cribbidaj

The one thing that bugs me about the walk cycle is the foot slapping down as he takes a step - it looks a tad to fast and almost painful. Please look at this and see if it's better. Admittedly, I have some work to do in timing and animating in A:M. How do I place single poses into a larger pose (i.e. a single finger "open_close" pose into a "open_closed fist" pose) without creating an unruly list of poses in my user properties? Thanks. tux_walk_2.mov

I'm so excited! - I know this is not much by many standards, but the clip below features a model completely created and rigged by me and is my best work so far in A:M. Using Mike Caputo's rigging tutorial from the A.R.M., I managed to accomplish a simple but working animateable rig. Alas, the links to these tutorials are currently dead, but hopefully will be up again soon. If anyone has info on his "FK to IK" arm tutorial, please forward. I've got it working pretty well, but I believe I'm missing a step when constraining the "IK Bicep to Elbow". I am learning simCloth after purchasing the 2005 Siggraph DVD from Hash, Inc. Mark Weller's tutorial is very informative, but I believe it has some errors in the presentation that need to be addressed. After speaking with James at Hash, who cleared up some of the misinformation regarding which cloth material to use as the deflector, I have been experimenting and am totally immersed in the coolness of simCloth! Please submit comments - any and all are welcome! I now believe Animation:Master to be the sweetest software ever created! tux_walk.mov

Bless you, Ken. Yes, I had mirror mode on - something I'd just learned about in a tutorial which also warned me to make sure I turned it off after making the adjustments I needed. I'm glad it was this simple! I did save in versions, but, of course, strange things were happening in all versions while in mirror mode. Thanks, Chris

Hello - I've created a full model which I'm now trying to split in half at the center spline so that I can copy/flip/attach to rig properly. After deleting the left half, centering the middle spline at 0 along the x axis, at the copy/flip/attach stage a strange occurance happens. The model attaches at the feet. The foot is placed along the 0 y axis, but if I move the model down below the y axis, some of the control points end up at the bottom of the model (see attached jpeg). I've trid to backtrack my work to find the control points that are causing the problem, but when I try to delete them to replace them, they won't delete. Anyone know what's happening here? Thanks, Chris [attachmentid=20012]

The link to the plug-in sends me to a blank page. I'm using the Firefox browser but have tried accessing the link through IE as well - same results. The tutorials have downloaded fine. Please let me know where I can download the plug-in. addendum: Never mind, I found it in another area of the Forum. Thanks, Chris

The copy protection on the CD is intended to prevent you from doing this. The physical CD can't be bypassed. Ok, thanks. -Chris

Hello - Perusing WillP's post on CloneDisc issues in the FAQ forum I thought I'd ask what the procedure is to load A:M on either my HD or a memory stick so that I can run the software without loading the CD. Is this what programs like CloneDisc are for? What is the best solution? Thanks, Chris

Thanks, Ken. As I stated, I do have groups that have surface properties assigned. To my knowledge, this particular model is the only one I've created that has surface properties assigned to the whole model, and I have no idea how they got that way. As long as this doesn't affect the render times, etc., I guess it's not important. I just wondered if anyone knew how this happened. Am I mistaken - do all models have surface attirbutes assigned? - Chris

I have created a model containing various groups with surface attributes assigned. When I choose the name of the model itself in the project workspace, various surface attributes are assigned in it's properties as well. When I right-click on the surface property (or properties) of the model, only "new relationship" and "properties" appear in the drop-down box. How can I set the model's surface to "not set" and preferably (but not necessarily) leave the groups' surface attributes intact? Thanks, Chris

Thank you - I was clicking on the 'image' folder in the project workspace instead of the 'image' subfolder of the decal.

I am trying to change the texture property of a decal to 'bump' to use as a bump map. How do I do this is A:M v.12v+? -Chris

Yes. The "shortcut' to the audio file shows up in the choreography project workspace after I drag it in, and plays while I scroll through the timeline in both the choreography and action windows, but does not play in the rendered file. - Chris

I am messing around with lip-syncing with an original model. In both my action and choreography I am able to hear an imported .wav file, but can not hear it in (nor is it in the movie properties of) my .avi or quicktime files that I render to. What am I doing wrong? I'm using the latest version of A:M (yeti disk). - Chris

Yeah, I actually learned that from the "Flag Wave" tutorial. Do I need to set up a dynamic constraint? It seems like maybe I haven't set the hair to recognize and respond to the wind force. Do I right click in the choreography and select simulate springs? How do I set up the hair properties to respond to force? In the "flag" tut some of the control points are assigned to react to force. How do I do this with hair?

