robcat2075

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.

do you get different results with the same PRJ in different versions?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animators-Survival...4244&sr=8-1 a bargain at new or used prices.

"Page Up" and "Page Down" control real-time subdivision. If you post JPGs instead of BMPs it will take up way less server space and people can see them without downloading.

running is a bit complicated because there's a stretch where neither foot is on the ground and the character is moving forward thru the air. It's like a series of jumps from one foot to the next, to the next, to the next... This will be difficult to get right in a typical CG cycle where the character runs "in place" while the ground slides underneath. There is a run cycle animated for Thom on the CD that you could study for that. My advice is to animate the character actually moving forward in space, running from one footstep to the next, for about 3 or four strides so you can discover the right timing and spacing. Put a little stone on the ground that the character is running past. Then you can shift the poses back to the starting line and make the ground move appropriately backwards based on how far the character had moved past the marker stone. Richard Williams' TASK covers runs ans the important key poses on pg 176. Note that most of his drawings aren't registered so that the foot on the ground stays put, which exaggerates the forward motion of the body. But on pg. 180 he has some sets where the feet are registered and you can accurately gauge how much the character is moving forward from each drawing to the next.

you may want to check out the uncondensed version of the tut: http://web.archive.org/web/20080201095824/...t/CoopFace.html

select all. right click Flip Normals

show a pic of what you have. It's too hard to judge what's wrong from a text description.

Cute Dog!