robcat2075

that looks real sharp!

that looks good. It will need careful lighting to bring out the detail.

check the first post

Versatile, yes! Robust, no. It is very easy to crash A:M or get incomplete results when scripting for TSM2. There is, unfortunately, no error checking and no error messaging so successful script writing is for the very patient and very diligent. You have to get happy with the idea of pawing thru 800 lines of code to find a single character error. Here's a small example of what can be done however... If you don't like the way TSM "advanced fingers" control the last two joints of a finger with one bone, this script will make TSM2 write a dedicated control bone for each joint and yet still retain the ability to move the hidden metatarsal bones in the palm of the hand by translating the first joint. In addition it will write and properly constrain three fan bones at each knuckle (for those of you who spline your hands with 3 rings at each knuckle) advfinger_fanbones.zip retitle the script as "advfinger.txt" and copy it into the "TSM/scripts" folder. you may wish to save your original "advfinger.txt" to some other location for safe keeping. Do not rename it to something like "advfinger_original.txt" and leave it in the scripts folder. Follow the normal workflow of using TSM Builder to place bones in your character (choosing "advanced fingers") and using TSM Flipper to flip right to left. Of course you've read the TSM manual to understand this process. Attach your CPS. Sorry, that's still mostly a manual thing. but dont' worry about complex CP weighting here. The fan bones on the knuckles will replace most of that. Then run TSM Rigger. Do not attach CPs to anything called "control". You may want to hide them while you do your CP attaching. the new fan bones have "fan" in their names like "advfinger1fanA" the longest fan bone is for the ring farthest down the joint. the shortest one is for the ring farthest up. Guess what the middle length one is for? hide them when you are done. leave just the "control" bones visible. I fully anticipate that someone will do a step wrong and make this appear to not work. It does work. This is just an example of a simple mod to TSM. Much more is possible and when my enthusiasm and time are sufficient I'll get to that.

If you like the TSM2 rig, you can rig with TSM2 now, today. Download it, use it, love it. If you need to use the Squetch rig, it will be possible to eliminate compensate resetting by using TSM2 to install it. Someone knowledgeable about Squetch will need to the detail work of converting Squetch to terms TSM2 works with. That's probably not me, so I dont' have an ETA on that, but I'm confident it can be done.. again, you can use TSM2 now. It's quick way to install a great rig.

Don't move the model bone. basically, you animate it like the guy was on a treadmill. Have you done #5 in TAoA:M? that covers the basic workflow of walkcycles.

Here's a typical problem with animated jumps... leaving the ground without the body fully extended. Everything should be completely stretched out at the last moment before his toes leave the ground. In real life it's hard to get very far if you dont' straighten out. In animation it looks like the character is floating because in real life no one can really jump that way, so it implies the character has no weight or is being moved by some unseen force.

post a model on which this has happened. don't forget the decal.

13.0t is the last version for the Yeti CD. You can download that from HAsh. You seem to have every brick individually modeled, that's going to make your model file very large. Usually a texture would be used for that to give the appearance of bricks. But that wouldn't necessarily render faster. Your light is a "sun" light which has to use ray-tracing to cast shadows. that will be slow. It might be possible ot use a "kleig" light instead, set to use "shadow maps" which are faster. But i was able to "Final" render your 1st frame in 14 seconds with your settings. My computer is less than yours. Something else must be wrong for yours to be so slow.

The path constraint has a item in its properties called "ease". Set it to 0 a the time you want the action to start at the beginning of the path and 100 at the time you want it reach the end. you can also set values in between to slow down or speed up.

Maybe what you're looking for is "IBL"... Image Based Lighting. Sometimes mistakenly called HDRI. Haven't ventured into it myself yet.

Suppose I told you I could pretty much do that with TSM2?

I can't even get a message like that. If I leave a field incomplete the "Next" button stays greyed out and if I type in a wrong value it says the information is incorrect. But I can't get a "missing field" message. What OS are you on?

Possibly it needs my name in the top field? "Robert Holmen" although for me, any text in that field will do.

That looks real good. I suppose the Maya guys are still figuring out how many weeks it will take them to do it.

I dunno... could be an imposter. I better take that link down again.... BTW, I did suggest that Anzovin just continue to keep TSM2 for sale as a download item with a caveat that they couldn't support it anymore, but they went the extra mile and made it free. Thanks again to all the Anzovins!

OK, i put the link back up. But I'm warnin' ya, Vern... it's a link to something on the intertubes... this whole "net" thing is just a Pandora's box of malware and demons and stuff that god-knows-where it came from. I have a free lance project (which led to all this) I have to finish up and then all my TWO stuff to get back to and get out the door so it will be weeks before I can do a proper presentation. In the meantime, TSM2 works just fine like it always did and nothing I'm doing is going invalidate the way TSM2 is used now.

Yes, it is possible that some one might use Google to find something on the web. I recall reading something about how people did that. A "search engine" they call it. How modern! Dang, I am so backwards. Big business apparently. So they say.

quick example wave.mov wave.zip

what that is is a wave motion distorting a drawing of a wave this can be done in A:M make a long wide grid with numerous vertical splines scale it so 4 vertical splines cover 1 wavelength of the moving wave. (this looks to be about 2x the drawn waves) apply drawing to grid add 4 identical bones group every fourth spline to bone0 group every fourth+1 spline to bone1 group every fourth+2 spline to bone2 group every fourth+3 bone to spline3 keyframe the bones so that they are going up-down-up-down at about one cycle per two seconds, maybe 3 offset the channels so the bones peak one after the other instead of together

Ok, I'll take my link down.

Welcome to A:M! If you get stuck, ask a question onthe forum and soem one will pop in with an answer.

I believe there was a mac version for TSM2, I don't know if it survived the transistion to OSX. A TSM2 Mac user will have to pop in here.

I've added a link to a zip with the installer in the first post.

Looks deadly! If you post a wireframe some one will maybe have some tips on undoing a couple of creases Welcome to A:M!