Mechadelphia

Hi mtpeak2 (Mark), I recently made a video of me installing the A:M 2008 Rig into one of the characters for a short that thejobe is working on. I'm going to make an introduction section to the video before I post it and I wanted to give you credit for the rig and the installation procedure. So... how do I pronounce your last name? I'd like to say your full name in the video but if your forum name here is preferable just let me know. Are there any other people that you would say I could credit in some way for the rig? One last thing, who modeled the Robby model that was included in the example model for the 2008 rig? In a previous post you mentioned that Animus provided it but you did not know if he modeled it. I used Robby in another video tutorial (still in progress) and I wanted to give credit for that model in the video as well. Thanks

thejobe, I've finished rigging your elf for you with the 2008 Rig and have emailed it to you. I'll have the video of the process up on my web site in a few days. There are 4 and 1/2 hours of video and I want to trim it down a bit. I may edit a long version (for those who like details) and short version (for those who don't care much for the details). Good luck with your project. Take care.

Exactly! Ask questions when you get stuck But it can be tough just starting out so hopefully the forthcoming video of me installing the rig will help him out a bit.

you are awesome! i just gave up then i come here you save the day! emailing you now! Thank you!! You're welcome. I have the model now and I'll update you tomorrow.

For the 2008 Rig? I don't think we're talking about the same thing...where are you reading that in the instructions? There's more to it than just moving the bones into place. i guess so. thats one thing i was never ever good at was rigging and this one is just confusing me. i been working on this for like 2 days and cant figure it out at all. i about ready to pay someone to do it for me. I'll rig it for you and you don't have to pay me. thejobe, You helped me a lot with the airplane hangar and I've been very thankful for that. If you send me one of your characters I will rig it for you. With my schedule I could have it done by this weekend but that depends on the model that you send. I'll make a video of it while I rig it and post it on my website for your reference so that you can refer to it when you are ready to try it again. If that works for you then either post the model here or email it to me at mack@mechadelphia.com along with any notes I should have about the model before I start. Let me know what you want to do about this when you can.

I have not had my own copy of A:M since they were on CD (because I objected to the licence/ subscription scheme) but after trying the demo for v17 I may go ahead and subscribe. By the way: Thank you Hash Inc. for offering trial subscriptions for version 17. But if I were to run into problems in 17 that I did not in prior versions am I free to download one of the previous versions (ie: 16b) as long as my licence is current?

As a workaround, could you possibly just drag the CP back? Thanks again for your responses to my question about this. Those methods of working around that issue will help but I'll file a report at A:M Reports about it tomorrow. I did not notice the forum here for A:M Reports until just a moment ago. I suppose that I could have posted my undo question there.

Thanks Robert, Yes, I have tried that as well but that did not work either.

These additions will make this kind of work much easier so thank you for that. But... Is there anyway to undo a change in the UV Editor (ie: ctrl +z)? I don't mean reconnecting a CP but if I drag a CP in the UV editor can I undo that last action? Thanks. (Edit: Reworded first sentence so that it makes more sense)

Thank you Rodney for your compliments and criticism. Yes, I did decide to use bump maps early on with this model. In fact, I already have one on his torso for some of Superman's muscle groups. At this point that is the only bump map and it does make a subtle difference with the shading on the model. The "S" logo on his chest will definitely have a bump map applied but those are details that I think that I will save towards the end (of animating). I'm trying to avoid being slowed down by fine details at this stage. I have not really considered displacement maps though. I know what they do so I'll have to experiment with them to see how they look. As far as the textures are concerned, they are all preliminary ones at this point. I can and will do a better job with what is there now. Some areas don't even have them yet. I will redo the maps when I finish animating (I have already started some of the animating). The belt and belt loops are separate geometry already. I did not want to make the belt loops too pronounced but I can modify them some to check the results. The belt and belt loops will also get their own texture maps too so that may help. On a side note: Until now, I've never gone very deep with the animation tools in A:M but I have to say that I am happy to see that they are really very good as well as relatively simple to grasp. I'll still have animation questions like I said previously but I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep the momentum that I have with this going. Thanks again.

A little closer... I think that the cape makes a big difference. Vertexspline, Thank you. I'm glad that you've been enjoying this. ... I still have a little left to do like minor corrections and finishing the texture mapping but those things can wait until after I start animating (I'm at the point where I can and I want to start that soon). I only planned to make this a modeling WIP and I did not plan to make this an animation WIP. I am not sure how much more that I can post at this point to keep this thread fresh. I will have plenty of questions about animating so if I ask some of them here at the A:M forums I may just start a new generic thread in Animation sub-forum. In the meantime, questions, comments, and suggestions are still welcome. Thanks.

Thanks again for the compliments and feedback. KJ'd Beast, I agree with your observation about his feet so I straightened them out a little bit. There is still a little bit of a curve on the outside buit it is nowhere near as extreme as before. I've circled the corrected area in question in the image below. Thanks.

I started off this thread thinking that I would finish this in two weeks... HA! I'm not even close. But I do have some updates: I've changed my mind and now I am going to animate this. I have rigged the model with that in mind now. The rig that I made for this is set up from scratch but based heavily on the A:M 2008 Rig. Gerry, I spaced out the splines in the elbow area to impove the deformation a bit. I've also started adding texture maps... In the following picture Superman's face is a strange color because the is the color that I assigned to the group that I'll use to UV map that area. I am still working on the texture mapping and I'll update this thread when I get closer to finishing that. I'm also storybording this too and it's looking to be about a 3 minute short at this point. It won't go any longer than that. I'll post more updates when I can. Hopefully sooner than last time.

