rusty

What version of AM are you using?

Oh yeah... well how 'bout this! 8-0 Seriously I can't wait to see the tut you are working on. When that's done we need to tie you and robcat's hands behind your backs so you can't be tempted to tinker. :-) So then... tell me truly, not much has been added to the rig that was used back then in TWO? I last looked at the Squetch about a year ago I think and unless you started backing out features instead of adding more, a whole lot has been added. That does not mean that it will slow things down at all, but it is a legitimate concern given the number of features added. [[Edit: Actually it absolutely does mean that it will make things slower... but, will it be noticeable?]] I don't remember seeing a 'lite' version of the rig for low res proxies (that is not a feature request BTW, but that would be neat)? I've always been excited about the Squetch rig (okay, and a little nervous too). Cheers, Rusty

Jason, I'll be interested in the reply. It could well be that what you seek is already available (unless it's been rendered outdated) and you'll be directed to the wiki ~or~ the reply might well be 'if you're happy with TSM2, stay with it'. All of the people who contributed to put the Squetch rig together worked very very very hard to do so (a triple very!) and I guess their vision was to develop the ultimate rig (and maybe they have!). I do not wish to belittle their efforts or the Squetch rig in any way and I pray I do not get flamed for this message LOL! I believe that the following concerns are valid of any software and/or just my personal perks... okay? I talk of past problems I had with it, possible problems due to the escalating complexity I last saw and finally, the many good and great aspects of the Squetch rig. Also, be advised that although I put half a year into attempting to migrate to the Squetch rig, that was a year ago and I am not 'up' on the current state of the rig. That said... Two reasons 'not' to switch (for myself anyway) 'used' to be that (1) the 'adjust compensates' part of the installation (over 100 multiple and complex steps) made the installation too much work (I'll get disagreement on this one from many) and, (2) that the rig was never stabilized at any point -- that is to say, there was no 'stable' version (like version 1.0) and, new/improved feature updates came out almost every week and there was usually no way to apply these short of a complete re-install (I did this for half a year never once completing an install before a new version I wanted came out and I was completely redoing the installs of eight characters). Some more reasons ''''''might be'''''' (and this is in general of any software) that there are now too many features and, because of this, it takes up too much memory (i.e. can you put 8 characters in a scene and still be able to function in AM). Also, in many cases, due to the complexity and sheer number or features and the inability to adequately test everything... the level of stability is low (more bugs), the frequency of updates is high and the learning curve is steep plus the ability to keep documentation/tuts up to date goes beyond support resources. Again, possible situations for any software. I have no reason to believe that the Squetch rig suffers from any of these except that the number of features was approaching the 'all things for all people' level when I last looked. I'm hoping that all these situations have been rectified and/or do not exist because... I would probably switch. Why? Because there are 'many' valid reasons to consider switching... of the top of my head and in no particular order: 1. the rig is much more solid to work with then TSM2 2. it is a very advanced rig with lots of really helpful bells and whistles (i.e. the hand thing, better and more flexible squash and stretch, and more I can't remember right now) 3. it comes with a very advanced face rig (which I currently use with the TSM2 rig right now) 4. aside from the aforementioned 'adjust compensates' it has a very advanced and easy install process which, over all, would take about the same time as TSM2 (at least the way I use TSM2) 5. it has a seamless fk to ik transition 6. if aforementioned pitfalls have been avoided -- it is a far better rig than TSM2 7. it is the official rig of AM and it is the future I hope this helps (and I pray does not offend anyone). Rusty

Do you really mean smartskin shapes? Or are you rigging distortion boxes? "morph targets" don't really exist in A:M. Quite true but he's probably calling his pose slider positions morph targets -- the face is 'morphing' and doing so to the 'target' shape of the pose at 100%. I called them morph targets at first even though I knew that this was wrong -- I did it simply because in any other software and, in the book I got my shapes from, they were referred to that way and, morph targets sound's cool LOL. But you're absolutely right... its like calling a patch a polygon (yikes! sorry Martin!). I seem to remember you pointing this out to me as well many moons ago. :-) Rusty

Superb animation Nancy! The layering is perfect and, as far a conveying 'weight', I've not seen anything better! Even if I tried I could not imitate your style. If you got a lot of your work 'out there', I'd be surprised if you went 'undiscovered' for long. Rusty

