robcat2075

There are some useful links in this thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...19&hl=jacob

Welcome to the forum JohnP! AFAIK, you dont' really constrain a path to a surface. A path is a spline and you would have to manually shape that spline to follow your ground surface. (There is a tool coming in v17 that will conform a spline to another mesh's shape.) However, the path constraint itself is a fairly basic thing, it moves an object through space along a path, it's not aware of character animation issues like re-posing feet or a character's posture to accommodate walking up or down an incline. I remember sitting through a Softimage demonstration several years ago where they showed a path constraint that was a bit more aware of this than A:M's. But it still didn't look right. It would not have been acceptable for anything but the most undemanding pre-vis work. In finer animation most walks, inclined or otherwise, will be posed out step-by-step.

If I'm working on animation and the models are already "final" and saved separately then i just save chors and let the chor load whatever models it needs. We did all of TWO like that. When I'm doing experimental stuff like building/rigging a model and maybe have a chor set up that I'm testing it in along the way, I like to save PRJs with everything embedded so I can always backtrack to a complete self-contained environment. And either way I'm always saving with incremented version numbers, I never save over old files.

Smokin'! How long before someone gets it down to a minute?

Hey, I remember that one! That's a cute one. Good movie making.

there is preroll for particles but not for cloth AFAIK However you dont' have to render every frame cloth is in , you can render the one frame you like by setting your render range when you go to render. You DO have to let a cloth simulation run long enough for cloth to settle into the place you want it. So you will have "animation" in your chor... the cloth settles into place... but you only have to render the frame at the end that you like if that's all you need.

How about if you go ahead and let the center CP get selected when you are doing the weighting on that side, then go back and fix the weight on that center CP individually?

I just did some cloth yesterday in v16 and didn't see anything odd. Can you post a test PRJ with something odd?

Good looking test! I'd suggest more "drag" to the cloth to make it less flippy and tone down that head nod.

I like that vantage point!

You can't say you're just a kid anymore, welcome to 21 and up!

ouch! looking forward to next installment!

I bet you could use Luuk's AMTrak to mocap the puppeting... put some markers on your hand and shoot that.

Good looking trailer!

I interpreted the dark slash on the picture as the surface suddenly sloping so you'd need a spline at the start and end of the slope which is what the two blue lines attempted to stake out. I could be judging that entirely wrong. I probably am. However, you need to know that shape before you model it or you'll never know when you've got it. You might look up more, clearer reference pics. Or perhaps you have that bow?

You always make great characters!

you're making me dizzy.

It has something to do with the hook that is in the middle of that spline. Try selecting the points you want from another angle, with the lasso tool and make sure not to include the end of the hook.

Since the camera will always be seeing from the same angle, some props could be flat cards.

That's a great object for extruding. A great object for spline modeling. Roger is on the right track by suggesting extruding and I think you can do the whole thing with extrusion. For the hand grip portion, study the shape closely and know what the cross section shapes are. Start with the shape at eh bottom of the handle. I bet 8 or maybe even just 4 CPs could shape it. then extrude that once and reshape the new loop to match the shape of the cross section at the next major land mark. then extrude again to the next part. Just giving it a quick look I'd think the major spline rings might land where I've marked in blue, basically where ever the contour starts changing again.

Also... the biggest reason to animate in the chor is that you can see how the camera sees your animation. That's all the audience will see and you need to look good for that viewpoint.

possibly this is a permissions thing? Did you install as Administrator?

I think what you needed to do was save the master0.lic file before you wiped out that last install. I hope you still have it somewhere. In the trash?

Remember that PRJs only contain links to their images. I f you put the images in a zip with the PRJ we'll get it all.

We'd have to see you do it but my first guess is you have doubled splines of some sort.