John Bigboote

Yeaaah... good suggestion...did'nt work... emailled support . DANG! This puts my 'oars out of the water'... GOOD THING I'm not on a 'job' now(I am on 2...but they are 2D AfterEffects jobs) I'm trying to get some stuff done for Comic-Con too though... I will inform you of support's solution... Meanwhile, where is my old V13 disc...?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Patchwork3D!

and now A:M won't boot! I know A:M thinks I am trying to scam more time on my sub...but I'm actually NOT---I've a good 7 months left! HERE's what happened... last week I checked the calendar on my PC to see a date in July... I was on the phone so I highlighted a date and after I hung-up I accidentally hit 'APPLY' instead of cancel. Now today I checked my calendar and noticed the date was July 24th- which is wrong... so I realized what I had done and changed it back to todays date, no harm done, right? WRONG! --- when I go to start-up A:M I get a 'SYSTEM CLOCK HAS BEEN SET BACK(-40)' error and A:M will not boot. WHAT CAN I DO? AND::: Let other users beware... this could happen to YOU!

YEAH!!!

For some reason...I'm thinking I would approach this with booleans...

Blows me mind that something that...mindless...gets 45,000 views.

Yeah---time...BIGTIME! Actually... the female character was one I had already done... Nigel is off the CD (I'll put Jim Talbot in the credit) and Myron had done the pool table, balls etc... and then I'm using a lot of motion-capture from Mr. Bones... who will also use this for marketing his 'SexyBones' BVH package ... so it isn't AS bad as you may think... I'm also resorting to a 'make it up as you go' freeform non-scripted approach. I know it has it's prollums, believe me.

Looks like the curly hair I made for this character: I have no idea how to get that look with cheats... if you are interested in using A:M's hair feature like I did to get dynamic curly hair... let me know.

THANKS Spleen...I always appreciate your positive attitude. The A:M hair feature is by NO-means perfect, I'd like to see it further developed- however- I don't complain because I have noticed MANY improvements over the last years since V13 when it 1st appeared, so I figure Stefan (or someone) is persistent in constantly improving upon it. AND- who else is doing stuff like this??? MY approach to 3D particle-driven hair has ALWAYS been to 'Youtube' it first to see what the other softwares are offering... some is really good, most is quite bad- but all samples are incredibly SHORT clips and are never followed-up with subsequent efforts. I have MANY examples of 3D dynamic particle-driven LONG hair which (this is the tricky part) seemingly does NOT pass-thru the geometry underlying it (does that make sense?) I would love to hear someone come in and say 'Oh- Maya has perfected 3D long hair' or 'Carrera' or 'Max' or 'Poser' and then show some examples that are stunning with NO passthrus and incredible lifelike realism... but in MY experience... LONG HAIR is extremely difficult to do in 3D...and A:M does quite a nifty little job with it... not perfect mind you... but closer than most.

OH---AND--- the main thing I think is cool in this...is the Animation:Master hair feature in full display... I am literally doing nothing with the hair except seeing it in full animation after I render... NOT passing thru shoulders, full of action-reaction...returning to it's (minimal) style... full of sheen and vibrancy...it's a joy! Other than any Pixar 'Incredibles' or Disney/Dreamworks animations... NO ONE is doing full long 3D hair like this... I know it's not perfect- but show me better-

You guys are sweet when you say 'take a 2nd pass'...in reality it would be about a 9th pass...someday I'll be able to nail it on the first pass like that. It is a lot of work... trying to get it done for Myron's show (which is WHEN again?) It's just been quite a while since I did anything 'long-form' and Myron gave me a nice opportunity. The girl is meant to have UNrealistic proportions... some folks think I am going for realism- I'm not. I've discovered a lot of problems in my rigging...probably caused by modelling and rigging her with her arms down and not in the 'T' pose, but I'm Just having fun. I see stuff that bothers me when I look at Pixars work... Thanks for the comments~

UPDATE on progress: about 80% there.

Happy Birthday! Miss ya. ...ET, phone home!

Looking good so far...don't forget about 'Al's Greebles' in the Contributers Cue' to help you with the conduit-ry...

An hour per pass for a still image...? Thats not bad at all. My motto... program all day- render all night. Here it's the weekend and I have 3 A:M instances toiling away at sequences at 9 passes for 45 second scenes (Rack 'em Up vid) and most-likely I'll go in Monday morning to have a look...see something I don't like and delete it all. When your computer is sitting idle it may as well be rendering images in A:M!

You get all the bells and both of the whistles! PLUS, any updates that happen within the year...so you are always 'current'... AND, I hear V16 (64bit) is just around the corner...

I wish that the AI Wizard dialogue box had a line of text that warned about this... I've used the ai wizard HUNDREDS of times and will still occasionally forget to save as the right version... and EVERY new person goes thru this same thing. Perhaps I will make a request thru reports.

I think I see what you are trying for...and yes, it will matter come decalling time. You have some issues in the fuselage too.... you need to do some experimenting to get this right. I would try selecting 'all' on the wing, then un-peaking everything (o) and then just peaking selectively. It may be that you need the OPPOSITE of what you initially did (story of my life) so you would have the cross-sections peaked and the runners unpeaked. Like I said... experiment. You do know how to select the ring of the cross section, right. Click on the spline so that one of the CPs hilights, then hit the comma key and all others in that spline will highlite... I apologise if thats old hat to you.

Private viewing for A:M Forum Members. It progresses.

HERE's a trick I used for the left hand's 'up and down the neck' action. Constrain your characters left hand to one of the many splines running up and down the neck of the guitar with a PATH constraint. Now, you can easily have the hand slide up and down by keyframing the 'ease' setting...add to that some poses for the hand which pose it in common 'bar-chord' positions and you are in bizzzzz! DISCLAIMER: If you are doing a Jimi Hendrix character...substitute the word 'left' with the word 'right' in the above paragraph.

I've taken a stab at this several times. My initial thought... 'bone-up' on your constraints...ie orient-like, translate-to, path, aim at. HERE...I found a link of a sample... no Jimi or Townshend... but Richards and Wood: Like playing guitar, you might want to start-off with a more simple-less ambitious idea, like simple strumming with one hand while changing chords with the other. Reminds me of an incident 'back in the day' when a young feller came to my house and took a guitar off the wall and started doing some Stevie Ray 'swingarounds' and proclaimed "I should be a guitar player player because I can really do some tricks with these things!"...and then -WHAMMO! the guitar lay in pieces on the floor... the kid never even considered that you need to do some things with the strings. AND--- What are you throwing Harrison in there for? He just stood there and picked! The Beatles themselves were embarrassed by their total lack of showmanship... that's why their shows lasted a whopping 30 minutes.

I really have taken a break from showing stuff on this forum after a little legal 'mishap'... anyways- I thought some of you would get a kick out of this... I'm (hoping) to complete a 2:30 music video for Myron Leroy's 'Rack Em Up' song. If things get tight, I may need help from willing forum members to help animate and render this puppy. Needs be done mid summer... I'll show some animation eventually, but here are some select stills from the first minute I have done. It's about an old pool shark (Sir Nigel) who ends-up getting himself hustled by an underdressed vixen. ALL images are WIP not final renders... Nuff said- HAPPY MD WEEKEND!

Great fight scene!

I think your right...that the newer Dynamic Constraint has put the older Spring Systems 'out to pasteure' so to speak. I don't even know where you SAW the spring systems referred to in the app nowadays.

Here at home, I have an HP with Win 7...I haven't purchased the sub yet but I HAVE been using my old V14 disc, with no problems.