I saw a tut many years ago which showed how to rotate an object where you just entered the number of spins... as I recall the rotation handle was rotated instead of the bone. Unfortunately I own almost every tutorial cd/DVD made for A:M and I've not been able to find it again. Hopefully someone will know and answer you and we'll both find out. Beyond that I'm not at all certain that actually spinning the rotor is the best way to go. I don' do cartoons, only realistic and personally I would create a disk with a decal with outline of the blades going all around it and an alpha channel making the rest invisible. Then I'd make the outline of 4 of the blades even spaced around the disk darker and then I'd rotate the disk slowly, a little faster when it goes faster and when it goes real fast I'd rotate it back wards slowly. Just my 2 cents. Rusty

Why thank you TNT! It's always nice to come across something like this. Jim Talbot also has a real nice tut on texturing the face -- nowhere as complex as mine and I think his is more for stylistic characters. However, in his tut he adds faint specels of red and green to the skin and I liked the effect so much that I've added it to my process and I would have added it to my tut if I'd known about it at the time. His tut is excelent and I recommend it along with mine. I think his tut presumes you know more about AM and Photoshop then my tut... mine is really good for someone who doesn't know AM and/or Photoshop too well. Ye Ole 'Master of AM', Rusty

Hi, I don't know if this has anything to do with what your seeing (and to have time to write this, I had to skip reading all posts) but if this is the problem I fairly sure that nothing will resolve the problem. That is to say, my older system (which was fairly kick butt) experienced the same wait time as my current system when I purchased it and it was a significant upgrade (the BOXX 3200 was arguably the fastest non-over-clocked, single CPU system you could purchase at that time which was a while back -- it was pre-64 bit and I only have one video card, see signature for details). Anyway response time went through the roof on everything else but, not the patch count problem. I can not find my documentation on the problem but there were forum posts on the issue. At certain patch counts, the wait time for certain operations would go way up. I mean you add one patch and 'Ka-Boom'. I'm guessing but this threshold was somewhere around 24,000 patches, then again around 35,000 patches and again around 55,000 patches. When you exceeded the 55,000 patch count (a guess but it was somewhere around that number) wait times for copy/paste patches, add 5pt patch and several other operations went to around 15 minutes or more!!! Other operations remained completely reasonable. Martin helped us out by telling us that the duplicator plug-in would do the copy/paste patches faster -- yeah, that was sure right! While copy/paste was taking 15+ minutes the duplicator wizard was instantaneous! Its pretty easy to tell if you are seeing this problem (and in truth I have not tested the problem in V14, maybe its fixed). Being an old programmer I always suspected array limits were being reached. Cheers, Rusty

This is awesome! The number of characters, sets and rendered frames knocks me over... someone is working their butt off! Just the over all size of the project makes me shake my head in wonder! I like the look and feel. The lip sync is very good. Over all, the animation is good. The story I can't say because my wife is sleeping next to me and I watched it in silence. I normally avoid constructive crits, especially if not asked, but your project is so impressive I have to point out the two things (and IMHO the only two things) that... well, drag it down a little so to speak (and I'm sure you are aware of these already). I think that to the average person (not us over critical animators) your production would be drop dead perfect (and I have only seen this from a very few people) if it weren't for the hands and a few of the walk cycles. The hands jump out at you as always frozen in the default position. I think you need more movement and micro gestures (or something). Also, some of the walks jump out at you as being unnatural and/or too slow. Even if both these items were animated perfectly to real life or done with motion capture, they look off in the context of the media. If you've saved each scene which I'm sure you have (you could not have produced this if you were not organized) it would be well worth the effort to go back and tweak these items. You wouldn't have to fix and re-render everything, just a few shots or areas here and there. I (and I'm sure other animation people) could point to other things but I believe none of them matter to the average viewer. Or you could just leave it as is and it flys just fine! Despite my two constructive crits, I am totally impressed! Rusty

