mouseman

It's really convincing, especially within the set.

It might be neat to see rendered with Ambient Occlusion, but your render times would go way up. (There's also a "Fast AO" plugin ... I think there is a free version and a pay for version, but I've never used it. A lot of people on the forum rave about it.)

Kind of looks like a comet ... what I would imagine a comet to look like, anyways.

If anyone asks, I'll be in my bunk. (Extra credit to anyone that recognizes the quote.)

Looks really impressive, especially the texturing. In the video, the ears were slightly visible beneath the hair. I think the ears were a bit too high. Looking straight at the front of the character, the top of the ears should line up around the eyes or eyebrows, and the bottoms of the ear between the bottom of the nose and the mouth. Looking forward to more!

1060 patches, 56 5Point patches Click for the animated GIF.

I hope I can run now "Whole Program Optimization" build , on my old machine I got after 1 hour running a "Out of memory" error :-( Changes like this really do change everything! I hope you enjoy the new setup!

I must have missed that one when it came out! I don't remember it. A really neat high-energy animation!

Sorry to give a "Me, too" response, but I agree with Rodney. The multiple medias are a really neat part of the show. The one thing I'd tweak with him is that his arm seemed to just wave around, sometimes almost in front of his face. It would be good if it were a little lower, and then comes up occasionally while he's talking.

I would suggest limiting yourself to projects of 30 seconds or less to get your pipeline working. The forum projects are good value that way. Once your skills are honed, then tackle larger projects. Others save with new file names; I save and commit to SVN. I set up an SVN repository before starting and try to commit after every significant change, or at least at the end of the day. It's nice to push things into their own files, instead of having things included in the PRJ file. I also have a backup that runs periodically. It's not A:M specific, it's all data files, so the A:M files get backed up in that process, as well. PNG is a nice file format to render to. I think it also does transparency. Of course we have NetRender. Depending on how complex your project is, you might want to think a lot about how your file hierarchy is arranged. If you have more than 10 models altogether, you might want to separate them under folders such as "Actors", "Props", "Set". Depending on how complex your models are and how many files are associated with them, you might want to have a separate folder per model. Additionally, I try to keep only data that can be checked in under one "data" folder. All renders go to a separate "renders" folder. I have it set to save and use the file paths in the camera and set that in the choreography's shortcut to the camera, so once those are set correctly I get what I want where I want it with no accidental overwrites.

Indeed, well done!

It's nice seeing your splineage choices, especially on the head. There are lots of trade-offs that have to be made.

He's a really smart and nice guy. I'm glad he still pops in here once in a blue moon. I hope he's doing well.

Pretty nice in theory, anyways. I haven't been following up with it. I did with my old project years ago (Eggs, Potatoes, & Bacon), which was kind of nice to have. I have been thinking of writing a program that would let me create projects, tasks, etc. to keep track of it all. I would use it for both the contracting that I do (software developer) plus animation projects. But that will probably not get done any time soon. I think my big downfall with the spreadsheet is having to open it up. The current timesheet software I have starts up at login, and has an icon in the system tray at the bottom, so it's very convenient. If you do have the time, by all means do use the spreadsheet. It is nice having all the numbers there to reference, along with a graph of how much you've worked on it.

Gruesome at its best!

Creative way of getting good results! One thing I'd suggest is making the diameter of the toilet paper roll tube a bit bigger. Even now it gives a nice running effect.

1016 patches, 56 5Point patches Animated GIF showing progress: I am a slow poke these days! But the drive upgrade didn't go that well this weekend, so I both didn't get that done and I didn't get much modelling done. At least back where I started, with no data lost.

Quality work. Way to go!

If you have the gumption, I'd suggest trying to do quick end-to-end projects. Maybe you are focusing on modelling, but do a model, then do an animation with it. Maybe only 20 to 35 seconds or so. But get in the habit of doing animations frequently, you will have a framework on which you can build wherever you want, as opposed to just being stuck for example in modeling. This is advice that I have not taken very well. But look at what TheSpleen has accomplished and how much he has developed.

And it's very easy. In model/muscle mode, select the CPs of the ring, right-click, choose "Edit CP Weights ...", and then add the other bone, make them each 50%.

Oooooh, that's painful!

You really earned them! Excellent work!

Perfection! Now I just have to come up with an idea.

You are quite a master at this! I'd love to dream that some day I might be as good, but I know I won't!

It's looking pretty awesome!