[rigging my model]

the other character I came up with who is doing a jump kick:

BTW, all i get in your .mov's is one still frame. Is it supposed to be just one frame?

[2 New Characters]

They look quite promising! how about a fold in his chin (a double chin) to give it some detail? It looks like there's a bulge between his upper lip and nose?... that looks a little odd.

 

But they look like real animation characters!

[rigging my model]

I don't get how to make the hands work.

Hmmm, I missed that part of the question the first time....

 

as far as the finger bones... you have to unhide them in the AM 2001 rig and associate CPs with them, much like you do for the arm and leg bones.

 

exercise 3 has a section on making the hands work. I'm presuming the rig in that Rabbit is the same as the AM 2001 rig. I've been using the Anzovin rig so I admit I haven't really messed with the standard AM rig.

[My first walk cycle and Pieman's too!]

He's alive! I think its a good first outing. I'm not a walk expert, I'm still wrangling with 'em. but...

 

During the brief point where we can see him head-on the effect is somewhat robotic because he's not shifting his weight from side to side as he's being supported by one foot at a time. We very rarely balance ourselves evenly on two feet. And it's impossible when you're only on one foot. The side view doesn't make it as obvious.

 

in most casual walks the motion of the hands and arms will lag behind the shoulders by a few frames. i also think doing the arms in FK instead of IK will get more natural results in walk situations.

 

The hard part of walk cycles is getting the end frame to match up with the first frame. yeah I know... copy keyframes and paste and all that... but you also have to get the slopes of the drivers at the beginning and end to resemble each other too.

 

Actually I think walks are a rather complicated first exercise. A super hero like this would do well to start with a big broad jump and landing. "Up up and away... to pi r squared and beyond" and all that...

[a stability/performance Tip!]

This is useful information

manually cleaned my registry, removing all HASH keys,

Is this particular operation documented somewhere for the un-registry aware like myself. All I know about the registry is that mentions of it are usually accompanied by a big

 

WARNING: DO NOT..."

["Catch" - Animation Showdown entry - Feb 6, 2004]

I liked your Catching Something Heavy!

Hey, thanks!

I was expecting (on probably the third viewing, looking for something to improve upon... )

Yeah, there's lots of room for improvement. Original plan was to have him slip and fall backwards after lifting Thom, but... tick-tock and all that.

 

I'd like to get to the point where I can put something like this together in two hours and use the last two to review it and tweak it. But right now I sit down and four hours later it's "huh?... wha?"

DivX does not lock out Mac users.

I went to the DivX's mouth and yes, there does seem to be mention of an alpha encoder app for OSX. I generally hate weirdo codecs, but it does encode small. I wonder how it compares with the "pro" version of Sorenson?

 

but does it happen any time other than Wednesdays? :\ That's me busy day.

Seismic cultural events like the Super Bowl can shift the schedule by a day, but usually wednesday is it. You can start anytime on Wednesday though, morning, noon or night.

[brickwalls and the cloth wizard]

How does the cloth figure into this simulation?

[Does 64MB more RAM on a video card really make a difference ?]

Would 64MB more RAM on a video card really make a noticeable difference?

I think video ram has more to do with being able to display large textures fast and display higher resolutions than with being able to update geometry fast.

 

I think moving geometry is more of a processor speed thing. That's only based on what i've read. I haven't tested that theory.

[Edit Angle as... and Euler Rotate Objects]

You should see that obscure option [CONVERT DRIVER TO..]

 

AHA! Thanks Mr. Wrong!

 

Geez, that was buried! I suppose the Lindbergh baby is in here somewhere too.

[rigging my model]

The manual that came with the software is kinda too general on the material for skeletal rigs.

Too general? Exercise 13 "Show some backbone" is all about putting a skeleton in a biped character, just like yours is.

 

nice character, it oughta work well with that rig.

[bullet holes]

So... these boolean cutters you speak of...? How do they work?

 

There's a page in Help>Help Topics

 

do a "search" for "specified booleans"

[Edit Angle as... and Euler Rotate Objects]

There used to be an "Edit Angle As" option in A:M but I can't find it now. Does it still exist?

