higginsdj

The walk is a little too slow and upright for my taste (I don't see any shift in balance) and the legs seem to stay bent for almost the entire walk - its almost a pop when they do straighten. The loon - well he just seems to lack the anticipation, squash and stretch I might expect from an object that is full of air. I think he needs to be a more deformable ballon. Cheers

But of course Ken - what else would I be using Cheers

Personally I find dopesheets a waste of time for good lip synch. All the emphasis is on mouth shape for a given sound/phenome. Speech just doesn't work that way. More often than not the mouth shape needed is a combination of 2 or more mouth shape poses - the dopesheet cannot handle this! Here's a very good test (I did this with Frank Silas as the facial model and his Devil Character as the aniamted model). Video yourself acting out a line of dialogue but close in just on your face. Now load this into AM along with your favourite character. Now position your character head and the roto of you acting in an action window side by side and try to animate the head and facial expressions to match your video. You can do it with the dopesheet first up just to see how wowful the result can be. Now do it again with a standard phonome setup and see just how bad it is again. What is wrong? You need to set up poses for mouth shapes and not default word sounds. Heres an example with some animated examples Cheers Cheers

Yep - 6 looks good but you can tighten those mouth corners more if you like via the magnitude on the CP bias handles. Cheers

Hi Lazlo, That should work OK - just be careful with your smartskin/fan bones/CP weighting not to overly involve the 5 pointers. They look like they will probably form the edge of the skin fold area. If it does become a problem the you can shorten the long sides of the 5 pointers with short splines that have CP's through the 5 pointers but hooks on each end. Reducing the size of the 5 pointers can be more usefull than trying to remove them. Nice model by the way. Cheers

I assume the splinage on each corner is the same - how about posting the closeup wireframe view instead. Its a bit difficult to see just from a skin view.... Cheers

Actually I thought it was part of a music video clip - it seemed to fit so well with the background music The only thing I foudn disconcerting was how close the robot was to the mirror when wiping it and immediately after. His position moved back considerably when you cut to him looking then pushing the button. Cheers

Ken, This is what I had in mind for his heart...... Beating heart 80kb QT Cheers

Yes - as long as its not 20+ mb in size..... Cheers

Great work with the face Ken. I don't like the heart though. I'd prefer to see the heart as a jewel (deep red) that has a beating glow from inside. Cheers

Wow - Dark, but a powerful message. Cheers

What has that got to do with this topic? Was it supposed to be amusing? If you have a problem with Hash take it up with them and leave us out of it. Cheers

For known quality animators - 5mb. For total unknowns - 500kb. For a movie everyone raves about - 10mb (maybe 20 if I can leave the PC to it's own devices downloading for 2-3hours - but disconnects can be a real bitch) Cheers

Thats viewable in Windows Media Player 9/10 isn't it? If so - yes.

Thoroughly enjoyable. (Just one point for all those posting animations..... for those of us on low bandwidth, poor quality small files are great - far better than not being able to see anything at all.) The only animation thing I'd wish to critique is the pacing of the characters. The steps seemed a little monotonous. Some sneak type steps would have been better ie step - slow - look, step - step back etc where the step pace was varied including fast steps. Also the gun height could have been varied. It's not rivetted in the 'firing' position. The only cinematic thing that bothered me was the discontinuation at the stream to the next shot - the cut felt awkward. ie the hunter is revealed, the bird steps back cautiously out of frame then the camera moves and we have no stream in sight. Cheers

Actually you might not want to cut back on the number of splines around the eyes depending on how much skin folding and creasing you wish to implement and animate. Cheers

Just make sure the normals are pointing outward then save the project, close it and reopen it. Cheers

It's difficult to tell from the image due to compression artifacts but it looks like you have some splineage issues. You might want to post the model file so we can get a better look. Cheers

Animating balance may be a tough ask! Cheers

The Simbiont Colour shift in v12 has been reported (and I think fixed in Beta1) Cheers

Well there is twinning and there is twinning. It might appear that they are twinning but not mechanically so - ie there will always be small offsets - one foot is usually favoured; unless the body is perfectly balanced then one arm will be slightly 'off' to counteract - or the body will have a small bend or twist in it. Cheers

Hey Ken, Nice model (I particularly liek the design of the head/face). Given that you have modelled joints for everything else, how do you envisage tin man will bend and twist at the waist? How about facial expressions? Cheers

OK, heres my take. 1. Light stand needs a base. Looks Odd just sticking in the ground. 2. Shot 2 is too still. You might want to add some head movement to go along with any breathing/snoring, a small body shift - anything to show that the character is alive and not just a posed suit of armour. 3. Cut to shot 3 should be a fade cut not a straight cut (the cut felt too abrupt for me) 4. The camera pan/dolly is a little slow and leeds to a confused final composition. The phone is lost in the background of the knight. I'd try zooming in to make the phone far more prominant and/or spotlight the phone and/or do a rack focus - phone in focus and knight out of focus until the phone rings when you rack to knight in focus and phone out of focus. 5. The knight in the background is poorly posed. Put one or both feet flat ont he floor and at differetn angles to avoid the twinning effect you have - perhaps shift his weight slightly int he chair to put a curve in the pose - maybe put one leg up over one of the arm rests to give him a really casual pose. 6. The antic of waking up is quite good though you do have portions that are twinning. Try to offset the recovery - one arm before the other, one leg before the other (see the bounce recovery at 27 seconds with both legs and arms in the air for an example) A little stretch and squash would go nicely here as well. 7. A little anticipation on the 'look at the phone' action would be nice and should involve more than just the head (there appears to be an arm movement but this is blocked by the phone) thought he head shoudl be the most prominant move. Overall it is going well. Cheers

Umm the ZIP link seems to be broken! Cheers

You need to use the action blend method under the choreography action property. Set it to ADD mode and any action you do is added on top of the action itself. You can also use BLEND. The default is REPLACE which is why you are having the trouble you are. Anzovin have a good CD tute on the subject if you wish the full story. Cheers