robcat2075

The front angle is the weakest since we can't see the bend in his legs. I liked the lay out you had in "Shot4" the best of all so far. Here's another rule about falling and jumping objects: when they are falling down, like he does after he swooped up a bit, they can't slow down before they touch the ground. Gravity accelerates them until some other force can counter act it like the pressure of the leg on the ground. But until that toe or heel touches he can't slow down. Of course he's a superhero with flight powers, but I see it like he turned off his invisible jet pack at the top of that last hump and falls to his feet from there. I sort of imagine the motion like he came down a ski jump shoot and the plopped down right in front of it.

That took me a few hours too. I always think it's going to be fast and it never is. I do like your concept of the shot. I like that small dot in the sky that grows into a whole guy.

The first thing I notice about that is that when he settles down for that landing his butt is moving pretty much straight down and then does an L turn and starts moving forward the moment his heels touch. That would not be a normal path. Here's sort to what i imagine you're going for, if we just watched it from the side. I didn't animate the arms at all for this quickie. LandingToe.mov

you can land on your toes too and then have the heel contact next. That's probably what we do more often in real life. But I've never jumped over a 10 story building. I'd say landing on heels is more graphic, toes is more real. Although I may have seen some Superman drawings where he leads with a toe. Hmmm... Someone jumping and skipping rope maybe never touches with their heel at all.

I actually liked the shot 4 version better. One rule of jumping and landing is to always re-contact the ground with (nearly) fully extended legs, maybe even tippy toes, so the legs can have their full travel to cushion the mass of the body as it falls. The more they can bend the more they can seem to be opposing large mass. I had some notes on jumping and landing here

Welcome to the forum! It's easy. onthe chor in the PWS or in a blank spot inthe chor window and do "save as"

When they do a take, i imagine their eye popping up off that stalk and plopping back down on it again.

Simplest solution is to start the second action with the pose that ends the first action. And I agree with Xtaz that he oughta crouch down way more before he leaps.

Charming. Is the yellow rain coat called a Macintosh or am i imagining that?

render as lines and turn on "Glow"

Spring systems were part of the old cloth system. A "Cloth Wizard" would run thru a selected mesh and set up a spring system unit between each pair of CPs. Unless you can find more info about it that tells of exotic uses, I 'd say SimCloth, Dynamic constraints and Newton Physics have super-ceded anything it did and made it more easy to do.

Much improved!

That judgment is a bit harsh. Not even close to being a "Worst Movie". Is that channel dedicated to pirating Sparkplug Films? Getting any animated feature done is pretty much a miracle i think. I only saw four animators listed. I guess you did a big chunk of that, Holmes? That's an accomplishment in itself.

Much better splining on the bottle! Simpler is usually better. On something like this it's good to get one thing going at a time. Like first, the glass bottle with nothing else. I changed the bottle outline just a little bit. and made a new glass material, using an "edge gradient". It makes the edges of an object look different than the middle. Glass is like that... more reflective and less transparent at the edge than the middle. Look a t that and see how it works then try adding the cola. CokeBottleRevised01.prj

Of course windows 7 didn't exist when v12 was made, but in general I don't know that old windows programs are NOT compatible. Anyone? (I'm still on W2K) this help? http://lifehacker.com/5466628/learn-to-use...with-older-apps or this? http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows...p/compatibility

You mean the installer won't run?

I just saw the Celestial dragon, looks very cool.

First I think you have WAY more spline rings than you need. Typically you strive to have just a CP at each peak and valley point along a contour. The "glass" needs to have thickness. model it with inside and outside. If you want liquid inside that will be another enclosed shape that slightly overlaps the inside of the glass. As far as the materials, don't' use translucency. The "Specular Render shader" set to "Glossy" will help with some glass looks. Turn "Plugin Shaders" ON when rendering When you render it you will need to have it in an environment that shows detail behind the glass or you won't be able to see the effect of the refraction.

This is the one part I worry about. I recommend you be way ahead of your students before you start them.

I watched the video. Cool stuff. Those monsters take a licking and keep on ticking!

That looks much improved. I might suggest spacing the 3-ring s at the elbows and knees a little bit farther from each other so the two outside ones don't overlap when the joint bends.

They also gave you the link to the additional models on the CD. This was in your confirmation email...

Is it in this thread? http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=291556

That turned out real well! I like that you did it without dialog. Congratulations. I bet that was a hit at the festival.

My experience is that environment maps work better for complex surface shapes. A simple button shape like that may need that you do actual off-screen things for reflections. Simple, flatish shapes tend to reveal the pixels in the map also If you look at my car paint tests you can see that the glossy reflections look better in the still done with off screen white cards, than in the animation done with an environment map.