 

Along the same line, how do I get a bone to be driven by an "Euler Rotate Driver"? (not the same as an "Euler Limit" constraint.)

 

Euler Rotate Objects and an Euler Rotate Driver Menu are mentioned in the online docs but I haven't found where they present themselves in the software.

[WIP: Pieman]

I think the pi symbol should occupy more of the circle.

 

And what would the special powers of pi man be? The large legs indicate he must do a lot of running and jumping to achieve his mathematical value. Pi is a long number I guess.

 

I think he should have a dog sidekick made entirely out of one-radian arcs.

 

I'm eager to see this guy animated.

[Computer graphic schools]

I have training tapes and books, which I don't

have the desire to read, to much tech stuff, just show me and son't give me

the 10 page reason or history behind it.

I can understand that sentiment. I just bought a utility called "OS selector." It helps you partion a drive and select different OS's upon startup. That's all it does.

 

The manual is 12 chapters and 172 pages long! I haven't used this utility yet.

 

But if OS selecting were my intended field, I'd dive into that manual, because if all I knew about OS selecting were the top two or three things someone showed me in a class I'd just be an adequate OS selector and never a great one.

[Animation screenshots]

Looks like fun stuff! Id be interested in seeing a sample of the A:M images used with Flash interactivity.

["Catch" - Animation Showdown entry - Feb 6, 2004]

My entry in last night's animation showdown. The topic was catching something heavy. (QT Sorenson3 140kb)

 

I spent a long time trying to get the double take to work and never really got it.

 

Still lots of room for A:M people to try this showdown out. It's usually on wednesdays at digitalrendering.com. Ya can't say you don't have time... ya don't get much!

 

The entry always needs to be in divx, does that lock out the Macs?

[Simple image]

It's a strange and dangerous molecule.

[DO YA Love ANIMATION MASTER?]

Well, I guess not too many other A.M. users feel the same way as we do because they did not reply. They must think A.M. is not that great...

I'm just guessing it would take about 50-100 accomplished A:M artists, working in various capacities, to knock out a feature film in a reasonable length of time. And about 10-20 support people to wrangle all the details you don't see on the screen. That would be for a modest movie.

 

I'm not sure there's that number of qualified, AVAILABLE, people looking for something to do. One reason I hope Mr. Hash's new focus on marketing renders results is that the A:M user base hasn't really reached the critical mass needed to produce the accomplished users it takes for great projects to consistently happen. I see alot of knockout modeling going on; great character animators are not so abundant.

 

I'd suggest you produce a short with a smaller crew. If it turns out great, the other great A:M users may take notice and show interest in a larger project.

[Req: Very easy and quick tutorial for animating]

Exercises 3, 4 and 5 in the booklet that came with your CD are real must-dos. They cover a lot of essentials.

[Solder]

i think the proportions aren't quite right. Are the arms and legs too short or is the torso too long?

 

great concept, great details.

[Bump layer?]

Hard to tell without seeing what your result was, but... yes the decal is a grayscale image. no, it's not specifically a seperate "layer", although it is possible to apply several decals over one another.

 

Make sure the "type" is set to bump in the decals properties

[That Earthly glow...]

brrr... a quick attempt with a "combiner" material. not as good as the plug-in but should work on a MAC and if you mess with nesting more combiners you may get closer to what you were wanting...

 

the project file

[Jason Osipa stop staring setup]

Fab book. After i got about ten pages into it I realized I really needed to refamiliarize myself with A:M first.

 

But anyhow... I figured I'd could probably duplicate his null functionality in A:M by using one bone to control the mouth... I'd smart skin the "wide" shape to side to side rotation of the bone and the narrow "open" shape to up-and-down rotation of the bone. No expressions needed i think... that's my theory anyway.

[creating smooth meshes]

one way to rethink the body

[Jason Osipa stop staring setup]

I've only started digesting that book, but I don't' think you need expressions at all. I believe you could use A:M smart skin to make a mesh respond to the position of a bone (or null). There are probably even cleverer ways that others will point out.