Jeff, I've been sitting here looking at your post torn between clicking on the button and making no response or... or what? That's the problem... I have no idea how to respond to you without writing a book that's already been written many times before. I've easily spent a hundred hours reading or watching tuts on rigging the face. All the info you need is on this forum or the hash site or the manual if you search. First off, the phonemes and dope sheets have always worked for me. Not too many people are going to know how to respond to your post -- many (probably most) will move on without replying because of this. Far better would be to ask where there is a tut on rigging a face (I don't know off hand and you can search as well as I can) or, post screen captures of your face and your rig (bones) and describe what its doing or not doing. Even better, post images of where the built in lip sync fails you and get help on that. There is a tut on the built-in lip sync in the manual and a video version on the hash site -- my wife just went through it and it worked just fine. It makes me crazy when I need answers and no one replies so even though I don't know how to help I can at least explain to you that your question is too broad to answer -- its just short of "help, how do I use AM?" LOL. Make it a little more specific and provide more info so we can help you. rusty

Hi, Oh yes... its possible. Search the forum -- use 'material effectors' and/or john3d -- John shows you exactly how to do it. If fact I'm sue John will spot this and direct you when he checks in. Rusty

How to learn as you go and add tips to this thread... As my final tip (for a while anyway, I'm at the end of my list but will likely think of more) I'll just say that every time you open a menu in AM, scan that menu and if you see, as you very often will, a menu item you've never used and don't know what it does... figure it out then add a post to this thread and tell everyone else. Rusty

The art or selecting CPs and splines... I'm lucky in that I believe that I have every tutorial made for AM. In at least 3 tuts that I can think of, the person doing the tut does something kind of strange and so I have to offer this tip. What happens is he/she carefully selects a bunch of patches on the right side of the model and names the group. Now the same patches need to be selected on the left side and what happens is... they carefully select the patches on the left side and name the group. There's a far easier way: period, period, left click for the menu and select 'Mirror Selection'. The period, period inverts the selection then inverts it again so that the same patches are selected but in the PWS your no longer have the right side group selected, you have a new temporary group for the left side. Rusty

Hi Helojammer, Get your model positioned just the way you want it then click on 'render to file'. Make sure the advanced options is checked then select the file type of jpg. Then enter where you want the file to go (desktop is easy) and enter a file name. Now there's a lot of render options but if you are in the modeling window you can probably just click on 'okay' or 'render' or what ever the button says and in a short time you will have a jpg image of your model. Hope that helps, Rusty

Oh my God! That made me laugh! But I guess you don't know how well I know the rig and must assume the lowest level. I've been using TSM since TSM1 first came out. I know the rig pretty well. Well, despite my years of working with the rig, perhaps I 'am' doing something wrong because my mesh is assigned/weighted/SS to the proper geometry bones (mainly "1 right arm" and "1 right upper arm 1" and "1 right shoulder fan") and all tests done just moving the geometry bones, they are constrained properly by the "1 right arm" rotation but, after the control bones are installed the shoulder can go beyond where they were limited to. Right. Don't think so (and by saying that it will work next time I have the control bones in place!). In bed with flu today... probably have assorted fixes done and do the rigger tomorrow evening. Will let you know. Thanks dude! Rusty

It IS the default in ver 15 You're kidding! Well let me pull my foot out of my mouth so I can eat my words! Hey, I made that request in V9.5 I think. Well the jokes on me. Here's a tip Rusty: Don't shoot off your mouth if you're a version behind!

Hi! One of the bones I have had the most problems with, as far as proper placement goes, is the shoulder bone "1 right arm". Its placement determines where the shoulder bends from as well as the pivit of the shoulder when it is raised, lowered and moved forward and back. It determines if the arm will fall by the characters side correctly and how a shrug or a raised arm will look. I have worked very hard to get the placement of this bone correct. However -- in the final TSM2 rig, all this careful placement is seemingly tossed out of the window!!! As far as I can tell, you can move the shoulder anywhere you want and the shoulder pivit is non-existent!! Has anyone else noticed this? Am I doing something wrong or missing something? Thanks, Rusty

