robcat2075

The "crease" is really just the shape your CPs are making. When you have some CPs VERY close together they will do their job and try to make very tight shapes. My first guess is that the middle CP of a group of three is making a small peak or valley. here's a simplified example: model: CPCreases.zip (JPG banding may make this look less smooth) you can make small CP adjustments easier with 4 5 and 6 keys 4 constrains CP to direction of spline 5 constrains CP to perpendicular to direction of spline but still along patch surface 6 constrains CP to perpendicular to patch surface Another possibility is that you have some spline continuity mistake, but you seem be doing well at that so I doubt that's the problem here.

I'll join. Define the parameters so it all fits together like fps, min time, max time, going left or going right, common ball model...

Regrettably TSM2 doesn't work with current MacOS. Anzovin didn't have the programming staff on hand to update TSM2 and that was a big reason it was discontinued. I'm hopeful that someday someone might purchase the source code and fix it. I'd be curious to know if TSM2A and TSM2B work if you delete the TSM2C from the dir. Of course, C is the biggy.

I like that. You might make the legs even shorter and the head bigger if it's a child.

I think vern left out one key word... Bias adjustment... well, that's two. Those lumps can be fixed by slightly adjusting the bias of the CP. You can adjust it manually with the yellow handles, but it's actually easier to do fine adjustments in the properties box. Select the CP and you can drag on the number in the properties to change it in 1° increments. It's almost always the gamma that you adjust, rarely the alpha. Someone will probably pop in to say adjusting bias is bad for animation, but that hasn't been true for several years.

Does the tool icon change when you do this? Try turning it on with the icon.

How long is this production?

I'm wondering why you have it on a path constraint (which will move its position) AND are keyframing its position? that may or may not be part of the problem.

I like that solution. I didn't know it could create parts based on groups which is cool. However, it seems to be forming numerous non-continuous splines which create creases, more apparent on my bare sphere, at points where two splines butt into each other. I CAN detach and reconnect them, which would be doable on a small model such as a sphere, iffy on a more complex subject. But creating thickness for the sections is a real plus over my method.

I prefer facial hair A. It has a more graphic look to it.

Even more alluring than the famous "Hunter" dance. Lovely work!

What do the designers you mentioned go on to do after this prototype stage?

Those are quite impressive. Perhaps as you do more projects in the future you could post some of your WIP so people might see your good work developing.

You'd pretty much have to adjust the biases of the CPs on the edges to get things back into shape. Or... here's a cheat... Instead of deleting the parts you don't want from a sphere, make them transparent. If you want to make it look like a sphere is divided into 4 parts, you'd take 4 spheres and make 3/4ths of each one transparent. Wow! this worked better than I expected. I was sure there'd be a Scooby-Doo type giveaway seam showing. quadSphereH.mov SeparatingSphere.zip

If you had the actual DarkTree program that creates those DarkSim materials you might be able to do either the glow or the clear thing, but I recall it's quite an expensive program and not immediately simple to use. Once the shader is exported from Darktree it is much like a preset with limited flexibility.

William Gaylord covers an extending tentacle, which is pretty much the same thing.

"the horse is a surprise..." my favorite line from El Dorado Yes, TSM2 is alive and well. When you install it make sure you're installing it to your v14 A:M, not the default v11 it tries to find.

I just did a Google search on "old bendy legs" and it was the very first thing to come up. Don't miss William Gaylord's continuing thread on different ways he is rigging tentacles

He looks wonderful.

I think that works real well. My only thought would be that there are several points where the light/shadow direction seems inconsistent, but the overall effect is quite good.

Aside from the wireframe guide, volumetric effects *don't* show up in shaded mode. They are effects that must be rendered in "final" mode to be fully seen. You can quickly test out a small portion of your screen by doing Shift-Q and Right-button dragging a bounding box around the area (the effect perhaps?) you want to test. Anything show up when you test render? I dont' know about this one, but as a general tip a more specific topic title than "Certain things not working" might get you more result since people generally only read posts that catch their attention and the person who knows the answer to your flocking problem may not bother with something so ambiguous.

That shouldn't be a problem. Bump maps don't have to have a related color map.

I don't mean that the Red shows through, but that the b/w grayscale is showing without creating the ribs. The map used to create the bumps should not be seen. Should it? It's *possible* that the shading is fooling you, but no... a bumpmap should not produce any change in the color of the patches it is on. After you are SURE that map is changed from "color" to "bump"... save, restart, reload. just to try. However, for features as big as those ribs, modeling them explicitly is the way to go. Ought to be easy with splines.

Just as a technical point, alpha channels can have a use in any kind of map. An alpha channel limits what portion of a map is used. In a situation where color and bump maps were derived from the same source material one might very well might have an alpha channel in the bump map that was the same shape as the alpha channel in the color map so that they would both affect the same area. It's not common, but it's out there. One exception is the cookie cutter map with alpha where the alpha channel is interpreted as a transparency. This is different from what an alpha channel in a color or bump map does.

translation to calmer, post warm milk and nap tones: You're rendering bigger than you need to. 6000x3200 would exceed the capabilities of any existing display in our world.