NancyGormezano

You betcha - that's why I like it too. I can understand it! Or at least I can pretend I understand it. Aside from that, I like that I can easily isolate the geometry bones from control bones. I like the naming conventions. And I particularly like that it has some pseudo-squetching with the neck, torso and lower hips, even the arms some. I like the face controls, the hand controls, the IK/FK switching. I find it barebones only in terms of number of bones - it's full featured enough for me. Installation is easy enough. Relying on "black box voodoo" is uncomfortable for me. I offer my feedback only in case you or others might benefit. I recognize you're probably not wanting to maintain this rig ad nauseum

I like it with the shadows too - hadn't thought about using lite list. And I repeat - nice, friendly characters

Thanks Steve - yeah I agree about the wand - thanks to Robcat for suggesting a prop, and his valuable feedback. Thanks to Michel as well for his also helpful feedback. Thanks to Holmes for his Literig. Thanks to Malo for his modeling tutorial. Thanks to A:M for a full featured, accessible and powerful product and forum. I am also working on next iteration ... trying to add some friends for her... trick will be to not have them be tooooo distracting, cluttering, but subtly add to this 11 second story. I did fool around with a swarm of butterflies...That was a bit tooooo much. I think. I have another idea I will try. And Thanks Bruce! Glad you likeee...but I think you're just looking at her undies...ummm...now that I think about it...so is Steve probably... Here's the swarm attempt - would need more control over their movement, like I said - I have another idea I will try. But I also changed the lighting ...I think I prefer this flatter lighting?... cocoonshiny15newlightswarmMed.mov

terrific throne (to go with also terrific Phred Pharoh)! - I think you're onto something...or on something...or something like that.

Next iteration: Moved camera back, added prop, tried to fix penetrations, tried to fix lip sync, added some more (subtle) body movement across/within camera frame, changed some gestures, tried to loosen up and yup - different acting choices are coming to me - might add a widdle bird/insect that flits around as a side kick if I have the energy, inclination cocoonshiny15MPEG4med.mov

Datsa some Phunnie Pharoh - terrific character! Your modeling just keeps getting better and better

Nice friendly looking characters! I believe the black specs are an artifact of AO (and insufficient passes? not sure) You might try adding a klieg light, with z buffered shadows. Add a rotoscope (an all white image) to the camera. Make the ground plane front projected and flat shaded. I think? it will work with AO (I know it works with AI). You may have to decrease the AI value, and/or you may want to set the klieg to just be spec ON but diffuse OFF, and definitely shadows ON.

Just checking...(I changed normal to bump in your sash project) Are you viewing with Render lock (green button) ON screen (which looks bad and is not how it will render) as well as Render mode (blue button - which looks good to me and is how it will final render based on whatever settings you have in your render dialog?

Yes - it's the very same song...Have your people call my people and we'll take a meeting...

Yup, looks like a mighty fine Chickbot magnet to me.

Thanks Steve! Thanks Michel for your comments - I agree about screen movement, didn't notice the index finger - but I've changed it, as well as toned down skirt movement on "yesterday" (was trying to go for belly bounce) I've tried to address the issues in the next iteration - But - of course I'm messing things up, making more problems and having some difficulties working with a prop. Also having some problems with body movement, so I don't think I'll rework my mundane acting choices too much (would have to start over) - but when I get more confidence & control/knowledge of this rig - I will definitely try to be more creative on the next effort.

Hi Holmes This is primarily a question. And maybe a FYI. I noticed when using the lite rig (for doing the 11 sec club animation this month) that I was missing being able to rotate the HIPS Null and have the body (torso,pelvis, arms) rotate with it. Perhaps I missed some instructions to reparent the torso geom bone, and maybe the Biceps as well? So I just did some experimenting. I dragged the torso, bicep bone hierarchies to under the Hips null If I didn't miss the instructions, and that wasn't your intent, you may find, like me, that there is more flexibility and ease of use if you do that. Everything seems to still work. However I did not test extensively. I think when I am done with the 11 sec animation, I will do this to Rita. I think this works better as you can still isolate torso, lower hips movement, as well as move them all together. I took a look to see what the other rigs were doing - and its all over the place. So obviously it's a preference of mine.

HAH! they are great! I do a very sophisticated rendition of singing "Fairy Tales Can Come true" in chicken squak-speak - if you ever need a voice for them. Bwack bwack bwaaaaack...

Thanks Robert - I appreciate your input. I will try to take it to the next step, and incorporate what you've suggested. Ah yes. You shoulda seen it BEFORE I loosened it up...And my husband said - yikes that looks sooooo blocky stiff! Normally I don't do blocking, or pose to pose. I usually wing it - do straight ahead, or a combo of the 2. And usually the comments are - it's tooo floaty, need more holds...So this time I thought I'd try guessing at what I think the procedure is that other animators seem to do. Notice I said GUESS. I can see why this method might make for the "everything moving at once" and "too stiff" look. But it was good to do it that way - and now I have to figure out how to get the fluidity back, without being floaty. Delete keys, move keys, and change biases, I'm guessing. UH YUP. I had also thought the same things. Thanks for reinforcing. At this point - I was trying to try different technique (for me), without getting too creative, difficult. And yes - the result shows lack of creativity. I was also trying to work on better hand emoting gestures. I couldn't resist. This dialog just begged me for demonstrative hands. Again it was good to do for me (at this stage of my fooling around). I found my acting choices "obvious" as well. A GUN, you say? Now THAT has creative possibilities. I was thinking more along the lines of adding the same ol', same ol' fairy wand and petite butterfly wings...and...and...a tiara...a twinkly, glittery, sparkly, motorized, gurly tiara... Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions. Thanks John also.

