robcat2075

Online updates don't include them. get it in ftp://ftp.hashmirror.com/pub/updates/windows/Am2007/ master.chm is the file you put in the same directory as your master.exe file

under Tools>Customize>Commands>Tools you can actually drag the icon from the tab to any tool panel in A:M

That's quite effective. I presume you're not going to go the toon-render route?

There is the complete stuff under "Help". If one studiously read thru all of that, one would at least get a mention of everything.

The channel filters are the buttons near the bottom left of A:M. The first three are blue boxes with arrows around them. Hover your cursor over them and they have labels like "Key Skeletal Translations"... "Key Skeletal Scale"... The first eight control what aspects get keyed if you force a keyframe. If you have none of them set, no keys will be made at all. Click on the red-green-blue icon at the bottom of the PWS timeline window to actually see these channels. You can reshape them there like splines. the last three (Bone, Branch, Model) control how much of the model gets keyed when you force a keyframe. A single bone, the bone and all of its children, or the whole model. One is always "on". Each of those is modified by choosing the "only pre-existing.." or the "all filtered channels..." options discussed above. you move a bone "manually" by selecting it and moving it with your mouse, like when you pose a character.

Edsels?

If you put everything in the book that could be in the book you'd have a book that was about five feet thick.

in the properties panel of the path constraint you can set the "ease" percentage to any value on any frame. You could set it to stay the same while you want him to idle. You can also edit the ease visually in the channels.

Those are wonderful looking drawings. Translating those to 3D will be an ambitious project. I'll look forward to seeing the results.

After a quick look, the problem seems to be your knee targets. they are down by the ground when they should be in front of the character. the knees are doing the best they can to point at them but that's going to be backwards sometimes where the targets are now. Go to the modeling bones window and move them waaaayyyy in front of the feet. Just that made the walk cycle 100% better when I tried it.

This won't do ANYTHING unless there is a pre-existing keyframe on that bone ("Pre-existing" means there is one already), which you haven't mentioned doing before this. (forcing a keyframe "only in channels that pre-exist" really means that no new channels will be created where none existed before. If a bone wasn't keyframed before this (which is what gives it channels) it won't get keyframes now with the "Pre-exist " option. There are only two ways to create a keyframe on a bone that hasn't been keyframed yet 1-select it and physically move it in the animation window. This is easy. The drawback is that you will only get channels for the kind of moving you did. If you only translated it you will only get translation channels. If you only rotated it you will only get rotation channels. YOu 'd have to do both to get both. Easy on one bone, but a hassle if you want to key several bones at once, which is why we do.... 2-turn on the single bone filter ("Key Bone", not "Key Branch", not "Key Model"). Turn on the channel filters you want; for most animation that will be just translate, rotate and maybe scale. CTRL-select the several bones you want to force a key on. SHIFT-forcekeyframe, and choose the "all filtered" option. All those selected bones will get keyframed on all the channels you wanted. IF you want to use the "key branch" or or "key model" options later, choose "only pre-exist" when you force a keyframe or you'll get keys on bones you had never intended to get keys on. moving a bone will create a keyframe automatically, which is why you don't have to use the force keyframe button very often. Forcing a keyframe is useful when you want to keyframe a bone in the same place that a previous keyframe had left it and make the bone remain stationary from the first keyframe to the new time you're at now before moving to a new position. Like when you want a foot to stay in place before it moves. "key branch" and "key model" are useful when you want to do that to many bones at once rather than having to do each bone separately.

That sounds like you have it exactly backwards. "All filtered channels" will force keyframes on the bones you have currently selected even if it hadn't been keyframed before. This is something you ususally only want to do when you are trying to set a bunch of beginnning keyframes at once, at start of your work. This is not a problem if you only have one bone selected and have the single bone filter on. The trouble starts when you mistakenly turn on the "whole body" filter and force a key fram on "all filtered channels". EVERY bone inthemodel will get keyed whether you wanted it to or not even if it had not been keyed before (such as fan bones that you'd never want to keyframe). On the other hand with "ONLY IN FILTERED CHANNELS THAT PRE EXIST" you can have the "whole body " filter on and it will still only force a keyframe on all the bones you have intentionally keyframed already but no others. This is something you may often do to make sure that a pose you have in a certain frame is nailed down on every bone that you have been animating. The value of that is difficult to explain. There is no simple explanation that covers all the possibilities.

This tut shows how to animate after using an action: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=242421

Quat should be the least troublesome of all the interpolations. I think some other problem is at work but without seeing the project it will be impossible to diagnose.

That is something that has perplexed me about working with the squetch rig. I surmised these phantom keyframes had something to do with the switching, but didn't know if they were "needed" even if I hadn't made them myself. I've experimented with deleting them and so far, no disasters, but leaving them be seems to have no effect either.

Ouch. Has anyone put in a request for an option to turn this keyframe forcing off? There's a lot of AM2001 characters out there. Fortunately the TSM rig doesn't seem to be affected, I suppose because it uses a percentage slider to choose IK-FK rather than an ON-OFF.

By any chance is the "A" (Animate mode) button OFF?

Does this mean old rigs are broken? Just ones that use ON/OFF poses?

I'm looking forward to seeing your film. looks like lots of cool stuff is going into it. In this view, I'm having trouble figuring out how his left thigh is attached to his body. The body looks like it's too far on the other side of the saddle for the leg to be as far front as it looks to be.

a few more notes abour importing models to A:M scroll down to second quote

particle streaks are a good bet. Don't make them too long. I think that's what was used in Boids of a Feather

There is presently a community project that is a feature length film...TWO (TinWoodman of Oz). And a few more... "Telepresence" (1997) and "Miss Cast Away" (2004) were live action with CG effects movies. I've seen them both. While not GREAT movies, the effects work are good examples of what very small crews with very small budgets can do. With other software it would never have gotten done at all. There's also a full CG feature called FarStar in production, no finish date announced. But really, if you're making a feature film, the software you use isn't your main worry. The toughest part is the humungous collection of people you need to get it all done. AM can import objects from other software, but only as props or converted to the AM model file. If it is converted, you would have to do a lot of cleaning up. AM is not a polygon-based application...the packages you list are polygon-based, so it's harder to go from or to them from AM. And just to amplify that... In A:M a "prop" is an imported object that you do not intend to "rig" or otherwise edit. You can put it in A:M scenes and move it around. If you need to change it in any way, you should do that in the program it originally came from and re-import it. If you convert a polygon model to A:M splines, some cleanup will be needed as most polygon models do not have well constructed meshes. Triangle based meshes are the worst, don't bother with them except as "props". Quad meshes that came from NURBS or SUB-D modelers have more promise, but a new user would need to understand essential A:M concepts like "spline continuity" and the proper use of unique A:M things like the 5-point patch to properly edit them. These models will not generally be ready to use after simply importing them and substantial editing skills will still be needed.

no, hair will stay with the model. If is isn't, something was seriously not done right. post an example if you're having trouble.

You may have to show us a movie of it happening to make it clearer what you mean. Generally, once particles are emitted they are independent of the model, rather like water spurting out of a hose. Once some water has left the hose, moving the hose won't change where that water went.

If he's a good dog you should give him two eyes.