robcat2075

Proper Normal maps are quite festive looking things like the top image in Holmes' post here

Wow, that looks sharp!

Yes. A normal map is a color image with different color channels storing the angle of the "normal" at each pixel. Almost impossible to paint one by hand. I'm surprised the gray map did anything! There was a tut found on here a while back that showed how to extract a normal map from photos of real object but it depended on the objects being all white.

Great looking characters as always! But you're never going to animate them?

How much ram do you have now? What's the most your mother board will take?

Even though it looks stiff in this blocking stage, this is an important step to do because this is where you can judge how your main poses work in sequence, if they work themselves at all, if they can be improved. This is where you can test out the main milestones of the action. At this stage it's easy to make big changes to your performance without losing a lot of polishing work. The hard part is showing it to someone who doesn't have your vision of what it might look like when it's finished. It's very difficult for them to see the potential. But if you start out at the beginning and try to progressively do each moment perfect you are investing a lot of time into your first guess at the performance which may not be your best idea.

Nice model. When I was little "the LEM" was my favorite thing to make a paper model of.

I think the #1 rigging issue is the shoulder area. It looks rather awkward when the upper arms rotate on their Z and when the shoudler raise up and down. The #1 animation problem is what i call the "everything at the same time" syndrome. This is when the character moves the body parts all start at the same instant, move all together to their destination and then stop together. It makes for a very rigid look. For example: the arm fling gesture she does from 93 (body, arms and hands all begin moving) to 101 (head, body , arms and hands all bounce off their pose then immediately reverse course) to 124 (everyting halts). You may still be in blocking and that's ok, that's what blocking looks like. but moving forward I'd be thinking "how can I loosen up this motion from pose to pose?" The head turn from about 138 to 160 suits my taste much better. Even though the head and shoulder have to turn the same way you've got some contrary motion and overlap going when the head begins by anticipating away from the camera even as the shoulder have started turning toward it. That looks so much better! As far as the performance I think these choices can work, but there will be many using this gambit of a character gesturing with his arms as he speaks. I'd say 90% of 11 sec club entries do just that which may be the least effective acting choice. What else could the character be doing in her life, that fits her character, while she's talking about this problem in her life? That's "secondary action" (not to be confused with overlapping action), action that supports the character's situation, but isn't trying to depict the dialog. This is your chance to imply more backstory for the character than is revealed in just the audio. Easy technique... give her a prop to hold in one hand. A mop, a coffee cup, a book, a gun, a coconut... anything. Each one of those would precipitate a different performance from her because each is handled differently and there's a different reason to have each one. And it forces you to not animate those arms as if they have to be mirror partners of each other. Great looking character, Nancy! You are the Queen of non-cliché CG characters.

that looks improved! I'd skip the breasts and do thick eyelashes instead

but clay is smooth, it doesn't have creases.

Welcome to A:M! To take your A:M flag into movie maker and put it over footage in Moviemaker, Moviemaker would have to properly use the alpha channel that rendered with your flag. Don't know what an alpha channel is? It may not matter since I doubt movie maker can use them. What does your Moviemaker manual say about using alpha channels? What formats can your Moviemaker export?

Do you think those little bricks around the pod bay door are rubber bumpers, maybe? So grandma can get in without scuffing up the pod too much?

You can add a light in the model. >new>light it's like a bone you can move in bones mode.

one of the most ancient PC image formats PCX

I'm sure the six-foot penis was a time-consuming adornment. But for that you would have made it.

and that is a free download if you bought the download version of A:M

Good scene. The music is competing with the dialog a bit. It's very dark at the start. Some backlight from "the moon" would help outline them better. There's a few comments about "night" lighting in the tuts link in my sig.

What does that mean? This is a rig you've created yourself?

Have you done the tuts in "The Art of Animation:Master"? There's a head and body tutorial in there.

So the grass texture is something you painted onto a 3D render? Can you show what the parts looked like?

I thought copyright was pretty much all the same in the EU, so just Germany is odd. Maybe it's the Russian Bear.

That's looking nice. Maybe vary the trees a bit more?

Presuming that image is made to match edges properly you could apply it with method>cylindrical to each leg (those are legs, right?) and get nice mapping. Adjust the repeat values to suit.

That's lookin nice!

Where's the distant town?