: July 20th 2017 to add link to version 1.5. The first is an overview of the rig and what it does. It includes some brief videos about the rig. There you can download a sample rigged file an try it out in A:M to determine if the rig is something that you’ll find useful. The second is the post where you can download the rig itself so that you can install it into your own character(s). That post has video instructions and some written ones too on how to install the rig. If you have any questions about it then please let me know. I may not reply right away but I will do my best. I hope that you find the rig useful. Take care.

You can start at Will Sutton's site. That should get you pretty far.

Yes, but you can create a snapshot of the Stamp(s) within the Decal without having to edit it. So you can do what you like in the Pose as far as arranging, apply a decal, then take a snapshot of the stamp you just made at whichever resolution without the need to edit the actual stamp (since you already layed it out the way that you wanted in the pose).

In v18, you can now take a snapshot from the UV editor. You can also choose the resolution of the snapshot by control-clicking the snapshot button. If it is not a control-click it some other modified key stroke. I have used this feature and it saves a lot of time compared to the old way.

How long did that image take to render Steve?

Hi Paul, I encountered something similar but not exactly the same as your experience in v17. In my case, I had been doing something a bit obscure to make that happen so it was easy to figure out how to repeat it (I was trying to use expressions in a way that was not intended). It was fixed afterwards but I don't remember the report number offhand. Are you doing somethings with the model that are a little non-standard or are you working as you always have? Are you serious or are you saying this out of frustration? If you want this fixed then you should report this at A:M Reports. To get that problem fixed you'll need to be able to reproduce what you are talking about in v18 though since v17 is no longer being worked on. Or at least try to figure out how to repeat it in v17 so that someone can try it in v18 to see if they can reproduce it and then report it. You said that v18 crashes with models and decals so you can't work on it there. On my end, I have not run into that problem in v18 at this point. Have you reported that issue or do you know if it has been reported for v18 in A:M Reports? I don't get the impression that this is what is happening to you but if you save incrementally and save consecutive blank files then report that right away (and include the file(s) in question) even if you don't know how to reproduce the occurrence. If you aren't saving incrementally then you should start. Even outside of A:M. Anyway, I know that trying to reproduce these types of things so that it can be reported can be time consuming but if you are dealing with a bug this critical and want to have it fixed then this is the only way. If you are willing to sort it all out here at the forums before reporting it then attach a copy of the last file that had data in it before it was wiped. If you can provide at least a vague description of what you were doing before the problem occurred then maybe a few users will try a few things out to see if they can help.

by Anzovin Studios. The link is to You Tube since I could not find it on Hash's site.

Rusty, Yes. You can save and load workspace layouts since v18. In the "View" menubar option select "Save Layout" and name it whatever you like. Later you can load it again by selecting the "View" menubar option select "Load Layout"

Really? So does that mean that if I want to install the A:M 2008 rig into a character model then I really don't need to interact with anything at all except the geometry bones as long as the FK settings are "On" and the spine controls are "Off"? Or does that depend on installing the rig as the directions instruct first and then making adjustments later on?

What if you had the animation rig bones use constraints (aim like 2?) to align with the geometry bones?, then if you adjusted the geometry bones, for a different character, the animation controls would refresh--I realize that would be circular, but maybe an on/off relationship switches from "rigging" where the geometry bones are primary, and "animating" where the control bones are primary. Sebastian Thanks. I did try to work something like that out when I first started this rig project but I just could not find a way to make that possible. I think that extra features would need to be added to A:M in order to be possible. It sounds like you are talking about having A:M update the bone's default positions in a Model file based on changes made in an Action file. The only way to accomplish that at the moment is by exporting the changes. William I'm not sure if you watched the video but that is what this rig does (you could just skip to the end of the Drop-In video where I talk about what is happening behind the scenes). It does not refresh by itself so you would need to do that by hitting the "Conform Rig to Model" switch again and export again. I'm probably going to post a rig of some sort over the weekend so you'll be able to try it out for yourselves and/ or dissect it to see how it works.

Thank You! This is a very good article.

Thanks markw. I'm hoping to have something out for this by mid-January. I'm just trying to decide which rig to setup with this first. I might do a mixture of a few different rigs for the first rig or the A:M 2008 rig. I've even studied the Squetch rig and have a tenative strategy on how to set that up (I need to study it more though) but if I do that that will be a little later on. Once I finish some of the rigging for Shelton's coffee shop project I'll be a bit more focused on it. Fuchur, Thank you. It is very easy compared to building the same rig from scratch. Keith, The most that you'll need to know using this install method is how to assign control points to a bone. Knowing how to use control point weighting along with setting up smartskins is also very beneficial. I will include instructions once I have a rig to release. Rodney, When I rig models that I have made I always end up adjusting the mesh to accomedate better deformations. Sometimes I also have to adjust things like the lengths of my model's arms because I did not get the proportion right while modeling it (you can see me run into that same scenario in the rigging Ian video). In general you don't have to do anything much beyond laying out the mesh properly at the joints. The only situation where I might adjust a model to take advantage of a partcular rig would be if I were installing the Squetch rig or a rig that aims to achieve the same kind of functionality.

