robcat2075

I had to rig a character quick today and I noticed that a newly-rigged TSM character now gets "Error loading string xxxx" at the end of its relationship names. Since the character still seems to otherwise work ok and this didn't happen before, I'm guessing that A:M has changed some detail about how it reads these names in from the model file. Perhaps some termination character is not being recognized anymore or something like that. Has anyone pawed thru this situation with a text editor and found out what the cause is?

Hey David, I really like the way you move your characters around. You're one of the few people animating around here that "gets" body mechanics. Even when you're doing something weird it has a plausibility about it that is rather rare. -The action always seems to be trailing the sound. I feel like if i slid the sound later a few frames it would really lock in. -I'd consider making red tent a white igloo or something not so red so it wasn't grabbing so much attention.

That's a great concept. Several levels of meaning in there. Right now the staging is a problem. His body is obscuring too much of the hand that's leaning on the mirror. I'd consider waiting to reveal that the reflection is "on it's own" until just before he speaks.

I may have voted... not sure, but I think I did.

Yeah it does look a bit dark, but I think it worked well. Hope your teacher likes it!

The other option was a usb dongle. Not inexpensive however. I got a second cheap used CD drive and leave the A:M CD in there. I understand they are going to online activation for future versions but I dont' know the details of that.

Looks Good. hmmm... You should model to be in the commercial. I remember him hawking something called "Liberace's Easy Note Song Book" back in the 80's. It had colors and everything. Maybe he was just ahead of his time.

I've never had a "swap" like that happen to me. Is mirror mode off?? That shouldn't affect bones anyway. It's weird this is happening on the feet and not on other right-left bones. Did this happen to you with 11.1? you can have v11.1 and v12 installed simultaneously, they sit in different folders by default. ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/ has all the last versions of every version. I presume 12w is in there although I'm not sure whether it is AM2006 or AM2005. trial and error should find it. Perhaps someone else here knows exactly which file it is.

If you do New>light in your model window you wont' need to use constraints. Make the light a child of a bone in your model. ALT-1 will make the PWS appear. you can look at the heirarchy of your bones there under the listing for your model. drag the light under any bone to make it a child of that bone.

Actually there is a 12.0w, that's what I have but I doubt that is the problem. I'm not sure what you mean by "swapping" bones... a "right" bone shows up in the left leg? Is it possible you hit the rear view when you thought you were hitting the front view? Thom would look the same in both views. But i opened the model. many foot CPs were assigned to the opposite foot bone. I fixed that. MyBonelessThomRepaired.zip I put him in an action. It seems to behave normally.

Yup, get those bad patches out of your system.

Great looking character! That would have been a good Mini-moive entry.

ifyou just hook three splines end to end, they will form one spline. the CPs athe corners of a patch really should be made from the intersection of two splines. Does anyone know where the pic Colin Freeman made of good and band spline continuity is? That would make it very clear.

patches must be made from more than one spline. A single spline looping around 3 or four points will not fill in. in complex models an opening may appear to be made of two different splines, but it's really one long spline doubling back on itself. That won't fill in either. The patches you are making there will probably get creases but that's another issue.

A:M files are XML formatted text files, so presuming you made keyframes of your camera positions, you could look at a saved chor file and discern some numbers if there was a reason to do so. Much easier to just reload the chor, however.

it may be in a codec that A:M doesn't work with. Use an NLE or Quicktime Pro to convert it to a targa series. THose work much better.

I'm looking forward to it too. I recall Martin mentioning a while ago that Peter had moved to take a new job. Maybe that has sidelined this.

Sounds great. I presume that character is a Hasbro product?

"Basic" turns onthe rigs constraints. you want that on. btw... turn off the "balance rigid" and "balance" and "Steady" stuff before you animate anything. They are more hassle than they are worth.

one odd thing i notice about the walk is that the hips stop moving forward and drop straight down on the contact poses (when the heel first contacts the ground). Also the swinging of the arm carrying the radio is very erratic. An arm carrying a heavy weight like that would only move a little as the person was walking.

Good start. Move the camera to show him in a 3/4 pose and it will read better, especially with his long beak.

I believe you can right click in the model window and do New>light. I think you'll need to be in bones mode to see it.

Hey that looks promising. What will it take to track the eyelids and eye direction?

in the project workspace>your model>bones you can drag the listing for one bone onto another bone to make it a child of the other bone.