Hi! Thanks to each of you for getting back to me! Amen to that. I never met Steve but so many emails passed between us that I felt like I knew him. He went out of his way to help me (and all others) so many many times. He'd actually write back to make sure things had worked out! That was so sad. My heart went out for Raf. I miss him. Hmm... I prefer doing it the other way (I don't think it should matter either) and, I bone the thumb correctly (looks just like yours). Your images are of a 3 finger cartoon hand -- for a realistic human hand with 5 fingers, your second image looks 'so' wrong. But despite all that, I must admit that the third image looks right! I'll have to look at that some more (I have some of the TWO models which I think you did and that I use for reference all the time). Fishing to see if anyone has done anything for this in the TSM2 rig -- Although I using the TSM2 rig I haven't been keeping up with the TSM2 posts and I don't like re-inventing the wheel. It's easy to envision a fix for this. Whether there's really is an easy fix is another story LOL. I think you have the same thumb bones but you attach the mesh to either 2 or 3 added bones -- just duplicates you create. These bones are tied to the original bones via a relationship that provides the twist. Maybe? I think you're right about missing the ability to rotate the thumb. Cheers, Rusty

Hi! If the thumb is level with the hand, the bottom of the thumb points at about a 45 degree angle down and toward the hand. If you move the thumb down, it rotates and at the lowest level it points toward the tip of the little finger. I can imagine several ways to accomplish this in the TSM2 rig however, has anyone else devised a way? Also, does anyone know if any of the other rigs account for this? Thanks, Rusty

Removing unwanted items in Relationships.... So I hope you drilled down into the relationship and removed the pose rather then redo it because that is real easy to do. Just select the pose in the relationship area of your model (in the PSW) and hit the splat key on your numeric key pad to completely expand it and everything is easy to see. LOL. I'd like to remove a couuple... like the Compensate Mode button... instead you just hold down the shift key when you click on the constraint target to NOT have compensate mode! I mean how many times do you NOT want to use Compensate Mode... almost never. Compensate should be the default. Rusty

How to stop recording a Relationship... When you are creating a Relationship (Relationships include Poses and Smart Skin) sometimes it is desirable to move something that you do not want in the Relationship. For instance you are making a pose called 'left nose down up' and you would like to make it similar go the 'right nose down up' which you've already created... its nice to move the 'right nose down up' pose up before you adjust the pose so you can see how it moves. However you do not want this pose movement to be 'recorded' in the pose you are making. By turning off the 'Record Relationship' tool (two interconnecting circles which, by default, is located between the 'Mirror Mode' and 'Animate Mode' tools) you can move poses, CPs and/or bones and this motion will not record in your Relationship. You must remember to turn the 'Record Relationship' tool back on before continuing though or you'll likely have to redo the creation of the Relationship. Rusty

Okay, if you select the bone and press the 'r' key you'll go into the advanced rotation manipulator mode and you'll see rings (an orb) around the bone, one for each of the x, y and z axes (color coordinated) and a white ring for rotating the bone in relation to the screen view. Grab it anywhere else in the orb and its 'free' rotation. Your cursor will change as you pass over these rings so you know your on it. Rusty Edit: you can also bring up the... er... whats it called... a see through input box that kind of follows your cursor which you can type values directly in. I don't have AM open darn it... hope you know what I mean.

Constraining the movement of a group of CPs or one CP. (More then just 1, 2, 3) If you select part of your mesh or just one CP and move it you can move it anywhere except directly toward you or away from you. If you hold down the “1”, “2”, or “3” keys while dragging, movement will be constrained to the x, y, or z-axis respectively. For just a single CP there is more… the taoAM manual states on page 136: = Hold down the “4” key while dragging a control point to constrain it to one of the splines that intersects it. = Hold down the “5” key while dragging a control point to constrain it to the other spline that intersects it. = Hold down the “6” key while dragging a control point to move it perpendicular to the surface. However, in V14.0 anyway, it’s not quite that simple… while the “6” key seems to do exactly what it says, the “4” and “5” keys do not really constrain the movement to the splines but rather to the splines bias handle(s) (and an imaginary line which extends from them). At some point, I thought that it really did follow the splines and I’d really appreciate it if someone with other versions installed would let us know how this reacts in those versions. Finally, if you select one of the splines when you select the control point (which you normally do unless you draw a box around the CP), that will be the spline which will influence the movement when you hold down the “4” key and the “3” key will act on the other spline. Rusty

Damn, you're right! No one told this guy how difficult this was supposed to be! Well Pixelgrabber, now that you know, next time your model won't come out so good!

Don't you do it Pixilplucker... we'll tear you into little bitty pieces. Just kidding. If you plan to animate your head there 'are' good and bad ways to lay your splines out and you can definitely get help here that will save you down the road. ;-) Rusty