robcat2075

third variation that follows the smoke to extinction posted at top now there is no image! It's all "streaks".

thanks! I've added another version in the first post

a stab at that slowly wafting smoke action. slowCigH.mov It's streaks, no gravity, low velocity, low viscosity, and two forces moving thru the smoke column. Update: slight variation and longer take slowCigBH.mov Update II: another take with slight sideways draft that follows the smoke to its demise slowCigCH.mov Update III: WIlliamGaylord asks test of emitter on moving cigarette slowCigDH.mov Here's the PRJ slowparticles8c_cigMoving.prj The initial problem was that an Emitter Rate that looks good when the cig is stationary is invisible when it moves fast. That's probably pretty close to reality, but just to try, I'm pumping up the rate during the transitions to make a visible smoke trail. With some more trial and error I could get those changes feathered out more and less obvious. I'm pleased with how well simple streaks work for this. It also appears that a long standing problem with A:M particles has been fixed. In the past particles were all born in clumps at the project frame rate. A fast moving emitter would leave puffs behind it rather than a smooth stream. But now they seem to be spaced appropriately between frames.

here's a sample PRJ that shows slow drifting streak particles. slowparticles3.prj slowM400.mov it uses very large particles that are 99% transparent. (this is why they don't show in the chor) more particles, more transparent would make better smoke. they have no gravity, low velocity, very slight viscosity, long life. one large weak force with weak turbulence hits them to disperse them slightly. I'm not saying this is your finished effect. This is proof of concept that such things can be done. With fine tuning of the various elements I think any desired effect can be had.

Lightlists. A light can be made to illuminate only certain objects

That is really charming! I like the hairstyle on him and the whole look.

You're right. Sprites have no real volume so they can't shade like real shapes. I think that effect is a bit more like a fluid simulation. Think of an aquarium filled with clear water and then pouring a half cup of milk into it. If you filmed that in super slow motion and turned it upside down you'd get something like that mushroom cloud effect. I think that's actually been done in some movies. Could A:M fluids do that? maybe. You'd have to learn a lot about what the various settings do. BTW, isn't it amazing that someone can DRAW that smoke? -someone did some cigarette smoke here recently -high viscosity slows particle motion -does baking particle make keyframes? If so, you could stretch them out to slow things down.

a touch of rimlight from behind the characters would really help define them without making them too light. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=299467.

Yes, what have you done with the real "flashawd"? The one who's done all those shorts and has actual paying clients. Untie him immediately.

SHIFT-8 will toggle hair and particle rendering on/off In Tools>Customize>Commands>Draw there is a button for that you can drag to any of your button panels.

Thanks!

If you're brave you can use a text editor to search and replace "Error Loading String: 5002" with "Relationship" and resave the file.

That's interesting. Mark is right that it wont' stop the rig from working. I've found that saving the model, restarting A:M and reloading it would fix most errors. But i guess that didn't work for you. However, I notice that when I rigged your Fly it all came out perfectly with no errors at all. Maybe it's because of V15f. Steffen mentioned that it has some new kind of code in it that previous versions did not. Save your version that is from before you ran Rigger for when you get updated to V15f and try again then.

Did you do a search on "clouds"? There were several threads there that had some good hints. like this one don't stop reading after the first post.

I'm glad this came up because most people don't know that TSM2 has a solution for unusual bodies. If you can post a version of the model with no bones I'll add it to the top post.

Looks Spiffy!

Here's case study of rigging a non-standard, non-biped, character with TSM2. TSM2 does bipeds, and quadrupeds, and for any other odd creature you may dream up it has an a la carte menu of body parts to choose from. The "Parts" tab in TSM2 Builder is used for this character I. Assessing the character, choosing body parts, TSM Builder, Moving leg bones into place FlyRigging0001H264.mov II. A few cautions about moving bones, positioning arm and head bones FlyRigging0002H264.mov III. TSM Flipper, Assigning CPs, TSM Rigger, Testing the rig FlyRigging0003H264.mov Here's a boneless version of the Fly so you may follow along if you wish. Fly.zip This is an hour of video. It goes faster when you're not explaining it along the way. But really, an hour is not bad to go from zero to a rigged character that you can animate. PixelPlucker's character was intentionally a very low-spline model so there wasn't much talk here about fan bones or smart skin or CP Weighting since it didn't need them. But that's really a discipline separate from what a "rig" does anyway.

hit PageUp to increase the subdivision level

When you say "anime look with realistic texture"... that seems like complete opposites to me. hmmm... -right now you have a single uniform color for all the skin. Real skin has slightly different coloration in lots of different places. For example the cheeks might be a little redder, the eyelids might be darker... You have to really study some reference to see those things but they are there. You'd paint a color map for this -real skin has pores and fine lines. You'd paint a bump map for those. Again, study reference real well.