When I hit shift-8 in the choreography window the hair disappears. I'm sure there is just some setting in either the force properties or the material properties that is not set properly. I've tried tweaking every possible button - perhaps the order in which I've tweaked is the issue. I'm dopping long, straight, black hair to the back of a sphere to keep the exercise simple. To get the hair to lay straight back I've set the hair emitter's force to: x=0, y= - 500, z=0. As I stated, the hair reacts perfectly when I create a simple back and forth or side to side head movement, so my settings work well in that way. It's just adding a force with fBm turbulence (I assume this is correct?) that seems to do very little. - Chris

I have dynamics turned on in the hair material properties - still can't affect it with my force in the choreography. The hair moves nice with the model's head movement - but no wind blowing. Am I correct to assign the force's attribute to fBm?

I've been messing with A:M's (v.12t) hair emitter today and am trying to get a "billowing in the wind" animation in either an action or a choreography. I haven't found a tutorial that addresses this, so I apologize if there is an obvious oversight on my part. I've tried to adapt the A:M "Wave The Flag" tutorial to my current needs, but am running into a snag since I'm using a hair emitter, not A:M cloth. How do I get my hair material to react to a wind force? -Chris

Thanks, Scott. Actually, that's a good, if brief, explanation - thanks. I'll check out the tutorials. -Chris

With all the help on the forum I've managed to come up with a cool walk cycle along a path in a choreography. Thank you! Now, I'm mixing 3 different actions in the same choreography - character begins with the walk cycle (action 1), does a hopscotch move (action 2), then takes a few steps, turns, stops, and looks at a sign (action 3). How do I get the character to stop moving along the path as she looks at the sign (or how do I add an action to this character in the choreography that is NOT constrained to the path after she completes the actions I want constrained to the path)? Thanks. Chris Walters http://heartdancemusic.com/chriswalters.html

Thanks for the acute observation, Scott. I'll take a look at the keyframe you're talking about. This is one of several walk cycles I've work on with this character and it's actually based on a 2d walk cycle of Frank Gabriel's mouse walk I found in Particle Illusion's emitter program. Therefore, it is not a true 3d walk cycle - one side is not a mirror of the other. Some of the other walk cycles I've created with the character are examples of this, but those results are less than stellar as well. I thought I'd try this cycle and just render it from the left view - there are 10 keyframes, each spaced 2 frames apart. I like a lot about it - it's relatively funny - but I want the character's 'cuteness' (I'm glad you see it!) to jump out at the audience and I feel facial expression (which is hard to discern at this speed) will go a long way toward accomplishing that. Chris

Here it is at 24 fps. I still feel it's hard to really make out her features even at this rate. I'm going to mess with stride length and lighting to see it that makes the action easier to watch. girl_walks_by__24fps_.mov

Perhaps - I'll mess with the stride length. However, the speed of her walk is kind of humorous and charming, it's just the jitteriness and lack of definition in her appearance throughout the action that bothers me. -Chris

Thanks for your input, Ken. What are non spline curves and how can I alleviate this jitteriness? Also, how do I add frames quickly between keyframes? Seems like everytime I start adding or deleting frames in my actions they get all screwy - once an action is played, it creates a default timeline length that I don't know how to change. As for the first and last frames of the cycle not matching, I did copy the 1st frame and paste it two frames later than the last 'posed' keyframe of the cycle as all resources suggest, but I'll look at that further. It seems you understand my predicament - the movement is not bad, but it seems 'jittery' and not easy to watch. It occurs to me that if I'm feeling this way about the scene without any objects other than the default ground in the scene, once I begin adding to the character's environment it will expound the difficulty. Thanks.

I was trying to send an mpeg4 - here it is a a quicktime file - 575 kb. Thanks. girl_walks_by__sm_.mov

Hello - I have created as short walk cycle with a model I created that I am now in the process of animating for a short film. The resulting choreography is okay, but I feel it is hard to focus on the girl model as she walks across the screen. I'm experimenting with lights and what not, but really have no idea what I'm doing. I thought it might be because I rendered it at A:M's default 30fps, but when I change the project's fps to 24, the choreography speed still looks the same. I'm unable to attach the file to this forum because I get a "You are not permitted to upload a file with that extension." error message. How can I show my results so members can see it? Any suggestions how to make this animation easier to focus on? Thanks, Chris Walters http://heartdancemusic.com/chriswalters.html