Gerry

Here's a still from West Side Story. I want my girl character to have the same style of dress as this pink one, a very full skirt with fluffy crinoline underneath. I will be doing a cloth material so the dress can flip and flounce, which works fine in my tests with just one thickness of geometry. But how would I accomplish this crinoline look? A hair material? several layers of geometry in the skirt? I don't know if this is doable, just looking for suggestions.

My wife does slideshows for her cooking blog and generally uses the "free" loops that come with iMovie. She posts them on YouTube so she can link them to them from the blog. Awhile back she got a notice that one of her slideshows would be blocked in Germany because the supposedly free loop from iMovie is copyrighted there. So the whole issue is not black and white by any means. On the other hand there are websites where you can download free loops, and some of it is pretty nice! It might be worth looking there if this all gets too unresolvable, Holmes.

Yeah baby!

All true, jimd. I don't have strong opinions either way, I think it's largely a judgement call. If it was going up on a website that's one thing. If he's just sending cd's to a handful of folks, that's something else. But you're right, why hamstring yourself just getting out of the gate.

Holmes, I was going to add more but William makes excellent points on everything I would have said.

I don't think using someone else's music on a demo reel is a problem. Holmes isn't selling copies, it's just his demo. I believe this would fall under fair use. Copyright is primarily for preventing the marketing of multiple copies of someone else's work.

welcome back to A:M!

Seems like the bedpost pillars could be a little more slinky or sinuous somehow. They seem a little hard-edged and geometric. Maybe like Myron's art nouveau stuff.

Rodney- thanks for the nudge! I am way behind with getting new content up for "Nightcallers", between being slammed at work from October through Jan. and then ramping up work on my music vid it has fallen between the cracks, but I'm always thinking about it. Time to get some new tests posted!

Nice work but it looks like she already had the guns!

wOO HOO! The completed "Guard Dog Global Jam" is now live on Vimeo! Click on this http://vimeo.com/20252572 and use this password: Th4588r . Freakin hilarious!

Sure there is, I found it on YouTube! I bookmarked it about a year ago but didn't look at it prior to this test. Mostly I've been sweating just how to rig the tongue for this, downloaded a sample prj from someone here with an extensible tongue and was completely baffled and intimidated by it. Then last week I realized I could do it completely in muscle mode and did this in about a half hour! So I'll go back to look at the video and do this over. Though I'm still a little thrown by a lot of rigging things, I'm way more comfortable going in and tweaking cp weights, redoing things that don't look right, and generally getting more comfortable with rigging/animating as an ongoing process rather than something I'm stuck with. That last paragraph makes my work process sound a lot more dire than it actually is, and your comments are really helpful.

Thanks mouseman. Those are all good points you make. Getting some reference for the singing is a great idea too. Glad you liked it!

I've posted a complete animatic of this video over on Vimeo rather than here, since the file size was pretty large. I"d be happy to hear any comments! http://www.vimeo.com/20167713

Looks like its made out of lead.

This is looking great, Will!

Here's another test of the "eyelick" shot, a recurring image that will be used as a segue between some shots. A lot of these tests need to be a little snappier, my first attempts all look a little sluggish. But it's a start. EyelickTest_02_h264.mov

Great to see that this project is still alive! I look forward to further installments.

Here is a series of four various walk and dance cycles. I'm still playing around and getting comfy with the rig controls and keeping in time to the music. The first segment is just a walk cycle, the second and third are two different views of the most elaborate dance step I've done, and the last is a walk cycle, then he licks his eyeball and goes into the dance step. In the dance steps I've gotten a little lazy and mostly kept his feet flat on the ground, so they're just sliding back and forth. Because of the way I'll be shooting these scenes that will be sufficient, but I may continue to refine these so they can be shown from any angle. Danceand_WalkTests_h264.mov

Really super excellent, Robert. Thanks.

Yayyyy! Cake! Happy Birthday! Gerry

Thanks Robert. I had a feeling it was something like that.

I tried to utilize TSM on my Mac. I know the historical .hxt limitations for Mac (no more than 6 files in the .hxt folder) so I prepared to do that, then saw that in v 16 there are a couple dozen .hxt files in the folder. Is that limitation gone? I then copied the three TSM files into the .hxt folder, but got an error message that those files wouldn't load. So I moved them back where they came from and moved on. So, does that limitation still exist? With a whole bunch of .hxt files, it seems not, but the app obviously doesn't like the TSM files. Anyone know if there's a way to get TSM to work on a Mac?

Thanks Paul, all good points. The arms are detached as a matter of fact, so I may do that to minimize the hooks by the wrist.

Here's the model of the guy. I'm still refining things but any comments on the mesh are welcome. The hands need smoothing but I'm not sure if I've got too many hooks there and in the face, and if the face is over-splined or under splined. EDIT: The colors are temporary!