robcat2075

that looks first-rate!

Technically, you can connect them like that, but the "?" spline really needs to be taken out and terminated somewhere else.

Generally not. The shapes maybe, with much work. The rig that makes them move, no. that would have to be be redone properly in A:M. Someone is selling expensive A:M models? There are quite a few free characters on your V11 CD. You can also buy a CD of A:M models from Hash, although many of them have been made in V13+ and won't load in V11.1 A:M works best with models made in A:M.

If the model looks normal inthe model window, but takes a new position in an action or chor window, then some pose somewhere is turned on. You just dont know it. You really dont' have TSM on in that pic? I see that arm trying to reach the FK control bones and that won't happen unless TSM is turned on.

Turn off all the poses in your character's user props and then put him in an action. Then turn your TSM pose on to make sure it isn't doing anything weird. If it's ok, turn your other poses on one at a time until weirdness happens. Then you know what to delete and od over or to try to repair. BTW... you're putting each fan bone in a different pose? Normally you'd put them in one pose so you don't have to turn so many on later.

I particularly like the careful transparency effects.

You can always put the original script back if the alternate doesn't work out for you.

What exactly was the problem? Remember that "advanced fingers" control the last two bones with one control bone. You rotate the blue ring to move the tip. did "adv thumb" show up in the list of things to rig/not rig when you ran Rigger? Normal fingers are fine but you give up individual control of each bone to do poses where the bones are not all equally curved. However TSM "advanced" fingers are not my favorite. That's why I made the alternate finger script that writes a control bone for each finger bone and retains control of the "metatarsals" edit: never mind, I see you figured it out.

open up the polygon model. make one other spline somewhere to the side and select just the new spline. hit the lock icon on the right side. (that locks everything that is not selected)

Good looking character, is the hair color decal doing the fade around the eyes? Lots of good looking texturing all around. The walk up has a very halting quality to it that I don't think is helping the character's performance. Serendipitously, I made some notes on walks for TWO animators a while ago that address some of those issues. I dug those links up a few days ago for someone else so I'll dig them up for you... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=258588 (post 180)

"Aim at" constrain the eye bones to your target. And make sure you turn ON the pose in which you made those constraints.

Somehow the phrase "compose desktop" comes to mind, but i have no idea really....

Somewhere in here there's a thread with advice to disable something in Vista for A:M, although I don't know that it was about your particular problem. What version of AM?

Tools>Options>Global>realtime driver to choose opengl or directx. sounds like a videocard problem. Are your drivers current? XP or Vista?

That looks sharp!

MP4 is a much safer choice than ON2. Congratulations on getting started animating! I made some notes on "walks" for some TWO animators a while back, those may be helpful as you work on the knight's animation. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=258588 (post 180) Picking up the rabbit is a tricky problem because he needs to be constrained to the knight's hand (so he doesn't drift) but constaining his head/ears to the knight's hand wont' bring the rest of the rabbit with them. I'd constrain the main hip bone (or whatever moves the whole body) to knight's hand and do the whole pulling motion faster so we don't have time to see any errors in matching the two together.

Yes, congratulations on your first shot! I wonder what could be done to get a bit more... contact... where the boat meets the water?

if you select a CP/CPs in the smartskin window you can use the next keyframe/prev keyframe buttons below to step thru smartskin keys. when you recognize one you don't like hit the delete keyframe button.

It so happens that I've been working on process for rigging a face using just bone falloffs to get most of the bells and whistles like smiling/frowning/ooo/mmm. It's not ready for prime-time yet but there is promise in bone falloffs. Of course alot of time is spent on positioning the bones just-so... jury is still out on whether it is faster than manual CP editing.

the chin is too prominent for a female face. I think you really, really, REALLY should get a reference photo of a person similar to the character you are trying to model. and then some things would become more apparent when you compare them. And that would give us all a common reference point in trying to improve your model.

Welcome to A:M! Yes, do all the tuts in TAoAM, and if you get stuck ask a question here.

I've run into similar problems with TSM2. Should I be doing the same thing, i.e., turning off the IK setups before creating the cog joint constraints? That will help. However, the most important thing is to make sure you are attaching your cogs to the actual geometry bones and not control bones that TSM2 adds. TSM2 hides most of the geometry bones so it's easy to go wrong. The easiest time to add fanbones (or weight CPs) is before you run TSM Rigger. YOu can test them by opening an action and using the rotate manipulator to move bones individually. For example, if you are testing a right elbow fan, you'd use the rotate manipulator to move "1 right lowerarm1" and watch the elbow fan while you do. Then go back to your pose or model window to make any tweaks. TSM Rigger will preserve your fanbones when it does its thing.

First, buy A:M v3.0 twelve years ago...

- in the model, all the "spine" bones need to be exactly centered; to have start and end at x=0 - make sure the Key Model filter and Translate and Rotate filters are on when you do your copying and pasting

That got better! Still needs stronger poses and, in general, I don't like talking straight into the camera, but thinning that out has helped. Ship it off to the voting and brace yourself, I'm sure you'll get comments!