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That looks nice Gerry! Are you going to put some kind of outside landscape decal on, or behind, the Window? If not, setting the camera background color to black or dark blue may make the fact that there is nothing behind the window a little less obvious.

From what I heard, the subscription activation process is supposed to be automated. But how can you automate situations where a user has changed his hardware and, of course, AM won't validate then. It thinks the user has copied AM and is trying to run the copy on another computer. So in those cases, a phone call is really necessary. I'll be happy when some genius figures out a way to discourage large scale piracy while allowing payed customers the freedom to use/move their purchases however they want.

You can't rotate a rotoscope or decal in AM. You have to rotate the model instead. Be sure to do that in an action or pose.

Really nice start Tralfaz, but have you thought about adding some detail to the model? It looks a little plain

I would put a few towers with red blinking lights on top of the taller buildings. You know, those lights that keep airplanes from hitting the tops of the buildings. In the cities I have visited, the lights in the buildings are all different tints of white/yellow. They aren't all the same color.

Attack of the Giant Killer Dragonflys"! That sounds like a great "B" movie.

I hope you let us read some of it and look at the pictures when you get farther along!

Maybe something like this? ginger_dance_lowrez.mov

You could conceivably build a TSM rig right in AM. So the chances of the rig itself no longer working are probably about the same as any rig built in AM not working. The TSM builder/flipper plugin however is another story...

The Step option tells AM how many frames to skip. If you are just doing test renders, you can render every 100th frame (step = 100). Or if you have two instances of AM rendering the same project (different cores or different computers), and your project has, for example 1000 frames, you can set one instance to render frames 0-1000 with a step of 2 - and the other instance to render frames 1-1000 with a step of 2. The first instance will render frames 0,2,4,6 etc. The second instance will render frames 1,3,5,7 etc. If aren't rendering with AO or SSS, you can get quite nice renders by using the non-multipass renderer, which gives decent (but less accurate) DOF and MoBlur. Plus the render time will probably be much faster than rendering 16 passes. 63MB for a render/animation test is probably a bit much for many people to want to download. If it's just a test, I bet you can resize/recompress it down to under 10MB.

The tears are great! Like the burning leaves too I think Robcat is right about the gravity.

I don't have Vista, but I think other people had luck by right-clicking on the AM program shortcut icon and choosing "compatibility mode" ... somewhere. Turning Off Aero has also help some people I think.

Very nice model!

Here is an extensive tutorial on working with Post Effects in general. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30168

Awesome models I can't help render either. I work on my computer all day. But if you are at school ... there is no reason your computer at home can't be rendering all day long. And you aren't using your computer at night while you are sleeping. Another option is to render smaller, then use Irfanview or a Photoshop action to scale the frames up to 720p.

Hey Gerry, I just made a new face rig that might work a little better. It also might install with fewer hassles ... but I need a model to test it with. Would you be willing to send me a version of your model with? * The body rig already installed. * All the Face Bones positioned correctly. * And all the face CP weighting done. * Face Rig NOT installed If you do, I'll install this updated rig in it ... and if it actually works, I'll send it back to you If you don't have a version with the face rig Not installed, that's OK. I can just delete all the relationships and start from there. Thanks. holmesbryant at gmail dot com

You can just move the Jaw Control Null up a bit on the first frame of your animation to close it. Normally, you would model the character's face in it's "default" state. For some characters, their default state might be that their mouth is just naturally slightly open.

Turn Off both the Face Constraints and the Mouth Corner Constraints. You can do this in the Action if you want. With the Mouth Corner constraints Off, the mouth corners will no longer move when you open the jaw. If you want to test the weighting with the jaw open, clear the action (when you clear the action - if you turned the constraints off in the Action - the Face Constraints and the Mouth Corner constraints should revert to their default state, which is ON.) When you want to refine the weighting further, be sure to turn the Face Constraints and the Mouth Corner constraints back Off.

Hi Gerry, Sorry I didn't reply to your Oct 18 post. I didn't see it when I hit the "View New Posts" link. -------------- For the mouth corners, see below. For the Inner Eyelid corners, I have never run into that problem. How much do they jump? ---------------- For the mouth corners: In the *User Properties Panel*, turn Face Controls > Hide Face Bones Off. Edit User Properties > Face Controls > Mouth Corner Constraints. Go to Front View. In the *Pose Slider Panel* (Not the User Properties), Turn the Pose Off. Place a horizontal and a vertical guide (forming a cross-hair) at the tip of each Mouth Corner bone. Turn the Pose ON. Move the Mouth Corner bones so the tips match up with the guides. Switch to Left View. Turn the Pose Off. Place guides where the tip of the left Mouth Corner bone is. Turn the Pose On. Move the tip of the left Mouth Corner bone to match up with the guides. Do the same with the right side. Then close the Pose window. In the *User Properties Panel*, turn Face Controls > Hide Face Bones back On. ----------------------------------------- To make the top eyelids close completely, the the easiest way to make smartskins for the (4) upper eyelid bones. If you already have a smartskin for each of the (4) upper eyelid bones, you can use those. You don't have to make new smartskins if you already have them. In the Model window, select the CPs that are associated with the upper eyelid bones and hit the "Lock CPs" button, so only the selected CPs are editable. In the *User Properties* panel, turn Face Controls Hide Face Bones - OFF. Open the model in an Action. Set Face ON/Labels ON/Split Controls to "1". The face controls should appear. Move the Eyelid Control null straight down. The top eyelids should close about half way. Select each of the upper eyelid bones and either create a new smartskin or, if one already exists, edit the existing one. In the smartskin, move the CPs associated with that particular bone until that particular part of the eyelid is closed. Do the same for each of the eyelid bones. ------------------------------------------------ I don't understand this question. In the movie you posted, the mesh seems to move fine. ---------------------------------------------------

you should email support@hash.com

That's very clever. Thank you for sharing it.

Oops ... I left out an important step right before you export the install action as a model: * Make sure you have the appropriate filters active and [shift]-click on the "Force Keyframe" button. (see instructions in the Installation PDF file) * Save the project (or at least the Action). If you do not save it, it will not export properly. * Right-click on the Face_Install Action and choose Export > Model from the context menu. ---- awesome. Please let us know how it goes.

That's great Matt. It reminds me of something I might have seen as a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons. For some reason, I am more prone to overlook issues in an animation done in a rough style, such as this one. When watching animations that have more visual polish, I find myself being more critical of little issues.

Yes, if you have not already weighted the face, you can wait until the end. Although, it is generally easier to weight the face before the rig is installed. (If you have already weighted the face, you do not have to re-weight it in order to use the alternate install instructions.) I'm not sure I understand. * If you only have a copy of your model with no face bones at all, start at the beginning of the instructions. * If you have a copy of your model with the face bones already positioned, start with that. Then continue with the "Make a new empty model" step. * If you have a copy of your model with the face bones already positioned and the CPs already weighted, start with that. Then continue with the "Make a new empty model" step. * Since AM crashed when you originally tried to export a model from the face_install Action, do not use that model. There is a slight chance it might be corrupted somehow.

Well ... um ... ... yeah there are several iterations of the LiteRig floating around. Please use the latest one I uploaded a couple days ago to the original LiteRig thread. I'm pretty sure the Liteface in Bumpy Man is different than the LiteFace in Gloria. Getting LiteFace to work in Gloria was something of a hack because Gloria uses the 2008 body rig ... and I'm easily confused.