robcat2075

Thanks, Fuchur, and thanks for being the go-to guy for A:M-to-game knowledge!

For control freaks who need to precisely choreograph the coin's death... here's an all manual approach, made easy with bones: CoinRoll_600.mov mp4 version: CoinRoll_600.mp4 RollingCoin03.prj the "Ground level" bone moves the coin around the center. The "axis" bone is a child of the "Ground level" bone and is the axis of the coin and has two poses. One pose keeps it tilted toward the origin of the "Ground level" bone. The other is a slider that moves it closer to the origin of the "Ground level" bone. I only had to make keyframes at the beginning and the end: the "Ground level" bone turns 1440°, 4 revolutions the "axis" bone is spun on Z to make the coin "roll" ( I just eyeballed it quickly, it's not exact here.) the slider moves from 0 to 100 % to move the coin closer to the center.

Muscle animation is for meshes that you need to make some shape-changing change to. A rolling coin wouldn't need to do that. Animating it with bones sounds most likely.

He's very flexible!

Remote control greetings!

What is that?

It's Real Close Now. NoMatterB_2.mov

Best wishes, Paul V.!

If that's v16, screencam it, that would be a good A:M report.

Successories! Looks like one little patch isn't taking its decal well. Maybe a CP got moved?

I think its greatest use may be for quickly blocking in mouth poses for dialog, something that typically involves a number of bones or controls that , for polishing and nuance, need to be not locked to each other as a pose slider control does. There's a $200 add-on for Maya that has the same functionality.

You have to try to imagine where the center of all that mass is. The center of gravity on a person varies depending on how he's standing or bending or crouching or slouching or whatever.

It downloaded for me. Try later or possibly with another browser.

Mine is not really an exploration of the best timing. It's in the ball park, but there are others. Mostly I just wanted to show it's possible to pose his weight farther forward so when he's jumping it really is over his toes when he is pushing with his legs. All your legs can really do is push your body straight away from where ever they are touching. So if you want to go straight away from the earth (up) you need the body to be up from (above) the contact point. If the weight is not directly over, some front or back motion will happen. Look at these three cases. The blue arrow is where they are contacting the ground. Where is each one's mass in relation to that point? The first one is obviously not able to jump straight up from his pose. the second is close but sill has his mass behind the contact point. Only the last one of these is really posed to go straight up when he straightens out

How about putting the sky on a plate behind him so the camera can still move in?

Will the lighting be brighter on my shot? Right now it's so dark I can't see anything unless I turn on the wireframe.

I suppose the basic goal is -move weight over the toes while he's crouching -keep the weight over the toes while he's jumping and landing -move the weight back towards the heels as he recovers You've pretty much got that going. His feet are very long so it may not look right to shift him so far forward from his standing position, but I'd experiment to see how close you could get so he'd really be pushing up from where his toes are contacting the floor. You may already be at the happy medium. (His toes are still wandering below the ground.) Here's my quick attempt at getting his weight further forward over the toes during the pushing and landing poses. This is just the key poses and I dont' feel i have it quite right. jumpingBlockedD.prj It would probably be helpful to shoot someone from the side doing this jump-in-place to really see when the hips and body are moved forward and back. That would be a good thing for you to do to investigate this further.

I like that one, trying to figure out where up is.

I like the up and down motion better. I thing you've got the slow in and out at the top going well. Yes, he does look like he's leaning backwards during his jump. He's probably in the air a bit too long and that's what gives it the moon-gravity look, but overall this is much improved.

Here's basically the whole performance. I'm not proud of the fist pump, I might find something less to do. Still need to do the actual lip motions and some facial expression and overall polishing. NoMatter_600.mov

There's probably a similar dead end spline on the other side of the hand? I'd just continue them to meet in a CP in the middle. You won't be able to use a hook as a side of the 5-ponters that are already there. However...first trick to try to make a five pointer... select all 5 points, then hit the period key twice.

How do the other programs pick a new rotation center that is not the 0,0,0 and is not something else selected?

That's the way it works. It rotates around whatever is currently selected and that's the model bone if nothing else is selected. If you are working on some far-flung part of the model you could temporarily move the model bone out there (don't use the translate manipulator). Just remember to move it back to 0,0,0 when you are done.

A video you might find very illuminating at this point is my "Keyframing basics", which you can find in the screencam tuts link in my signature.

So that's actual A:M hair on that guy, right? That's a pretty good 'do.