robcat2075

It's a notion I've had in the back of my head for a while. Ideally we would be able to do what you were trying before, to paste a mesh copied from a model window into a pose window but there's no way for A:M to know how to relate the two different meshes. This is the only path i can think of in the absence of an importer that could fully interpret other programs' rigging and morph target stuff. For this plugin to to be useful, we are presuming the user has access to some polygon program where they can manipulate the original character model they are wanting to remake in A:M and export various versions of it like "smiling", "frowning"... etc.

That's good news, Mark. What Windows did you end up going with? I wonder ... does MacOS have any "compatibility" settings for old programs the way Windows does? In windows you can set a program to run in Windows XP "compatibility mode", for example. That's how i got my 13 year-old version of After Effects to recognize modern Quicktime.

This sounds like a completely separate thing, right? Here's how I think it could be done... -create a plugin that will move a CP in Mesh A to the nearest CP in Mesh B when both are in the same model or pose window. the immediate problem with that is that perhaps Mesh B is so morphed that the "matching" CPs are no longer the nearest to each other. so... -make the plugin restrict its search to only CPs in a Group the user has defined. You might make a group for "Upper Lip A" in the A mesh and "Upper Lip B" in the B mesh. The plugin would only look for nearest neighbors for group A CPs only among the CPs in Group B. You might have to make these groups very specific before the right targets were being consistently found but that would be easier than manually matching every CP individually

I hadn't had a chance to digest it yet. Can you put the pictures back?

Looks good. Suggestion... if you animate the channel for the particle numbers to vary semi-randomly over time it can get you a more natural appearance to the spray.

I'm not playing it in my browser. Here's what the QT Player "Show Movie Inspector" window looks like That "aacl" is different than "AAC" that shows up in other movies...

I forgot you mentioned the stop-mo project. Yes, an exposure sheet would be necessity for that. The clothespins are cool!

I too get the message that more software is needed. I notice that the audio codec is "aacl" which is not one I've heard of before. AFAIK, Quicktime has "AAC" as a standard codec but not "aacl" Perhaps that is why it's not working for everyone.

When you say "use Excel" what do you mean other than reproducing the layout of the paper sheet? My own feeling is that exposure sheets are of less value in CG. They needed them in hand drawn days to create some sort of visible representation of the sound track vs. time for the animator to match since he had no real-time access to it. But now that we can put the audio clip directly in our time line and scrub it in real time to locate important moments, an exposure sheet to do that for us isn't needed.

That looks like if Robert Crumb made a muppet.

I keep using TSM2 because I'm familiar both with installing it and animating with it. I know exactly what to do with it and how to modify it when i need to. In a few minutes i can throw the basic bones in a character, attach the CPs quick and dirty and shazaam!... i've got my character at least movable and posable in some basic fashion. But that's me. The other A:M rigs are not much harder to install and the Squetch rig is a wonderful thing. However, I think the CP attaching and weighting process still baffles most users no matter what rig they choose. I don't feel TAoA:M ever introduced "rigging" properly so we have a large body of users who don't "get it". In my startup video for "rigging" I tried to explain the reasons for why rigging is what it is and make the strategy that goes in to it more clear.

That's what drones should look like

The darktree Stuff doesn't work on the mac? The simbiont plugin is included in the mac version isn't it?

To not have the map "stick" to the surface, I believe you must set "Global Axis" ON in the Environment Map Properties.

I'm glad I'm wrong about the Mac license situation and I apologize for the misinformation.

It would not be impossible for a coding person to create a wizard that would run through a selected set of CPS and create a new bone at the same position as every CP. Before the coding person would go to the trouble of doing that you'd need to explain a compelling reason as to WHY this is useful and SHOW it being useful in sample case that you did by hand.

If it works, it works. A new activation code is really a new license, however. If Hash will give it for free, that's great but i don't know that that is standard practice. Jason would have to clarify that.

I'll note for anyone wanting to run A:M on Windows on a Mac, it will require an additional license. The license from the Mac side will not activate A:M on the PC side.

I never read the EULA all that closely but I'm running Windows 7 on my self-built PC that I didn't sell to anyone else. Do Mac forums have anything to say about this? TSM2 does run on v16 32-bit. I think Windows shoudl be fine once you get past initial screen and launch the app. My first suspicion is that it will be ghastly slow or incompatible, but let us know how that works.

Can you show a small case, like on a simple lathed cylinder, that demonstrates what you will do with this? I still don't' see it.

Tell me again why you need to do that. How many CPs is it?

Tell me again why you need this?

The only semi-automatic solution i recall is to use the Group constraint with "Use Offsets" OFF to translate a bone to the center of a one-CP Group.

I think the Shif or control key manuver was to stop plugins from loading. Help>Reset settings is the only way i know of to get all defaults. i believe some custom settings are stored in the .MAC file, like keyboard shortcuts. You could copy that and replant it later. Other things like window positions and last directories used are registry settings. I suppose you could save your registry with regedit and restore it later.

That looks good too. Disappointed to not find out what the deal was with the cat.