fae_alba

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!

Materials is one of those areas I haven't mastered yet, so over the years I've built up a library of canned ones, just in case I needed them. But for the life of me I can't seem to get my hands on a decent felt material, or any felt material. Anyone happen to have one kicking about in the dusty corners of their 'puters?

way too easy to use up time playing with this!

Yes, the Mac version of TextWrangler can do it. As always Robert you have produced two more excellent videos. Very helpful and interesting... If I find the time I will use PHP to create a huge line with that approaches... maybe tomorrow or the day after that... we will see. See you *Fuchur* I would use excel and a macro. The macro can build out the xml-ish string for the cps and bones...make it as long as you like. Perhaps today at lunch I'll work it up and attach post it..

Ok, so I tinkered with the force settings in the chor...switched y from 100% to 0 and x from 0 to 100% and get the following result. Getting there. Going to read up on Roberts' tuts now to see what sage advice he has on pendulums. swimtest0.mov

Mark, the motion is strictly from the dynamic constraints...dropped the fish in the chor and viola, the tail wags. I'll have a look at the gravity setting, that sounds promising.

Papa Bear is going fishing in a few days, but he needs some fish to catch before he can. I've modeled up the fish, and am at the point of coming up with a rig that will best give the impression of a swimming fish. I started out with a simple backbone rig, adding some dynamic constraints to help simulate the swimming. The movie below is the result. While i kind of like the result, the fish swims more like a dolphin than your run of the mill trout. But for the life of me, I can't seem to suss out the best approach. Ideas? The rig: The result: (no keyframes applied, the result is simply the dynamic constraints at work) swim_test.mov

More than likely his book is the reason for being on the show. Gone are the days where publishers promote new books; it's now left to the publishers to do the stumpin'.

not a mac only bug, since I've noticed it as well. Just sort of dismissed it as yet another feature i wasn't familiar with! of course the definition of a bug is an undocumented feature....

along the water idea..one thing I've always wanted to see is "believable" (notice not realistic) rain drops in a puddle. and too, ( along other conversations of "want it to look like Pixar"), the look and feel of Disney's original movies (specificaly Bambi, using the multiplane camera). While I'm giving up on my original script idea (Rodney has already given a viable demonstration of it), I'll just throw these ideas over the wall as well.

Again, in my mind my script idea was not to "replace" the animation stage of any project. There is no way you can automate the art of animation (like how I worked TOA:M in there?) . My thoughts have always stopped at the animatic stage....And in reading the conversation so far (kind of hit or miss for me right now since I'm in NYC taking some training for work, in a winter storm no less!), I kind of agree that this would take 1) some serious off line discussion on what this might look like and 2) some external coding to accomplish. The dope sheet approach would be one way to do it today, as a POC though. Assuming that the models (or main characters) of a project are being developed at the same time as the script is being finalized (they should be) and at least the rig is in place by the time the final script is signed off on. Basic poses can then be created (perhaps use a naming convention of "animatic_nnnnnnn") and as the script writer can then (with a list of the poses) key them into the script. For each scene in the script, add tags to the scene header say like to call up the pose. Add in camera movements of and for timing.

Hey now... that's a whole new ballgame. Now you are talking some kind of macro language. Very doable as well but... very different than: I'm just sayin'... I downgraded my expectations 'casue Robert said he couldn't do it (throws gantlet down in a theatric way).

Robert, I'm not thinking of building the final animation from the script, only as far as the storyboard or perhaps animatic stage at best. So think along the lines of move to point a, position camera (based on script keyword instructions), render a still, move on to next. So there wouldn't need to be any action cycles to deal with. Aaaaand Action!