robcat2075

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.

It looks like the bugs feet are not quite touching the ground.

Hey , I remember that gumstick clip! That was fun. I suppose technically you can keyframe any bone anywhere you want, on any frame you want, so there's no reason you couldn't do a flip with the root bone. BUT... you're probably more likely to get the basic motion right doing it some other way, and then when you polish that basic motion, things will be easier to adjust.

Basically the CPS are children of the bones, the bones are not children of the CPs. You CAN alter both simulanteously in bones mode. Pick a bone, hit S to scale it, hold down the CTRL key while you scale it and the mesh will transform with the bone. Also works for Rotate and Translate When you pick a bone you need to make sure it's a real geometry bone with CPs attached to it, and not a rig bone that merely controls other bones

Yes, a back flip animated with the Root bone would be very stiff looking and probably awkward to do since it isn't anywhere near a character's center of gravity. If you switch the legs to FK they will follow the hips. If you're in IK legs, animate the hip or pelvis bone to do the flip and animate the legs to follow it around. flip done with IK legs: gymnast.mov

It looks like a windsock that emits fairy dust.

by design, A:M only considers bones for mirroring that either are labeled "left" or "right" (like arm and leg bones) or bones that are very close to x=0 (like spine and neck bones).

Reminds me a little bit of Chuck Jones' "Inki" character. Minus the top-knot. Looking forward to seeing him animated.

Wkipedia entry has two horse cycles as animated gifs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_l...tion_in_animals General rule of quadruped walks... the rear foot hits right after the front foot lifts, Many times it will step right into where the front foot was placed. Edit: More Muybridge

It looks good. Maybe the shadow areas look a little "flat"? I like the light casting shadows thru the leaves.

One possibility is that your character's hip and pelvis bones aren't exactly on x=0 in the model. Make sure both origin and tip are centered.