fae_alba

Hey Rodney, the next modeling task for Papa Bear (after the sci-fi contest!) is to begin a list of props and sets I need for the first script. The vision I had was a setup much like Disney used in Bambi (the multi-plane camera) and rely a lot on background paintings to achieve that look. This of course will depend largely on my ability to understand lighting, rotoscoping etc that I haven't had a chance to play with yet. But your set does fit the bill for the foreground and the props that Papa Bear will need to interact with. A large tree with replete with a family of birds plays a big part!

the key is the settings...the search string boxes were all lower case and not Camel Case...fixed that and viola! she woiked.

Goog God, how the hell did I miss the bone naming screw up! Well slap me upside the head and color me stupid! I'll work this out and let you all know!

How about RonCo pricing.... $4998.99?

I've been cooking Papa Bear's rig low and slow for quite some time, adding cp weights, a face rig etc. Finally I got to a stage where I felt it was time to finalize things and executed the mirror bones plug in (2008 rig btw). Once I did this per the instructions, I noticed right away that the eye, ear, lip bones I added did not mirror. Upon further investigation I also noticed that the fan bones for the arms and legs, as well as the shoulder bone didn't mirror either. Well, as another bear once muttered, "Oh bother!" If anyone might give a look and offer up some hints I'd appreciate it. PappaBear2008RigFinal_7_2008_PostInstallRigV22pre_mirrorbones.mdl

Thanks Gents. Spent the day (starting at 4am EST) traveling to IL for work. Connecting flight in Chicagoland was delayed three hours, 2 of which were spent on the airplane because of mechanical issues....tiring.

I am working on Papa Bear's face rig. Today's task is to work on the eyelids. Up till now I've always controlled eyelids with a pose slider and manipulating cp's in muscle mode, but that created a lot of keyframes and made it nearly impossible to have the right and left eyelid work the same. So this time I wanted to try using bones. To facilitate this I added more eye rings as well as changed the sape of the eyeball from an oblong to a normal sphere. So far I have three bones for the eyelid, one controlling the center of the eyelid, and one on the inner side and outer side of the eyelid. The inner and outer bones of an orient like constraint to the center bone. So far the only cp assignments are to a single cp on the leading edge of the eyelid. This set up works great until you get half way through the blink, then the eyelid begins to penetrate the eyeball. The rig needs to control the next spline ring and possibly the one outside of the second ring as well. My thought is to add a second set of bones (and possibly a third) arranged the same as the first, and constrained to follow the first with some sort of lag. I just can't figure out how to build a constraint so that the second (and maybe third, don't forget that third one!) so that it only follows when it needs to to prevent the eyelid from penetrating the eyeball).

Excellent point. A:M has all the tools needed to make a facial rig to the same level as those shown above. The trick (for me at least) is building a model with the right balance of mesh density that would lends itself to a fine tuned rig. For me the rigging has always been a challenge' I've been messing with my Papa Bear rig for months now, and for the past month been on the face alone. Since I don't intend on the character to speak, his facial acting needs to be even more expressive. I've always gravitated to pose sliders controlling cp's in muscle mode, but this time around I'm trying to build Papa Bear's face rig with bones. So far it's looking good, but I haven't really tried to stress test it either. A:M has the tools needed to build a great face rig, what I think is lacking is the knowledge base to fully take advantage of these tools.

Just got back from the magic (and HOT!) place in Orlando. Thought I'd share a quick clip of the float in action. maleficent_float.mov

Ah the memories... as a young whipper snapper of the 70's I dug up my dad's super 8 and old movies that he made in Okinawa right after WWII. One of these was of an anit-aircraft drill, where they (attempt) to shoot a target being towed by an aircraft. I had a balsa wood model airplane i built, so being the budding film maker, I put a firecracker in it's tail, lit it and sent the plan a-flying, all with the camera rolling. Plan was to splice the two clips together. While I still have a bunch of my pop's movies, I can't seem to find that footage now.

Let me chime in here: I've been having consistent problems since v17. I've noticed that if i open a model with a decal, once I go into shaded mode A:M crashes. Since I am an older win7 laptop (going on 5 years old) I attributed my problems to a hardware issue I simply stayed on v16 which works like a champ. Here's a post where I first related my issues.... Display Issue

Ya know, I spend a lot of time on the road with long nights stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do. Not practical to lug my animation laptop along with my work laptop, so I can't work on my A:M projects. But i can (and do) a lot of coding. I just might take a crack at renderman, just so we can say that A:M plays nice with Pixar. Here's the caveat, if I am spending a lot of time taking the deep dive into renderman, I may need to ask assistance with my A:M projects to keep them on track. Does that sound a tad bit self-serving? You bet! Since renderman is largely written in C, it shouldn't a huge-ish learning curve, building an interface between A:M and renderman that can be easily maintained and kept up to date with renderman is another matter. It might be a good plan to build an interface between the two and release it as public domain, in keeping with Pixar's stance with renderman. This has the added advantage of visibility to A:M. This will take time, and I really, really, really want to see Papa Bear come to life, so if I do this, I may be asking for some help with my animation projects. That being said, I'm on vacation for the next week so I will be somewhat out of touch as I cavort with the Mouse in Orlando.

at one point I tried cloth on Papa Bear's shirt, and had to give up on it....I can send you a copy of the latest model if you'd like.

