robcat2075

It's fixed for V15.f Cool! I was thinking I might be crazy. The thing I thought was really odd was that increasing the patch density didn't reduce the straightline jagginess.

wonderful! He looks ready to do "Puttin' on the Ritz" in "Young Frankenstein"

OK, here's simpler example... VariVase2e.zip turning pose "random bone" ON ties translate Y of "random" bone to an expression with Rand() turning pose "storer like random" ON constrains "storer" bone to "random" bone turning pose "Red like storer" ON links surface color red value to translate Y value of "storer" bone. turning pose "storer like random" OFF turns off constraint to "random bone" and forces key on "storer" to lock it in current position. mystery: once you turn "random bone" ON, the bone will continue to randomize even after you turn this pose OFF or delete its ON keys.

correction: the "2nd pose" I mention above is a regular translate to constraint, not an expression basically expressions are all about the here and now and not what happened in the last frame. I wish it worked your way. Fun fact: before I posted the old VariWinkie example i tried making a simpler example that would be easier to follow. I couldn't get it to work! I don't know why.

A:M expressions don't have "variables" in the sense that scripting languages so i don't think a purely expression solution is possible. It is possible to do this, however. For TWO, I made the generic Winkie so that any number of them could be dropped into a chor and each one would randomly choose clothing colors and then stick with that choice for the rest of the shot. This was a year ago. I forget the specifics but basically you create two dummy bones for the value you want to work with... "Randomizer and "ValueStorer" Your model has a pose that when ON activates an expression that constantly varies a "Randomizer" parameter, like translate Y value, with "Rand()" Your model has a 2nd pose that when ON activates an expression that makes "Value Storer" take it's translate Y value from whatever "Randomizer"'s is. Your model has a 3rd pose that when ON activates an expression that makes the parameter you wanted to vary-then-hold equal to whatever the Y value of "value Storer" is At the start of the chor you turn on all three poses. the parameter will vary randomly until you hit a framewhere you like the random value, then turn OFF the 2nd pose which will cause a keyframe to be made on the "value storer" bone in its current position, locking the random value. I don't recall the exact specifics but here is the variWinkie in a demo chor you can study. You will need to study it carefully since the mechanism is not obvious and I don't recall the specifics to elaborate any further.. They vary their clothes colors until frame 10 when the "storer like random" pose is turned OFF. The also have poses to self vary hair style and body proportions but I left those off here. edit: see simpler example project below

something got corrupted in the file. the excess items can be edited out in a text editor. Try saving the model out separately as a model, then text edit out all the rotoscopes, then open it back in the PRJ and see what that changes.

in every project you've ever done, or just the chors in a particular project?

bending the tube doesn't really need a simulation. put a bone in the center and weight the middle ring to it 100%, weight the next two rings 60% to center bone/40% to the model bone and the outer rings are 100% to the model bone. right click on a group in teh model window to "Edit CP weights". CP weights are covered in the Help. animate the center bone to react appropriately to whatever is hitting it. (very quick example) rubbertubebonesA.mov rubbertube.zip

i think this got mentioned last time... http://www.innovateenterprises.com/AM/

Apparently Pixlet is a Mac-only codec. It sounds neat but it probably won't be playable on PCs.

Thanks David, that's a neat set up. I'm not sure I can see it on yours, but I think the surface constraint really follows a four-subdivision-per-spline approximation of the surface rather than the actual patch surface. That's what the tests I've tried so far indicate. This is a bone following the surface of a 3-cross-section lathed cylinder edit: subdividing the cylinder into 16 sections didn't help. the constrained bone is still moving in straight line paths, about 4 sections per 90° turn. I'd be curious to see if anyone can load this test PRJ and get a different result. SurfConTest.zip

the animation is 5 minutes long? that's 7200 frames. One uncompressed 640x480 frame takes almost a megabyte. So you got off easy. you can load your movie into your images folder and do a "Save as Animation" to compress it with a smaller codec. But you didn't say what codec you used to begin with. they're all different.

Never mind. I got it to work a bit. However, I'm finding the constrained object is following a jagged straight line path over the surface rather than following the actual surface curve. this is an onionskin screen shot Anyone know what's up with that?

Does anyone have a small example PRJ that shows a "surface constraint" in operation?

You need a second choreography action. In the tuts link in my sig there's a video on "adding animation after an action" that explains this. Watch that. The vid mentions a "Blend" mode setting. In some versions of A:M it may need to be set to "Add" rather than "replace" like I said in the video.

I think that looks pretty successful, but I think this idea... would be an easy improvement to avoid the doll-hair look. It wouldn't have to be a complicated map. Just fade into something darker from the edge of the hair line. I remember some close-ups in "Incredibles" that made me go "ouch... doll-hair". It's a tough problem to solve. But your work does look very good.

Issues?

Do you really mean smartskin shapes? Or are you rigging distortion boxes? "morph targets" don't really exist in A:M.

There are "Glow intensity" and "Glow radius" values in the chor properties. You could keyframe those directly. They would affect every glowing object in your shot, but it would be a way to vary the glow. glowvarying.mov glowvarying.zip

I think that looks like a pretty promising candidate for rigging. There are some good tuts in the rigging forum on strategies for rigging a face. You may find after you get it moving that maybe a five point patch or hook may have been better here than there, but you don't know until you try.

I haven't made a study of TSM2 quadruped yet, but you may want to investigate some of the options for "necks" to see which you prefer. If you chose "IK Neck" there are really two neck controls. "head" controls just the stub at the base of the head. "IK neck control" handles the longer chain of bones in the neck. Here's a PRJ that shows animating the IK neck control (and head) to lower the head below the shoulders. Look in Action 2 from the side. It's bones only, no mesh. I've made visible the neck bones which would normally be hidden so you can see their movement. IKNeckMovement.zip Tail problem can probably be solved by placing the base tail bone to the base of the tail in the model.

Welcome back! Did you know you're still a Hash Fellow as Tralfaz?

You only need to create "timelines" for bones that will have animation at some point. You can see all the bones that have keys in the chor in the PWS whether you have them selected at the moment or not. Presuming it was in its default position until then... go back to 0 and force a keyframe on it, then go to the last frame where you still wanted it to still be in that default position and force another keyframe on it. Remember to zero slope those two keyframes. Then start animating as usual.

You can greatly simplify the animation of any rotating object by going to its properties and right-click transform>rotate>convert driver to and change the bone to "Euler" instead of the default Quaternion mode You can set one key at frame 0 and another at the end for (number of turns you want X 360°) and A:M will do the whole thing for you. This should eliminate the need for the MUFOOF technique OR... you can set frame 0 to 0° rotation and frame 1 to anything, say 90°, and then in the PWS change the "post extrapolation method" (Squiggly gray line to right of item) to "accumulate". There are 3 squiggles. You want the last one. A:M will automatically add 90° (or whatever) on each successive frame. Anyway, I've been thinking one could use a blurry transparency map to simulate a fast moving rotor. I made the map with radial blur in Photoshop. It's a 2 blade rotor that I set to rotate a little less than 90° per frame for that severe strobing effect you see in movies. There's no real motion blur here: rotortest03H.mov Helicopter02.zip Tip: If you choose a codec besides "Animation" (like MPEG4 or Sorenson3) you will get much smaller file sizes for posting movies. Format>SaveOptions>set

After reading your post a bit more carefully, I think I spotted the problem... You want something selected when you make a keyframe, typically the same something you want to create a keyframe for. Still watch my vid though.