robcat2075

First thing I notice... you have animate mode off. The "A" button at the upper right. Press it.

That parts I bolded are parts that don't make sense in terms of describing A:M. For example, a "folder" in A:M doesn't show "framenumbers" (good or bad) so I don't know what you really mean or what you are actually looking at. Could you describe the problem more carefully?

rotation limits are a constraint you apply in a pose window. make a new ON/Off pose. Select the bone, then NewConstraint>Euler limits

Hey those are good looking toon renders. One suggestion I'd note is the skies in the background are maybe too flat. It makes them look too close to me. Maybe they need a cloud or a gradient or something to help distance them.

Now that I look at the Bear some more, i think when running TSM Builder that the "biped" option should be selected for the front legs on the Quadruped page. Those would be jointed more like human arms and would be more like bear front legs.

fuzzier:

Looks great! I think the problem with the rainbow is the edges are too sharp. If it was fuzzier if might have a more glowing appearance.

Good looking model. One thing those shapes need to be more realistic is "bevels" Yves has a good tut on them. http://www.ypoart.com/tutorials/bevels/index.php

i forgot... 7 - now you can drag this model into a chor and animate with the visible bones. If the mesh doesn't move with the visible bones, select the model in the chor and look at its properties window. User Property "TSM Constraints" should be ON. It should already be on since you saved teh model with it ON in step 6

1 - load BEARMODEL_11backlegfixed.mdl. it has the CPS assigned the way I left them but hasn't had Rigger run yet. You could change CP assignments here if you wanted to but for now, dont' do anything, go to step 2 2 - rightclick in the modeling window>Plugins>wizards>TSM Rigger 3 - a window will come up with a list of systems you could choose to rig or not rig if you wanted to. Leave them. just click "Rig" 4 - TSM Rigger will do it's thing and leave a set of bones visible like the one in the movie. 5 - in the properties window for the model turn on User Property "TSM COnstraints" 6 - save this model under a new name. I really , really, really... 1000x really... recommend you go thru the instructions that are installed in your TSM folder to learn how to rig their sample biped character so you understand the TSM workflow. Trying to do a quadruped when you haven't done a biped is asking to get off on the wrong track.

Now this is NOT a great job of CP assigning I've done. This is just the quickest and dirtiest and fastest to get something moving. I haven't really studied the TSM quadruped rigs so I'm not entirely sure about best practices with them. That said, here's a quickie: BearStandsUp.mov the bones you see in that mov are the bones TSM makes visible after you run Rigger. They are NOT the bones you attached CPs to after you ran Builder and Flipper. Those are hidden and controlled by the visible bones. If you want to fine tune the CP assigning, use the BEARMODEL_11backlegfixed.mdl in the attached zip and then run TSM rigger on that to get a rigged model. SpleenBear.zip I changed one TSM option from what you had chosen originally: I chose the "short neck" instead of the "IK neck"

TSM Builder puts in one side of the "Geometry bones". you position those to fit your model (and dont' delete any) TSM FLipper copies those and to make the other side TSM Rigger hides all of the above and adds bones you actually animate with. hold on .... I'm looking at the bear right now

I'm looking at it right now. There are no constraints so I know that TSM Rigger hasn't been run yet

Yes TSM is your most likely bet for doing a quadruped. I recommend you rig your crazy man character with TSM first so you get a feel of the TSM workflow.

with an animated bitmap tube.mov with a material. Not sure why it shadows so weirdly. tubemat.mov the PRJ tubetest.zip

those look good!

$79 gets you A:M for one year. After that year, you would need to buy another $79 subscription for another year.

If you somhow implied "moonlight" you could have fairly distinct shadows. Bluer light will help suggest night.

you could apply the animated reveal map to a straight tube and then use different poses for that tube to contort it into the shapes you need. There's probably a way to do this with a material but I haven't thought it thru. This vid shows an animated transparency map on a curvy tube (about 17 seconds in). I don't recall if I used the prestraightened method or not. http://www.brilliantisland.com/demoreels/idl_150kbps.wmv

Quickest and dirtiest solution.... model it as in "B" and use either a matierial effector or an animated transparency map to slowly reveal the Blue part from one end to the other. If you actually have to have the blue mesh move along the path then putting a bone at each spline ring and using path constraints to move them is the way to go.

I think adjusting bias in modeling and doing it in rigging are two different issues. I haven't had many reasons to adjust bias in an action or a pose as your sample did. I only use bias in the modeling stage. I agree that CP weighting is the main tool for rigging. But I wouldn't tell modelers that bias is bad. I'd tell them that bias is last thing you should adjust if you need to smooth a mesh and that making the mesh right is the first goal.

but that's true of anything in CG, not just bias adjustments. Based on your comments I think the problem biases happen when they have been used to force splines into a shape that should have been arrived at by good CP placement instead. When I've used bias to un-crease my own models it's always been very small adjustment of 0 to maybe 3 degrees and i haven't had a problem with moving those around. I bet on your own models ( because you know where CPs ought to be) biases wouldn't be a problem.

A:M is full-featured by itself. There are a number of free plugins that add some additional features. A:M has OBJ and 3DS import/export BUT... Most polygonal models are poor candidates for use in A:M. Good topology in a polygonal model and good topology in an A:M spline model are VERY different things. A good A:M model will have far fewer "patches" than a good polygon model will have "faces". poly models made of triangles are generally only useful with a certain type of import called "prop" that does not allow editing. models made with quads are better but will need serious editing to thin them out. On complicated models the amount of editing woudl be daunting for a beginner. Thin Sub-D models are the best candidates but will still need editing to conform them to good A:M splining. A:M is really intended as a complete modeling and animating environment, and not as an adjunct to some other modeling strategy. One of our forum members has detailed a successful workflow here for using ZBrush to texture models originated in A:M. ZBrush-originated models tend to be too dense for use in A:M

I'm quite doubtful about the central premise here. Here's why... bias0002MP4.mov

There are many details an experienced modeler woudl do differently, but really, for a first time out this is pretty successful. Here are some easy to spot spline errors that I thought we got you to not do on the last exercise Directly attaching the teeth to the lips is probably not a good strategy. When you rig the lips for talking and smiling and stuff they'd be dragging the teeth along with them. I think modeling the mouth in a neutral pose rather than a smile is easier for rigging. But I like the concept of the character, especially the non-symmetrical appearance.