NancyGormezano

I ran some tests just to see what render times would be for me. I am probably the only one, but I would ONLY consider doing the 480p size, and would prefer mono vision. On my computer, just the set alone (with default settings) takes 1:46 /frame (with soft on), with soft off - takes 1:35. Mono vision takes :58. The larger render size with default settings takes 3:32/frame on my computer. STEREO, almost doubles the render time, and most likely diminishes the number of viewers. Not everybody has red/blue glasses (especially non-animating friends and relatives), nor necessarily if they do, would they go running to go find where they last put them. And I can't say I enjoy watching stereo animation requiring red/blue glasses for any length of time. Stereo, with the current settings, causes my computer to put out warning of HIGH CPU usage by A:M (for just 1 frame), which more than likely will present problems for me with multiple frames. Even with rendering at 480. The stereo looks cute, but the lighting probably doesn't need to be so render costly. I question having shadows for all lights turned on, even with mono vision. Can probably get away with only the SUN and Mainlight having shadows. I also question if the glass needs to be there (transparency is a render hit). Stereo rendering diminishes the beauty of the set, and I expect, would encourage different types of animation, ie things flying into the camera I don't know how to combine the left-right images so that I could compare the differences between stereo and mono vision imagery. To recap: STEREO, all lights have shadows, with glass, 5 pass: 720 large size: 3:32 480 small size: 1:46 (Soft ON) 480 small size: 1:35 (Soft OFF) MONO (Stereo = OFF) , (all 480, soft on) :59 all lights have shadows, with glass, 5 pass :41 ONLY SUN, Mainlights have shadows, with glass, 5 pass :36 ONLY SUN, Mainlights have shadows, NO glass, 5 pass

Best thing is to try it and see what happens - obviously SAVE your model before you try. For me, that's the best way to learn. As for moving bones I don't think you can move a whole bunch of bones if they are not in the same hierarchy. If you are having trouble moving them, it might be because the rotation of the parent bone and the view from which you are trying to move them are not making it easy for you

Ah, but you can grasshopper! If you have assigned cps to a bone, and you are in bones mode, hit ctrl + either translate or scale manipulator and the cps will also move. If the cp is weighted less than 100% to the bone, it won't move If you use the translate manipulator - then only the bone (and it's children) will move without the cps (EDITED for bad info) If you just use the standard mode manipulator, then only the bone will move without it's children.

Local boy makes good! er...almost local...newly local...ok...ok...California boy makes GOOD! Yay Jesse!

very cute. The first, last and 2nd to last images work particularly well.

Ooooo nice. Could also vary the colors and if ya add some bones here and there, animate the vertical scaling of the patches, and overall shape for more dynamics.

Seems I didn't add reflectivity in the above clip. So for my own education, added 50% reflectivity, along with 50% transparency to globe, which made render times shoot up to 31 secs/frame. When I ramped the transparency back down to 0, render time went to 11 secs/frame (still with 50% reflectivity), as expected. Transparency is always a killer. Forgot to mention I also added roughness to globe (in clip above as well as in this one). This clip has a slightly better look. Obviously could refine this, ad nauseum. So I'll stop now before I puke. globe0reflecttransparetlooph264.mov

Think again. Took John's last animated clip, decaled it onto a sphere with planar mapping ie.- no unwrapping, no unfolding, no complicated placement needed, but could have used spherical mapping. His animation was used to drive displacement as well as some coloring, but I also combined it with some other turquoise color image. Also added specularity and reflectivity Rendered 3 pass and it took 4 secs/frame - ver16b globe0highh264loop.mov

Maybe it's not a fold? I am seeing a triangular pink shape located to the left of the eyeball. (I scaled your image) OR the eyeball doesn't fit, ie. not scaled big enough for the socket and I'm seeing thru the eye socket to the back of the head? I don't notice this pink anomaly in your new pic. (correction: I do see it, it's just less noticeable because the image is smaller)

Make a small test case with just the smooth surface (window casing) - still happen? or is it some shadows being cast from something else?

Very cubey!

Good characters! All of them.

I like ACE! And I like Wheatley (whatever that is) - well done!

As Robcat said, can't just go to an entry, gotta wait till they serve it up to you. And I don't think the votes count until you've voted for them all. I might be wrong about that part. Best of luck John, May it be a productive learning experience!

If you could make a sample case out of that to study and post it... It would be useful to see. I did just test exporting model from action with decals and hair in ver16b and yes it now works! In 15jplus hair would get messed, and decals (especially noticed if they were cylindrical with a repeat count, did not try all cases) would get messed up. Both problems appear to be fixed. yay! However I find that this same model rigged in 15j plus has some poses that do not work the same in 16b, in particular it has to do with hiding and unhiding nulls. I will try to make a simple case. I had to create a new pose in 16b to get it to work.

