John Bigboote

I eventually figured out that you can never rely on a party or BBQ to provide drinks- so then amidst the regulars I became the guy who 'always brought a big cooler and would offer anyone a beer from my 30-pack on ice.' THEN- because you bring what some people consider 'cheap beer' (ie Miller High Life) people feel they can razz you for not bringing 'their' particular swill... and you get the 'got any lite beer? got any ice beer? got any microbrews?' The trick is... leave the beer in the car and go in and sniff around to see if there is a keg or any house beer, then- ask if you can bring in your beer. When you get caught looking in someone's cooler say 'we have that exact same cooler- I thought it was ours- sorrry!'

I have teeth from other models as well that could be copy/pasted in...

I know it is 'wrong'... but I kinda like the sphere in there... it does not draw attention- like teeth can... maybe I'll cut it in half for uppers and lowers and add a toungue/mouth behind it... sometimes you need to stylize.

I really like the look you have there... maybe populate it with some boulders and foliage here and there... Here is a grass model I use over-n-over if you would like to throw it in there. I want a credit. Grass.mdl

Here are the files, MDL, PRJ and all the image maps thus far. V19... Less than 1mb! Jirards AManda.zip

Meet AManda! Jirard had posted a model, and I saw great potential in it and built upon it... and thought it would be a great idea to use as a community building/learning project- see where it goes! I learned a lot by looking at Jirard's wonderful minimal splineage, and my model- if studied, will teach some of my tricks and 'bad habits'... Now, Jirard was going to take it and add teeth and... whatever from there. For now- it is just a female head. I added minimal bones and some poses. Feel free to DL this model or project and add to it... we'll figure-out a way to combine progress as we go. Show us YOUR tricks!

Cool Jirard! I am going to move this over to it's own thread... https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=48588&p=416271

Maybe that is it... im uploading to GIPHY and then trying to link it from there... Which is how they want you to do it on Facebook. I need to try to upload it directly to this forum

https://media.giphy.com/media/8rFce4ODMLjXZzSLA1/giphy.gif What is the trick to getting a gif to play in the forum? Normal map added on the lips... normal maps rock!

I like the modelling on the lips- I even added more splineage! I added another ring of splines around the skin/lip perimeter to puff the lips off the cheeks a little bit... here is an image of where she stands now... I added a decal of a radial gradient (black to transparent) inside of the nostrils that adds better definition to the bottom of the nose... I am also working with some muscle-mode poses (smile, pucker, blink poses) and I added some bones using the falloff feature to calculate smooth CP weight amounts, around the lower jaw and the eyebrows- great feature! Still below 30 seconds per frame to render... New render coming shortly!

Another thing about the DC... anyone ever get the collision-detection feature to work on the DC? I can't figure it out to know if it is functional or not... does it regard to the end of the bone? Does the end of the bone look for collisions with other bones? With geometry(patches)? For instance, if you setup a chain of bones on your horses tail you might get a LOT more play out of the DC... it might bounce all around- even THRU the body of the horse- which would not look right. SEEMS you should be able to employ the collision-detection to remedy this. If it is a working feature, I need to know how. If it is broken or never really programmed fully- I wish we could fix it or just remove it from the interface. Anyone know?

When you say AO- do you mean SSAO? Are you doing a 'Bake Dynamic Systems' before you render? Sometimes I will set the dynamic constraints so they look real good in the preview playback- then, I bake the constraint and the results are less 'bouncy' than I had previewed. Have you tried rendering with multipass off to see what happens? Are you on latest version of 19? OH- another Q... are you doing the DC on just one tail bone... or do you have a chain of bones? The dynamic constraint is a fun, easy and powerful addition to A:M... WHEN it wants to play ball.

More tinkering...eye mascara via material gradient... added creases above and below eyes by pinching Jirard's bias handles on those CPs... think I might start adding hair next- dickering between A:M hair or geometry hair... ALSO- I used this model to explore the capabiliites of the new(ish) SSAO feature, and I am really pushing it here. The trick I have discovered is I realized that the GAMMA setting is reverse to my way of thinking. I thought by cranking it up to it's max (2) that the AO effect would become DARKER.... wrong-ola! Try lowering the gamma and your SSAO will become darker- more pronounced! I also spread-out the effect by increasing the distance and radius settings. AManda2.mp4

Here is a screenshot of my skin setup, and a movie file of my latest iteration... I will share this model back with the forum once I have it furthered along. AManda1.mp4

It was a later feature... V17...18? I thought there was some discussion on the forum about it be a sort of replacement for porcelain... but even tho I think it does the same thing... the porcelain looks much better on your model.

Jirard- could'nt help but adding to her... hoping you don't mind! Played with eyelashes and brows... SSS and skin colors.

The ice-cream might be more ice-creamerly! (one image made in A:M by me... other made and rendered in modo.)

That is a great model, Jirard! Trying to figure-out what porcelain does- here I thought if you used the new 'normal weight' feature at 100% it would do the same thing... but I get odd results. When I open the hood of porcelain tho... all it is- is a material that sets the normal weight at 100% What is the difference?

something wonky in how those bullets land...?

A reminder that Youtube provides a nice selection of usable royalty-free music tracks and sound effects- free-of-charge. For those of us that can't generate our own music or sound effects... https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music?feature=blog

Everyone should download that just to see the "smile" pose! I did... well worth it. GREAT model!

If I may add context... In 2009 this very Animation:Master Forum held a participation event called 'Pass the Ball'... where the only criteria was to create a short animation where a ball would enter frame left and exit frame right. I collected the clips and edited a short video adding music, sound effects and titles. The entries were humorous and featured many various styles. Here is link to view it: https://youtu.be/1koP6oTPYZQ If there was enough interest in doing something like this again- I would be happy to collect and edit... let's talk about a theme! I'm IN!

Good trick on the lathing approach, Rob. Unfortunately, bevels in A:M are one of the underdeveloped areas, and you should know that you want them as a forethought to modelling... not as an afterthought or 'hey- a bevel might look good here...' kind of thing. Other apps that are highly actively supported have amazing bevel capabilities... among other things. They also cost 100X what A:M does...

What I usually will do is drag the image into the model window- choose decal(not roto) and then I do not apply it.(You can simply click outside of the box.) Now, I go into the action window where I have the model flattened and ready... right-click on the decal listed in the 'Decals' folder of the model in the PWS and select 'Position'...

There was 1st a 3rd party thing called Arctic Pigs which generated a lot of hubbubb and was fully functional back about V10-11 days and then the entire A:M code was rewritten and since there was big gaming interest Martin hired a special programmer to take-over the endeavor named Ken Chaffin and the project was renamed HA:MR for Hash Animation:Master Realtime. With time, interest fizzled and as Hash lost marketshare and programmers the effort was shelved. The quality of the realtime was not much more than what you get in-program... it just added interactivity in a web environment.