Watched it last night...read the comic book pdf first, then watched the vid...never watched the series but, man your vid stands on its own two...um zombie feet

Now that I spend as much time on the road as I do working from home, a good tablet such as this would be a boon for me. Trust me, doing a sprint from one end of Chicago's O'Hare airport to the other at 7 am to catch a connecting flight with my laptop slung over my shoulder is no picnic and a tablet that can do the same work as my Dell is a no brainer. Now would I replace my laptop completely? probably not; while at home I'd still gravitate to my trusty laptop.

Even better, if your set is in a closed room, you could set up each wall to turn on/off so as you position your camera you are not constantly having to deal with a wall getting in the way. Up until now I would model each wall on attached to the others (or the ceiling) then bone it, and in the chor slide the wall out of the way. This of course means having to keep track of key frames etc. on the walls. Your way is much more elegant.

Way to guilt me into getting busy!

That's a tremendous idea! Add a contact form on the back of the entry, and do a secondary drawing of those entries for a give away (t-shirt, poster) perhaps. I had my entry about half done, but then got put on the road too often and just ran out of steam. I'd give it the 'ol college try to finish, honest injun'! Here's what I had started on....just a teaser..

Chris, that was a cool animation. As for rigging, my latest model (Papa Bear) has gone thru no less than five different rigging attempts. Each time I got better. Each time I learned not only better ways to apply a rig (the 2008 rig), but better spline layout, better approaches, and most importantly, how the character reacted to the rig (yes, Papa Bear has gained some life of his own, along with a personality that is struggling to get out!). In short, rigging is a learning process, one that never ends. And as Robert said earlier, the true work begins with animating your character. One that I have only just begun to learn myself. Keep at it, and happy animating!

Yup, that was it. Lesson learned; once install rig is run, no touchy the bones!

I wasn't entirely happy with my last go around with rigging my Papa Bear model so I decided to go back and have another go with it. At the same time I re-worked some splines in order to try and make it easier to control joint issues. Starting with a fresh model file, I applied the 2008 rig, followed the instructions all the way up to cp weighting, and ran into some weirdness. On the right leg, I am experiencing issues with the Right_Thigh_Geom bone. When the leg is moved (in an action) to an extreme down position then thigh bone spins 180 degrees and twisting the mesh in all sorts of ugly ways. If I slide the foot forward just the littlest bit the same thing happens. Here's an example: rig_issues.mov I went through the instructions multiple times, and while knowing full well I screwed something up, I can't for the life of figure out what. So the programmer in me wants to know, a) what the devil is going on? and more importantly, how do I diagnose what is going so I can correct it myself. Here is the model in question if anyone wishes to have a looky see. PappaBear2008RigFinal_7_2008eRig.mdl

You guys are missing the point: There is a bug, without a doubt. That bug is saving a blank file when there is one in the current model being saved. The how/why/frequency to that I cannot say. It has happened to me, twice in the last three - four months, both in version 17 (I can't use 18 since it crashes with models and decals). The save/save as/incremental suggestions are all well and good, But, even if save as with an incremental number is used, if am is saving blank files without any warning, then I am still getting, well blank files. Regardless of how many different copies I've saved. And yes, at some point there would be a version that is still good, the question is, how much work would be lost that you wouldn't know about until you actually went back in on another day and discovered the empty file. I don't think memory is the issue. My laptop has 8gb ram, and I usually only have at most, A:M and perhaps a browser open.

the only thing ontoward was a slow down in response time. My usual process is to save the model/project, close am then restart. No errors, no warnings. The model saved as the empty file. I do have the backup option turned on, but it doesn't seem to work. No files are being written. Local folder, saving over existing file. When I reach a "milestone" in the model, I make a copy of it as a backup This is definitely something worth looking at more closely. I assume you are suggesting that if you were to save the model again the file might then contain the same data as what is displayed on screen? I'm not sure. I don't think that is true. Putting on my developer hat, it feels like there is a disconnect with what is being used to "draw" on the screen, and what is being used when saving the file. Variables or memory registers, are getting re-initialized in error under some condition not being reflected to the user. When that happens, saving as a new file name wouldn't help. When this happened last, I saved multiple times. Since you have no warning when this is happening, you have no idea that you need to react. A:M does this every time we select "Save As' and attempt to overwrite an existing file. I have never trusted direct saves in any program and definitely don't trust Save icons (who knows where those really go?... and worst of all... they are intentionally designed to automate (and take the user out of the process) of Overwrite and Destroy!). At least when using 'Save As' the program lets you be in control. And when something inevitably fails you'll know it was you and not the computer. That's not a bad idea, but again, under this particular case, I don't think it would save the model. I think a check for an empty file when using the Save option before writing to disk is a good one. If the user chooses to create a new model, and before doing anything wants to save the empty model, they wouldn't get a warning, since the Save option is disabled on new models.

For the second time I've had A:M hiccup and save an empty file of a model I had been working on. The model exists on screen, but what is saved is looks like this: ProductVersion=17 Release= PC FileInfoPos=162746 This obviously is wrong. I would suggest a warning message be displayed and a prompt to continue before actually destroying what is on disk. Fortunately I didn't lose much work, but it is frustrating when it does happen, and could be (and has been) catastrophic. Just sayin.

I'm already working on it!