GAngus

HeHe... I can dig-it... Not to interrupt the thread here but.... Hey, it was a L-O-N-G time ago when I did that stuff. When you're young and with good physical conditioning, and work into it step-by-step, it's like anything else...... A little at a time and you can do anything. No magic really. Yes, on many occasions, there are variables that one has no control over, but that's life, with it's usual challenge. There's a "system" to everything if you look at it more closely. Right? That includes A:M. BTW Once you delve into it, it's not that hard at all. Your "brilliantisland" dive looks a bit cavalier indeed, but quite acceptable in a cartoon venue and I liked it. Shifting his weight on the approach makes it much more believable. I struggled for months with various "Dive" animations but, Barry's DVD helped me a lot with understanding how to get better results. His "jump" tut was really great and got me in the right direction. The secret is, as has been already stated, is to consider moving the whole model, in blocks, and then refine the animation with the "in-betweens" to get the desired results.... right ? Right, at least in the most simplest terms. BTW, I should think that animating a bird, flying around in a 3D scene would be even MORE of a challenge. The turning, the diving, the constant up and down of all the things that birds do just seems like it may be one of the hardest things to animate, not to mention the flapping of the wings as well as flap-variations during turns & dives. Just the thought of it boggles the mind !! Sounds like a good future project. I hope I can undertake it sometime soon. Cool

I did a lot of spring-board and platform diving as a kid and later on the college dive team KSTC-Emporia. With a dive from a standing position or from a spring board, the arms should be reaching for the sky as the knees begin to straighten out so that the the diver can get up as high as he can. Very important when one needs the time to do a flip or two before he/she hits the water. The starting position you have him in would be good for a racing dive where one would want be projected out horizontally as far as possible. I threw a small thing together here to try and show what I mean. It's only a jump and the timing of the shot is a little off but, if you step through the first part of it slowly, perhaps you will get my point better. Otherwise, that's a cool little dude there doing the dive. Keep at it, a real animating challenge, for sure. ThomDiveA.mov

Oh, that looks like such great fun. I hope I can, some day, be able to juggle all the files needed to do some of that sort of thing. Nice work with the Rex there...

Yes, very nice start there. I started a while ago doing my whole ground floor and found this to be inspirational and will dig out those files and get going again on it. Looking forward to seeing some textures indeed.

An incredibly "real" looking creation there !!! Thanks, so much. for sharing.

So John, what would be a general work flow for that avatar you made for Phatso. Can it all be done within A:M somehow ? Thanks

I'm wondering how people get an animated avatar in that box. I have seen some amazing ones here. As a wild guess, it could be linked to one's own website for it to animate correctly. The only size restriction I read about (Caroline) here, was that it be only 64 bits square.

Hey, The blogspot page method looks fine to me and each page enlarges nicely as you click, view and read. Thanks for your efforts here and I am looking forward to understanding how to employ the mysterious use of Materials. I have often been amazed with the wild examples you post from time to time.

Very Nice....

Not sure if you tried this yet but, Way up at the top of the forum page, hit the search button with the word Panther in it and you will find a bunch of old posts you can weed through and perhaps find out what you want to know. Pretty sure that Panther AM support never went beyond version 12.0 There was a time when I used AM in Mac OS9 also if your G3 can do it. Good luck..

here's another horse just walking.... http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/Movement/HWalk.html

Here's a PDF horse run sequence you could play with, not sure where I got it from. HorseRun.pdf

Yeah, I recall the tedium ,also, of doing those type of models too. I remember using that duplicator plug-in in A:M for some of it (somehow) which cut down on the time it took to create. The results were worth it in your render here. Not to steal the thread here but, here's the one I did, just to illustrate the/your point.

Yes, terrific animation job. renaming to mpg, mpeg still didn't work with QT here on my G4 Mac but, mpeg worked after I gave it to VLC player. Simple, and point well made. Unfortunately, back over a pack a day lately...

