Gerry

Well the experts have spoken! Maybe I'm thinking of trying TSM on the Mac, but that would be like a year or so ago. I've sworn by it for rigging for years now, to the point where I was maybe too dependent on it. but I tried the squetch rig and the install was pretty easy so I was happy with it. Be advised that I'm depending solely on my memory!

Mark, I believe the Setup Machine no longer works with the current version of AM. It did up to maybe v15 or 16, but no more. I guess you could run it in an older version, but check further, I could be wrong as it's been awhile.

Wow, nice tests! Sorry I missed the original thread back then. Excellent work.

Fuchur, thanks for the rundown of browsers. I use Firefox on my office pc and Safari on my mac at home, but I have 4 or 5 browsers on the pc so I can do testing when Im coding. I've got IE but only to access our company ftp site (and testing, but IE is always a disappointment!) otherwise, not so much. Steve, good luck in Spain, sounds like an adventurous move!

Yep, the particles are glitzy for sure! I'll probably keep some version of them in there. Meantime, I've gotten a handle on remaking the "wobble" in the rings by animating the bones, but I still have one problem to overcome, which is the big bounce at the end. If I do that with a d-box, the bones still won't travel with the cp's and I lose the whole effect at the end of all the ornaments bouncing with the tree. So I'm moving forward with it so far but I can see a big problem looming later on.

Wellll, not yet, but thanks for the vote of confidence!

The next hurdle I have to figure out is that there are bones along the spiral guide path (each attached to a cp) that the ornaments will attach to. But I find that when the guide path bounces, the bones don't travel with their cp's and instead stay in place. I would have thought the bones would travel with their cp's? EDIT: Dang, figured it out actually. I did all the secondary stretching of the guide path in *muscle mode* when I should have been animating THE BONES. Back to the virtual drawing board. Argghhhh...

What I mean by the "bounce" is that each ring expands at the leading edge of the growing part. I've exaggerated it a bit more, and added a secondary reverse bounce at each turn and it looks lots better, then I added some particles spraying from the tip and now you don't even notice any of that! The particles may not stay but they look cool! TreeGrowwithSparkles_h264.mov

I feel like I *should* add something here since I've had experience with KS as well, but in truth I was really relieved when my KS failed because I was not eager to take time away from creating the project to think up, create and distribute the "rewards". In addition my project was not to become a finished, consumer-oriented thing but was just a sample animation to pitch my project to broadcasters, and given the experience I had at the Kidscreen conference, which was invaluable, the sample animation wouldn't have helped in the least. One of the questions I was asked at the conference, which really helped put my project in perspective, was whether I wanted to be an animator or a show creator. You can't realistically do both unless you're bound and determined to wear all the hats. Of course I wanted to be a show creator, in which case presenting sample animation is completely beside the point. It makes more sense to create a bible, character designs, a script and/or an animatic. Presenting animation that wasn't 110% broadcast quality turned out to be a big drawback.

Here's an animatic of my pencil sketches with music. Music is watermarked with a voice saying "preview" until I pay for it! Animatic_v1_h264.mov

New test of the growing tree. I've got quite a bit of bounce at each turn of the growth but it doesn't show as well as I thought it would. I think I need to really exaggerate it. TreeGrowTest05_h264.mov

Trying to make something like this up in the modeling window is doing it the hard way! Definitely a roto, or at least a sketch.

That's a good workaround, Robert. fortunately it was a simple enough shape to recreate. I'm rendering a new test now but it may not be til morning before I post it (it's not a long render but I'm skinning out of here at six!)

Tricky question: can you reverse the direction of a path? I'm setting up this christmas tree with bones in the part that's growing, and a path constraint. I'm creating the constraints now, but it appears the guide path starts at 100% and goes to zero. So when I create the path constraints for the growing tubular parts, the bones and geometry flip 180 degrees when snapping to the path. I don't know then if this means the geometry will flip inside out, normals and all? I don't mind calculating the ease from 100 to zero, but I can also imagine problems down the line because of this. Is there a way to invert the direction of the guide path? EDIT: nevermind, I just recreated the path.

No, it's a little more involved than that. Each ornament will have a different inspiring word on it and the camera comes in and does a closeup flyaround, faster and faster, and ends in closeup of the star on top, with guess-who's logo. And, scene. I should probably do an animatic, I've got a piece of music already picked out. I can start timing some of these things out.

Mark, I was thinking the same thing; it sort of wants to happen. Once I get the design more simplified I'll be able to do these little tweaks. Thanks for the comments!

Thanks for comments, peeps. Nan, the distortion box does seem to have a little quirk to it, i.e., you apparently have to reselect the cp's FOR EACH KEYFRAME. In other words, select the cp's in muscle mode (I did this in an action, but will prolly work fine in a chor; and have the Animate button on), click the distortion box icon, and tweak the d-box to move cp's. Then go to where you want the next keyframe, and even though the d-box is still visible, you have to leave distortion mode, select the cp's again, then click the distortion mode button, tweak cp's, and repeat. What maybe confused you was that intermediate step, where the d-box is still visible but when you move the playhead for a new keyframe, the d-box doesn't effect the cp's. Try it, see if that helps. Robert, that's a possibility. I discovered that the "tree" is too complex right now for the end result I'm after, so I'm simplifying it down to have maybe only 4 or 5 rings, closer to the doodle at the top of this thread. But I think before I proceed to rebuild from scratch I'll play around with the biases on my current model just to test. Currently the spiral rings are too close together for the ornaments that will *pop* out of the spiral as it grows, and I also would have needed a truckload of ornaments to fill the tree properly which I just know would have complicated my task later in the process. And yes, there will definitely be some glitzy texture, either flocking or sparkles or something like that!

Here's a wireframe test with bones showing. The jitter is smoothed out to a pretty good extent but not perfect. I'm not sure yet but the lower part of the tree may not be onscreen for the whole growth process in this shot. TreeGrowTest_wf_h264.mov

Hey Roger, do you have a sketch or something to indicate what you're going for?

thanks Robert, I'll try to later today. I've had some luck by just retiming the starting keyframes of all the bones as they arise from the base and it's a pretty straightforward process. I'm tweaking today and should have more to show this afternoon. EDIT: What I really like was being able to do the final bounce with an animated distortion box, the first time I've tried that!

Well here's another quick test with some smoothing out and final bounce... TreeGrowTest03_h264.mov

thanks, Paul. I didn't like it much either so I've been playing around with the keyframes and it turns out smoothing out that jitter was easier than I thought. I'll post something more tomorrow.

Here's a first test of the tree effect. I decided that I like it a little irregular and Dr. Seuss-y, so I'm not worrying about making it perfectly round and smooth. The one thing I'd like to fix is the way it "pulses" out of the ground, but I'm gonna keep moving forward because ultimately I don't think it will be a problem. EDIT: I should say that uncompressed the movement is a little smoother. When I compressed it to post it got a little jumpier than it actually is. TreeGrowTest02_h264.mov

Welcome to the forum, Phaedrus! Best place to get your AM questions answered.

Mark, I'd buy it again if I hadn't already! Good luck with your new plans.