robcat2075

Remember that game "Operation"? Trying to get a sound post in a cello is like that.

A soundpost is a wooden support that fits between the front and back of a string instrument like a cello. The exact placement of it is a mysterious art involving much trial and error. However, because the front and back are not parallel surfaces, you have to create a new sound post of a different length if you want your soundpost in a different spot. Matching the slope of the interior surfaces is also difficult. This is my vision of an adjustable length sound post that could be put anywhere. The center is a "jack screw" which has opposing threads on each side. Turning it would push or pull the two wooden parts. The ball joints at the ends are held together by magnetism. Unfortunately, about a day after I thought of this someone announced a commercial product that does much the same thing... for 500 euros! But maybe I'll make this for myself. I figure it's about $15 in parts and postage.

This isn't something that can be done in one pass... within A:M. It requires compositing of three passes... the SSS pass, the non-SSS pass and the pass that shows the greyscale SSS-intensity pass. The additional render time for the SSS-intensity pass would be negligible. If someone wants to post me a simple SSS PRJ I can show how it's done. Something with an obvious SSS case like backlit ears.

Which one do you mean? My suggestion or another?

I notice in real life we don't do a lot of mouth shaping or it tends to be rather ambiguous. For example we can make an "ee" sound with almost any mouth shape besides the Preston Blair "ee" I'm thinking the motion tends to be more important than the shapes.

One path I see is to apply the grayscale map that indicates how strong the SSS effect should be, render with that as a greyscale image (flat shaded, of course) and use that to composite a SSS render with a non-SSS render and using the greymap to control how much of the SSS render shows thru vs. the non-SSS render.

First... Welcome back to A:M, Ray! I believe there are some code examples available, like a bare bones plug-in but that may be already bundled with the SDK. Someone knowledgeable will need to chime in on that.

I'm supposed to do a quickstart modeling tutorial and I think I will mak a point to mention the period-period thing. The mystery I'd like solved is, why does it make a difference?

I'll note that this should be the period key that is pressed twice to invert and un-vert the selection. That works for most cases. Almost all. Exceptions are when there is an additional dead end spline attached to one of the selected corners or the hook situation noted above.

It was fun while it lasted.

We'll be eager to see your results when you are ready to show them.

Hooray!

If I were to make an informal list of face features that one right rig... (starting with the most important) -mouth open/close (this is all Muppets have and they do quite a bit with it) -eyeballs pointable -eyelids movable/blinkable (to do something besides the straight ahead stare) -eyebrows poseable (there's probably more expression potential in the eyebrows than there is in the mouth) -mouth shapeable (this is what everyone thinks they need for dialog, but I think people obsess about it too much) After that there is a long list of lesser elements like tongues, teeth, cheekbone scrunches, nose flares...

Is that Lightbulb King?

I'm surprised the 5-point rings could be made into a patch. It shouldn't be able to do that with one spline.

Looking at it a bit more... it seemed to me that the 5-pointers shouldn't be having so many problems. i don't remember having that much creasing to them even on highly curved ones. When i delete all the groups in the model they get much smoother. So there's probably some sort of conflict in a group. I'm not sure where but it's a clue.

There are quite a few patches facing inward, but even after I flip those the 5-pointers are getting stressed out.

I took a quick look at Tinman. i guess it will need a few more spline so the five-pointers aren't part of such tight turns. They look OK in shaded mode but in final mode the five-pointers are broken up.

What is the license file called... exactly? Mine always say master0.lic

I really like the economy of that. You could slide the funnel/hat forward for downward eyebrows and slide it back for upward eyebrows And then rig the actual brows so you can scrunch them along with that motion. You'd have a dialog ready face.

That's a great face, Rodney!

That sounds like something you'll have to re-ask Hash about, but... You did do this all on the Windows side of your Mac, right? The topic says Mac, but your profile says Windows.

That's why it would be good ot have an A:M representative in that group so that a path to accomodating it wold exist in the specification. I don't know much abotu what is involved in that or how likely this standard is to become important. Lots of standards get proposed and most go nowhere.

Ideally there would be a programmer person from Hash involved in the working group that is devising that standard.

Those bounce great.