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Here is a guide for making your mouth shapes. You will have to adapt to your character, but this page gives you a good starting point. http://www.garycmartin.com/mouth_shapes.html

You must make sure your images are sequentially numbered. (myImage_000, myImage_001, myImage_002 etc) Also, don't select all the images in the folder. Just select the first one, and make sure the check box labeled "Import Image Sequence" is checked.

I think v13 went up to 13t

That's a great start! Can't wait to see how it develops.

Looks like the makin's of a classic French tragedy about a clown.

Nice job Mark. The Squetch rig really seems to work well with gorillas. The hair looks great. large - you must be talking about real-life giant gorillas, not the variety that are commonly seen hanging around movie sets

If you can deal with the lag, it probably doesn't matter ... that much. However, in every case, except for a small number of exceptions, 10K patches are not only unnecessary, but will bite you in the butt when you try to rig and animate the model. If a model really needs that many patches, it is usually a landscape, a large machine, or a building. In those types of models, it is standard practice to divide the model up into "pre-fab" pieces and assemble them in an Action or a Choreography.

If you are asking this question, you will save time by: 1. Open one of your phoneme poses, like MBP. (right-click on the pose name in the pose slider window or in the model's User Properties and choose "Edit Relationship") 2. Go into Muscle Mode (the button is usually at the top of the program window. It looks a little like someone flexing their bicep) 3. Make sure the pose is at 100%. 4. Move the control points in the mouth around until it looks like it is saying the associated sound. 5. Close the Relationship window. 6 Open the next phoneme pose and repeat. Face rigs are great to work with, but to build or install one correctly for the first time, you can't be on a deadline. The first one will probably take you two or three days. The process I mentioned above will save you some time.

Does this post help? http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=293595

You need to make the poses for your character. Step 1: Make nine poses named: MPB U O C D G K N R S TH Z WQ FV E L AI They have to be named exactly as I typed them. Step 2: Open each pose for editing and, with the pose slider at 100%, pose the mouth so it forms the right shape. For example: In the MBP pose, the mouth should be posed to look like the character is making a ... M, B, or P sound.

When you are working in ANY program, it is always a good idea to save often - and save in versions (MyProject_v1, MyProject_v2, MyProject_v3, etc). I've had Photoshop crash on me a few times too. If I hadn't saved different versions of my work, all my work would have been hosed. I save my work in A:M every time I change something [Ctrl - S]. And every time I make a major change, I save a new version. It has saved me many times.

Here's another converter that's totally free. (donationware) http://formatoz.com/

Does your computer freeze while you are 1) Modeling ? 2) Animating ? 3) Rendering ? How much RAM do you have? If the models you are using have a lot of pretty large decals, or if you are using Hair or other features that take a bunch of RAM, the scene may require more RAM than your computer has. When you run out of RAM, you are pretty much dead in the water. If that is the case, the only two solutions are to 1) buy more RAM or 2) Simplify your scene. Resize all decals so they are no larger than 512 pixels x 512 pixels. Take hair out of everything except only very small areas. Decrease the number of lights. Only have one or two lights that cast shadows. Use Z-Buffered shadows instead of raytraced shadows. If you can only render 200 frames or so before you run out of RAM, then only render 200 frames at a time. Render frames 0-200. Then render 201-400 etc. and join the movies together in AM later. (Make a new project. Import all your movie clips. Add them all to the camera as Rotoscopes. Set the Chor Range for each rotoscope so they play one after the other. Then render.) That will require much less RAM.

Thanks Stefan!

Don't know for sure but I have a couple of ideas. 1) Open up the image in a paint program and make it twice as large. 2) Use a TGA image instead of JPEG

I love your designs Kelly and the modeling and textures look really good too! A nice balance of simplicity and detail. It makes me want to know more about the story. Nice work.

That is good information David. Thank you for sharing it.

That's great to hear Large. You are much more than just some guy doing a cartoon about pirates. You help to inspire and motivate all of us to get off our a** and do something fun and creative.

[EDIT] Don't use this file. Download the file from the first post instead - Example Face (11/11/09) Here's a sample model with the LiteFace rig installed. (updated 2/11/09) : Robby_LiteFace.zip

That's a neat trick!

Don't forget Robcat's FREE video tutorials on various aspects of animation. They are all quite good. http://www.brilliantisland.com/am/amtutorials.htm

Do you want to import live action footage of a person sitting in a chair? Or do you want to show a real movie on a model of a TV in your chor? For a person sitting in a chair, people have used a green screen for that kind of thing. You will get better results if you import the footage into an editing or compositing app and create an alpha channel before your bring it into AM. For a movie playing on a model of a TV in the chor, just convert the movie footage into a quickrime movie (mpeg4 compression works pretty good) and apply it to the tv as an animated decal.

LiteFace is a basic face rig which provides for a wide variety of facial expressions. It is a light rig because it has a minimal set of bones. This has advantages and drawbacks. The advantages are: it is fast and easy to install and, since there are minimal bones, the process of adding control point weights is relatively straightforward. The drawbacks are: it may not allow facial expressions as complex as a more robust face rig. The rig itself if very fast and easy to install. The majority of your time will be spent weighting the mesh to the bones. It can theoretically be installed in a model rigged with any kind of body rig, provided there is/are no Eye bones, Jaw bone etc. in the existing body rig. Control point weighting, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of this installation guide. However, I have written a 24 page illustrated tutorial on Weighting a Face which uses a face rigged with LiteFace. You can get it here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=292565 Hopefully I will be able to upload a rigged and weighted model for you to play with on Sunday. LiteFace Instructions (updated 1/31/09)LiteFace_Instructions.pdf LiteFace Rig (update 5/27/09) LiteFace.zip LiteFace Rig + New Instructions (updated 11/09/09) Liteface_2009_11_10.zip LiteFace Rig (11/11/09) LiteFace_2009_11_11.zip Example Face (11/11/09) Example_Face_2009_11_11.zip Installation Instructions (11/11/09) Liteface_Installation_2009_11_11.pdf LiteFace_10_15_09.zip

Me too. I understand how much time and effort goes into good documentation.

Nice list! Thanks for posting it.