Simon Edmondson

You could paint a series of frames that represent the area of the floor that the mop is going over. I did this in After Effects but you could screencapture yourself in a paint program doing something like this live: Rob Thank you for your suggestion. The test was just to see if I understood the process of putting in animated maps of different kinds. The ripples seemed a good way to test that. I see what you mean about the strokes of the mop and will try that later. If you meant to film myself mopping ? Unfortunately that is not something I can do effectively as I'm a wheelchair user. regards simon

Another test. This time with specularity intensity, diffuse , reflectivity bump and transparency. Ripple.mov I messed up the maps because I got the process wrong but think I understand it a bit better now so will redo the maps later. Any feedback welcome. regards simon

I did a little test with an animated bump and transparency mapRipple.mov I like the effect but does anyone have suggestions for a water settings in materials ? regards simon Thank you to everyone for their help so far.

William Thank you for your suggestion. How would I do such a thing ? regards simon

Rob Thank you as ever for your help. I checked and, as you suggested, it was the wet mesh dipping below the floor level that was causing it. Mop.mov I've done a low res version with the chrome ,material. It looks good but the render times are horrendous. It started out at 20 seconds per frame but the last section they were taking 5mins or so @ 320x240. With only one ray for the light source and no multiple pass. ( this on a 3.00ghz Imac... regards simon

The wet effect is a mesh with colour, transparency and reflection properties applied. It is squashed up at the beginning and then scaled out across the floor as it progresses. The lines on the floor are a jpg applied as a decal regards simon

I was trying for a time lapse effect on the action and going to try the chrome material suggestions later. However, in doing this test, I noticed some anomalies in the render and wondered if there might be a reason for them that could be avoided next time ? The lines on the floor disappear at times as the 'water' moves over them, only to reappear later, especially on the left of the scene? regards simonMop.mov

John In the instructions on how to use your material, you say to turn on the plug in shaders. Having turned them on, which one(s) should I then select to be used ? Thank you for your time. regards simon

John and ```rob Thank you for that. I shall try it this afternoon.. regards simon

Does anyone know of a way to get a wet looking material. property or map that they could tell me about ? I want to have a character painting or mopping the floor and need to have it look wet. It will be a white floor. Would a reflective, transparent material be the way to go ? Thank you for your consideration regards simon

Rob Thank you for you comments. I shall try to incorporate your suggestions over the next two days, (other commitments). Its not really been staged as yet. This was just a render of the birds eye view. I liked the ( accidental ) way he walked off into the shadow. I'' see what I cando in the next few days to correct. regards simon

This is my first effort at using the 2008 rig for animating. I'm not sure how I feel about the rig yet yet, there are so many controls and variables. I haven't done any lip synch or facial expressions yet so there is no sound. I will post that with the next one. Any feedback welcome regards simonCirius.mov

Another glitch of a different sort. Trying to animate two figures in a chor, using the 2008 rig in V15J on an Imac with OSX 10.68 ( with Intuos tablet and mouse ) The sliders that allow you to navigate around the PWS have frozen so that they can not be moved. What I mean is that the window that shows the heirachy won't move up and down. The Time line won't move left to right and the frame slider in the controls won't move either.. The bones can be selected in the chor window but not in the PWS. I've just tried it again and it seems to work now but... Has this been experienced by other people too ? regards simon

I got the files. Thank you. Now for the install. regards simon

ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/docs/ Rob Thank you for your reply and help. I tried the link but it asked me to log in to the FTP site. I tried my forum log but it declined that. DoI need to register elsewhere ? regards simon

I installed V15J as standard from the CD on my Imac. For some curious reason the help files did not seem to install at the same time ( this was some time ago I admit ). In order to stop me asking my usual dumb questions, is there a way to install the help files after initial installation ? regards simon

Mark and Gerry Thank you for your thoughts. It does sound like a feature request. Where should I make such a request ? regards simon

Gerry Thats very kind of you. Thanks. simon

Just discovered that, if you click with the right mouse button on the play range timeline, ( yes I use a PC mouse on the Mac ). A dialogue box opens up which allows you to specify the start, end and range... In the absence of the colour method this will do for me. Thank you for your time. regards simon

This seemed like the best place to ask (?) I am using V15J on a Mac under OSX10.68 and trying to set up some cycles at first but animations later. There is an anomaly on the Mac version which never seemed to happen in the PC interface and I wondered if there was a way to correct it ? When setting up key frames over a timeline you can 'bracket' the frame range at the top of the window to just play back those you want to see. On the PC ( as I remember it ) the inactive frames were shaded in a different colour and it was easy to spot the limit and then adjust it. On the Mac version, its a slightly darker shade of grey, and that makes it awkward to find the edge and drag the markers to where you want them to go. Is there a way around this ? regards simon

Yep--I just noticed that the other day playing with a model that I made in 123dcatch [which seems to play nicely with A:M!!] Just as I was starting to feel happy with giving up windows... ! simon

My apologies. I'm not functioning very well at the moment due to illness. I just tried it again, but changed the capitalisation in the dialogue box that comes up when the mirror bone plug in is used. It appears to have worked this time in that the missing bones are there. Thank you very much to all those who helped. regards simon