Ok. testing, testing 1 2 3 4 with this month's 11 second dialog problems I see: 1) rigging, modeling issues with arms, hands 2) lip sync for "yesterday I ate" starting around frame 155 3) hands penetrate around frame 95-96 4) ??? (not done with costuming, texturing) Comments welcome (and nooooo...ya won't have to go vote for me...unless you absolutely, positively want to wade thru 6 billion entries all with the same dialog) coccoonshiny8mpeg4medPCMhintedstream.mov

very appealing!

Yes I noticed the A:M box - and... as well - I noticed and enjoyed all the good work both you and Myron did. I know that's Santa Myron, but was that a Spleenie Elf?

for a pattern such as you have - you might try patch images...they also have funnies - but it might suit you better select group in pws - right click, choose add image/ select image from drop down - each patch will get the entire image - you will then have to probably rotate the images on selected patches to have them orient correctly (right click on selected patches - choose rotate image). You can also set the repeat pattern (change x,y repeats) for scaling the pattern - & you can use values less than 1 if the pattern is too small - or else change your image to work with the scale you want.

Yes, that must have been it. I thought you were trying to go for a look of either images pinned up on a corkboard - or child's drawings taped to a refrigerator - which I thought was a clever idea ... When you had the "pins" I was going to suggest that you skew the images some to give the impression of "tacked" paper drawings.

er Yup - here's Rita being tested with this month's 11 sec club dialog. I used every control for the face except the tongue. Yes - she still needs work, but I wanted to try it out. Thanks again for the literig cocoonhairroughmp4medium.mov

Of course not - are you wanting opinions of the animating? or of the rig? It's hard to offer constructive comments on either. As you say: Both are unfinished. Face rigs are always interesting, useful. Minimum controllers sounds interesting - but it's hard to know without the details if it would be intuitive/flexible to work with.

looks terrific - like the style Didn't the first image (before fixing tree line) have some "pins" around the border ? Or am I imagining something - like spots before my eyes?

As Stian said: Thats how you get the light to travel a path in 1 frame.

I thought you already had a different (and excellent) tutorial for "How to weight cp's" - ie a general weighting method? I am all for a general description for understanding how to apply it to other situations. I just think in this case, it might be presented in the wrong place. I don't think I've discovered anything to streamline the process. I pretty much do what I believe is suggested (what you have suggested) in order to assign weights to cps that are influenced by multiple bones. In general: 1) In MODEL window, modeling mode: Select group of cps that are to be weighted with the same percentages. Hit Lock 2) In MODEL window, switch to bones mode - assign all locked cps to 1 of the influencing bones, then assign at least 1 cp in the group to the other of the influencing bones. This will make the cp weighting process easier in following steps. 3) Open an ACTION window (if not already open), go into muscle mode, select locked cp's, right click - choose edit cp weights 4) In the CP EDIT dialog box - All the cp's that belong in the group should show in the left most box, all the bones that were selected in step 2 above will show in the right most top box with percentages (some may have ?). Click on bone name at top of dialog, edit it's weight in bottom most box of dialog. Repeat for all bones influencing that group of CP's - ie click on next bone name, edit weight, etc. Make all weights add up to 100 %. Click DONE. Do not close action window. Repeat from step 1, for the next group of CP's to be weighted. The above needs language cleanup, pictures of the cp weighting dialog box, with the lite face bones. For clarity, it helps me (and maybe others) in many cases if 1) the goal (and maybe why it's the goal) is stated up front & 2) the how (and maybe the why it's done a certain way). I like to know why I'm doing it, rather than just following steps. You have very useful general information about cp ordering (which I never knew about), as well as the pitfalls of the cp dialog etc - but perhaps some is "out of scope" or "out of place" - ie bogs down the process of lip weighting for the liteface rig (and makes rabid lite-o-philes, such as moi, cry for days). I do not want to see all that good detail lost. The pitfalls could be highlighted in one of your "warning boxes", the general method perhaps as an appendix, or perhaps to the other document you've written. Might not disrupt the ease/flow of the liteface weighting process document. These are only my opinions, experiences. You write wonderfully, much clearer than I. Newbies and/or others might feel differently.

I realize why you did what you did in the tutorial for lip weighting, but that section made my eyes go glossy, in contrast to everything else being highly readable. You can always add just what you said above: " it's not exactly the same for each model - but these are the weighting goals for this model's lips" or something like that. Then present the how. I still am not sure why you were going thru so many steps. I found that since it was so easy to find the bones, I could just select each vertical spline to weight going from left to right, top first, then bottom - that I could weight it relatively easily - once I saw what a "starter" weighting scheme might be. I always hit done (never apply) and I did all weighting in an action window. I included both photoshop files in the zip - incase you wanted to also show eg of alternative spline layout/weighting Lip_weights.zip