robcat2075

Those look fabulous!

The long-awaited conclusion, Part C, in which we create the baggy pantsed Penguin look. This is a case where our traditional tactic of rotating spline rings around a joint doesn't get the look we want and we need to look deeper into A:M's rigging toolbox for an alternate strategy. This one runs a bit longer due to some unexpected bumps but you get to see me claw my way out of them. Penguin_Rigging_C_Weighting_CPs.mov

Here's an alternate strategy for getting a foot bone at the heel without adding that extra Foot Control bone. Although I called the extra bone a "mistake" it's really a matter of workflow and there are advantages either way. Kinematic_with_Offset.mov This is not "Part 3" yet.

I haven't forgotten part 3. I found a possible bug in a plugin and got distracted with that. But I'll get to part 3. In the meantime, here's a small goof fix tidbit: Mirror_a_Bone_Manually.mov

I like that! I'll try to take a more detailed look at it. One thing I notice first is the way her arm and sword move as a rigid unit at the end of her second swing, everything reverses direction instantly with no overlap. More generally... that's got to be a heavy sword but she swings it about as if it were a cardboard prop. I don't know much about sword play. One thing that bothers me in movies is that they always look like they are trying to miss (which they are), but your character doesn't look like she's trying to miss!

I'm going to say you're doing something fundamentally wrong. I can't think of a time that weights have disappeared on me. Can you show a case of it happening?

I tell people A:M is not intended to provide every possible means of CG production, A:M is intended as an end-to-end pipeline for narrative animation, meaning you want to tell stories with characters. Do you want to pre-test the optics of a 17-element zoom lens you've designed? A:M is not for that. Do you want to study the efficiency of a coolant flowing through an internal combustion engine? A:M is not for that. But if you want to tell a story about a guy who sees something very odd with his zoom lens or a story about someone who gets stranded in a strange place when his engine overheats, that's what people do with A:M. My pitch would be... buy the $80 subscription, give it a fair shot and if you love it the extras will be there waiting for you.

I found my comparison thread... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...80&hl=brand I guess A:M was more than a hair faster. Fine print: My knowledge of Maya is far less than that of A:M, it's possible I wasn't using Maya to its full advantage. But i was following the manual to set things up as similarly as possible. A sun light is a sun light and a cylinder is a cylinder, I figure. It's also possible that, like A:M, Maya has become more clever and faster since that 2007 version. I haven't bothered to upgrade Maya to find out; A:M already does everything I need.

Can you post one of the decals?

Regarding the speed of your CPU...anything you have in a computer today is way better than what we had a few years ago and still did lots of stuff with. There will always be something faster out there teasing us.

In the interest of full disclosure one should note that GPU in A:M is in the very earliest stages of development. There isn't a beta of it we can all test yet and we dont' know how much of A:M's functionality can be made to work with things like that. A:M renders about the same speed as other similar apps that do 3D. A while back I compared the speed of A:M vs. Maya on CPU intensive scenes and found that they were either the same or A:M was a hair faster. That was with v13, A:M has gotten about 50% faster since then.

Thanks Rodney! I just happen to be reading a book on storyboarding at this time.

I like that. I was thinking of "Rear-er-er Window" but I like Front better

Part B tests out the bones and CP weighting and adds the simple IK leg constraints. Penguin_Rigging_B_Testing_Bones_and_Constraints.mov the next part will look a special penguin problems

I'm not sure if they should or shouldn't be there. Just to try... delete the groups, save the cloth and deflector materials copy the mesh only to another blank model window, save the new model, restart, load the new model, load the two materials recreate the groups and drop the materials on them does it sim?

The concept is "Rear Window". It's entirely from the viewpoint of someone in a building across the street. Much like BUS STOP was entirely from one view point.

Looks like the same thing repeating over and over... have you tried pruning it?

Yes, I get error messages when it can't do a simulation. If you get a crash with your sample PRJ you should change your report's "severity to "crash"

Nice bus! I like the varied windows. Needs an identifying number so no one gets on the wrong bus.

Here's the first installment. This is just the stuff that has to happen before we get rigging... essential housekeeping. Penguin_Rigging_A_Housekeeping.mov

I like that!

Good lookin' set, Mark! of course, those are all "front" windows....

There's something odd about Invisusira23, when i try to select the "DeflectorBody" group A:M goes to "Not responding" for a while.

I get the same outcome. V15 works and v16 doesn't. I just reported it and it looks like you have too!

My opinion is... you don't need the library at all. Open and load files from the CD like you would open and load files from any hard drive location.