robcat2075

Here are some more fluid tests, not all useful but interesting none-the-less. PRJ06Tests.mov

I'm finding there's a lot of interplay in the parameters that have a way of amplifying or negating one another so don't shrink her yet!

No particle will be left unturned in our search for an appropriate result! We're going for something that is less "white-water" than a dam burst but not as static as a glass curtain. Somewhere between those two extremes.

This is the start of some basic R&D on particles. Four different tests for "fluid" to see how it behaves and how it interacts with the objects it hits. FourWaters.mov

P.S. My animation of the backflip WAS done in an Action instead of the Chor because I did intend to repeat it exactly a few times and animating that once in an action, then reusing it in the chor made that easier. A rare case. None-the-less, the model bone isn't moved to make the character flip, it's all skeleton animation. (It's actually impossible to move the model bone in an Action. You can only keyframe a model bone in the Chor.)

Nope. Paths, as we know them in A:M, are rarely used in character animation. The model bone is placed once to locate the character at the start of the scene in some convenient spot, but after that the skeleton bones of the character are animated tp create whatever motion is needed. Here's a video that shows the animation process on a simple robot. Notice that even though the robot is being animated to walk forward the model bone is never moved. Post #20 Simple IK Leg Walk. If all a character had to do was walk the same walk indefinitely, then we would use a walk cycle on the character with the model bone constrained to a path. However it is exceedingly rare in story-telling situations for a character to just walk. When they also have to do the butt-scratching and twirling, getting in and out of that path constraint is a huge hassle and it's really easier to keyframe all motion from start to finish.

William Detwiler (aka detbear) and I will be collaborating on a brief shot in this forum William and I have both been long time A:M users but we didn't really "meet" until we were both students in the very first class to enter AnimationMentor and noticed that we were both using Animation:Master for our assignments. William is a professional animator and since AnimationMentor I have contributed bits of rigging, animation and other elements to projects of his. Now William has asked me to consult on a new endeavor, a trailer for an adventure movie he hopes to use for a Kickstarter project and I am eager to see what we can do with it. In particular we are narrowly focusing on one scene here. William has prepared a rough draft to show the essential concept... Detwiler_Project_Waterfall_WIP_C.mov That is not the whole trailer, that is one shot. Out goal is to make it look like a truly cinematic, movie-quality scene. The water effects are the obvious challenge, but we also need to design appropriate lighting and probably rethink the staging a bit. Basically, everything needs to look better and we want to figure out how to do that and we want to do it with A:M! That's what we'll be doing in this Special Topics forum and if any of you have comments or suggestions you may certainly toss those in!

Welcome to A:M, guye! I also was worried about leaving the model bone in one spot and having a character walk away from it when I started animating but that is the overwhelming choice among animators professional or otherwise. The model bone is good for moving the entire model as a whole but that is something animators rarely do. They are always moving parts in relation to other parts. Even when the whole body is in motion, it never moves as a rigid whole which is the effect of moving the model bone. Here is a step-thru of an old back flip I did. The model bone is never moved, but all the other bones are animated to turn the character 360° In this view bones turn red when they have a key frame on them. clip3568Gymnast.mov Basically, you key bones as often as you need to to get them where they need to be. I'd have to know more about the constraint problem. Constraints should work no matter where the model bone is. This suggests some additional mishap you may want to tell us more about.

Problem solved now? I think we got you moved over to particle bubbles instead, right?

If you are using hair for grass you can use a grayscale map to control its density to make the grass gradually thin out over some distance or even have some dense clumps that diminish over an area. Unfortunately we can't use particle materials as components of combiner material

What's causing the ripple on his face?

Hi Mark, here are some wandering, random comments on your heavy push... clip3566MarksPush.mov

It happens if you re-save a PRJ after you render? I'm not sure about the disappearing names but you don't need to re-save a PRJ after rendering. If you just save the PRJ and reload it the names don't disappear, right?

A:M has a camera post effect that will "burn" the current frame timecode into the rendered image, but on Mac you can't set the size of the effect. Here is a simple integer image sequence of 000-719 that may be added to a camera as a rotoscope if frame numbering other than what the "burn" effect can do is needed. It can be resized and moved to anywhere in the frame. I'll note that having an animated rotoscope in the frame seems to slow down real-time performance so you may want to turn it off until you render. counterTGAs.zip

There should be a properties setting to adjust the size of the time code.

Will he have a tux sort of costume?

Hey, I enjoyed watching that! I think the guitar player with the tree growing out of his head is my favorite. And that's your band and your song! i like that too. Welcome to A:M!

Here is my 15 minute simple version with a sprite. The color of the sprite is animated in the channels in the material. You can load this and play it. KellSquiggles03.prj Edit: you'll need to download this PNG for the sprite...

Which post do you mean?

Here's some cloth that pretty darn near settles as much as you'd need. If you needed absolute motionlessness an attach group could be turned on after it mostly stopped moving. Settles000.mov Here's the PRJ you can look at and run the simulation on. Note that the special cloth settings are made in the Group in the Chor and not in the materials folder. ClothSettles.prj Also, Shaggy's Bus Stop Rope Trick uses cloth that spend a lot of time on the ground needing to be motionless. It can be done!

Yes, you can make cloth stop. Higher damping settings will make the cloth settle. If it needs to be absolutely frozen an "attachment group" can be made to completely stop it.

I've been testing cloth settings. These flags have the same settings except for "Stretch Stiffness" From left to right they are set to 0.1, 1, 10, 100 FlagTest.mov

Good catch!

Unfortunately i couldn't play the SWF.

hmmm... First, try turning off all the things that are ON on the Options tab and render one frame. If that works then turn the first one ON and render. Keep turning things ON one at a time until you get a crash. Then we'll have at least a clue about what the problem might be.