John Bigboote

Ah! I was gonna do an umbrella gag... changed my mind... how did you do the water on the ground? Awesome!

GEDDUP THERE, TOM!

FUNNY!

Could be a Quicktime issue...try a sequence.

I see what you are saying, Holmes... that's like 'cross-dissolving' between the 2 actions using blend. THRU MY TESTS... I discovered that MY problem is just that...MY problem. As Rob said...SOMEWHERE I am turning the same pose on multiple times, my challenge is to find out where- as i have spun quite a messy little web here... THE GOOD NEWS is that this A:M method of 'action-blending' works as advertised, and as Martin once proclaimed... it is a powerful and robust feature -which needs be further implemented, by me. I've always approached my CGI animation in a bit of a straight-ahead manner... this tool can help me to compartmentalize actions... and IMPROVEMENT hopes to follow!

Sure and begorra (is that how it goes?) I made a new pose...left my special 'does-all' pose alone... turned ON TSM2 constraints and stayed in FK...made my 2 actions... blended perfectly. NOW I'll redo it all again and try IK without the pose.

It's probably got something to do with a little bad-habit I taught myself... For each character I make and TSM2 rig- I make an ON/OFF master pose I call 'ANIMATE READY' and in this pose I do all the stuff I want done... turn ON TSM constraints, MY constraints, and set the nuances I have come to be familiar with... IK arms... knee pointers... eyes aim at null... the list goes on. Somehow it must be additively negating some constraint setup or other... Good suggestions, I've tried them...no go.

Okay... I'm stuck again. Using a character which was rigged with TSM2--- so I am using the IK arms and feet controllers... My first action is a walk-cycle... looped 3 times... transition to next turned on. 2nd action is just a standing action, meaning I want my character to walk and then come to a stop. What keeps happening is when I turn ON the 'transition to' and offset my 2nd action to get that neat little 'ramp' to happen on the walk cycle the character seems to lose his rigging in the ramping from action to action... so he slowly returns to the 'T' pose he was modeled in, and then SNAPS to the 2nd action. The meld from action to action is not a pure meld. All 3 actions (including the choreography action) are set to replace. I suspect it is the IK that is the culprit, I'll try a test in FK. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Was having trouble action-blending... found this tutorial very helpful... THANKS ROB!

SO--- the thing to remember... when you want/need TSM2 for A:M- don't search for it at Anzovin.com... search for it here on the A:Mforum! ANYONE try using it with V16 yet???

DETAIL! Love the belt-buckle... great work! Please continue!

Thanks... I'll tell you what I learned in that last video... getting DOF to work is a bit tricky... I had to set the near and far controllers very close to the focal plane to get the effect the way I wanted it.

OR--- are you going to do your KEYS in 3D... and then tween and finish them hand-drawn? (I like that idea!)

Sorry- I fell away from this... but I DID revisit it and made a nifty little title sequence with it... matcaps...DOF... enjoy! cuber.prj cuber_square1.act cuber_square2.act cuber_square3B.act cuber_square4.act illusion_small.mov

Sorry, but I have never been much fan of that car. If I should do one more movie car it would be the Delorean from "Back To The Future" I make movie models in my collection: Ghostbusters 60's Batmobile Mayberry Sheriffs Car Herbie the Love Bug Back to future 2 car Dragula (Grandpa Munsters car) Munsters Koach Beverly Hillbillies truck Monkeemobile General Lee Mach 5 How about Chevy Chase's station wagon from National Lampoon's Vacation #1 ?

Try making each quadrant it's own group- and apply the emitter material to each

To the best of my knowledge...Steve Anzovin was a talented animator, programmer and A:M champion. He and his son, Rafael (Raf) founded Anzovin Studio, which makes both animations and animation programs. They made a utility for A:M back in 2003-4 called 'The Setup Machine' which automated the rigging process, and gave you a great rig for animating. They later updated it to TSM2 in 2006 and made it available for Maya at that time. The Maya sales were high enough that they decided to drop TSM2 support and sales for A:M altogether, as Anzovin Studios also switched to Maya. Steve later passed away, and Raf gratiously made TSM2 for A:M a free unsupported utility. Anzovin Studios continues to produce shorts, programming, and gaming. http://anzovin.com/ The last film they worked on together had a 'father-son' theme... it was called The Duel... made with Animation:Master. When I look back, he's one of the people I say 'where would I be if not for him'... Martin Hash is on that list as well. I met the Anzovins at Siggraph in 1999, Raf was a demonstrator for A:M, at the age of 19. I thought Steve was a genius, and he treated me the same.

