Dhar

That helped ALOT David, thanks You can see the finale here

:::wheeeeew:::: After yet another false start, and thanks to David and Mark, the rig looks installed. If the rig gods don't see anything out of the ordinary, I'll be CP assigning next

Now I see what was happening; clicking in the empty space near the model seems to switch between Action and the rig. That's where I was getting confused as to why suddenly none of the sliders were working. They won't work if the Action is hi-lited. Action1 vs Action Object!

It doesn't look like that David. What's the name of the other bones so I can unhide them in the Object folder. For some reason the eye_install_bone was hidden there.

Starting the rigging over :::sigh::: EDIT: Here's a tip; save each step of the tutorial as separate projects. i.e. Model_Rigging_1, Model_Rigging_2 ...etc.. so that if a crash occurs you don't have to start from the start like I did (silly me).

Working fine now. It seems as though going in the PWS and manually selecting the eye_install_bone to unhide woke everything else up. Making progress

Problem persists - could this be a v14.0a problem? Edit: Had to look for the eye_install_bone in the PWS and click the eye icon, that seems to do it.

You should be able to do the hiding in the modeling window if the Action window is giving you problems. Hope that helps. Yes, I did that, then when I go back to the Action window the unhide_eye_install_bone stops working again :::Performing a clean install:::

I opened the project again, and this time it shows up, however, the hide function doesn't seem to work in the Action window, ya know? Trying to hide all the CPs except for the eyes? I am in muscle mode, I choose the eyes, the Hide CPs button is grayed out and clicking H only gets me a "blong" sound.

Can't seem to unhide the unhide_eye_install_bone

After a few restarts on the rigging process I seem to have gotten myself stuck on STEP 6 where the unhide_eye_install_bone doesn't seem to unhide anything at all. I'll post this problem is the Squetch Rig thread as well.

That's a good looking character. Not knowing how sophisticated your rig is, the movements seem disjointed. The chest moves but the hips don't, or the head moves but the chest doesn't. Just remember, every part of the body that moves will move the rest of the body to a certain degree. When Yoda speaks, his whole body needs to be engaged, not just the part that speak Keep up the good work.

I think it's time to rig it. I'm wondering if I should keep this thread going or go to the Rigging folder??

That's pretty slick noober. A wrire frame?

I know how hard it is to stop messing with a good thing, but since we're past that point I just thought it would be great to replace that big shiny rock in the left corner with a water puddle??? That's enough... submit it already...sheesh...

I turned off Keylight - turned down Fill light to 20% (maybe less, can't remember), and mostly used the Rim light to create the spot leight effect (change color, intensity to 85%, and change the influence cone size) Hope this helps

Five point patches are notorious for that. But if it renders OK in final, then I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, that patch doesn't get extreme movements so I wouldn't worry about it too much

Thanks David, I added a ring of splines to the hip area instead of just lowering one. I am concerned, however, with the lack of splines where the thighs come out? Do you think that'll present a problem? I also fleshed out where the eyebrows are so that expressions are clearly visible.

Thanks Jeff, that's what I need to figure out without having to hook to animatable splines (lips). Added two more aplines around the eyes since my concentration will be around facial animation.

Any pointers on how to get rid of this 5 pt anamoly?

Thanks for the great feed back guys. Immensely helpful. Narrowed the chest area a little, that seems to help. I tried lowering the hips but that made the arms unable to reach the thighs. Then I decided to add color in the manner that I'll be using this model for, and suddenly accentuating the features didn't seem all that necessary. Do you agree?

In the cylinder example, you simply select the top ring CPs of the cylinder and click E to extrude. That's for simple objects. However, when you start getting into organic and complex objects, lathing and manipulating will be quite taxing on your computer because what you're trying to do is replace nurbs with CPs (Control Points). That's comparing apples to oranges. I cannot recommend it enough to get this Tutorial DVD/s Barry Zundel

Take a look at Robert's (Robcat) work here when he was with Animation Mentor. That character is trademark of Animation Mentor. That's what I'm going for, something that is unmistakably Animation:MASTER!

Really great observations guys. Thanks Toned down the "child" body by accentuating the chest area, enlarged the hands and put a tad more definition to the shoulders and forearms. Where else do you think I can tweak to make him look 20-something?

Duely noted Gary. Good catch. Changed the proportions a bit. He's now approximately six heads tall.