(Edit: December 26th, 2014. The forum post for the finished version of this rig is at this link.) I’m posting this thread to bring attention to something rigging related that I’ve been working on for awhile. Please have a look at these two posts at my web site: “Drop-In” Rigging method for Animation Master Video runtime 27 minutes 10 seconds and alternately Rigging Ian with the Poker Rig Video runtime 33 minutes 43 seconds Basically what the posts and videos describe there is an automated way to install a complex rig into your models by positioning only the model’s geometry bones and the assigning the CP bones to them. This provides a very flexible rigging process which eliminates the need to use “Install Bones” to maneuver the complex underlying rig. It is a little reminiscent of Anzovin's Setup Machine. It works well and I am currently in the process of using it in Steve Shelton’s “Buying a Coffee Shop” project. I’m in the process of tweaking a few things based on some valuable feedback from “mouseman” (Chris Dailey) and I hope to release this to the A:M community once I finish tweaking a few details. In the meantime I’d appreciate any questions or suggestions that you may have about this. Thanks.

I have not looked at your file yet but I previously reported a similar issue in the v18 beta. This weekend I will download your file and report the problem under v18 if it occurs there too and is not related to my already exsiting report.

I am one of the users actively participating in the v18 beta testing. I have a Mac which is running Maverick but I use my A:M licence on my PC (since I prefer the way A:M's perfoms on a Windows PC). I have also been wondering about the status of the Mac version because I have considered switching to the Mac for my A:M work. (I run Windows just for A:M) I will contact Hash to see if I can get a temporary licence to also run to run the beta on my Mac so that I can try to help resolve any problems that may be present in it now. I will keep you posted...

TommyDAQ2, You should try that first before taking your computer to the Apple store. Unless there are other problems that you are experiencing on your computer Apple can't do much besides refer you back to Hash Inc for your A:M problems. Installing v16 to see if it works will help narrow down where the problem could be. If v16 runs on your computer then we can assume that there may be something specific about your v17 install that needs to be looked at closer. You can run v16 until the issue of v17 on your system gets sorted out. Also Time Machine won't help you unless you roll your entire disk back to the date it (A:M) was working properly. That would be overkill for just A:M since you have not tried running v16 yet. Even if you did get it working after a reinstall from Time Machine you can't be sure that v17 won't stop working again for the same unknown reason it is not working now. You could also try running A:M v17 from a different user account on your computer to see if it works there. If it does work then the problem is somewhere in your current home folder. So I would say try v16 and let us know if that runs then we'll have a better idea of what needs to be done at that point.

Thanks Robcat. It's there. You should have a look at the Squetchy Sam example model when you have a chance. What you wrote there is along the lines of what I was thinking. As soon as I posted my question though I continued to experiment with this. I just thought of a scenario were I would want this to animate a shot more efficiently: Think of Spiderman climbing vertically up the side of a building. It could be done with regular IK but it would be much easier with Toe IK. Instead of the the IK foot control null being the fulcrum of the the whole foot setup at the rear of the foot, the IK toe control is the fulcrum (at the front) and you still retain the controls that you get with the regular IK leg set up (minus the regular IK foot control null). That is interesting... Thanks. EDIT: There is no finger IK that I can see. The hand set up is from Steve's Hand Gizmo.

So I'm finally settling in and taking a very close look at the Squetch rig. I have a question and I'm not sure if it has been addressed before. There is a switch to set the legs to use Toe IK. I tried it out some and I think it is kind of neat... but I'm not entirely sure why I have that feeling. In what situations might an animator opt to switch a leg or legs to Toe IK control with the Squetch rig? I'm not much of an animator yet but I've found that I liked switching to it to quickly point the the leg from the toe when the actual position of the tip of the toe is important (conveniently bypassing the foot control altogether). After positioning the foot/ leg that way, I felt more comfortable switching it back to regular leg IK. Is that one of the intended uses of Toe IK? Also, are there situations where some animators might want to leave Toe IK switched on for certain types shots rather than use regular leg IK? Thanks in advance.

Thank you (again)

Hi Malo, That refinement is in v18 now. It's in beta testing now so I am not sure when it will be released.

Wow! Thank you Xtaz! When I saw that image during the contest I was admiring it a lot. Then I thought that it would be great to be able to have a look at that model file to see how it was all accomplished. Now I can . Thank you again.

I submitted a bug report for that exact issue. Hopefully it will be investigated.

For which bones exactly? All four of the bones with smartskin on them. They seem to get smartskin info written into them but it's not doing the deformations. I had more success than you did on this model but you are right about the partial successes. I looked closer and the problem is the mesh itself. The mesh looks like it was imported from a polygon format and that is tripping A:M a bit. While it looks symmetrical it is not (not to A:M at least). I copied and mirrored the left forearms and hands within A:M (then mirror bones for the rig) and when I did that I was able to get a perfectly mirrored smartskin for the hands (those bones are hidden). Can you confirm that? (Edited to add: Heiner you will need to clean up the mesh some by mirroring the left half of the body within A:M for this to work the way you are expecting. Also you should detach the sling from the body's mesh before you start to mirror the model)