Gerry

You could even reassign some already-used keys if there are shortcuts you don't use a lot. I recently reassigned my L key to Lock instead of Lathe, since I use the former much more than the latter. It's really great to have that flexibility.

Thanks for the comments, guys. This was a commission from the musician's mother who wanted to surprise him with the video for Christmas. He's an American, born and raised in Tulsa, who now lives and works in Singapore and is apparently a big deal over there. She picked the song but otherwise had no input, it was just "call me when the video's done". It was really a once-in-a-lifetime deal and I would love to do more like this, but time will tell I guess! Right now I want to get this into festivals and contests, stuff like that.

I'd like to announce that "Cicak" is officially released! It's on YouTube at and on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/34194395 . Thanks to the forum for all the help and advice over the past months, and a Happy New Year.

hi larswik, there are some workaround issues on the Mac that if you don't know about them, you should. Mostly when opening, saving and rendering, the finder windows will be greyed out and unresponsive. The workaround is pretty simple: first, when this happens and you can't click the "cancel" button, just hit esc. and the finder window will close. Then, hit Cmd-H to hide the program. Next, hit Option-Tab to show active programs, select A:M and unhide it. Now all finder windows will behave normally. I've been meaning to make a screencapture movie showing this workaround and I will shortly. Also, before you go to render or do anything, Save! Let us know if this helps.

Hi and welcome to the forums! Unfortunately as Fuchur said there's no trial version, but the subscription works out to about twenty-one cents a day and that's about as close to free as you can get. Plus, this forum is free and priceless at the same time. Definitely worth it!

Nice work Marc! Thanks for posting it here and Merry Christmas!

The stability has vastly increased with recent versions. I work pretty much every day with AM on both pc and Mac platforms and though there are a couple of small workarounds on the Mac side that I now do automatically, it's pretty much the same on both machines with the exception that renders seem to be much faster on the Mac. The really big plus though is this forum, which didn't exist back in Ye Twentiethe Centurie. Come here with questions and believe me they will be dealt with!

Great tut, Gerald, thanks! this is a great new tool, can't wait to try it.

I agree, hearing that The Soulcage Department uses pose sliders to animate their faces was a real revelation to me and that's how I'm going in the future, except for a couple of bones for the eyes, eyelids and jaw. Much more control, much less mystery.

Yep, the guy who sweeps up on after the parade on "Rocky and Bullwinkle"!

Welllll... the dvd's are burned and ready to ship, and I'm already re-doing some shots. heh.

It's finished and I am officially in relaxation mode. I'll post some links over the holidays.

Myron, that's really terrific! Keep going!

Nice as usual, Robert!

Hey Myron, some time ago, Marcos (xtaz) did a really nice tutorial on driving decals with smartskin, which may be of some help here. He actually made it in response to a query of mine so the tute starts out with "Hello Gerry" which still makes me smile! It's on his website at http://xtaz.com.br/index.php?option=com_co...0&Itemid=63 , and here on the forum it's http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33460 . This may help you find a wider range of solutions to your question. In any case, it's a really cool solution with many applications.

Jason, that's a great tutorial, thanks! I would like to mention though that it's not QT Pro that you're using but rather QT player v10, and to answer Walter Baker' query, there's no additional software needed. QuickTime is kind of in between versions and like most Mac users, I've got QTPro v7 and QT Player v10 side by side in the dock, and I use them both for various things. But the video screen capture (with audio) is part of the v10 player and works great, except that you can only capture the whole screen and not a window or region. No doubt they will fix this "soon"!

Nice analysis, Rodney!

Hey, that's handy!

Alrighty, here's one more in wireframe and I think the "squash" in the heels works a lot better, i.e., you can actually *see* it! Also fixed that foot slippage. feetCU_v4_h264.mov

You might also remove the colors and reflections etc and just model a plain white model, both for simplicity's sake and so you can "see" the shapes better as you work. Just my 2 cents!

Good thoughts Rodney. At the very least there is still some slippage in the right foot that I should fix, but in general I find that I hold back on exaggeration/squash/stretch because in the back of my mind that's for wacky Chuck Jones style slapstick. But one of the most insightful things I've read (either in TASK or Drawn to Life) is that EVERY move has either squash or stretch in it and yet I still hold back on that in my own work. So it's a learning process and I may go back and tweak this shot yet. When I watch the finished video it's like all I see are the mistakes, also a mindset I need to work on.

Here's an update of the feet closeup. I was going to create a new walk cycle from scratch but adjusting the existing keyframes seemed to be working okay. I took some reference movies of my own feet and that helped a lot. I also re-rendered the closeups of the hands and face. Rodney, I added quite a lot of deforming/squetching of the shoes and I'm surprised it's not clearer to the naked eye. But though it's subtle I think it does add to the "realism" of the walk. Mark, also turned out the feet a little. Thanks for all the comments. I'm calling this done for now! feetCU_h264.mov

Um, yeah, this was in the back of my head for some time. Should have seen it sooner, but edits are more a matter of triage at this point. I may go back and tweak it when I've got everything else fixed.

Even the girl in the Lefax ad? Just pose sliders for the face?

that's some great work, Mike. I'm curious what you use for a face rig since TSM doesn't have one. Do you rig it from scratch?