robcat2075

This forum is primarily devoted to user support on Hash's Animation:Master software so you probably won't get the number of opinions here you need to decide a 2D software question. A good place to pose such a question might be on the forum at 11SecondClub.com. The "Animation Discussion" sub forum is a likely start place. A number of 2D animators frequent there who might chime in and you would also find previous discussions on the topic that present the different sides to the death.

Welcome back, Lee!

Won't hurt to try. You can do "Reset Settings" to get back the defaults.

Shaded Wireframe rule added (3a) There are seven weeks left in the Image contest! I need to get cracking!

I don't know how to ascertain what has changed since it worked before. Something has changed.

It worked before in v18, but not now? How about Help>Reset settings

Good looking models!

Seven weeks and five days left in Summer Image contest.

Welcome back! I believe Rodney recently created a sub forum "Welcome to The Art of Animation:Master" where you could put your TAoA:M exercises. The "Work In Progress / Sweatbox" sub forum would also be appropriate.

Note that in the real hammock the cords that stretch from the cloth to the tree are all about the same length and they attach to flexible cloth rather than a stiff span. The whole thing really is a single cloth system from tree to tree. How about this. Make the whole red area one grid of cloth, with bones (the green marks) about every third spline. Only the Yellow area will be set to render as regular patches.. The rest of the red area will be set transparent with a few splines (orange) set to "render as line" as if they were cords. After the cloth settles, scrunch the bones together like the cords are in the real hammock.

Here is another piece of the mechanism. The arm on the left is being rotated, which appears to cause the next link to push the last link in a linear fashion. It is the opposite of an IK chain and yet we can't use a simple non-IK chain of bones to make this work. Right now it only works if the first two bones are of equal length. (click image if it doesn't animate) The next problem is to get the end of the last bone to push around the tip of the first bone in the previous post.

Hmmm. It may not be entirely possible because of the freedom that IK chains need to work. Here is a partial solution... SteeringMechanism 03.prj Look at Action 1 from a top view and rotate "bone 3" (the short one) (click on this gif if it doesn't animate) Some how "bone 3" needs to get controlled by some different IK chains. I'll think about it some more. The most expedient thing would be to make a pose slider that moves all the bones as they are expected to move and then drive the pose slider with the steering wheel.

Properly, the ends of the hammock cloth should be done with an "attach group" rather than my dodge of excluding them from the cloth group. There's a link to a tut on attach groups in my tutorials.

Here's an ultra simple test of an ultra simple hammock that seems to behave appropriately.... hammock Test 03 simmed.prj

You shouldn't need all the bone on the cloth. Are you able to get the hammock to just hang naturally by itself?

less successful variation on the theme...

I'll post my WIPs here An experiment with making a less flattish tree bark with A:M materials...

Contest update: Rule 1b permitting WIP threads has been added. There are nine weeks left in the "Summer Memories" Image Contest. I think I have a few of ideas. Now i need to pick one.

I don't dread the stay-alive posts. It's nice to know you're still alive!

10 weeks left in the "Summer Memories" image contest!

How interesting! If you quit and reload the PRJ do you have to do that all over again for the rotoscope to work?

Contest update... Rule 2a, a "no naughty bits" clause, has been added.

That's wonderful, Mark! As a TOS loyalist who hardly ever watched TNG, I'm not bothered by any timeline problems.

I made the poster for the Summer Image Contest in A:M. I roughed the idea out in Sketchbook: I really did intend to trace out the vector version in FreeHand, it has many conveniences for this sort of art, but it's been so long since I used Freehand for anything more than a simple outline I decided I'd get it done faster in A:M The "Summer Memories" text was warped with a distortion box. The sunburst text on the left was done in Freehand and imported with the AI wizard. Of course, it's all flat parts...

Contest Update: - Announcement video added to top post. Let me know if it doesn't show or play. - Rules are now numbered for easy identification. - Note rule #4 clarifying the "Summer" aspect of hte contest. - Rule 13a added to guard against someone submitting 10,000 entries Rodney is correct, you do not need the word "Summer" in your image. I have added Rule 4 to clarify that.