robcat2075

I'm finding that the "with rotation x, y, z" statement seems to apply those transformations in relation to the "world" and not by regarding a bone that was duplicated as a 0, 0, 0 starting point. Would have been cool if it had worked the second way. Somewhat related, I think the "roll like" offset problem I mentioned above was an illusion caused by a small error that rotation statement created.

Hey I just caught that. Less is definitely more, wouldn't you say? I still think there's too much "small" going on and not enough "big", but I can finally start to see the core ideas that you are trying to present I like the shrug and sigh, I think that's your best idea. Sighs are hard to do with a CG character. One-handed gestures tend to be better than two handed gestures because they are non-symmetrical. When you are doing a one-handed gesture, I'd drop the other arm to the to the side rather than float in space. Good posing is a constant challenge. Here's ONE way I might loosen up the first pose and give it more direction. It's a broad pose, but I like broad poses. It could be toned down or made even bigger. We could go thru every pose and find ways to make them stronger and less stiff. That's most of the battle in character animation.

"display"

You do have to do some preparation of your character to fit him to the imported motion. There are some long threads archived on this forum about how and several people have had good success just using free BVH files from the web.

A:M can load BVH files. I'd hope that any motion capture equipment would include the software to record your motion to those BVH files. Check that out.

That's what "Peaking" is for. Really. That six-holed cube representation suggests that splines have to meet at 90 or 180 degree angles. They can meet at any angle. The four holed cube reduces the situation down to the topic issue of good continuity: we want two splines criss-crossing and no more. We don't want a third one dead-ending in to that. We don't even want to suggest that that is a normal practice. Don't start them off by showing a picture of that.

Don't do that! they are supposed to be pointing backwards TSM builder originates the bones correctly rotated. My first suspicion is that this has something to do with the two-bone groups that make an "upper arm" or "lower arm" not being really straight. I have a second suspicion but that's my first.

Looks promising, I think the lighting is damping your efforts. It need some careful lighting to bring out the important shapes and lead our eye to the important part of the scene. Lighiting is a whole field in itself but there's probably a good book out there on classic movie lighting.

I didn't know there were female sphinxes, but i guess there would have to be or they would have died out a long time ago.

a cube doesn't have to have a hole on all six sides. In fact cubes don't normally have holes at all.

I don't know that Direct X will solve your problem but "SDK" stands for "Software Developer Kit" which is not something you want to update your PC. That is only for people who are writing new apps that use Direct X Thei current version of Direct X is 9.0c and you want the "End User Runtime" from this page If you're getting a white rectangle that typically means your video card hasn't enough memory to hold the rotoscope image. Try a very, very small one just to test. What sort of video card do you have? Also you might try turning off all video acceleration in the control panel for your video card. Or try altering other available settings.

Interesting find! thanks!

Yes, thanks for doing this, Caroline. A few notes... -remember to place the IK foot controls under the feet and not to the side. -I like to put the origin of the body bone and the spine bone and the leg bones at the same level so they have a common axis of rotation. Viewed from the side, at least. This is very helpful when posing. - I'm a little doubtful of bending the two bones in the calf (or any other limb segment). It may have an adverse effect on stretching and twisting. I'd keep those two-bone groups straight.

That looks sharp. What sort of a creature is on the top center? The animal paws are what make me wonder.

These look real good. I'd take issue with something in the spline continuity page. The good CP is really more like a cube with 4 holes, not 6. The situation illustrated at the top with two splines crossing and another one dead-ending into that would be a classic crease-maker to be avoided.

you mean you couldn't save the file to your hard drive? Have you been able to save other 4 MB files from the internet, but not this particular one? What sort of connection are you on? What Windows are you on? You did save it but couldnt' play it? What version of Quicktime does your Quicktime player say you have? Your going to want to have quicktime working because that really works better with A:M than any other format.

So it's something about the model, not a constant behavior of A:M... right-click in the model window>info how many patches does it say you have? and show us a wireframe of 8 and 9 i'm wondering why the sudden jump between 8 and 9

You say it "started" doing this, so it wasn't doing this before. If you restart A:M does it do this with all models or just this one? Does it do this with versions of the model you saved before the slowdown started?

See all the spots where you have 5 lines going into 1 CP? That's always bad. It's never good. YOu almost always want just 2 splines to criss cross at a CP (like at the two green arrows. looks like 4 lines going in) Purple is where I'd get rid of splines and green is where I'd put them instead. ( i just did the front as an example)

you've got an extra "http://" in your link. Good luck. I think that's a do-able scope for a first project.

give it time. Really, i made that so I wouldn't have to explain it from scratch every time it came up. And I don't remember exactly what I said.

Assuming your model is a typical biped, my Simplest IK Leg Tutorial (DL it to your hard drive) will introduce you to some of the why's and how's of IK legs. QT7 needed to view. But if you just want to get animating, TSM2 is the fastest way to install a rig. There's a link to it in the Rigging forum.

Great shot Rodger! You must tell us more about the grass.

An update of Direct X for the end user probably doesn't have "SDK" in it. Does OpenGL not work? That works best for most people.

look into your monitor gamma setting. You want some setting that makes what you see look like what we see. Most of the world's monitors aren't gamma calibrated, so if you work on a monitor that is, most of the world will see your pictures way darker than you made them.