largento

I got the same thing when I ran it. Just save the model, close it and reopen it and everything will be correct.

Well, slight change of plans... I'm breaking the movie up into chapters! There are several benefits to doing so, but the biggest one is that it makes the project more manageable being able to focus on one section at a time... and takes some pressure off of me to try to get the whole project done in a rush. Tentatively the plan is to release the first chapter in September and then release the subsequent chapters every four months. This would then allow me to transition immediately into the second film without having to have a huge gap. I think creating 5 minute episodes will be much more realistic and I think that works for the web better, too. Very few people would want to sit down and watch a 20 minute movie on their computer all at once. I'm actually very excited about this, since the possibility exists for me actually being able to get ahead of the schedule... which would be a much better feeling than sweating whether or not I can get the whole thing done at once.

27fps on my Macbook (CoreDuo 2GHz) 20-30fps on my iMac (Core2Duo 2.16GHz) Curiously, it's faster in Firefox than it is in Safari...

Thanks, Masna!

The plan is a series of short movies, Tot... although finishing the first one is the primary goal. I'll see how it goes once I've done that.

Thanks, Robert! McCrary's movie is a full hour long, making it too long to put up on the website, although we'll probably put up clips at some point, just for the novelty of it. There's a short clip in this thread here. I've been taking a breather this week. Going back to work after my month-long sabbatical was tough!

Are you in the Model window in model mode?

How are you trying to delete them?

I agree, this is the best one yet! Nice job!

That's a pretty big task you're undertaking, Ari4reel. It's doable, but I would advise you to start with something a little easier first. Once you've come to understand the basics, you'll be able to transition into doing more complicated models with ease. That said, I would recommend starting with a pencil and a notebook. Do a bunch of sketches to find out what your hybrid cat lady will look like. What parts of her will look human and what parts like a cat? When you've decided on a look that satisfies you, then you'll need to find out the best way to model those parts of her. That's where learning the basics will pay off for you. Best of good luck!

Here's a reference photo of a pillbox bunker that still sits on the beach from the Battle of Midway: You can see that it was not a solid block of concrete. You might find it easier to construct the individual blocks and assemble it that way. There were also many styles of pillboxes, so you can do a Google image search (or search at Flickr) to find one you like.

Thanks, Eric! No, don't work at a studio. Maybe this'll be really successful, though, and I'll be able to open my own one day! :-)

Thanks, John! Focus is definitely a big part of it. Whenever I think of the big picture, I feel overwhelmed. There are just so many things to do. But if I just concentrate on what I need to do right that second, it's more manageable. Thanks, Ken. Yes, it's a sort of long short. The idea is to do a series of these mini-movies. The webcomic is meant to compliment the movies and provide the audience with content during the lengthy production times between cartoons. I wrote the script back in November, but haven't yet storyboarded it. That's the next step once I finish these guys out. I need to really have that done and figured out before I start worrying too much about building the set pieces. I probably won't have much to show for awhile, since I'm going to keep the story secret, so as not to spoil the cartoon.

Here's the thread that explains how to bake the surface...

Thanks, Gerry! By way of introducing the 3D versions of the characters on the website, I've been doing these little renders of them with standees of the original 2D character designs. It's been interesting seeing how much the characters have changed and how much translated: Poco Boco finally makes his first appearance in today's strip. Cutthroat won't be introduced for quite some time and Henrietta even longer than that. As I've been updating the models with new facial poses, I've been updating my desktop image. Here's a smaller version of it:

Mechadelphia started making a tutorial for rigging, you can find the link in this thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...gging+tutorial# It'll give you some idea on how to start, I'm sure. I'm not sure if he ever plans to finish them. I would model the entire character before trying to rig it, but you can learn from experimenting, too.

Do you mean that you deleted your project, or just closed the project window? Is the project file still where you saved it?

I believe Lee took most of the audio from the episode "Harley & Ivy."

I don't know how, but I missed this... I kinda' stumbled around finding stuff. I'm still doing a lot of things by the seat of my pants, but there were two big sources for what little I do know. One was Dave's video tutorials for the Squetch rig. You can see Dave actually doing it, which is very helpful. (At the time, I didn't even know that you could manually assign weights!) The other was the CP weighting disc that you used to be able to buy through Zandoria Studios. I did a tiny, very simple tutorial in this thread. I'm not really sure that I know what fan bones are. He does cover using cosmetic (or orient like) bones.

Thanks, Chris! That means a lot! That's something the folks around me aren't aware of (heck, I'm still finding it out myself) and they tend to ask "Are you done yet?" or "When will it be done?" everytime I show anything to them. :-) I'm nearing the end of the month-long sabbatical I took from work and I had lunch with some co-workers on Friday who didn't quite understand that I wasn't able to finish the whole movie in this time. Trying to talk about rigging and CP weighting came out as "blah blah blah. blah blah blah-blah-blah" to them. :-) I searched out "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" and heard it for the first time yesterday (and then a bunch of times.) I'm probably missing out on a level of inside jokes with the Canada-specific stuff, but it's still pretty funny just with the idea of the farmer pirate being called "Tractor Jack." Especially the gag about the Mountie having to chase him on the shore, because he didn't have a boat. :-) Thanks, John! Your stuff is always incredible and I love your style. Thanks for the boost, guys! I needed it!

I'd wait until you get your characters modeled and then render them both ways to see which you like best.

Thanks, Jirard! I sometimes wonder if I am. I had high hopes with this month-long sabbatical from work, but it looks like I'm just barely going to be able to accomplish finishing up the six characters. It's a lot of work, more work than I was counting on. Still, it'll be a pretty major accomplishment for me, so that's something! We're slowly building up stuff. The webcomic is about to finish it's 2nd month already and McCrary sent me the art for the 40th webcomic yesterday. Just have to keep moving forward!

And here's Henrietta! Now I've got to go in and do all the facial poses for these characters.

True, but something like this Pinocchio application would be... http://www.mit.edu/~ibaran/autorig/ It's designed for children and amateur animators and I could see the benefits and limitations of such a system. Granted, a setup as complex as the squetch rig would probably be impossible to adapt this to, but for folks who just want to make their own characters and move them around, it would be a pretty cool thing. Especially since it does the rigging and weighting in under a minute! The video is interesting.

I realize this may just be me seeing things where they don't exist, but I'm getting the impression that Mark doesn't like the idea of an automatic rigging plug-in. :-)