robcat2075

15 steps is a lot of steps! I bet it would be hard to find a movie where a character takes 15 steps in one shot. Maybe something about your shot needs to be rethought?

Part of the problem is that "The door is stuck" is a bit too big a leap from the previous animation exercises in TAoA:M. Another part is that the strategy of Blocking->Breakdowns->Polishing is not introduced. That would help you approach the task of dong a "scene" in efficient manner. That's a huge concept and probably a bigger one than could be handled in the short tutorials format of the original TAoA:M but I hope to address that in the NewTAoA:M. For now, show us what you have so far and maybe you'll get suggestions. Make sure it's compressed so we can DL it quickly.

That one made it onto a lot of film festivals also. A classic!

I hope you AMReported that.

Do dynamic constraints have any collision detection?

I don't think that's necessary.

2nd edition, pg 153 i found it by going to the Amazon page and did "Search inside" on "wrinkles"

Also... the 7,8,9,0 keys at the top of the keyboard work to do Hold, Linear, Spline, Zero-slope on any currently selected keys.

Rusty... is that an actual person you've modeled? If so, you might take a pic of him with good light and start comparing that and your render and say "what's different between the two and how can I eliminate that?"

If there are groups of bones you like to isolate, as Nancy mentioned, and return to them often, the PWS has Enhanced Selection Filters that make them easy to recall. You could call them in the PWS select them there, and then Tack them in the Timeline to work on them there.

That's the big distinction. You have to select something before it will show in the "Timeline". You can turn on the Tack icon in the upper left corner of the Timeline to make things persist in the Timeline even after you select something else.

On the fine wrinkle lines... In his "Digital Lighting and Rendering" book Jeremy Birne suggests to add some red at the bottom of the wrinkles. Same color all the way through is unnatural.

If you want an extra texturing detail to add... water/rust stains dripping down from the corners of ledges and where metal has been bolted to brick walls.

It's beginning to come back to me... Perhaps the problem is the automatic "ambience intensity" setting of 30% that imported Props seem to get for no great reason. When i drop an imported prop into a chor it's properties get a "Surface" subsection that has this setting exposed and you may reset it to 0. Alternatively, if your prop has decals, they may have a similar property that needs to be reset. Example below . The right vase is an imported OBJ where i've reset it's Ambiance Intensity to 0 so it now resembles the original spline vase.

the model is not black, what is it??

You'll need to expand it to see all the bones. pot a screen shot of what you are looking at.

Gerry is correct. One fine point... the "Timeline" (ALT 2 on PC) shows only what is currently selected. The timeline in the right pane the PWS (ALT 1 on PC) shows everything, always.

I like that! I like the sag on the eye lids and lots of other details. The wrinkle lines are something I was thinking about just this morning... they look a bit too wide. Darkening the scalp would be something to try and on the hair... to avoid the severe doll hair look try fading in the transparency from 100% at the root AND/OR fading in the thickness from 0cm at the root. He does look a bit shiny. add on: is it possible the inside corners of his eyes are too far out?

And you can be a guru too! All you need is the answer to someone's question.

UserProperties>Rig>Setup>IKLegSetup OFF will make the leg bones visible again. (they weren't needed when IK was ON) To make your SmartSkin: Select the bone you wish to base it on :New Smartskin with the Smartskin Window open, turn OFF "Define Relationship" (the linked rings icon) Select the Model in the objects folder to bring up its properties in the properties window. do UserProperties>Rig>Setup>IKLegSetup OFF ( we turned Define Relationship OFF so this choice would not get keyed into your Smartskin) Turn "Define Relationship " back ON and proceed to make your smartskin. I think that's the way it works. Remember when you are animating with an AM2001 character to set Balance and Balance Rigid to zero, do not leave them at their defaults.

Help>Reset Settings would probably suffice for something like that.

In NewTAoA:M I hope to bypass the library entirely. There's nothing you do with A:M that requires an object be there. We did all of TWO without the library. Don't worry about the library.

You dont' really need anything in the library to use them for the tutorials. Loading them manually. If you need just a model from a PRJ, save it out separately and load that.

Exceedingly odd. I like it! Not sure what did the head flip.