KenH

I've never heard of that before. Are you sure you're looking at the root bone in the bone window? Select a blank space round the model in bones mode to see the root bone. Also, if you open the model in a brand new chor does it look the same?

It's an Nvidia card problem. There are beta drivers that solve it (do a search of the forum).

Take a look at the yellow box on page 20 of the manual.

Oh yeah. I think Booleans still need to be fixed. You might put in a report. Edit: Refer to next post.

AM has booleans which cut out a shape at render time. It's not really a substitute to making the mesh, but it can get you out of a "hole" (pun intended). All you do is make your hole shape as a solid (putting it in the right place in the "to be cut" shape) and then assign it to a bone. In the bone options, there's a boolean setting to cut out the shape.

Make a box and split it down the middle with a spline. Then you can break that spline on one face to create an opening in the box.

If there's not a setting in there (pre-roll?) then you might consider using hair instead.

It may be a redraw issue. Try pressing spacebar when they look strange.

It's all done, thanks. I just used the FK calf controller bone on the knees for example. I haven't a clue about rigging the crotch area (there are three bone directions to worry about) but it's passable. I'm sure you'll find plenty of weighting errors when I throw this model out there.

I couldn't smartskin them from an action because I didn't know about this. Cheers.

Yeah, weighting has that shrinking factor and I'm probably not weighting to the right bones, so smart skin is going to be faster. It's nearly there, but I want some definition in the bends. The bones I've tried to smartskin (they don't move in the smartskin window) are un-hidden in the model, but they don't appear in an action.

I need some smartskining on the ankle/knee/thigh/mid rift/stomach areas. Which bones can I put it on?

I've been seeing this issue in v14 too. I've reported it as should you. I believe it's a refresh issue and if you press space bar in the camera or outside (or both) it resolves.

Yes, doing a Q render on the helicopter stalls at about 30% and I have to close AM. But I don't get those lines. I assume you'll report it to AM Reports....

I just looked around for all the thumb bones/IK controllers. It took a while, but it's sorted now. Thanks again David.

1) You can go into shaded mode in the options and in there there's an option called "show back face patches". If you set that to off, if the patches are flipped the wrong way, they'll be transparent. Just look for the holes to find a flipped patch. 2) Nothing built in. But it's easy to make. Just make a material and set it's attributes transparency property to what you like and then you can just drop it onto your model to make it transparent. I just press the 8 key on my keyboard. 3) Same as number 2), but you won't see anything in realtime. 4) I don't understand. You mean stereolithography? The 3D illusion thing? I don't think so. But it would be a fun way to model.

Nooo! I've installed the rig and have a good bit of cp assignment done and now I discover the thumbs are rotating the wrong way. Help! Is it possible to alter them now? Just rotating the thumb bones in the PWS doesn't seem to do it. Thanks.

I believe you can use a force system to blow the branches/leaves. But I've never done it. You can find out about forces on page 191 (exercise 18) in the manual

You'll need to select the patches with inward facing normals and flip them by pressing the F key.

Oh man....I hope that's not as complicated as it looks. I'll study it tomorrow, but I can't even get the bones to move with the nulls. I unhid them and they just don't move at all when I move the Face nulls. I don't know where to look. Thanks for the in depth explanation. BTW, does anyone know if there's a keyboard shortcut for CP weighting? Or am I going to have to right click my way through all these cps?

Thanks guys. I've made a feature request in AM Reports where you would select multiple bones first and then assign them cps.....the weighting for the cps would be distributed over all the bones. So if you multi selected two bones first, and then cps in bones mode, the weighting would be 50% to each of those bones. I think it would speed up cp weighting abit. So, I'm making progress on the body. Now the face.....I know I read about this before, but it's all a blur. I'm pretty sure Rusty asked it..... I'm assigning cps to the face bones (cheeks, brow, etc) , but nothing moves when I work the Face interface nulls in an action. Is it necessary to tell the face bones where to move somewhere? Edit: Also, the forearm bones aren't restricted like in the TWO characters. I don't know if that's a deliberate change or a bug.

I recommend waiting for the new version (v14). It usually doesn't take long to arrive. I'm sure all your issues will be resolved then.

Also, I've marked another area that needs fixing You need to turn on the bias handles (if you're not experienced) to see the flow of the splines. The center spline should flow straight up.

Welcome back. The "show manipulator properties" panel on the top right of the main toolbar will show absolute positions. Pressing Shift+3 will toggle the grid. For the display problem, try switching from Opengl to DirectX and back. Then make sure your graphics card drivers are up to date. If you haven't made any big changes to the interface, you could try resetting all the tools etc located in the Help menu. You might have something like the hide tool on or something. Of course, you know that if you press the zero key, you'll be able to see the splines being made....not if you press the 9 key (on the main keyboard.) I assume you're using v10 so the crash probably won't happen in the new version when it arrives.

OK....another quick question then. Here's the weighting of a cp on the stomach of green monkey. I assume you rigged him Mark. Is there a secret to all that weighting? Or is it trial and error? What process do you go through? It must have taken ages to weight him! And what's the difference between say "stomach_IO_geom" and "stomach_geom"? Why are both used in this list? I appreciate any help.