Here's some annotation and commentary on a custom TSM2 script My original, unannotated custom finger script is in this post: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=273221 but here, I've added comments ;like this after the semicolons, this is not allowed in a real TSM2 script. open the "advfinger.mdl" from the Components folder of TSM2 in A:M and follow along as the script refers to the various bones. Be careful not to resave it. It needs to remain in V11 format. hide "advfinger" hide "advfinger2" hide "advfinger3" hide "advfinger4" those were the "metatarsal", first bone, second bone and third bone inthe finger respectively "hide" made all those geometry bones invisible Next, we make our first new control bone, name it and position it create a bone called "finger control1" ; this makes a named bone, TSM will add numbers and "left" or "right" as it repeats this script for separate fingers with parent the parent of "advfinger" ;this gets the new bone a place in the heirearchy as a child of "hand", which is the parent of the parent of "advfinger" with start point of "advfinger2"; with end point of "advfinger2"; the bone has the same start and end points as "advfinger2" with roll of "advfinger2"; and the same roll basically same drill for the next two control bones : create a bone called "finger control2" with parent "finger control1"; notice that it is child of bone just created with start point of "advfinger3" with end point of "advfinger3" with roll of "advfinger3" create a bone called "finger control3" with parent "finger control2" with start point of "advfinger4" with end point of "advfinger4" with roll of "advfinger4" Now we can start adding fan bones: create a bone called "advfinger1fanA" with parent "advfinger"; it is a child of that metatarsal bone with start point the end of "advfinger" ; it begins at the tip of that bone with the rotation of "advfinger" ; it points in the same direction as "advfinger" with the length of 3; why 3? just a guess, may not be conveniently sized, ;but doesn't really matter, the bone will be hidden that was one fan bone. we make two more starting from the same point, but shorter and shorter so all three aren't exactly superimposed: create a bone called "advfinger1fanB" with parent "advfinger" with start point the end of "advfinger" with the rotation of "advfinger" with the length of 2 hidden ; this hides the bone, I'm not sure why I didn't do that on the first one create a bone called "advfinger1fanC" with parent "advfinger" with start point the end of "advfinger" with the rotation of "advfinger" with the length of 1 hidden I think I left the first fanbone unhidden so I could click on it in the model window and make the PWS open up to that bone. I'd manually hide the bone later. this next section creates similar fan bones on the end of the first finger bone and the end of the second finger bone: create a bone called "advfinger2fanA" with parent "advfinger2" with start point the end of "advfinger2" with the rotation of "advfinger2" with the length of 3 create a bone called "advfinger2fanB" with parent "advfinger2" with start point the end of "advfinger2" with the rotation of "advfinger2" with the length of 2 hidden create a bone called "advfinger2fanC" with parent "advfinger2" with start point the end of "advfinger2" with the rotation of "advfinger2" with the length of 1 hidden create a bone called "advfinger3fanA" with parent "advfinger3" with start point the end of "advfinger3" with the rotation of "advfinger3" with the length of 3 create a bone called "advfinger3fanB" with parent "advfinger3" with start point the end of "advfinger3" with the rotation of "advfinger3" with the length of 2 hidden create a bone called "advfinger3fanC" with parent "advfinger3" with start point the end of "advfinger3" with the rotation of "advfinger3" with the length of 1 hidden The indenting in my script goes unnoticed by TSM2, but it helps me give some visual organization to the script. OK, we're done making bones. On to the constraints... in on/off pose unprefixed "TSM constraints" ; creates the entry you see in your pose window. ; "unprefixed" means there wont' be a "right" and "left" version of this. ; if another script had already created the "TSM Constraints" these new constraints would be added to it ; instead of making an additional "TSM Constraints" pose. orient like constrain "advfinger2" to "finger control1" orient like constrain "advfinger3" to "finger control2" orient like constrain "advfinger4" to "finger control3"; those three lines made the geometry bones follow the visible control bones aim at constrain "advfinger" to "finger control1"; the metatarsal bone isn't directly controlled, it points to the first finger bone and is moved by translating the base of the first finger bone This section was a bit different from the original TSM2. I abandoned the scheme where the last two bones of the finger are controlled by one bone. Each one has a dedicated control bone now. I could have put the fan constraints in TSM2 but decided to keep them separate in on/off pose unprefixed "finger fans" compensated orient like constrain "advfinger1fanA" to "advfinger2" ;"compensated" means "use offsets" at enforcement 70% ; if I didn't use this line the enforcement would be 100% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger1fanB" to "advfinger1fanA" at enforcement 60% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger1fanC" to "advfinger1fanB" at enforcement 30% I'm not sure why I didn't just constrain those all to "advfinger2" instead of one fanbone to the next. It would have made more sense. But anyway, we do the same thing for the other fanbone sets... compensated orient like constrain "advfinger2fanA" to "advfinger3" at enforcement 70% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger2fanB" to "advfinger2fanA" at enforcement 60% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger2fanC" to "advfinger2fanB" at enforcement 30% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger3fanA" to "advfinger4" at enforcement 70% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger3fanB" to "advfinger3fanA" at enforcement 60% compensated orient like constrain "advfinger3fanC" to "advfinger3fanB" at enforcement 30% Even though there wasn't any mention of "right" or "left" or specific finger numbers in this script, TSM2 manages the task of adding those on all the different fingers it creates. When you write your own scripts there are two signs that you have made a mistake: -if you refer to a bonename that doesn't exist (or misspell one) , A:M will crash. -if you misspell a TSM2 command or even have some stray punctuation mark, TSM2 will stop running the script but give visible sign You can try to determine where it stopped from what got done and what didn't get done. Writing new scripts for TSM2 isn't an official feature and was never recommended or supported by Anzovin, it just happens to be possible to do. Since new scripts need to have an identical name as an existing script, remember to save a copy of your creations in another folder with some additional identifying text in the name.

You can always scale in the chor, but if you want to change the model you can go to bones mode, click in the window until the Black model bone flashes, then hit S, hold down CTRL and use the scale manipulator to change the model, bones and all.

Hey, good to see you back here, Rich!

Another great looking character!

"realistic" means a million different things. Post a picture and say what you want different and someone might have a suggestion.

However, you may get more looks if you put them in the Newbies or Animation:Master forum rather than "Off Topic" Maybe Rodney will happen by and move this.