robcat2075

One way to get the decal exactly right is to model one clump of needles such as you have pictured there, render that with alpha channel, then use that render as your decal. I'll also note that very fine lines tend to render better with multipass.

Yes you can do that. That is a frequent strategy for Cg detail like leaves. It is tricky to do with something that has such thin lines. i gave it a try here... PineNeedles.tga Apply that to a patch and set it to Cookie-cut mode.

A pretty much straight quote of "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner... clip4907SiegfriedsRhineJourney.mp4

I have a video on re-routing splines which may or may not have useful advice for your situation.

Here are the two tests I have used with my monitor. Warning: you can not use these in a browser. You have to load them into a paint program with no color management on and no scaling. I have the monitor contrast and brightness set so i can distinguish all the bars in colorbands.png Then i adjusted the monitor gamma so that vertical bands in gamma-test-2.png match each other at 2.2 the original directions can be read here http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ but don't use the test images in a browser. After i make these adjustments, the graphics and photos i encounter on the web look generally appropriate and full-range. gamma-test-2.zip

These images look generally appropriate on my monitor but still a bit darkish. The earlier tiffs were so dark that I couldn't discern much in them and couldn't see a difference in the rendering.

Here is a histogram of one of the frames. Is it really intended to just use the darkest half of the range?

The circle within a square is pretty much the classic situation where you need five pointers. Five pointers are best when they are fat and flat. Relatively little surface curvature and as convex a perimeter as possible. The CP that dead ends on a spline below the nostril will be a problem. Hopefully you are planning to extend that on to somewhere else. 😊

I have had a first frame problem previously... https://reports.hash.com/view.php?id=6914 However, the two frames I downloaded for comparison from your post appear so dark that I can't see a difference between them. Are they really supposed to be that dark? This brings me to another issue: Are we sure your is monitor set right? Here is a photo of my monitor displaying two of your frames along side a standard test image I downloaded. I feel like my monitor is within normal bounds because the test image appears generally appropriate and i can distinguish all but the darkest two shades of gray in the test bars.

A week to go! There is still time to put your entry together!

I did a little experimenting and found that an expression in the form of... AtFrame(GetFrame(),..|..|Translate.X) ... does create a "Missing a Right Parenthesis" error even though they appear to match.

David has a page of tuts on expression that may be instructive...

It is easy to get it wrong because the paths are so complicated. Our resident expert on expressions is David Simmons (it'sjustme). Drop him a message see if you can get him to look in on this.

He's supposed to have three little finger at the wrist. I'm just going to do two. I've hooked in three splines... ... to accommodate stitching in two spline rings. I extrude those out to start making fingers. I wonder what they do with them?

I would set the bone to "Euler" rotation and use the Z rotation channel since that will produce little visible motion of the bone and yet the curve would still be viewable in the same window. There is a function in Expressions that lets you retrieve values for a parameter for any previous or future frame. something like this Z rotation = ((previous frame z translation - current frame z translation) - (current frame z translation - next frame z translation) ) * some scaling factor

I think you could do that now. Since you only need the Z translation channel, a non-relevant channel on the same bone could be given an expression that calculates the acceleration.

Stitch in a loop from which a wing will be extruded... I added a couple CPs near the front edge so i can define the shape of the bone inside the skin better... Now I can extrude that loop out to make the patches for the wing... This theory of the wing flap is thought to be inaccurate today, but I'll do it because it's iconic... extra CPs for knobbier joints...

Steffen seems to have fixed this. I was able to load and render with the two sample plugins you had in the bug report. Keep your eyes peeled for v19k when it becomes available. Thanks for discovering the issue, Roger!

Try this... clip4900BoneMotiontoPoseSlider.mov

What is the origin of the tool you use to extract Pose slider data into a format for your "actuators" to use? Did you write it? Someone in your company? Is it a plugin that works in A:M or something that works on a saved file?

scenes from un-aired pilot for a TV series starring William Schallert and trouble-making cartoon character named "Philbert." This was primarily a project of Friz Freleng. Live action directed by Richard Donner, later of "The Omen," "Superman" and "Lethal Weapon" fame.

Charles, The above technique causes the Pose slider to move with the bone motion but it doesn't create an actual data channel of key frames for the Pose slider. If that is a problem, I have a solution.

Still two weeks to go for Prehistoric! Here is another Prehistoric tip...

try this... clip4894GimbalExpression.mov

Tell me if I'm getting this... clip4891GimbalBakingA.mov