higginsdj

This is the type of thing I want to do with one of my short ideas. Use VUE to generate the landscape elements and then render out in layers or projection maps where the characters have to interact with parts of the landscape. (I have that book - Ballistic Publishing isn't it?) Cheers

That looks great.

I'm waiting for my mac activation to be terminated so I can activate on a new machine. I think support is smaller than it used to be. Just be patient and it should happen soon. Cheers

With incorrectly facing normals you will likely get some rendering artifacts. You can always go into patch select mode and flip the incorrect facing normals manually. Cheers

Actually, I didn't win anything with that image, but I did win 'Toys' with this: Cheers

What they can do (and have done for me in the past) is terminate the existing activation effectively allowing you to re-activate on a new machine. This link tells you everything you need to know... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30459 Cheers

AM has plenty of free "realistic" models to choose from. Did you try the data file? ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/misc/Data.zip (there is also a LittleData.zip) Note sure what it contains but I don't think it has the same level of content as the Extras DVD (http://www.hash.com/store/index.php?main_p...4d3f212bd2ffe25) whcih does have what you want. Cheers

Add a null out in front of the character and call it Eye Target. Now each eye should have its own bone. Constrain each of these eye bones to aim at the Eye Target Null. Cheers

There's a lot of twinning there and the body is very stiff. You might want to consider moving him on his seat (if he is sitting), loosening him up, say a turn to his left then back around to face front again. Put some arcs in there. Cheers David

Its natural to do that. Hit the '0' key and view the mesh from underneath and pull the CP's out int he Z axis to give the face body. Another method is to obtain reference images at different angles and then match the mesh view to the same angle and see where the face is flattened. It just takes practise. Cheers

Much better. You don't have an unreasonable number of splines there so unless you are unhappy - I'd leave it as is. Next job is to look at the curve of the face across the cheek. Look at the shape from below the face - I think you'll need to pull some of those splines out in the Z axis to 'fill' the cheeks. Cheers

You made the nose a little worse. Sometimes it is better just to play with the splines on paper and see how they work or hwo they might be better placed. You need to get rid of those 'ring' splines. Spliens well placed can achieve the same result and if you need sharper edges then you can play with the CP magnitude, alpha and gamma values. Note that I have drawn too many splines - you can subtract at least 1 vertical and one horizontal loop and still get the shape you desire. Cheers

A good effort but you have a couple of problem areas. 1st the 3 point patches on the side of the nose need to go. Sometimes you can't avoid them so if you must use them make them small and hide them in an obscure place. 2nd, the dead vertical spline down the side of the face needs to be shaped to the contour of the face. Cheers

Love the image but not keen on the colour of the riverbank - too grey. It looks like a rock outcrop rather than a river bank. Being Aussie earth it should be a rich red brown Cheers

There is no need to make the body one continuous mesh. The car body comes in pieces so it is probably going to be much easier to spline it that way. Some detailed images of the complex parts may help us in assessing how you are going, but at this stage you appear to be adhering to the correct shape of a F1 car.... Cheers

I find the size of the nostrils very unappealing - makes his nose look like the exhausts or intakes of a jet a fighter! Maybe it's just the angle! Cheers

I can't rig to save my life but the only flaw I see are the fingers. They should be outstretched otherwise rigging them is going to be a nightmare. Cheers

The animation is OK though a little wooden in places ie in places there is only lip movement going on and nothing else - no-one sits that still, but the whole mood and action/acting is pretty good. Lets look at the lip synch. The sound and mouth shapes are out of synch for most parts - 2 or 3 frame off. Another problem is that you have chosen phonetic shapes for a given sound without concern for the average sound - ie your shapes are for the emphasised sound so when you use the 'a' shape for a subdued 'a' sound it looks overstated. Another issue (and it may just be style) is that the upper lip has a bow shape - ie you have bent it halfway to each corner only to give it shape. It leaves the upper lip with an odd shape. Cheers

I've modelled and rigged a couple of space marines that are publically avaialble on the Hash extras DVD you're free to use those. I am flat out on a lot of projects at the moment but where I get a chance I'd like to contribute modelling or animating as the case may be.

Cool - now you have something to clean up that plane wreck Very nicely modelled and finished - as usual. Cheers

Sorry - didn't mean to imply there were any limitations to the FACE rig (I don't know of any) - I just didn't know what rig he used for his face and just referred to it generically as "a face rig". Cheers

Not too bad. It may be a limitation of the face rig but the shapes do not all fit the sounds and it appears to lag slightly behind the voice. Remember, you don't need to animate all the sounds - just the main sounds. ie W hen_s o Me W ild_eyed EI ght F oot_t All M aniac ....... etc Capitalised are emphasised sounds and each strung together set of letters represents no mouth shape change (though you may have tongue movement). Then you can tweak it after these key poses have been set - but less is better than more. Cheers

I've used various Wacom Graphires - found it ideal for organic modelling.

Did you raise an AMReport on the issue?

I'm no Mac expert but I have 15a running on OSx 10.5.1 on my iMac with 3gb RAM. There are some issues and I have reported them using AMReports and hopefully they will be resolved soon enough but crashing is only an issue when I try to render everynow and then. I have no problems at all on a Bootcamp install on the same machine under XP. Have you reported your problems to AM yet? (see the AMReports link on this forum) Generally speaking there is no-one on the forum who is likely to be able to assist you to overcome crashing problems. They tend to be machine/user specific. Cheers