robcat2075

that's not a good way to work with TSM2 The best plan is to do all your CP weighting and fan-boning and smart-skinning on the bones your model has before you run Rigger. Save the model, then run Rigger. If you want to change the weighting or fan boning or smart-skinning, just reload the version you saved before Rigger, and work with that, save it again and then run Rigger. I've done a lot of models that way. You never want to make a smartskinnig or CP weighting on the bones that Rigger adds so you don't need them when you are dong that stuff.

I'll note that A:M can also render a depth buffer for when that is useful in compositing to distinguish between objects of different distance from the camera. There is a two week trial version of A:M available although two weeks may be rather brief to get up to speed to investigate what you are wanting to do.

Notebook styles? What would that be?

I believe the basic problem is that some of the splines that run the long ways of the blob are really all the same spline looping around and around with the result that some of those 4-pointers are made from one spline on all sides, which will not fill in. This would never happen in a typical A:M model because we'd probably make a shape like this from a lathed object where all the splines end at the poles and don't merge into each other. Load this facelossB.mdl And break the spline that runs between the two CPs in Group "Point". When that spline is broken many of the empty 4-pointers will fill in. If you reattach that spline, the patches will empty again. Load FaceLossC and find the Group "Make Hook Here" shown in the top window... facelossC.mdl Break the spline I've marked in Red. Separate and reattach the two spline ends I've marked in Blue. re-extend the Red spline with the Y key and attach it as a proper hook in the middle of the joined blue splines. It should look like what is circled in black in the bottom window. that will make all the 4-pointers fill in.

Paul Forwood showed something like that a long time ago but didn't go into how he did it.

Is the problem solved or is there still a problem?

As far as I know, there is no provision for 2D motion tracking in A:M unless someone were to make use of a 3D motion-capture format in some 2D way. You are asking about motion that has somehow been captured off of a 2D video, right? I don't have FCP but I have After Effects, it has an ability to track a detail in a video. I can't think of anyone here having experimented with that. My initial question would be... where does this 2D plane of motion live in the 3D space of A:M after it has been imported? I suppose you could stick it somewhere manually? The short answer is, no, A:M doesn't import 2D motion tracking. It's not something A:M has built-in right now. The longer answer is... maybe it wouldn't be hard to convert? What does this file format look like? If it's like a human-readable text file and it's just XY positions for each frame, I can imagine someone writing a converter. Can you post a small example of one of these files? I'd just be curious to see one.

Very interesting to see that, Nancy, and to have a CG pioneer like yourself in our midst and to know that somehow it all leads to Professor Schmaltzy-Pants.

load the alternate version of your character into your Project. (I presume it has a different name.) Select the old character in the chor, then in its properties use the drop down list to the right of "Shorcut to" to select the new version of the character. You might need to save your PRJ (with a new name of course) and reload it to get any complicated constraints made in the chor to awaken to this change.

Basically, I'm not sure what is causing the problem you have.

Here's what i get with the v16 PRJ...

Here's what i get when i load the v15PRJ in v15, v16 and v17 They look OK

I edited that to fix the link, it was missing a colon and a www

I sat down to make a quick demo of it and found that Snap to Surface wasn't working right, so I've sent a note back to Steffen on that for him to look at. I see it sort of working like this: First you use Snap to Surface to get your CPs close to the intended targets and then you select them and Choose Snap to CP to bump them all in place exactly.

i imagine one could do something like that in A:M. Put your hand drawn animation on a flat and place it in your 3D modeled background. If one can hand-draw animation...

I'm impressed they were able to light those to look right.

Hi chariev, I don't think A:M directly supports a FCP motion format. Biovision BVH and Polhemus DAT and Polhemus Network are the formats mentioned in the motion capture device list. Of those, BVH is the only one i recall people making use of. That has been done successfully. I don't know if there is a way to convert.

Bobby, could you also post a chor made in v15 that uses that Thom and animates the arms from the default position to the position that causes that bad shape?

I'm surprised to hear that. Can you post that Thom you show there? I'll try it out.

Lovely work. She needs a sister named "Ima".

Review of "The Wind Rises" in the NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/movies/t...ne-creator.html

OK, i didn't realize that Boolean was important. Yes, i think that's a bug to report. Show the case with Boolean OFF that works and the same case with Boolean ON not working and I think that would make it clear.

Here's a sample PRJ that seems do do everything that Stefan wants, (except one thing)... SimpleEyeTestSurfCon04.prj -The pupil properly floats on an irregular eyeball -The aimer bone follows a target null outside the eye -there is no jumping or flickering -the one thing that doesn't quite work is that the pupil bone bone doesn't follow the aimer bone while you are manually moving the target null. However if you flick the frame counter back and forth one frame it will go to the proper position and if you drag the time counter or press play the animation will work properly. The failure to immediately follow an aimer bone that is constrained to a target may be a bug or it may be a limitation of how constraints are evaluated in real-time when you are moving stuff around without actually advancing the time counter. There is one other case of this where things don't fully calculate without advancing the timer. However you can pose and animate properly with this mechanism, just remember to check your results by tapping +- to force A:M to work through all the constraints.

Hi Bobby, Select your model and look in the Property Window. The relationships you added will appear under User Properties on User Properties>New Property>Folder That will make a folder in User Properties (you can rename it) You can drag Poses into and out of folders with the little cross icon at the left of the Pose name

The Wayback machine still has "Dem Bones" Part I Part II It's quite old, I haven't examined it enough to know if it represents what are still best practices today in A:M or not but I imagine it would all still work. You may have to do a bit of mental translation from the interface screenshots in the pictures to the interface today