I was looking down at the bottom of the forum where it shows todays Birthday Hasher's... I saw that Steve Anzovin would be 56 today. He may be gone, but not forgotten. Whenever I rig a character with TSM2- at that magical point where you hit the 'rig' button and you sit back and watch all the work going on... I always say- Thanks Steve...Thanks Raf! Steve loved A:M.

One for the road... HAD FUN! Thanks Tom, Rob and Rodney! In this one I saved out each 'squares' choreography as a separate action, then made a new chor and brought in each of the 4 squares and applied the appropriate action to each, setting the loop to 10. I see that I missed a scale operation on one of the legs, somehting for folks to find and fix down the road. I used a matcap for the look. I can post the prj if there's an interest cuberQ.mov

Weeeell- I can't figure out that 'scale-like' constraint, why it gets over-written by the parent bone...defeats the entire purpose! SO- I added the extra bones that were needed and animated their scale the olde-fashioned way- BY HAND. Project included if anyone wants take a looky. cuberQ.mov cuber.prj

Great puzzle... I almost have it! I am stuck at the point where the squares resize either up or down... the connector rods need to scale up and down accordingly. I think this needs 1 more set of bones and constraints. THE PROBLEM I HAVE: When I use a 'scale like' constraint it seems the scaling is controlled by the bones parent and not the scale-like target, which has me baffled. cuberQ.mov cuber.prj

Wow, Rob--- that would make a GREAT elbow joint or knee joint for a toon character!

Both of you have that cool siggy thing going on... I never figured out where that is... can you put a swiff or a gif there?

Not too sure about this answer... but it seems that in the chor you can (from an alt view, like front) turn ON the grid guide...set your grid amount and then turn ON snap to grid... and drag and drop objects to that one by one ...

I was having trouble getting a good idea for this... so I decided to animate a joke... I googled 'bus stop jokes' and every one was TERRIBLE so I was still stuck. Then- last night in my dreams I dreamt I was at a bar and a guy was telling me a bus stop joke... it started off just like one of the bad ones from my google search...but ended much funnier and I laughed myself awake. Dawn asked me why I was laughing and I told her the joke... and she thought it was funny too! It is still NOT appropriate for our movie... but it sure got the juices flowing and lead me in another direction and I now have an idea I am happy with... but I wanted to tell the joke--- so here it goes! THE JOKE FROM MY DREAM: (somewhat adult in nature...) These two fellas are sitting at a bus stop when the bus pulls-up and off come 3 beautiful women who stand and wait for the next bus... one guy says to the other "watch this pickup line... it's guaranteed to work on 1 out of 3 women!" SO the guy goes up to one the first woman and says "Tickle your ass with a feather?" The woman says 'WHAT?!!!" and the guy quickly says 'The weather, particularly nasty weather...?" The woman gives him a nasty look so he tries the line on the 2nd woman with the same results... shot down. He then winks at his buddy and approaches the 3rd girl... 'Tickle your ass with a feather?" She smiles and says 'How big is your feather?" and off they go together. Now the other fellow can't believe this... "guaranteed to work on 1 in 3" he muses. I'll give it a try. The bus then pulls up and off come 3 more women who sit together... the guy figures he'll try them all at once to save time, so he approaches them and says 'Tickle your-" just then he noticed the 3 women are NUNS so he quickly abandones the line. "Did you say something?" the nuns ask.... he backpedals and says "Isn't this particularly nasty weather we are having?" The 1st nun says 'Yes, rained all week...!" The 2nd nun says 'overcast and windy!" The 3rd nun says 'How big is your feather?"