robcat2075

Looks cool! I like #2 best. I like the darker toon-lines. You might even make them thicker. That looks best in the still. I dont' know if that would hold true in animation, but based on what I see... #2 I dont think the "hair" beard in #4 fits the graphic look of the rest of his body. edit: I guess the lines look a little too thin in the #2 closeup, but maybe too thick in the #2 long shot.

You won't catch me on on one of those crazy things. My diving is limited to having to take one leap off the 10-meter platform to fulfill a graduation requirement in college. Here's a dive I did 4 years ago. Now that i look at it again it's a bit light on the feet. http://www.brilliantisland.com/am/dive20.mov

Save the chor, delete it and re-load it.

reading your new description I still don't think an expression is needed. Basically, you want to keyframe the position of some materials over time. I'm not sure you even need a pose slider. "Show more than drivers" for your model in the chor and you can set keyframes for any XYZ value for any material applied to your model. I ain't saying it's immediately intuitive and obvious... but it can be done

here's a vase with a 0-100 pose slider that changes the color from 255,0,0 to 0,255,0 colorshifting_vase.zip -i made a vase - i made a group for the top -i made a new percentage pose for the model - in the temporary "action" that shows up in the PWS while I'm editing the pose I enabled "show more than drivers" and selected the group to make it's properties show up inthe prop window - now i can set particular RBG values (or any other property)for any position of the pose slider doing "Show more than drivers" in that phantom Action is the key to making these non-obvious, non-bone related sliders

Wait a sec, I might be wrong about that "any other property" stuff.... I'm testing it ...

Without fully understanding what your desired result is , I'll just say that you shouldn't have to use an "expression" to make a pose slider control a color value. the +-100% settings on a pose slider can represent/control any value on another property. btw, +-100% aren't the limits of pose slider values. the right-click "Settings" allow you to enter any number for the limits.

It's a promising start. As you refine the character's rig you will find it easier to get good results. Jack-knife dives are very difficult to animate because the body's center of gravity changes quite a bit as it bends and a CG character is not rigged to automatically simulate that. Two things to look out for as you go forward... once he jumps, he can't stop suddenly and pause in mid-air... he should make a continuous smooth arc, and once he starts falling he will accelerate rather than move down at a constant speed. your daughter pulled the plug?

all you have to do is rename ____.txt to ____.mdl In IE (and maybe other browsers) you can change the save as file type drop down menu from "text files" to "all Files" and it will save as what ever it was supposed to be.

YOu'll want to show a wire frame too, but i see spots where you've got more than 2 splines goin thru a CP. There are keyboard shortcuts to restrict Bezier handle motion, Someone will pop in with a link. I find it easier to click-drag the gamma and magna values in the properties window.

They do quite a bit the same thing, however, the PWS shows all items you have revealed by expanding their folder. The "Timeline" only shows what you have clicked on and selected. This is useful when you want to work with a few bones that are not near each other on the PWS. For example "left hand", "right hand" and "torso" might have many bones between them inthe PWS, but if you shift-select them they will show up in the Timeline without other distractions and making it easy to see the relative position of keyframes they have. Hit the Tack button and they will stay in the TImeline even if you should temporarily select some other bone. Timeline can even selectively show the x.rotate channel from one bone and the z.translate from another. Yes, I've actually had a reason to do that once. I'll repeat something I've said before... the PWS needs lots of space to be useful. Scrolling around a PWS the only gets a sliver of the screen just about hopeless. getting a second monitor to put the PWS on was the single most productivity enhancing thing I ever got for A:M. Used monitors are cheap these days. Graphics cards that drive two monitors are cheap too. Even some laptops can drive an extra screen now. If you absolutely can't get a second monitor, undock PWS, stretch it to full screen and use the keyboard shortcut to toggle it on and off when you need it.

