robcat2075

select the five points. hit the period key twice. then hit the button with the five sided icon on it.

make a 2 cp spline. attach each CP to a separate bone. constrain 1 bone to your gun constrain the other to your target. the spline can be set to "render as line" to make it visible, but I'm not sure a single line can glow, try it. A thin cylinder with a ring at each end would work as well.

hmmm... now I dont' know if an expression can do this or not but I think the algorithm would be something like this: 1-from the previous frame to the current frame you find the distance the center point of the wheel has moved horizontally. this is a pythagorean theorem calculation using x and z coordinates. 2-that distance divided by the circumference of the wheel gives you the portion of a complete rotation the wheel will turn if it is aligned exactly inthe direction of movement. 3-some formula probably involving a sine function would scale that rotation portion from 0 (the case where the wheel has skidded sideways, causing no rotation at all) to 1 (the case where the wheel is aligned exactly with the direction of movement) based on a comparison of the orientation of the wheel with the actual direction it moved. 4-add the resulting rotation value to the wheel's previous rotation value. repeat for each new frame. Of course this would only work on level ground; bumps, hills, potholes would be beyond this simple formula. I suspect this is all doable in A:M expressions but I dont' know enough about the exact syntax of A:M expressions. Some interested expression writer may want to try it.

"streak" particle emmitter at the wingtips TAOA:M has an exercise to introduce you to particles.

That's cool looking. I think you need to cheat the "nightime" light a bit so the shapes are more clear. It's very dark right now.

also called "key modes" there's a whole bunch down there. search for "Frame toolbar" in help and it will show you pictures of them,

The translate and rotate filters should both be on also. And those nulls have been keyed at least once beforeyou tried the copy, right?

That's a pretty good "sad"

that's one that would benefit from a non-frontal angle.

you do have the material in a visible window right? the one that shows the sphere. that has to be open to adust its props.

you can set any properties value as a CP in the channels. Of course the channel has to exist first, which may not be possible until you make change in the properties window.

Yup, that does look like an old Vitaphone short.

That looks quite good. You should enter it next time the "mechanical" contest comes around.

Cute vampire.

are those legs at the bottom?

What you really want is to make an Action the rotates the bone once. Drop it on your model, Then set it to repeat in the (in its properties) as long as needed.

It looks good, but I don't understand pasting 120 times in every frame.

I honestly have no idea what you tried to do from that description. You can copy a keyframe from anywhere to anywhere. You got to have the right filters turned on. But there's no way for me to know from that description what you might have not had set right. Did you do the rabbit sidestepping example exercise that's in that video? Do that before you do anything else.

Those look good. I remember one of the very first CG images of "motion blur" was some billiard balls. I suppose if you wanted to pursue more realism, the depth of field effect looks undersampled. And maybe some wear on the balls, they look a bit too shiny.

I don't think you'll want to animate without the timeline for very long. Kyle, try this... put your jumping animation aside for just a moment, and do the rabbit sidestepping exercise exactly as I did it in the video. It may not work for you the first time because you'll forget some button. watch the video again and try it again. Getting something to stay in place isn't hard, but it's hard to get right if you aren't managing keyframes in the timeline.

Didn't we cover this stuff back here... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=260184 ?

I like john's fog. We need to find some way to keep the sprites from making that hard edge at the water line.

Before you jump into that, make sure you've done the tuts in "The Art of A:M". Most beginner questions will be answered there. the render to file button at the top. set your frame range to 1 frame and pick an image format like JPG.

"default" bone positions are always going to be the positions the bones were modeled in. If you want a quick way to set a character up in some position, you can create a new ON/OFF "Pose" in the character model that puts the character into that shape. Then , instead of turning the Pose "ON", drag the pose from the pose slider window onto the character inteh chor window. It will directly keyframe all the bones that were keyed in the pose. This is not a complete explanation. There are many things you can get wrong the first time you try this.

It turns out that flour sacks are very hard to rig satisfactorily in CG, I think because the "body" is so big in comparison to the "legs" and "arms". So while animating a sack is almost a beginner exercise in 2D, it's quite an advanced topic in 3D. That said, I think your sack needs to scrunch down (anticipate) before he leaps up. That's how he gets his mass moving to toss himself into he air.