John Bigboote

Another thing I've learnt that may help you to 'part' her hair using grooming instead of wind... If you make a higher res scalp and divide it into 2 separate mesh's- one for scalp Left and one for scalp Right... you can HIDE one while you go into grooming mode to groom the other- and vice-versa.

Did you make sure the parents of the old bones were now parenting the new bones? I had rigged a head bone and jaw bone in my character before I installed the SOCCI/SAUCY rig... afterwards, I made the jaw bone a child of the saucy head bone and deleted my head bone.

We have'nt heard back from Xtaz to see if he got his dynamics sorted-out... Hi Adam, good test! Thanks for the compliments! I see you are discovering the myriad of settings and switches for A:M hair. Yes, there IS a pre-roll period where hair will fall and find it's natural position... usually about 2-3 seconds will do. Forces can be used to control hair- or to add a 'wind' effect like you are doing. I would get the hair to NOT penetrate as best I could before enacting wind forces to complicate things. Here are 3 more pages of possibly redundant hair study. Pearls of wisdom and if you look closely you may noticed I left my properties settings open in each image. Rinse and repeat, results may vary.

I've tried it all ways... OFF is the default. I'm saying that I really do not see what the 3 spine controls effect...

Victor Navones name just came acrosst my Facebook... http://www.animationmentor.com/resources/webinars/timing-and-spacing/

Can anyone tell if the 3 controls in the 'Spine' tab do anything? -Steady Head -Steady Chest -Steady Pelvis I get no reactions when I activate these. ALSO- I am experimenting with constraining my SAUCY character to a BVH action... and it is a spin action which causes a 'pop' in the spine where GEOM Center Spine 1 suddenly loses its roll-handle orientation by 180degrees. Don't know what to do on this one...

Recently did this work for Jet's Pizza Facebook page... this is all 4 episodes edited together... had FUN doing this! The story was crudely storyboarded for me, so I wrote none of it. I made HUGE use of the After Effects distortion filter called 'turbulent displacement' in this. Jets COMICsmall.mov

Heyyo- Recently completed 3- :15second Tireman web-loading-spots for Belle Tire. In these- I strived to get the best render out of A:M that I could, so very little post-processing or compositing is used. 2016_BT_TM15s_small.mov

William- I just did some SmartSkinning today on my SOCCI Character- it is not that bad. Make a new action with your character- bend the joint you want SS'd in the way you want it... then, on the Supplemental tab- Show Geometry Bones to ON. Then Rclick on the bone that needs to be SS'd and Rclick select new SmartSkin and begin to rearrange your CP's for that deformation... THEN- to avoid confusion- delete that action when you are done.

I just started a quick hair project from scratch in 18.0P and including it here- see if it works on your side... I made a new model, lathed a 8sphere. Copied the top half and pasted, used the SplitPatch wizard to uprez the scalp(top half) which helps immensely with collision-detection...then deleted some CP's for a hairline... Seperated into 2 groups, face and scalp. Made a new material for hair, applied to scalp group. Turned ON Hair System dynamics, preroll 1:00, Targeting Constraint @3%, Control Points 6, Object collisions ON. THEN- I did a quick groom operation to the hair- combing it back a little... to do this tactilly- I turned OFF Dynamics and sett preroll to 0... then when done grooming- turned dyn back on and preroll back to 1;00. Everything seems to be working as it should. I am on a PC. HAIR TESTER V180P.prj

I have been toying with hair dynamics and various settings... endlessly... currently in V18.0pAVX(what does the AVX mean?) I'm rather enjoying the dynamics seem to be getting better and better as versions come along. Can you elaborate on the situation you are getting? chair.mov

Ahhhh-Node! Funny Stuff! Thanks for the conversion!

I dl'd it but have nothing that plays swiffs anymore... can you put it up on Youtube?

Why is it a SWF?

I am getting the 'hang' of this SAUCY rig! There is a bit of a transition coming from TSM2 setups, but all in all it is quite nice. Things I am missing from TSM3 is the 'hips' being able to swing about without the feet following, but I think the settings are there that would make that happen. The finger controllers are really nice... DELUXE just like TSM2. What I really like is the way I can do things in the choreography like transition between actions and use additive actions- there was always something in TSM that convoluted such things. It is an approachable- add-on-able, customizable setup. I noticed there were no arm or leg stretch sliders... but adding my own was quite easy. The install process is straightforward enough... do it 2-3 times and you got it down, just can't skip any steps. At first when I started animating, my results reminded me of... everyone else's style!!!- I had lost my identity! But, now with some familiarization and learning all the little controls you can use... I am seeing my 'bad-habit-self-taught-shortcut-city' trademarks coming thru. TOP MARKS!!!

Just like the one in my camping box... missing the glass that always gets BROKEN!

Wowwwwww!

I will 2nd this motion. More importantly, I think- would be an FBX Exporter. This would continue to allow A:M to be pertinent with a lot of other programs, animation and gaming.

Quicktime Pro has been a very nifty little utility over the years... hasn't changed or updated at all. I've discovered that when compressing QT.movs- NOTHING is better for making Quicktimes than Quicktime itself. Also- you can set the loop/continuos play and save it so the end users file will loop. It is also a VERY simple video editor for stitching QT's together. Several people have recommended FLV player so I have downloaded it and will start getting used to it. When Apple pulls the plug on something- it literally gets 'thrown under the bus'. Final Cut Pro, Motion, they even pulled the plug on Flash and they don't even own Flash!

Quicktime is THE media standard in the video editing and digital media industries. I don't see this happening too quickly. It is how files are delivered, broadcast, mastered, archived. Sure, there are other players that might have more features and play smoother, but they play .movs mostly.

ANOTHER thing to consider whenst doing eyes... I've found I was ENDLESSLY trying different settings of specularity, specular size, reflectivity, placing lights and other tricks trying to get that elusive EYE HIGHLIGHT to show up. Just when I had it looking good i would move a light or camera or action and it would disappear. SO- I resorted to placing a modelled small disc just in front of the eyeball... set to white with high ambiance... weighted half to the eyes bone and half to the head so it would not be locked to the pupil. I then made a simple pose slider +100/-100 that would make it larger or small/altogether gone. This way, I always have a nice 'pixar-ish' eye highlight that breathes life into a character making the eye look wet and alive.

Beam me up... Tommie!

Does this method prefer Klieg lights or regular bulbs- or no difference... what do you use?

Just made a pretty cool little discovery with my own eye 'aim at' simple setup- consisting of a bone in each eye(ouch!) and a null with 'aim at' constraints for each eye... THE DISCOVERY IS... if on 1 eye's 'aim-at' constraint you give it a lag factor of .25-.5 frame(fraction of a frame...)... it makes the character look more human and less robotic...

I did a quick try on that 36-pass global GI trick Elm was using- and not getting predicted results... I put an object in my chor... made a 'cyclone-coil' path in a model and in the chor set a kleig light to it with a path constraint and an aim-at to a null center stage. I animated the ease on the klieg to the path from 0-100 over the course of 1 frame and rendered in multipass at 36 passes. I am not seeing the klieg move from pass to pass... what did I miss? EDIT: Motion blur!