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Here's the url for those who haven't watched any of the episodes yet. http://www.animace.biz/videoplyr.html If you haven't seen these, I highly recommend them

Try simulating spring systems from front view, instead of from camera view or from a side view. If that doesn't help, you make have to separate the dreadlocks more in the model window to give the collision detection time to figure everything out when in the chor. Here's another tut on dynamic constraints. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29914

These might answer your questions. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29729 http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29743

It sounds like you are asking two or three different questions. You can zoom in and out of the timeline by clicking in it and either using the mouse wheel or by pressing [Z] and dragging left or right. You can fit all keyframes in the window by clicking in the timeline and pressing [shift-Z] You can create keyframes where you need them by pressing the "Key Model" button at the bottom of the main program window, moving the time marker to the desired time, and hitting the "Make Keyframe" button. If you can afford a cheap second monitor, it is well worth it. My PWS fills up one monitor and I do my modeling and animating in another monitor.

Awesome. Love your characters. Great news about a book. That means you will have most of your script done. Will the book be like a graphic novel or comic book?

That looks really nice. Congratulations.

That is my backup plan... But since it is an animation it sure would be nice to have it all in one;) Since the second "alpha channel" render will only be used for the alpha channel, you can just render it in "Shaded" mode with "16 polys per patch" resolution (after you turn off the sky dome of course). That should go much quicker than the first pass.

You can't compress the sound in AM.

That is a cute character. Is he for an egg commercial?

Great Gerry. I think you are now ready for Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit". I think you will really enjoy it.

It is always a good idea to make all images which are in the same decal (color,bump,transparency etc) the same size.

Very nice Tunames. Too bad you ran out of time, Robcat's suggestions were really good.

Dude, you're out of control .... amazing model.

It's pretty much just as easy as JohnL said above. I believe the fonts have to be TrueType fonts in I m not mistaken.

There's also a cloth tutorial here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29731

Great models so far. Good luck on your project.

That's great Mark. You're outta control man!

Another wonderful episode! Lighting, direction, camera work, dialog, story and art direction are all really compelling. Animation is floaty and lip sync seems awkward, but I'm still buying it Great job so far.

Place the top-most and bottom-most points at .01cm before you lathe. That will prevent creases to the sphere. You should only need 6 or 8 cross sections on your lathed sphere, 10 is probably too much.

I haven't tried the 2008 rig yet, but I have installed a few other rigs and even rolled one or two of my own simple rigs in the past. In the realm of rigging, "Easy to Install" is a very relative term. Rigging is a complex and difficult discipline. To really understand the term "Easy to Install", you must first try to create your own animation rig from scratch. This goes well beyond simply adding some bones and assigning CPs to them. You must understand: proper spline placement, proper bone placement, which CPs go with what bones, CP weighting, Smart skinning, All types of constraints, Simple and multidimensional relationships, Cogs and other types of fan bones, Using one set of bones to control another set of bones ... among many other things. After you have spent several months creating your first rig, you most likely don't want to go through the expierence again, unless you are an exceptional person like Mark or David. But you realize your new rig is not flexible enough for all the things you want to do with it, so you ... basically ... rebuild it. However, you really, really, really want to get on with your next big movie, so at some point you just quit dinking with your rig and you start animating with a rig that has all kinds of problems. Now, someone like Mark or David comes along and spends a ton of time figuring all this crap out and makes a rig that is both flexible and easy to animate with. You still have to understand the basics of proper bone placements, CP assignments, weighting, multidimensional relationships, and smartskins. BUT - they have just saved you 100's of hours of tinkering with mind-bending arcane technical mumbo jumbo. So the new rig is considered "Easy" to install. Anyway, that's my take on it.

I'm afraid I have no idea what you are asking. Please rephrase your question.

Assuming that "Mario jumping out of the pipe" was animated in "Choreography Action 1". Drag the Run action onto Mario and make sure it is *under* Chor Action 1 in the PWS. In the Run action's "Chor Range -> Start" enter the frame you want him to start running. In the Run action's "Repeat", enter numbers until the "Chor Range -> End" value is near the frame on which you want Mario to stop running. Set the Run action's Blending Mode to "Blend". Go to the frame where Mario starts his run action and set the "Blend Ratio" (_not_ the Ease) to 100%. This effectively turns the Run action off. Go forward in time about half a second and set the Blend Ratio to 0%. Now his movements from shooting out of the pipe in Chor Action 1 will gradually transition over a half second into the Run action.

Largento, what are you using to lay out your tutorials? I noticed that the tutorial is just a big picture. If you are using something like InDesign or Illustrator, or Open Office, you can export it as a PDF file which will preserve your text instead of converting it into a single picture with everything else. This has a couple of benefits. If someone is viewing the tut on a very large monitor, or one with a high resolution, the text may appear fairly small on their screen and they may want to zoom in a bit to read it. With a PDF, the text will scale and will remain crisp when someone zooms the document. When you or someone wants to print the tut, the text will be much more sharp, which is easier to read and gives the impression of higher quality -- all for little or no extra work on your part. If you ever compile all these tuts into a single online booklet, the text in a PDF file is searchable, so it would be easier for people to find what they are looking for. Also, it would be possible to make bookmarks for all the different chapters. I would be happy to convert them for you if you need.

I just watched Episode 4. Great story and dialog so far. I stayed interested throughout. Can't wait for Episode 5! Have you uploaded these to YouTube?

My guess is that you are going to need to create a group in your model containing all the geometry that gets dissolved, then create a gradient material and apply it to the group. In the chor, you will need to animate the translation of the material so the gradient slides up the group until all the appropriate geometry is invisible. You may want to do some testing with gradient materials before you try this. Make a 1000cm x 1000cm sphere. Make a gradient material with Attribute A colored bright green and Atribute B colored red. Apply the material to the sphere. Play with the gradient's Start and End values to see how they affect the sphere.