robcat2075

I think he was speaking more generally about controls, Simon, can you tell more about the trouble you are having?

My own preference is not to do that, since that locks you into a particular arrangement of motion for the whole finger. I do like to make draggable poses for whole hand poses that I need frequently (for example: default open, relaxed fingers, vulcan salute, index finger point, hyper extended fingers, peace sign...). Dragging the pose onto the character quickly keys all the necessary bones and if I need something slightly different it's easy to adjust the few bones that need to be different. Video in this post

in case you haven't seen it already... a video about the ever important concept of Spline Continuity http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=365435

I will make more. Just today I was sketching out a planned sequence of lessons. But thinking it through and doing all the footage to explain it in the best way possible is a challenging task. The orphan CP I'd have to spend time trying to recreate. It's a rarity. If it happens more, eventually you'll connect it with something you have done, and tell us what it was. Trial>error>learn.

You're right, A:M is great for mechanical models too. I wouldn't model with anything else. But if you were ONLY making mechanical models then your life might go faster with an app that can, for example, automatically bevel an edge. You can make great bevels in A:M but it's not as easy as a with a strong polygon modeler. For me, it's not a deal killer, I prefer A:M when I consider all the things that are easier. I think you were really close with what you had, there were just a couple bumps to diagnose. After you have made some more models you will start to see the bumps before you hit them.

Does it not give you a save dialog at all? Try a different browser first

I think it's a case of the alpha channel not being tight enough. I took it into PS and saw there were still areas where the alpha channel wasn't quite making it to the black edge of the drawing. For a quick fix I... Under "Selection" I did "Load Selection" of the the alpha channel with "invert" checked", did "Grow" several times, Filled the selected area of the Alpha channel with black resaved Black_Dog_revisedAlpha.zip Some parts like the tassels still have a white edge, they would need to be tightened by hand some more. Also drawing a black border all around the perimeter of the figure would ensure the alpha channel is catching no white pixels.

That does look like an alpha channel problem. Can you post the image?

I hope you won't go away mad! We're all trying to help. I bring up the face rigging because I'm looking "big picture" I presume you're not only wanting to make signs, I presume you really want to make characters. If mechanical modeling is the main goal then A:M is not your best choice, if only because it does take more time to do some of the things mechanical models typically do. But i think you're not just here for mechanical models, so I point out that A:M will be the better choice for a lot of things that go into character animation. Making thin mesh models out of splines DOES require a bit more understanding of how it all is attached together. It is not as simple as straight lines connecting simple points, unfortunately. The upside of that is... it's not straight lines connecting simple points , you get a lot of shape out of a little bit of data. Have you watched my NewTAoA:M "Lesson 1"? It's free! One of my goals there is to introduce the very new user to "the spline". Future lessons will expand on that.

One way of doing wavy distortion is to model a transparent distortion glass. Wavy transparent object with refraction and no color. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...post&p=9311 But you need to restrict its effect to the plume of the jet exhaust... hmmm....

Shorter answer to your question: No, it's not supposed to be harder, we don't want it to be harder, but it is, a little bit, for this task. We might ask the same if we were rigging a face with Blender. One of my Facebook acquaintances has been posting his progress on rigging a face he modeled. He's been going at it for weeks and can just get the mouth to open a bit satisfactorily. I can get that same thing going on an A:M face in an hour maybe: mouth.mov Blender is a lot harder for this task.

There's the core misstep at the outset... approaching splining as if it is variation of polygon modeling. A very common misstep among people who have been using polygon modelers but it's still a misstep. If you start out wrong it WILL BE HARD to get right again. No, A:M is NOT intended as the fastest modeler of angular mechanical models, although fine work is done in that area. A:M IS intended as a great platform for modeling, rigging and animating characters. That's where the thin meshes, the splines and patches become advantageous. That said, I feel comfortable making any mechanical thing I need also. Good splining IS much easier if you think through the shape of your object at the start and use strategy in placing your splines. That pre-thinking WILL be harder for some people. For me, i see the splines i need as soon as I see the object. That comes with practice. The sign post is not a bad first project. I'm sure it is taking longer than Blender but you're not a novice in Blender. How long did the first model in Blender take? And will you ever be able to model and rig a character in Blender? Really the only serious bump in the sign project was the 5-pointer that wouldn't close and we solved that one. And many lessons learned along the way.

the modeling ones are all good and fundamental. They are a good start. The animation ones are a bit basic and do not exploit the timeline as I would like to see, but no harm is done by doing the ones that are there. My own hope is to make a better explanation of rigging than "Show some backbone" but it does show one method to get a rig in a character. the ones on materials, cloth, particles are niche interests but they are decent brief introductions to huge topics.

Testing the Circus Media Cap Wizard a bit... it gives more predictable results if you use it on a spline that is on a vertical plane, a spline drawn in the front view.

Cool, John!

You must be doing it in a vary particular way. If I do that, the Five-pointer button will turn on but it still doesn't make the patch fill in.

How many water droplets?

Ah.... HA! ProblemCP.mov

Hey that's looking real good! I'm stumped on that one. Do any of our spline gurus have any theories?

What is that thing you are making at the top of the thread, anyway?

Sorry, i missed that. They are in the User Properties for the model under "Rig"

DirectX is still Windows-only according to the always-reliable Wikipedia.

A quick perusal of articles on the Web suggests OpenGL was superior at first, overtaken by Direct3D in the 2000's, but now it is unclear which is more powerful. It doesn't seem that OpenGL is in decline anymore. It's rare for a GPU to not support it.

This sort of machined-object surface is challenging in A:M. Your solution with the dead-end spline will probably be fine in most cases since the patches are sitting on flat planes, especially if this is a small prop. Here's a topology that bevels the edge of the indent and avoids a dead-end spline. Much bias fiddling would be needed to make it finished looking. Forum member Rob_T posed a similar problem. You can see my suggested solution here... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=367635

Thanks! That there is the core concept of CG animation work flow (and most hand drawn animation, too). You nail down the big landmarks of your performance and then refine the motion by staking out smaller and smaller landmarks in between. Also known as "Pose to Pose" animation.