robcat2075

The best way to make a part of a decal invisible is to create it with an "alpha channel". In Photoshop this is a fourth channel in addition to the R G and B Note that this does not make part of the plane transparent, it prevents the decal form from coloring part of the plane. In A:M you can choose to make any one color in your decal transparent, but it's all or nothing (jaggy), an alpha channel can give smoother edges to your decal images.

Even if you are compositing in AE you will do better to use the alpha channels A:M can generate rather than render an object against a colored background and try to color key that out.

Save your project like this Myprojectname_01.prj then, when you "save as" later, just increment the 01 part. Maybe three seconds to do. There are utilities that will autosave every so often, but it's easy enough to do manually. On complicated projects I like to add a bit after the number so I can find major turning points in the project like... projectname_08_bonesadded.prj or projectname_46_smartskinrevised.prj or projectname_73_constraintssimplified.prj This does take longer than three seconds but it makes it makes it easier to revert to before-I-made-a-bad-mistake.

But if you're impatient or just want to see a rough result you can just group select the whole model after you import it and hit "P" to mass convert the splines. Nice model, I'll be curious to see the conversion.

It may be time to reload the model and start over. I was thinking the same thing as well, ugh... Not looking forward to it tho, it took me forever to get the characters posed in the CHoreography the way I wanted, then added the cyclic motion... Everything was looking good up to that point... Just reload the version of the project you saved before things went wrong. What? You didn't save versions of your project? Tsk, Tsk. Save your work frequently. Every five minutes. It's very easy to press a wrong button and not realize it until no amount of undoing will revert it. But you do have your last save. Copy it and try deleting keys until whatever you lost comes back. It's a cheap experiment. That's about all I can suggest without actually seeing how you did what you did. This will not simplify your workflow, and will yield motion that is very hard to tweak. Better to animate in the chor.

Hey that's me! By default it only keys things that have been keyed before For most animation situations you only need and want the ones I have bolded above You're onthe right track here... You can set the key filter to "Key Bone" (rather than "Key Model") and SHIFT-select various bones to force keys on bones that haven't been previously keyed, without forcing keys on EVERY bone inthe model. Mystery to me. POSSIBLY having that "Key Other" button selected might be in some way responsible because that includes making keys on a whole world of horrors that usually shouldn't get keyed. That's just one theory. It may be time to reload the model and start over. BTW, after you've used SHIFT-force Keyframe to access the radio buttons, remember to SHIFT-Force keyframe then next time you use it so you can set the radio button back to it's normal, safe "key only bones that are already keyed" mode. probably right here. Using it with "Key Model" was the problem I think. Not sure And that's when you should come here to ask a specific question, as you are doing now. see brief verbosity above Actually I think this is pretty sophisticated stuff. Knowing when to key something and when to key only part of something isn't always immediately obvious.

Nice pig. Well, if I were going tweak one thing I'd make the body continue down for a frame or two after each foot contact so the legs don't look so stiff (the compression pose). And I'd puthe feet closer together instead of spread so far apart. And I'd make the nose movement an action separate from the walk so I could just use it occasionally ok, that was three things.

Remember, it's only "the channel editor" if you have the button pressed to look at the "curves". The other button shows you "that thing which uses red squares to depict keyframes" which may be called "the dopesheet". But both are states of "the timeline". I've never found much use for "The Timeline" window proper since the PWS timeline does all that and more.

Perhaps you could post a specific question to start, maybe with a screen capture to show what you're asking about. Personally, i prefer the timeline that is in the right pane of the Project WorkSpace (PWS), rather than the window actually named "the timeline". The PWS Timeline keeps everything visible all the time so it's easier to to see the relationship between keys on different bones. but again... post a specific question to start, maybe with a screen capture to show what you're asking about.

Post a screen capture of it so we can see.

I think it's just the whim of the front page editor. That dialog test with a guy tied in a chair they had up a bit ago sure didn't seem to merit being there. Argument of generalization. Another sophism. Incorrect. Saying that I've only observed something to happen under certain conditions is not making a generalization. If I had said "We always hear that trotted out when..." that might be a generalization.

Whatever the eyes, we still hope to see more of your work on this!

That is an argument of authority. A sophism. That doesn't validate anything. Perhaps, but I only hear that trotted out when someone doesn't like the authority's opinion. For me, the eye darts seem odd because they aren't in the style that the rest of the movie lives in, and they aren't a big enough part of the movie to expand the style to include them. They're like a blip and so their intended meaning isn't conveyed.

that before and after should be in Hash's promo material under "displacement mapping"

It doesn't hurt for a modeler to be knowledgeable about what a character will need to do in animation. At the pro level there are many fine animators who dont' do much modeling. Concentrating on animation rather than modeling probably helped their progress. Likewise, many people only model or only rig or only texture. Their specialized skills make them valuable as team members. Almost anything you see in a commercial movie is the product of much teamwork. Sit thru the credits of a CG-heavy movie and count all the people listed and the special titles they have. However, if you want to work alone, as some artists do, you will need to become at least passable at all the skills.

Good start. I'll be curious to see how you animate it. The loops in the back are interesting. Are they like ribs?

Yeah, you need to make clip of yourself battling that. Fine looking model! What's the cause of the creasing weirdness on what look like regular 4-point patches, and why doesn't it crease the render? Or maybe it does and the textures are hiding it? [attachmentid=20106]

That looks good ken! Does that have porcelain on it already? I'm sure you're aware of the numerous images of Yoda out there already. The fan art seems to vary quite a bit though. edit: here's an inexpensive official model that could be obtained for study

It's only visible if you have selected "shaded" for rendering method. It doesn't apply to other modes. [attachmentid=19912]

Render to File settings>Options>Polys per patch... I bet yours is set to 1. set it to "adaptive" for the render

In my test the dialog box was not able to move keyframes past keyframes that i intended to leave in place. Well, it did move them, but the in-place frames disappeared. If you need to move a keyframe past another: select the object set the time marker to the frame Edit>cut Keyframe set the time marker to the new frame edit>paste keyframe (Using the cut and paste in the right-click menu doesn't seem to work) To cut and paste multiple keyframes that span over time, you need to cut and paste those individually, or go to the curve editor (aka Channel Editor): movingframes.mov

a warm steaming pile of... thought balloon! very odd.

That's a good plan. Your animation will probably run faster without the room in the background slowing things down. Good start!

That's a fine new user piece! You shouldn't have waited two years to show it. Some of the timing is quite good; enough that I had the sense that good judgement was going into it. And when it wasn't working so well it probably because it was a very difficult thing you were trying to do. Story-wise I'm not sure I "got it" but it was fun to watch.

I'm guessing your extrude direction in your defaults isn't what the book is expecting. but if your new CPs aren't in the right spot you can always drag them to a better place. they're still selected after you do the extrude so they are easy to drag. if you post a screen cap someone might have a better guess.