fae_alba

The below images of Disney's Humphrey the Bear are along the lines of the sort of expressions that Papa Bear needs to emulate. For right now I don't see him speaking, but rather like Humphrey pantomiming

That's an interesting character. For some reason I can't envision how you got from a flat plain to the 3D head. I always have a problem with drawing in 3d space until I have a nearly completed model. That's why I start with existing models and work from that. As an aside, it'd be interesting to see what kind of rig you'd come up with for the mouth/snout. That's one big piece that I haven't been able to do nicely with Papa Bear.

In animation we can do just about anything. I'd imagine that if a giant finger poked at a flour sack, the sack's weight would be such that it wouldn't tip over unless already precariously perched somewhere. The idea being that most of the sand/weight is near the bottom of the sack and so the finger would simply redistribute the sand at the top of the sack. (we could actually have a go at animating this!) This is the same premise of what might happen if someone were to push on a regular human being whose is balanced. The push might cause some movement but if the base of the human is well balanced then only the upper extremities would react. In the spirit on Monty Python, I give you the finger poke. floursack_mp.avi

Rodney when i first read your response I instantly got an image in my head of a giant finger poking the poor flour sack in the back and tipping it over, ala Monty Python. But then that spun off onto a weird tangent and turned into the idea of a hill, then a sledding hill, then alas, two months later, the following short. https://youtu.be/NxVc4PwtvPk

Here's one I was just gifted with. It's Humphrey the Bear, from which I modeled Papa Bear from. The head and arms are moveable, and it is solid.

yes please

I experimented a little with makhuman yesterday. I could not for the life of me find a way to reduce the density of the mesh being saved. Being so new I figure it's a learning curve issue, but right now, while it's great to be able to construct human models this way, the high density, and honestly the still generic looking models, it's almost not worth it. The work that would be involved to reduce the patch count would be more than building a character from the ground up in am. Again my opinion is formed based on my newbie status with both makehuman and blender, so if I'm wrong, speak up!

aaannnnd as soon as I posted this I see that the obj file came through with a bunch of groups, all with transparency set to 100%. Yeesh.

So my darling daughter has made a whole bevy of make human characters for s story she is writing. She asked if I could bring them into am and see if they could be rigged and animated. I tried one character (below) and while it imported, some weirdness ensued. The big issue is that while I can see the imported model in wireframe mode in the modeling window, it disappears in shaded mode. The mesh appears ok (though way way too dense). Has anyone had experience bringing in these obj files before? Ryan-20170104T200945Z.zip

Disney is big into these figures. Only the call them vinylnation.

I'm pretty much the same. Though I'll qualify that by saying that I may be sent overseas to points as of yet unknown next year for work, so that may change.

Yeah, I'm thinking that this falls under the category of it seems too good to be true, it most likely is. Better to save my pennies for something else, like a nice bauble for the wife!

That's an interesting thought Rodney. Might take a look into replacement parts and if it is even possible given Geralds remarks. Of course I wouldn't want to be the one to take away your reminder to not spend money, what with it sitting right there on your desk staring at you. One could only guess at what kind of fiscal trouble you might get yourself into!

You know, I never thought to run the arms and legs up the side like that. Might have to play around and see if it works for me!

Has anyone have any experience or thoughts about this 3D printer? http://printm3d.com/themicro/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=costf#intro

I was doing a little research on flour sack exercises and saw one post that the tabs, or arms and legs of a flour sack are more for conveying emotion than for a means to create motion. That sort of resonated with me, so I revisited the rig on my flour sack and added some dynamic constraints to the bones for the "arms", then ran a quick test. The result is below. The big question now is, if the tabs, tassels, whatever, are not for motion, then how to we motivate a flour sack to scoot across the screen? https://youtu.be/-hrv65lValY

Not much, this is pretty much Animation 101. The big problem I foresee is scheduling everyone in one place at one time every week. Evenings mid-week are best for me. Since I spend the beginning and end of each week traveling for work, mid-week I'm ensconced in a hotel room with nothing to do. weekends I tend to try and stay away from the computer as much as possible.

I'd be up for it. I got through the first two lessons last time, but petered out after that. Now, I'm a little bit more motivated in honing my skills before really starting work on my Papa Bear short. So I'm in. and thanks Robert for doing this. Now we need a rigging boot camp!

Or we could actually finish one!

Well, I tried. A few weeks ago I dug up from my backup disk a halloween short that I had done 13 years ago. I thought I would simply re-render it, have my youngest write a quick soundtrack, and have a short done for this halloween. Of course, as soon as I looked at the chors I thought, "Heck I can improve on this!" What I intended to do was start off with the typical spooky scene of a cemetery, then have, off screen, two voices swapping silly halloween jokes. Cut to two talking statue busts (think the Haunted Mansion) cracking jokes and being an overall rowdy duo. Then cut back to the cemetery with a closeup of a tombstone, where a skeleton is breaking out of the ground, his repose interrupted by the rowdy duo. He climbs from the grave, grabs a jack-o-lantern and chucks it at the jokers, whereby he can go back to his eternal rest. Didn't get it all done. What I do have rendered off is below. scene0_small.avi scene1_small.avi One of the talking statues...

Sounds like a good decision to me. In all likelihood I'll be sent back down sometime next week and I won't find out till Sunday. makes planning a tad bit difficult.

No worries... I've been busy playing dodge-em with Hurricane Matthew. Was sent to Miami on Tuesday for a client meeting. Upon landing I got a text saying the client is delaying due to the impending storm (but to come in on Wednesday as scheduled and we'll "keep an I on the storm"). I said "not!" scrambled and got a flight out yesterday at 3am.

Hey I needed that on my Papa Bear short for that underwater look.

Rodney I was striving for a film noir detective movie kind of vibe. It will be interesting to see if you can pull it off!

Lookin forward to seeing what magic you work on it Rodney