Site not found, hello ? the URL is bad here..... Thanks, anyway... The basic metal material URL, that is

Hi guys, Hey, I hijacked that tip for trying Inkscape. Got it downloaded, but when I try to run the app., it just briefly pops on the screen as if to start up, but then it dies, and I end up looking at a unix-like terminal window in X11. No error messages indicated. The version I got says 0.45+devel (stands for development?). Note, on Mac OSX 10.4.9 here G4 Box Would any of you know what I might need to do to get Inkscape working from this point ? Guess I should really ask this over at the Inkscape site, and plan to, but thought I would give it a shot here . Thanks for any clues.

You import the rig as a model into the model. So right click and select Import->Model and then go to the posable rig in the Rig Along With Me/Models folder (that you download from the "Getting Started" thread.) OK, thanks for that Largento. That works for me here. That gets me back on track with the "Getting Started" tut. I'm still curious about which InstallRig.hxt version I should have installed for 13s or B2 with my Mac. I have since discovered a 3rd one dated 11-14-05 which I think was in the Rig_Along_With_Me downloaded folder. Perhaps its as simple as I should just use the newest one, and leave it at that. right ? Again, can any Mac users confirm which vers. they are using (date?) Thanks EDIT- sorry I inserted this in the wrong thread.

I hope this is a good place for this question, anyway, here goes.... OK, I am getting started on The "Rig Along with me thread/project". I have downloaded all the "steps" and started a new project using "Rig_Along_With_Me" using "JD_no_bones". One of the first steps is: "Right click in a blank space in the modeling window and import the "13s_Posable_Five_Finger_Squetch_Rig_04_29_2007_installation" rig. I got to this point in wizards/plugs and nothing happens. Nothing. I would expect I would have to point AM to someplace on my hard drive where the rig was and allow it to load or some thing but I get NO response at all here. Please note, I am using a Mac OSX 10.4.9 and for information sake I have in my HXT folders: AM 13.0s InstallRig.hxt Created-Modified-& Last opened 1/23/07. (from 2007 Hash CD)? also, but have not tried it, I have in HXT folder... AM 14.0 Beta 2 InstallRig.hxt Created-Modified-& Last opened 4/11/07 Today, I downloaded another HXT from the WIKI with dates: 1/31/06. So, David, can you help me here, (?) OR, if any OSX users see this post, and have been successful with this up to now, could you please let me know what version you are using ? thanks. JA

Ahhh, great modle. Will be watching your progress with intrerest. I Love these working/animated mechanicals. Brings back great memories of my mechanical drawing classes in High School. Will there be a cylinder wall for the piston, with perhaps a cut away in the wall so the motions of the piston can still be seen. Perhaps that's not part of the plan but just a thought. Great job, nice metalics.

Very cool there. So, not to over simplfy that great clip but Basically, that's a 3D model placed in a Chor and you animate the camera to fly in and display what it sees on it's trip right ?

Hey, I'm not seeing any active model tag to view the file with. Was it there in the first post of this thread ? It doesn't seem to be there now. Or is it my browser problem? Anyone confirm?

Absolutely, excellent tutorial here. The quality and completeness of this tutorial is great. IMHO, it, or it's information should be somehow included in the TaoAM Manual. I first struggeled with AM for months and months, if not years, before understanding these simple concepts. Thanks so much here. http://www.geocities.com/mestela/drifttut/index.html

There is a keyboard command, where you just hit "1" on the number key pad and it switches/toggeles to the next camera view. Just in case yoy didn't know about it.

Ryan- It's not easy finding people to group with. Here's a clue if you want it. http://www.meetup.com/cities/us/wi/ Many cities in Wisconsin are listed here. One may be close to where you are. They may be Groups that you are not interested in, maby there are. Meetup.com is a potentially good place to get envolved. If there is nothing for the AM topic.... Start one ! and they will come. Go for it.