pixelmech

Nice job! One thing I noticed was most of the lip poses seemed nearly identical, not really discerning different sounds. I wonder if this is because of the sound track being in Italian and being sung as opera? Did you pose all the sounds or did you just get his mouth moving enough to show him singing? I'm sure mouth posing is one of the toughest things to do. Anyway, nice work. I like the bit at the end where they scream and run away. Tom

He looks real nice - post a movie when you have one!

That is a GREAT idea - I would shoot for that! The whole letter falling down fits in with the light spirit that animation has as well. Tom

Pretty good so far. I did it as well and it's tricky. Your nose looks good! Let us know how it looks when you finish it. Tom

Sure if you purchase it first Actually according to them, there isn't a physical version, because I actually asked for one, but it's only downloadable. I'll have to burn my own CD as a backup. But its nice because you get it right away... now if it only worked

Thanks! I'm thinking the eyebrows need to be 'bushier' so I may do that. Good idea trying the 2001 rig, I may do that if they don't get a snappy response to my bug. Tom

Thanks I'll try that. Here's an updated pic with his new legs.

Ok, here's an update. I added eyebrows - simple ones. I also finally figured out the pose - wheee! So here's a bit of my first animation ever with AM - an eyeblink! Thanks to everyone who helped, and watching the video tut on the mouth helped a lot. Notice the eyes don't quite blink at the same time. I accidentally moved the bones for the other eye and I got all turned around, but it was a good lesson. Unfortunately my TSM2 software has a bug and I can't rig him yet, but that gives me time to put a bone in the eyebrows, probably redo the eye rig and add some better legs (not happy with them now). Question For each time I failed to set a pose, I have an empty pose I can't seem to delete - can you delete them? Thanks Tom eyeblink2.mov

I added eyelids via this post: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10834 Picture below. I just can't seem to figure out how to make a pose, will make another post on that in newbie forum. Question about expression in the eyes: do I still need some type of eyebrow, or is rotating the eyelids on the X axis enough to show a frown/surprise etc? Tom

Wow, half this thread is gone! Did the Forums crash? I'll repost the picture that shows more detail of the model. TSM2 is The Setup Machine: http://www.anzovin.com/setupmachine.html It rigs your model for you.

Thank you! What is he...ummm...yeah...not sure! I named him Mumby because he kind of reminds me of Gumby and his torso looks like an old strike Matchstick - so Matchstick + Gumby = Mumby LOL. I just wanted something to animate with, but I wanted to model it so I could practice my modeling. I'm going to try and do the eyelids, then I'll fire up TSM2, can't wait. Tom

Thanks J and thanks for the complement - eyelids its then Tom

Here's the pic - boy the forum is horribly slow and buggy today.. EDIT: Added better pic with two views. I realized he looks a lot better in the movie because it is small, it does have a lot of flaws...

Hi, this is kind of a repost because I finished "version 1" of this guy, and plus I uploaded the wrong movie before. Anyway here he is, the first thing I've made in A:M. Thanks to jamagica for the quick little eye tutorial, even going through that taught me a lot. My goal in having this guy is not so much to make him the perfect model, but to have something of my own to learn to animate with. I've learned a TON in just building this one character (many thanks to everyone BTW). There are certainly some rough areas - the feet for sure and parts of the legs. The eyes need some kind of brow or eyebrows. I think I'm going to add "floating" eyebrows - what do you think? I want to get animating - and I just downloaded TSM2 a couple hours ago - so I'm achin to get started! His name is "Mumby" - can you guess why? Movie here, picture in second post. Tom mumby1.avi

Looks like this is a double post, had trouble posting earlier so not surprised. mumby1.avi

Yes! The dark creases...what you describe makes sense and I'll try that. I didn't notice the spot where I had more than 2 splines, I'll have to take a look. I was pretty bleary eyed at the end there, it was midnight

Right, the highlighted section is indeed a 5-point patch. My point was I did everything I could to make that section a 5-point patch and it won't close. I used control click, shift click, tapping the period key twice to select it, but it will not give me the option to make it a patch... Sorry about the Movie mix up, and I can't seem to get my QT movie to be less than 1MB compressed so for now there is a picture up.. how do you make a smaller movie?

Hand pic

Hi, Here is a movie of my first model. A strange looking fellow. It's all original, I'd say I put about 8-10 hours into it. I've learned a lot but I could use some critiques to help me sort out the problem areas (I can upload the project file if that helps or is desired). I used shaggy's hand as a reference when I made mine, but it has some real rough parts. Plus, there is one 5 point patch that will not close, no idea why. See pic. One thing I can't seem to get is where you see a slight "diamond" area in a patch and can't seem to get rid of it. Also, I think I may have used too many hooks. In particular on the top of the hand, they look real bad :/ Please don't hold back, gimme the hard criticism, I really want to make some progress. NOTE Hand picture on next post. I uploaded this as a zip - the .mov was 2 meg at 4 seconds. Not sure how to make it smaller, rendered it in preview/low. Thanks! Tom

Excellent!

Really great - I'm new here and looked at your site yesterday and I'm blown away by the work you guys do - it's really great and a definite inspiration. Keep up the good work. Tom

Ok, I've updated it. I think instead of doing a hook I just ended up adding control points - nothing I did to make a hook seemed to work, but adding the CPs seemed to let me make the right patches. Now, I have these odds "peaks" some highlighted and that one odd straight spline in the first capture to the left. I've tweaked the CPs around but getting rid of these is very tricky - I thought I saw something about the direction of normals? I can't seem to find that in the manual - would that help here? Also, when I selected it all and did a copy/flip/attach it does wierd stuff. I can't seem to get it to mirror and attach. I tried just selecting the x group and doing it and that doesn't work either...anyway here it is.

Thanks Hig, it almost sounds like I need to start over or try again with the hole for the nostril. This is quite the challenge I must say, but I feel that once I get the idea, things will click - I'm just not there yet. Tom

Ok, I'm struggling a bit here. I've removed the 3 point patches and I have two open sections that need to be patched. I cannot figure out how to do it. I tried to add a hook unsuccessfully (won't take, I must be doing it wrong) but it doesn't seem to be right to put a hook there. I've attached a photo with the points highlighted, can someone point me in the right direction to fix this...or Alternately - do I have too many splines? Is that part of my problem? Tom

On that note - can someone briefly explain why this is bad just so I know? I seem to end up with this a lot (3 splines intersecting) and I must not be planning it out right. I think I have one more that isn't visible in the pic as well.