If the CPs aren't sticking to the bones you missed something. You dont' mention that you tested it in an "action" (putting it in a choreography will work too). FlowerPower mentions this at the bottom of the page "Assigning control point to bones" and just before it discusses Smartskin. The CPs won't stick to the bones in the modeling window, because if they did it would be impossible to change the position of a bone in relation to the mesh without haveing to reassign them to some other bone first.

The slow down these windows cause is due to them needing to be drawn and redrawn. When the cursor reaches the right edge the whole window needs to be shifted (redrawn) to the left to continue tracking the cursor. That redrawing takes time. If you've closed the PWS and closed the "Timeline" then those are not being redrawn anymore and are not what is slowing you down.

I call the right pane of the PWS a "timeline". Easily confused with the window that is called the "Timeline" They both exhibit timeline-like behavior and both can be toggled to show either red dot keyframes or channel curves. There don't seem to be clear terms for these however. on my computer I find that if either the PWS timeline or the "Timeline" has to scroll as time advances you get a slowdown. You can Shift-Z the timeline to eliminate the need to scroll. Channel curve view of more than one bone seems to have a penalty even if it doesn't have to scroll.

Who said that? Who said to use "deformers"?

Welcome to A:M! "deformers' isn't really a term in A:M "Bones" do the deforming in A:M. I bet you haven't done the tuts in "the Art of A:M" yet. Those will answer many questions a new user will have. Ex 9 (Flower Power) shows how to add bones to a model.

A:M doesn' t make animated gifs. However there are many apps out there (search the web) that make animted gifs from files you imported from another app. Typically you would render to QT or a targa series and the other app would use that to make the gif.

When the Timeline or PWS timeline window has to scroll itself that will definitely slow down playback. And channel view will slow down more than keyframe view. (more curvy lines to draw)

that's a spiffy lookin' bike. I guess "dirtying it up " for realism woudl be cool. How about a scene on a highway, where all the background is a blur zooming by? Put a generic humanoid model on as the rider, but keep him in wireframe with the realistic bike showing thru. That way the pic will still be about the bike.

i just have AE 5 so terminology may be different for you - you need to turn on the "modes" panel in your timeline -in that panel is a drop down menu for each layer that selects compositing mode and/or targeting for matte effects - this permits you to make the alpha channel of one layer act upon another layer. - the order in which they appear in the timeline has a lot to do with what can act up on what. - look up track mattes in the AE manual for better info

I presume it has moved to where ever the IK hand target is placed. just move the hand until the arm is in the pose you want. If the hand is not at the IK hand target then you've rigged something wrong. Impossible to tell from the picture, though.

It looks like Sam even has anatomically correct teeth. Lotta patches there. If I were gong to use sam a lot I'd start looking for ways to make a thin proxy. Another thing you might consider is animating at 24fps instead of 30. you won't get any more fps but the percentage of dropped frames will be less. And most animation is done at 24 fps anyway. Also... a P4... it's probably working pretty hard to get what your getting.

you mean the pinching of the elbow? or the position of hte arm?

2fps sounds very slow. Something-is-wrong slow. On the other hand, three characters plus props is quite a load. Squetchy sam has more patches than knight or Shaggy. speed up options: -turn off show decals -"page down" to lowest subdivision level -temporarily hide objects/characters you don't need to watch. (Eye icon in PWS) -change an object's draw mode from curved to vector or even to bounding box (a drop down list right of the charcter's name in the PWS). I switch to bounding box mode often to see smooth motion. (keyboard "7" enables "default" display mode that allows each object to show the specific draw mode and render mode that you have selected in the PWS.) -in the model window hide geometry you don't need to see. Sometimes I'll hide everything but the lips whenI'm trying to fix lipsynch. -swap in a lower res- proxy. Before you do change PWS listing to read "[model name]" rather than "Shortcut to [model name]". Then go to the properties window to change the model refernce to a proxy. -switch out of skeleton mode and hit return to unselect all objects while you are watching the animation play in the past some rotoscopes or image sequences could cause a serious slowdown. I dont' know if that is still true.

you can also select the end of an existing spline, hit Y, and a new CP will be added that you can drag to attach to another CP.