Gerry

Crumbs are a sprite emitter inside the g-man model and the bite is a boolean cutter. When the boolean moves in, the sprite emitter pops out a bunch of crumbs. Glad you like it! Edit: apparently that was rendered with an alpha so it's uglier than it needs to be. Here's a quick n dirty animatic that I did to work out the timing a little better, added a few frames to make the transitions easier to time. Animatic_h264.mov

Here's a test of the gingerbread man getting his head bitten off! (Warning: Graphic violence depending on how you feel about baked goods). headbitewithcrumbs.mov

Hi Holmes - I've read through your instructions to be sure I understand each step. I'm wondering if I can leave the cp weighting til the end as that's such a laborious step I'd like to be sure first that the export works. If it's something that you feel should be done in the order you lay out, I will. Let me know. Also, do I start with my model from BEFORE or AFTER the Install action is saved? P.S. thanks for putting your 2 cents in Nancy. This is a nice rig that deserves to be used.

Not using TSM, it's all LiteRig and LiteFace. EDIT: Sorry PP, were you asking for your own purposes? I may have misunderstood your question. I have no idea if they're compatible, but as each is self contained (and I don't think TSM includes a face rig) I would think they are indeed compatible, though that's just a guess.

I've got the face rig all done (in the model which already has the lite rig installed) and ready for export, but when I right-click on the action to export the model, AM crashes every time on both the Mac and PC. I've been saving versions at every step so no work is lost, but I've tried this at least three times on the Mac and three times on the PC with the same results. Not sure what else to say but I'll answer any questions or whatever I can do to diagnose this. EDIT: The error I get is "Unhandled exception #001".

You bet I am, I'm saving versions of the model at every step.

For some reason I either wasn't seeing it or unable to select it last night, but it WAS late! this is a great rig and I'm well into doing the lite face as well.

Oh, I see it now. I didn't know to turn off the hand gizmo to get access to it.

Thanks Holmes, I will look at all of that shortly. Can you tell me anything about that Carpal Controller or other method for spreading the fingers?

What, getting tired of naked girls??

I've got the Lite Rig installed and doing some quick movement tests. Here's one... Annieflying_h264.mov

Here's some weirdness I encountered using the walk cycle tutorial in TAOA:M. Appears to happen when I copy a keyframe and "paste mirrored". Is that something I shouldn't be doing with this rig, or is it a problem with my rigging? this is just practice and I won't be needing a walk cycle in my short, so it's not *serious* at the moment but I wondered if you could shed any light on it. Thanks! AnnieWalkTest_h264.mov

Hi Holmes - Got the rig all installed and doing some testing and a walk cycle at the moment. It looks great and other than tweaking some cp weighting I'm ready to move onto the liteFace rig. However in looking over this thread I saw on the first page that Nancy had an issue with spreading the fingers and a Carpal Controller was mentioned. But I can't seem to find it. Is it still in there? P.S. Thanks again for fixing the thumb. It seems to be fine now.

Very nice Steve!

That's a handy tip. I think I've learned more about AM in the past year than in the previous 9, but maybe more accurate to say that my knowledge base allows me to pick up the new stuff faster.

For an elf he looks an awful lot like a pumpkin! Nice start!

Thanks Shelton! I just noticed that you're from Tulsa, which is where my wife's from. I lived there for three years back in ye 70's and in fact we had a visitor this weekend, an old school friend of Vicki's, who is an EMT in Mannford so we heard lots of stories about her friends and coworkers, with lots of local color thrown in. Back when I lived there I did some acting with Theatre Tulsa and I appeared in the very first play presented in the (brand new!) Williams Center, "The Lion in Winter".

Here's a render of the room, though I'm still working on a lot of details I thought this captures the main mood pretty well.

thanks Holmes, I appreciate your help. But does deleting the action mean I need to do all the cp weighting from scratch? Can just the offending bones be deleted and replaced if they're named the same?

Hey Holmes - here's a series of screen shots showing the roll handles, unassigned cp's, and what happens as I assign cp's working my way up from the tip of the thumb. when doing these I noticed that the bone positions are different in the action window than in the modeling window. I moved some things around but not nearly that much. When I was fiddling with the bone positions I did it in the modeling window without cp's assigned.

I'll work on putting together some screen shots that will show the bones, roll handles and both the modeling window and the action where I'm doing the cp weighting. The first odd thing I noticed was that after the bones were placed but before doing ANYTHING else, when I selected "Auto Assign Bones" the mesh jumped and shifted in several places. It was very odd behavior as I've done these things before. I unassigned the bones and shifted the bones that seemed to be responsible, reassigned bones and with some trial and error it's all working ok, i.e., the mesh-shifting was minimized, but that it happened at all seemed odd. I'm following the instructions meticulously. I didn't mess with the "Install" action until the instructions called for it (only to do a test last night of the work I've done so far), haven't touched the thing that says "Don't Touch This!" and working through the cp weighting is working just fine.

Holmes, if you're around I'm having some trouble when I assign cp's to the thumb bones. I did manage to straighten out the left thumb with some trial and error, but the right thumb crimps up badly when I assign the cp's. In an effort to work it out I copied the exact position and rotation numbers of the left bones and used them to reposition the right bones, but assigning the cp's still messes up the mesh. Everything else appears to be working fine so far. I can post some screen shots if that's any help.

I just saw your last post a day or two ago but fortunately I had already positioned the feet as you suggest. I did puzzle over it but then opted to keep it simple and everything at 90 degrees where possible. I do have another question about positioning the thumb bones. In the instructions it says "The roll handles for the thumb bones must point in whatever direction the thumb is intended to curl." Based on the roll handles of all the other bones I assume this means that it points AWAY from the curl, i.e., out the back of the thumb knuckle. Is this correct?

That's looking nice!