robcat2075

It may be possible to splice group surface settings into a material in a text editor. save simple examples of both and look at them to see the file structure.

looks like trouble!

Hold on there. Those hooks you have coming out of the top of the head are not hooks. If you've done it right there won't be a red CP there. If you're trying to attach a hook where there's already a CP you wont' get a hook. Delete the CP where you think you're making a hook. There should not be a CP there, before or after.

Here's another tactic. This uses a light on a spline in the shape of the spot of sun on the ground for the bounce off the floor and another traversing a hemisphere spline outside the window for the sky light. Fewer lights but they are jittered over more angles. Still just Z-buffered Kleig Lights more passes gets smoother results 16 passes 1:27 49 passes 3:44 100 passes 7:25 256 passes 19:14 Those are not bad times for nuanced lighting effects. It's entirely possible that with more lighting skill those times could be cut down.

For confused Americans, on US Keyboards it's the "." key. Our keyboard layout is rather different than European ones it seems.

Here's the book. It's the world's foremost guide to CG lighting. He says so in the introduction. It's not a set of step-by-step tutorials but more of a discussion of concepts and how basic techniques are used for different purposes. It's mostly application non-specific, but after I finish it I may write a set of annotations to translate the few things that are different in A:M. For example, what he calls a "point light" is a "bulb light" in A:M. The good news is that A:M seems not to be lacking in CG lighting tools. I'm only on the second chapter but I'd recommend it to someone who is wondering about lighting. Make sure you get the second edition. Here are the lights in my shot

You can also use hooks to reduce some splines coming out of the eye sockets before they have to loop around the back of the head.

I'm reading Jeremy Birn's book "Digital Lighting and Rendering" and trying some of the stuff he talks about. This is a room lit with just simple z-buffered kleig lights. This renders in 75 seconds. The one in the book is much better but I'll get there.

looks snazzy.

Hooks are simple things and the giraffe tut probably covers most o f it. A hook can be connected to the 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 point of the spline it hooks to, so potentially you could have 3 hooks attaching between 2 CPs. I avoid that and stick with just one in the mid point.

A typical round cross section like a neck or a torso or a leg might have 8 CPs and you've got... 30? Yeah that's a lot. the head needs quite a few splines for the spikes at the top but those can be terminated in hooks before they stretch all the way down the face. Not a bad model , even with the excessive splines!

If you haven't already, you may want to watch my "Keyframing Options" video. In the Screencam tuts link in my signature.

yeah.. Help>reset settings.

I've got f, g, h, and i installed in different folders on the same PC and they seem to not bother each other. All i needed to do was copy the master.lic file to each installation folder.

this would be the anticipation pose here, such as it is... ...it rears back before it leaps forward. I suppose we could anticipate that anticipation. I'm sure that would be gilding the lily however.

hard to know what is wrong without the action. You know you can change the stride length number. make it a bit longer, a bit shorter... There will always be a bit of slipping if your character is on a curved path.

I can understand that. It did sound like a rather large scale project. But hopefully you learned some things that will be useful on whatever do next.

Dave, he's doing fantasy art, not a documentary. It's like when Frank Frazetta paints a warrior woman in a string bikini even though she lives in an ice cave. when that variation is wanted it really oughta be the result of something you intentionally animated by varying the emitter rate, not a precise, every 24th of a second variation.

Kevin Detwiler (detbear) has been doing work with combining vue backgrounds and A:M animation. He may have some notes on that when he's done with his project.

is that a starfish on his hump?

Correction: this is for if you intend to animate the orientation of the bone in the chor. I can reorient the bone without that while I am still in the relationship that set the path constraint.

You don't want a translate compensate. Turn "Apply before action" ON so you can re orient the bone.

After you constrain the bone to the spline, set the "ease" in the path constraint properties to define where on the spline the bone places itself.

That's good casting. I think the hats help a lot. My suggestion would be to not put the BOTH in chairs.

I got an idea for a movie so one thing I want do do this year is write an actual screenplay for it and possibly storyboard it. I've done almost none of either previously.. In the mean time I'll keep doing related experiments in A:M to see if what i want to do is feasible.