robcat2075

First, convert your video into Quicktime or (preferably) a targa series. This is done in some other app such as a video editing program. then import that into Images and use it as a decal or rotoscope.

most Materials are "combiners" and need to be rendered for all the detail to show up. (This can be very slow, BTW) A plane like the ground may only recieve one thin slice of a material so it may not give the result you expected. Scaling, moving or tilting the origin of the material (see its properties) may be necessary.

It's pretty hard to get people to jump in on an independent project. Especially one that isn't fully planned out yet. Most people already have projects of their own they'd like to do first. Keep developing it, maybe you'll snare someone's interest.

Don't drop it, just table it and come back to it some day. Fine looking stuff!

I think that looks like a good character for learning animation. Think about making a lo-res proxy so your realtime playback is up to speed while you're doing that.

Hey, that looks good. You'll have to animate him now.

Wispy fog with moving and flowing tendrils would need some sort of particle effect. Much experimenting would be needed to perfect such an effect. However it is possible to animate the fog settings in the camera's properties panel to vary the start and stop distances. This can get a general effect of the fog increasing. Change the fog settings on different frames to set keyframes for them. You can see the channels this creates in the Project workspace.

If you got a different result, that's a very strong indicator that you skipped a step or did a step differently, or did them in a different order. Beyond that it's impossible to diagnose this just by words. There's a hundred things you could have done differently and no way for me to know which one. I would suggest removing all the bones from one arm and starting from scratch on one arm. Don't copy anything from the arms you already have. Obviously that isn't working because some important part out is getting overlooked. Without watching you there's no way to know which one is being left out. here's a very simple FK arm alternative. SimpleArmMP4.mov

The overlapping action on impact works well. Who tossed him in the air?

Rigs often have a number of hidden bones that help manuver the visible bones and then have constraints applied that make everything work together. I'm not an expert on the AM2001 rig so I couldn't tell you exactly what might have been left out when you created the second set of arms. I made short tut on simple IK legs here.. the simplest IK leg Even though it's for a "leg" you could use the same tactic on an arm.

The easiest way is a cookie-cut map. search for "cookie" in your Help>Help topics. It explains the different type of maps

I think the shapes would work better reversed. Narrow for "oh"

Without knowing how or what you rigged the character with it's hard to say. I'd guess that you left some important element out of the second set of arms that was inthe first? TSM 2 has options for multiple limb sets but I don't know that you used TSM2.

Very impressive Paul! You should finish the tut, that would be a good case study. Or at least package what you got so far.

It's really just to show it can be done and how to do it. but here's the V13 prj. You'll need to point it to Thom and the walk. tomonpath.zip

putting tom on a path: tomonpathmp4.mov

congratulations on the gig! You're now a professional character animator.

Welcome to A:M! The exercises in the manual are a great place to start.

That last one is quite trippy.

That looks cool. We had some tripod walk discussion here previously that may or may not be helpful... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=173497

That's a tough one! I can tell you that if that were an animation school exercise, several weeks would be spent on it, so we can hardly expect it to be perfect after the first few hours. It's good that you are animating again and this is a good start. Dhar and Ruscular are homing in on a good point, that you want to create poses that really suggest the forces at work... gravity, his legs, his arms, his back. Grabbing the box by the sides is the easiest to make a CG character do but would be ineffective for a real person. I'd recommend acting this manuver out with an actual heavy box and see what you really have to do to lift it. Better yet, get someone else to injure themselves while you watch. It just so happens that in another thread (post #64)we were discussing someone else's heavy lift and why it didn't look convincing. It has some similar issues.

Here's a quick test of the squetchy cup notion. plungercup.mov This was done with a pose, moving the CPs. Just scaling one bone wouldn't get this If I had to animate quite a bit of this I'd probably want this done with bones and contstraints rather than a pose. What I have here doesn't accomodate the need to jump anywhere but straight up. I'l leave that to you to figure out!

I think you could get a much smoother handle by using fewer spline rings. plungerhandle.mov

If you did Objects>import>prop then it will not be editable. Is the object's icon in the PWS a blue cube or a "thom"?

Most of the elements of a good hop are there. I think it is in the air too long and traveling too far for the energy that was in the initial jumping motion. A classic jump would have the character contacting the ground in a straight extended pose (much like it leaves the ground) and do the crouching down as overlapping motion only after hitting the ground. I like Paul's idea of squetching the rubber cup to provide the propulsion. that would be an interesting exercise, although the cup might not offer as much range of motion for jumping as the handle does.