No no, not true - it is of use! I said I appreciate the intent to find solutions. I would love to find a way that simplifies for everyone - I have even tried to concoct some way for me to use INSTALL plugin. I even used it for naming some of my top level bones, but then decided I liked leaving those particular bones in, as it helped me isolate sections in the bone hierarchy, so that it was easier to visually scan. So I never ran the install plugin to remove them. Yes I shy away from keyframe filters, as at one time, it did seem to mess up. I most likely did not use it correctly, or it was at an early stage of development. I have tried again, but then just went along my merry way without using them. With my rig - it's not like there is a billion bones to wade thru - with squetch rig, it would be most decidely very useful.

okee dokie. This is wandering into circular logic land and becoming pretty funny now. I appreciate the suggestions and the intent to find solutions, but I think there is confusion as to which rig, and who's perspective we're talking about. At first I was clarifying for David which extraneous bones Holmes probably was talking about. With Robert, I am talking about MY modified process of installing as well as using MY modfied hybrid literig arms, hands, spine, modified face rig, modified 2008 legs, plus dynamic ears, tails, whiskas concoction. There is no install rig. I have found for the most part that it is easier (translation: less confusing, not necessarily most elegant, efficient) to just drag, drop, import modular components, position the geometry bones, control bones by hand, reedit if necessary affected constraint relationships (zero offsets). The dummy placer bones in my rig are a residual from starting with Holmes rig (post installation in some phamtom model). These placer bones show up attached to the ends of geometry bones, they have no function in my rig at this point. It is easiest for me obviously to just delete them rather than rename them to INSTALL bone and then have a plugin delete them. I do not believe that if one were to use Holmes installation process that he would want to delete these placer bones, as part of the process is to use an export action that has constraints on other bones to "translate to" these placer bones. These constraints are NOT on when animating, they are only used by the export action (not sure about shoulder, arm placement). If you wanted to reuse the export action - you would need these placer bones to remain in the resultant rig.

These dummy placer bones (in literig only) have nothing to do with any switches, nor IK/FK, nor any active constraints while animating. I am in particular thinking about the face rig placer bones, not sure about shoulder/arm placer bones. They are only useful during the rigging process, when one is using an action to export a model. I have actually deleted them permanently from some parts of my Lothario model/rig, as I don't use the export actions (safer, less confusing to me to position by hand). I just missed a few dummies and they show up when animating. I could delete those permanently as well. But if one wanted to use the export actions then one would want to leave them in.

btw... you can make a selection filter of these unwanted bones so they are easy to delete in one swoop if they get keyed without having to hunt them down in the full list of bones in the chor. Yeah yeah. And they come back again and again. Sometimes it's just better to ignore them. Most everything has a workaround, that I've used and I've lived with it. I've never put in a feature request for anything, ever. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee for things to NOT change, as I hate when new features inevitably cause old features to break.

If the installation bones have "INSTALL" in their name, you can run the InstallRig plugin to have them cleaned out. I am going to guess that the bones Holmes is talking about are the dummy "placer bones" that he put in the liteRIG, liteFACE that are attached at the end of another bone and are only used to act as a target to get some other bone or null to "translate to the end of a bone" rather than to the start of a bone. The way things stand now, he would want to leave these bones in, in the event one did further tweaking and the control bones and geometry bones got out of alignment. Those dummy placer bones are the extraneous bones that sometimes get keyed unnecessarily in the literig. That is why I thought it would be helpful to have a realtime function that one could right click on bone and choose "translate to end of bone" with a picker that could be used in bones mode (to add in positioning of bones), as well as maybe as an added constraint type. Then one wouldn't need these dummy bones.

Ooooo..yucky ickylicious One crit: The pink "fold" showing on outer eyeball doesn't look right. Not normal. But then again maybe you're going for not normal?

