robcat2075

looks good. I guess directors say "cut!" in German too?

Once TSM puts bones in a model they're just like any other bones you might put in a model. Bones don't disappear because the model got saved.

Cartoon characters seems to have an irresistable urge to find xylophones in the world around them. I enjoyed that very much, guys!

Post some wireframes of it and you'll probably get some tips on where you might economize the splineage without losing detail. If you do use TSM2 to rig it , do not do it without reading the pdf manual that gets installed with TSM2 and doing a practice run on the sample character they provide.

I've never ever, ever, ever, ever, had one fall apart. You're doing something colossally wrong.

Are you animating the emitter rate in the Chor? Enable Show more than drivers.

Here's one with very dense cloth. I guess you could just find one sim that got the cloth to fall how you like it and then only need to edit the decal until it looked right. tinboxClothHi.prj

now with shrink-wrapped label TinBoxCloth.mov tinboxCloth.prj Edit: forgot the decal...

Forget my previous suggestion. Here's how... a ) crop decal to the limits of the outer circle b ) in Photoshop ... Filters>Distort>Polar Coordinates>Polar to Rectangular c ) in Photoshop... double the vertical dimension fo the canvas d ) in A:M New decal, application method>Spherical, Apply e ) finished sphere (delete or hide the half you don't want) If you really need the wrinkles a shrink wrapped image would get, you could drop a piece of simcloth on a half sphere.

Flatten a half-sphere, apply the decal, unflatten.

the blue hitching post in blue light is really hard to pick out against the blue wall.

Look at it this way... the guy who won needed the free crit more.

Hey, I saw you got into the top half. Congratulations!

Another festival with no entry fee.

?? all the elements of the rig are part of the model.

It turns out to be pretty rare. When i first started using A:M I thought I had to do everything in an action but now I almost never use an action. Repeating anything in exactly the same way tends to look fake. In my sequence for TWO I used an action for the Scarecrow's "counting" motion at about 1:08. It's in the background, but it's still pretty iffy. I used Ease to vary how fast each instance played. But that was it for Actions, all the rest was just keyframed including the walks (and the eyeblinks!) In musical situations Actions can work well . For this parade sequence Ken Heslip made marching actions and instrument playing actions to mix and match on the band members. Mark Allen also made waving and watching actions for the crowd. Actions could work very well on motions that mechanical devices have to like in an assembly line

I wouldn't use an action for eyeblinks; it would make all blinks look identical which is lame. Fine posing tend to place the eyelids higher or lower depending on where the eye is pointing, so a blink action that starts from a pre-defined spot is a problem. I have a bone for each lid. When I want to blink, I animate them together from where ever they are and then apart again. Some of the rigging gurus on the forum have made face rigs with eyelids that automatically follow the eye direction and a slider that can close the eyes from any position. If you want a simpler solution, make a pose slider that moves your lids from 100% open to 100% closed , and use that during your animation to vary how open you want your eyes to be, and use it to close them for blinks.

I've put a new test up of a moving cigarette at the top post. yes, that looks very similar. Great clip!

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.