robcat2075

In the properties for the model turn File Info>Embedded to ON and save your project. The model is now part of your project file. Ther are other ways... this one was easiest to explain.

BTW, remember greenscreening isn't something you do in A:M. You use A:M to render your CG elements and take that footage to a compositing program to combine with your live action stuff.

That's a good one. BTW I'll just note that there seems to be an error in the screen grabs for the bouncing balls. They are identical when they should not be. The second one looks about right; the first one probably should be a bit less broad at the top.

Much of what you are proposing are advanced compositing tasks. A good book on the topic is Digital Compositing in Depth by Doug Kelly. 19.95 on ebay

Yes. Actions have an "ease" property that you can set. (gotta look in the property panel for it; after you manually set a value it will also appear as a channel in your PWS timeline.) By default, your 03:00 action will have ease set at 0% at 00:00 and 100% at 03:00. but you could set that ease to 100% at 02:00 and then the action would go from 0 to 100% in that time. YOu can even make actions pause or run backward with ease settings.

I think this indicates that a stronger GPU will not help much. A:M really doesn't make extensive use of all the real-time powers of graphics cards since graphics cards are polygon oriented. CPU speed is the biggest factor in your real-time playback, more powerful GPUs offer diminshing returns. At least that's what I have heard the Hash people say numerous times. If that's changed, let me know, I'll go out and buy a faster card.

Is there a "pitch" put together? Something to convince people to invest in your movie? Invest their time, I mean. Volunteer labor is hard to come by. And for a movie you've got to persuade them that working on your dream would be time better spent than working on their own dream. It can be done, but you'll have to be convincing. I'd recommend you do a short first, perhaps incorporating some scene from your movie and show people that a ) you can do it, and b ) you've got a great idea.

Oh that looks cool, and it's in color even. Not available yet... hmmm.... made in russia...

Hey, someone should make a keyboard with little LCD displays on the keycaps and it could change the shortcuts for every app you use.

When I've put WAVs into A:M I've tried to make them a "standard" rate like 44100Khz or 22050. It shouldn't make a difference, but I'm just brain storming here... I dont' think lagging will help overall since the sound is getting more out of synch as time passes.

That's very odd since it starts out in synch then drifts farther and farther out of synch. It's as if the audio track got sped up or the video slowed down. -is there any difference between your project frame rate and the frame rate set in the QT compression settings? -does the pitch in the rendered QT sound any different (higher or lower) than when it's played inthe chor? -was the original audio at any weird sample rate?

try these settings in A:M [attachmentid=16569] raise the data rate until yo get an acceptable image

"User properties" in Properties window

That's a fine looking creature. It makes mine look like a bald rat yes, it seems to bounce among several programs and much of it is not A:m at all; but the rigging stuff was surprisingly A:M heavy. For $4, it's a safe buy I think. Only go t the email today. Looks like TSM constraints are not turned "ON" in the upper right window example. edit: also... the tail on my sample dino was only set up to be done FK. you CAN drag the last bone around in IK fashion, but it's not recommended. I forget if TSM has an IK tail option...

The book Character Animation in Depth by Doug Kelly is about 7 years old and out of date in many ways but has numerous examples of rigging situations actually demonstrated in A:M. I spent a long time reading it and studying it to learn how to rig my character. Then TSM came along and eliminated all that and I was able to get animating and animate better than if I were using a rig I had constructed on my own.

I believe you delete poses in the properties panel for your character, under "User Properties" Ask questions here

ok here... 30 minutes to model a simple figure on the same basic layout as your dinosaur 20 minutes to rig with TSM2 40 minutes to animate [attachmentid=16426] [attachmentid=16424] Everything worked as I would expect it to. And I've never even used TSM's quadraped rig before! I'm just not having any trouble placing any body part anywhere I need it to be at any time. Of course, the simple geometry of my character meant I didn't have to do any fanboning, but from your description , that's not the trouble you are having. TSM was designed by animators who have seen and used the very best that modern CG rigging has to offer and they use it themselves. If it did crazy whacky things for no good reason... they wouldn't put up with it for a millisecond. As I was doing this, one thought came to me... is it possible some of your CPs are not properly assigned? Even darker thought... Is it possible you haven't done the whole TSM process yet? Builder, Flipper and Rigger? I want your dinosaur to work. Lets figure out why it doesn't. dino9.zip DinoJumpH.mov

But if your character is set to FK and you're trying to manipulate it as if it were IK... tangled mess I dunno... I've used it repeatedly to rig characters... they are completely well behaved. The limbs go exactly where I expect them to. Simplest possible IK-only Leg setup: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=171898 Post a character that you're sure you did right but isn't... we'll find out what is wrong

possibilities: -render it smaller -render it in Shaded mode instead of Final -use shadow mapped lights instead of ray-traced ones -dont' use combiner textures what does all that mean? Those are some of the ins and outs of 3D you will get more familiar with as you do more projects.

Just that first sentence tells me "knee target Problem" Something has gone wrong in the constraints that tell the knee where to point. Perhaps as Stuart suggests you're mistaking FK for IK; that would create instant knee target trouble. It's telling you you've installed the rig improperly or are using it improperly. I know you were careful, i know you read the directions but... you've altered a heirarchy, mistargeted a constraint, misnamed a bone, changed a pose from Off to On or vice versa... something easy to do, hard to track down on the limited info we have so far. That is additional confirmation that you changed somthing about the rig when installing it. Since the Hash models dont' use them, you don't need to use them either, and they won't get you what you want anyway. Better to figure out what went wrong with the rig. I used to recommend TSM to people so they could side step the rigging hassle, but then they'd complain when it didn't automatically smooth the joints or animate the character for them. I prefer it though. But that doesn't mean the AM rig is broken to begin with.

You probably don't have to make a new relationship; if you're animating the bone directly it's likely already in one of your rigging relationships. If you need to limit the movement of a bone that you don't animate directly (say, a middle spine bone) then use a spherical or euler constraint.

If you create a relationship that bone is used in then the manipulator options and limits become avaiable, but only in the properties for that relationship.

But what version of Quicktime do you actually have? I could "update" my old QT6 and it still wouldn't play material made with codecs unique to QT7.

Welcome back! This is not an unusual problem when combining a premade "action" with some new animation. The new animation mixes with the old action causing the results you see. To keep them from mixing you will need to create a new "Choreography Action" to put your new animation in. Yes, two choreography actions in the same chor. Quick view of how this looks in the PWS: [attachmentid=16357] An alternative, a more straightforward one in my judgement, is to NOT use an action for the walk. Animate the steps like you would any other motion of a character.

There might be a toon setting that works, but this one look more like "solarized" photography than toon. It's too fragmented.