Gerry

I can see my house from up here! Amazing work, Matt.

Here's a quick test, working with simcloth for skirt in the girl's dance segment, and after a few false starts I've got it working *pretty* good! However now I'm not happy with the dance itself and been looking at YouTube dance videos. Though I'm loathe to say there are any hard and fast rules for working with cloth, it appears that tweaking the damping settings is the main way to get wacky results under control. SaxSoloDance_clothtest3_h264.mov

Interesting test, Vance! Thanks for taking the time to explore this.

Have a good one!

I had a problem with lines like that awhile ago, and I believe it was caused by the type of shadows I was using, i.e., z-buffered vs. ray-traced. Don't remember which was causing the problem but switching made the problem go away. I'm pretty sure the shadow type is set in the light settings.

that's what the forum is all about!

Here's a test render of the guy doing a heavy walk with the world on his shoulders. There seems to be a pop where he puts his left foot down and I'm still tweaking keyframes, but comments welcome. WorldOnShoulders_compWF_h264.mov

Very helpful, thanks to all concerned!

you can also turn on "snap to grid", adjust the grid size, and your shapes will be perfect and accurate.

Here's a quick test of the girl dancing, and though it lacks some snap, I am, or was, totally jazzed by what amounted to a couple of hours (of company time!) of just playing around. I'm going to tweak some of the keys to add some of that snap back in, except for the following: I think I may have created some complications and I need some advice here. I animated the girl with her skirt hidden, as I'll be doing a cloth simulation with it and I want to deal with it as a separate problem. But I just realized, the dance is an action. I believe the cloth simulation only works in a chor, is that correct? Have I complicated things by having the dance in an action but having to do the cloth in a chor? I have no idea. If I have to redo the dance in the chor that's not a huge problem, but I'd like to save what I've done so far if possible. SaxSoloDancetest_h264.mov

I haven't watched this clip yet but it also occurred to me that sax players use a strap so it hangs around their neck which would also limit the movement. EDIT: Watched the clip, very helpful!

Brilliant! Congratulations! There's a film festival in California with an entry date just around the corner: Burbank International Film Festival, entry deadline June 15. I believe you need to enter via Withouthabox. They're looking for entries right now.

I'm about to start animating the girl's dance sequence for my video. My plan is to animate the model, with the skirt (which will eventually be a cloth material) hidden, so I can focus on the character movement. Second, I'll unhide the skirt, create the cloth simulation, and go from there. Though I had good luck with my initial cloth tests a few months ago I learned later that there are a LOT of settings for cloth that I need to learn a bit about. Any comments on the process as I've outlined it I'd be glad to hear them. I'll be posting stuff over in my WIP thread.

That's it exactly! I'm taping that to my forehead.

I guess what he's playing is a "tenor sax" there, straight like a clarinet? There's a big difference in how they're played, compared to the "S-shape" of a bigger sax. Clarinet players can and do bounce to the music, and that's a key difference and I *think* what led me to expect the same sort of physicality with a saxophone performance.

One of the things I've been figuring out is that when I watch a live sax player (or video) the upper body, head, arms and horn are locked into a pretty rigid "frame" (as we call it in ballroom dancing) and there is little or no bobbing, bouncing or other expressive movement, although we imagine there is. But of course what we're doing is called "animation" for a reason! So watching actual horn players is only so much help, then imagination, body weight, animation principles and dynamics come into play and are all needed for a believable performance.

thanks robert! I'm going to start burning frame No's into the renders for starters, should've been doing that already. The reversals are a big help, the gecko's spine is still wandering at some points and I think this will help me with that.

Here's a new version slightly finessed with a few of the above suggestions. WFSaxSolo003_h264.mov

Robert, that's an excellent point. I do notice that his arms are too rigid (this has been relieved a little with the "breaths" I've added that I mentioned in my last reply) but I've been adjusting and readjusting the rig to get a bit more flexibility in the head/horn/hands relationships, and I'm figuring it out as I go. As I mentioned above somewhere, since the rig is the TSM quadruped rig put into an upright position with an action, the rig has some built in complications. I may try your fix and I may have some questions about it. Currently the horn is constrained to his head, and the hands are constrained to the horn. But I should play around with the lag settings. I know in theory how that works but I've never used it. I want to get this sequence looking good but in practice this shot won't be seen like this in the video. There will be a lot of quick cuts to it, and no closeups. So I'm cheating, but just a little!

Mouseman, you read my mind! I've actually already added a couple of "taking a breath" moves after the first and second phrases, and the downward "bounce" for that last run of notes is not added yet, but you've described exactly what I had in mind. My main concern is that my character animation is often stiff and under-realized. The one plus here is that after a few viewings I'm getting better at seeing these shortcomings for myself.

I'm getting close on the animation for the sax solo. This is looking pretty good to me, but comments are welcome! WFSaxSolo_h264.mov

Just guessing here, but did you use the model bone of the emitter to follow the path, or did you create a new bone? Model bones are funny things. Or, what about: attach the emitter to the path, and rotate the path? Or, constrain the emitter to a bone in the center of the circle, and rotate the bone? Are there by chance 6 cp's in the spline path?

That's a strange one alright!

Happy birthday to the Mad Beveler!

Isn't it just a matter of applying the videos as animated decals? *Seems* simple, unless I'm missing something.