Dagooos

Great story. I thought the same thing as dhar maybe start out with the faeries in their natural enviroment with a shot of the faeries sunning themselves while relaxing on a leaf and then a close up of the trolls hand grabbing her. When the troll reaches into the cage one faerie could push the other out of the way sacrificing themselves for the other then a dramatic shot of the faerie bravely being set on the hook then you would have a hero. Ok I will stop babbling now

whats up doug looks like you are taking it easy on that rig. I would like to see that thing freak out (thats an industry term) David

Paul, I believe you need the quciktime 7 to view the animation its compressed with H.264 Here is a sorenson 3 version [attachmentid=14462] sword_stoneAO.mov

Thanks Dudes!

Thanks There is a small slapping sound in the sound track and I was trying to think of a way to give him big anticipation before the jump onto the sword but you are right its probably way to much and doesn't look very fitting.

OK I lied. I cant stop messing around with the ambient occlusion feature. Re-rendered bigger better faster and yes the sound was from ICE AGE [attachmentid=14417] sword_stoneAO4.mov

was playing around with new displacement and ambiance occlusion last night and rendered this little animation. For some reason looked a lot better when i was doing quick render test and the animation is a bit rough but I'm not going to mess around with it anymore. The sound is scrat from ice age.

Great animation! Are you guys using the A:M composite feature for rendering now or are you still using the same technique you used in the "I'M Walking" short?

I don't know how I missed this thread! Nice work! I liked the camera work too. Its funny in cg you can move the camera easy, anywhere or way you want but it doesn't seem to get used that much. I thought it made the shot more dramatic and interesting.

The cool thing about v13 is that you will be able to key all the face nulls or any group of bones by just pushing one button!. [attachmentid=12531]

This is a bug in version 12. You cant key more then one bone like that. I reported it and Noel is working on it.

Did you try using you eyeball decal as an ambiance map also or did you just crank up the ambiance on the eyeball group?

WOW great short! I really liked everything about it. character designs, lighting, sound effects animation style all seem to work really well together. I agree you could have shortened it up some but most 3d shorts of this length I cant even watch all the way through because they are so slow paced and boring. You did a good job of keeping it interesting and fun to watch. Looking forward to seeing your next short.

Cool, hot chicks in the talent pool Seriously though, I like it looks very professional and at least you get to use A:M in you boring old everyday job.

ahhah another cool character. I really like that kind of style.

I don't have any suggestions but it's a nice effect looks very realistic

Very nice, looks real professional

Thanks guys Here's the project file if anyone wants to play around with it. [attachmentid=11266] Mellowbug.zip

Hey Dagoos I checked my A:M 2002 Complete Guide book by David Rogers and couldn't figure it out. How do I do this? If I use the Key Heirarchy filter on say IK hand I only get keys on the hand, if I use Key Model I get all the moved geometry bones keyed (the hundreds of bones). So which filter do I use to force a key on every control bone only? Thanks -Alonso If you force a keyframe with "keymodel" "key rotations" "key translations" filters you should only get the bones which have been previously keyed. Make sure you don't have the key constraints filter on. That could give you hundreds of bones. If thats not it PM me. Just so we dont clutter up Davids thread too much

It's not really necessary...I don't think, David. The arm controller bones aren't physically connected, so they don't have to be in the center. The arm geometry bones are in the center and have "orient like" constraints on them, so the controller bones can move more in some directions. Has it caused a problem? I could rethink it if it has. I'm going to post a file here for Noel since I don't have full access to my e-mail at the moment. Nope, it works fine. I just couldn't remember it doing that before is all. Thats good news about the plugin! It will help out a lot.

Now I feel almost guilty after all the work you have done on this rig but I'll ask anyway Shouldn't the bicep controllers be connected to the shoulder controllers or something so the arm control bones stay in the center of the arm when you rotate the shoulder bone?

whoops, I have a new desktop image now! nice work

You have to use your keyframe filters if you are keying hundreds of bones that will slow you (and your machine) down big time. The only keys you should be setting are for the control bones and pose sliders. Learn how to use the filters and they will be your best friend

Here is what kept me up too late last night. Trying to keep character consistent with Darrell Johnsons characters. (you can find them here) I have about 6 hours in it so far. I'll probably make another pass on it next weekend Mellow Bug

Well this won't help much but I cant get the IK/FK switch working. I installed 12.0n+ couldn't try it on v13. frame 0 I position arm FK go to frame 10 hit the IK/FK button and it jumps back to IK position. The only way I could get it to work was forcing a keyframe with the keymodel and keyconstraints filters on but that gave me about a 100 bones keyframed in the PWS. The elbows seem to work fine like you have them. I didn't do a lot of testing with them but they seem to position OK. Am I missing a step to get the IK/FK switch to work?