I have found that the quickest, easiest way to delete bones from a model is to create an empty model window and shift drag the top level bone of the unwanted hierarchy from the PWS into the window of the empty model So now that I am remembering correctly (hah hah), my procedure has been to ctrl drag to duplicate the hierarchy and then shift drag the unwanted bones into the empty model window (no need to expand with *, the children bones will be deleted as well). Wow! I just tried that out and that really does work very well! Thank you again. I really do appreciate your help.

You're welcome. Thank you for stepping up to help out. ______ Edit: ______ I am just seeing your last post. I will try that method out tonight.

Thanks. I had forgotten how to do that. That will help a lot. I just put in a feature request maybe someday it will be implemented.

Drag the bone out of (i.e, above) hierarchy, then ctrl drag it to duplicate it, then drag the original bone back to it's place, and the duplicate bone to wherever you want it in the hierarchy. I am not aware of a key+bone sequence to isolate duplicating just 1 bone. Maybe someone else is. Thanks for sharing that technique. I've never thought of approaching it that way as a work around. I could possibly run into trouble with that method though when my model's bone count has grown pretty large or if I have a few relationships pointing to the bone in question. I have tried to see if other key combiniations would do the trick (ie: control + shift and drag etc.) but I have not found a way to do it. Not being able to duplicate a single bone is certainly not a show stopper to me but I was hoping that it was possible. ___________ Edit: ___________ I just tried this out and it really is not what I thought it would be. When I move (not duplicate) the bone outside of its hierarchy the bone's children also come with it. So it is better to just duplicate the bone first while dragging it outside of the hierarchy then delete the unwanted children bones (that is how I currently do it). That way, the original hierarchy remains unaltered. Thanks again.

I have a question in reference to this: When you hold down the (control) key and drag a bone elsewhere in the Project Workspace to duplicate the bone, its children (if it has them) are duplicated as well. Is there a way to duplicate a bone without duplicating its children? Thanks.

It has been a few days since my last update so here is where I am now: mouseman, Thanks, the only thing that I changed in my last update was the head size. I did not change the mesh in any other area at that point. It did make quite a difference. 3DArtZ You were right about the face being denser than it needed to be. I almost always start out very dense and then clean up but that face did need some more clean up so I removed quite a few patches from it. Thanks. I left the rest of the rest of the body mostly unchanged. Gerry Thanks for your comments. I agreed with you about the feet so I changed the width and height of them and I think that it's an improvement. I'll have to show you what they look like in a later post since you can't really tell in this image. The elbow area looks the way it does because I need the extra definition for the arm's muscle groups. That's another area I should get you a picture of so that you can have a look at it. The arm does deform properly (when using CP weights, a fan bone and some smart skin) so animating it is not a problem. I've had a request to animate it so maybe I will try that out when I finish this. What's left? Basicly some minor details on the face. The cape and its rig. The rest of the body's rig and texture maps. I think that is it for now. I've apreaciated all your feedback so far. I think that I should have asked for it sooner. I'll update again soon.

I understand where you are coming from. I went through my copy and took a quick photo of the bridge layout. Maybe this will help with a little until somthing better comes your way:

Good luck to you Mark with your TNG follow-up. I think that the TNG Technical Manual is very good but, depending on what you are looking for in it, you may disagree. It provides a lot of the technical (fictional) backstory to the Enterprise D as far as "how it works" and some interesting behind the scenes production infromation as well. If you are looking for detailed schematics of the Enterprise D I strongly recommend finding a copy of Star Trek: The Next Generation U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints. These are nothing short of excellent. It has 13 sheets of blueprints measuring 22" by 34". They are very detailed and the quality is amazing for somthing that does not really exist in real life. Ultimately, I don't know how much help either will be for you but if you are a little more than a casual fan I recommend looking into both of those.

The original model is about 9.6 heads tall. The adjusted model is closer to 8 heads tall (maybe just sightly less).

Thank you for the comments! robcat2075 and mouseman, I agree with you about the size of the head. In fact, I felt that way from the very start. I have modeled this using the model sheet that you can find at Sam Liu's Draw Angry web site. Here is how my model is set up in my modeling window: That is how it looks when I follow the model sheet almost exactly. I decided to go ahead and adjust the head size. The Superman on the left is the original one from my earlier post and the Superman on the right is the one with the head scaled up a bit. I like the newer version more so I will stay with that. I'll post more updates later. Thanks.

Hello. I'm taking a short break on a personal project that I have been working on in Animation Master to work on this: I am almost finished with this but I still have a few things to go with it: * I need to finish the head by adding eyes, teeth and a tounge. * Finish the face. * Finish the hair. * Tweak the boots around the ankle area. * Tweak his butt. * Finalize his belt. * Rig it. * Model and rig his cape (I currently am using a rough stand-in now). * Add additional texture maps. I think that is it for now. My goal is to not get caught up in the details and finish this in another two weeks or so. I find that with my personal project I take longer than I think that I should to finish but, with this, I have been moving a lot faster on this model than I usually do (good reference materials help!). There is more about this wip at this post on my web site. Questions, comments, and suggestions are definetly welcome. Thank you.

detbear, Thank you very much for your detailed breakdown. I definitely will be putting those techniques to use very soon. Take care.