Mark, David - my preferences for what a rig does, and how to install it are just that...my preferences. In no way was I critiquing what either of you did. You both did extraordinarily terrific jobs, without which I would not have been able to steal your ideas, as well as from Holmes and countless others. You two in particular have both been incredibly supportive to anyone who has tried to install either of your rigs. I prefer to understand what I'm doing, and to pick & choose the functionality. I prefer to be able to understand it enough so that I can fix the problems myself, rather than needing to run to someone else. People come and go. Rigs, software gets abandonned. I loved animating with Squetch ver1 on TWO - it did everything I needed. But there was no way I could tweak it for anything other than adding a branch of bones for something independent of basic rig. There was no way I could have dragged a completed rig to a new model, and moved bones around to fit some new geometry. It seemed to have less extraneous bones showing up in timeline than vers 2 (SO). The extraneous bones that show up are usually related to when switching modes of how something operates. Even tho it's necessary for the rig to work, it does make animating less fluid and spontaneous when one has to look at a long list and think.... It interrupts the flow. It's a preference of mine to have minimal bones with channels showing up in the timeline. If any rig did everything I ever needed and it never had any hitches in installation, and it had a minimal amount of controls that show up in the timeline for animating, and ... then I must have died and gone to heaven. Obviously that's almost impossible...I don't care how perfect either of you are. Even my rig has stooopid bones that show up. I was only commenting on how easy or hard it was to analyze a rig, from a user point of view, as well as animate with it. The less bones the better. Sometimes less is more. Especially for new user. User interface is all important. And the most difficult to develop. I have no experience with rigging in any other program, and I highly doubt that it would be easier to modify and understand rigging in those programs as well. It is imperative for anyone who is not intimately familiar with the development process for any rig developed by someone else, to get a top down "management summary view" first , then they can progress to understanding the details. This is not easy to do in A:M with any rig that one hasn't developed, or is a beginner. It is especially difficult to analyze any rig in A:M when one has to scroll thru endless bones opening and closing branches, with bones that have incredibly long names, that appear too similar to other bone names. Or have funny conventions (like TSM). It is especially difficult to keep in ones brain all the properties, relationships, etc that influence the bones when one doesn't understand the methodology or constraint concepts used in a particular rig. They're all different. It's like reading code without any comments, documentation, and without being able to easily see it in recognizable chunks. The 2001 rig was the easiest to understand -as presented in the TAOAM. No installation rig, obviously lacking in some functionality, easiest of all rigs to modify, tailor, tweak, and retweak. I was able to analyze the 2008 rig and break it down into it's component parts, and save those out as separate models (eg legs, arms, spine along with their constraints), that I can import easily into any model. Same with literig. I found that I had to actually print out the complete bone hierarchy and it made it easier for me to see how things were structured in order to break it apart with respective pose/relationships, to make it more of a modular installation choice. The 2008 instructions were extremely CLEAR, accurate, well done. All 75 pages. Yikes. To a user, seeing 75 pages (again I had to print it out first), that list of instructions is daunting and gives the new user the willies. Obviously one just plows thru, and it turns out to be no big deal. I have found problems with exporting from an action after texturing and adding, grooming hair. It didn't always work. Decals get messed, hair looses grooming. I shy away from that now with tweaking already textured, hairified models. I have also found working with mirroring bones, weights sometimes wonky. My models aren't on purpose always symetrical. At some point it becomes easier for me to do by hand than to rely on "black box"

Yes (along with orientation, roll, or aim like TSM) and as well, to repeat myself: The function I am looking for is useful also when one is tweaking, modifying the geometry, moving, changing geometry bones and the control bones, relationships already exist, and you want to move the control bones to align again to the appropriate geometry bones - to realign, and get precise, rather that eyeballing or entering long strings of numbers. I typically just import rigs from one character to the other, and then just start realigning the geometry bones, control bones. No Install process necessary. Just a tweaking hell. Or will start with fully rigged character, modify geometry into entirely new character (so I don't have to do major weighting of cps), and then do the tweak dance. And then do the compensate dance. Would be nice to have some auto compensate (zero the offsets ?) method as well. Obviously we've all been struggling along for 10-20 years without these functions.

Yes it is - when you have your own rig or understand your rig then it is easy to modify. The problem with TSM is that it's hard to understand. You understand it because that's what you use, have written scripts for, have installed it, modified it many times. I found it overly complicated when I tried to analyze it. There are simpler ways to do what it does with less bones. I found it much easier to analyze and understand the 2008 rig, and the literig. They all do what one needs mostly. It's that some do it with WAY more bones than necessary, or have the bones organized in a way that make it hard to figure out for the user who is not intimately familiar with the how, why of the particular rig. It's a mess. See comparison image. I did not include Squetch Rig - with almost 1000 bones! but also with the most functionality, but most of it never to be used, and the workings only understood by 2-3 people? And way toooo many bones show up in the timeline when animating - way too confusing for me. For my comparison - Lothario (hybrid of literig, with 2008 legs) uses 197 bones and has way more functionality (body, hand rig, face rig, dynamic whiskers, dynamic tail, dynamic ears, some squetch) than the 2008 rig at 209 bones (body, hand rig only) or the TSM basic character with the most at 257 bones (body with squetch). I could even trim more bones out of Lothario (ones that aren't necessary). These extraneous bones only exist because I used part of the generalized install method for Literig and liteface. The reason I would trim the number of bones down is because it simplifies animation, and sometimes these extraneous bones get keyed for no reason and complicate the workspace and confooose my widdle brain when animating. You can duplicate any bone in place by CTRL-dragging it in the PWS onto its parent. You will have to delete the new bone's children that also got copied if you don't want them. Yes I know that - I have used that obviously when initially creating control structures. The function I am looking for is most useful when one is tweaking, modifying the geometry, moving, changing geometry bones and the control bones, relationships already exist, and you want to move the control bones to align again to the appropriate geometry bones - to realign, and get precise, rather that eyeballing or entering long strings of numbers.

Didn't know you were looking for input only from beginners, with a standard character. Or maybe just from Gerry? It's not a matter of being stopped dead in one's tracks. The trouble comes for most (especially me, and I believe Holmes also expressed the same dilemma at one point) when they want to modify it. Then they have to understand the resultant overly complicated rig. I don't blame A:M for this. BUT I sure would like to see some real time rigging function (not via constraint, or pose, more like a "snap to") in A:M that performs similar function as the TSM script commands that allows one to create, change a bone or null to have same position (start, end points), and oriention, roll like an already existing bone, null (maybe even cps?) without having to manually do it, or input values. This could help in accurately getting control bones, nulls lined up with geometry bones, and maybe even cps.