Gerry

That sounds like a good plan for someone who knows what they're doing but that's not the only problem I found. Starting from scratch I think will be less trouble. Thanks for the response.

Wow, "Puppet Method"! I didn't know there was a word for it. Back in 2000 when I was creating the original "Sister Mary Dracula" Flash animation, I was really sweating the lipsynch/phoneme problem, when a friend told me "forget about phonemes! You only need two mouth positions: open and closed." And he was right. It's not only a cinch, but it's much funnier (if funny is what you're going for). I've noticed in some CG-animated TV spots that there's a trend toward a jerky, rough almost clay animation look. It's not just that it's cheaper to do, there's a certain charm to something that's a little rough-edged and clunky. It's nicer to look at and a relief from the overly natural, realistic approach that a lot of CG animators aspire to. It's also a good way to totally avoid the "Uncanny Valley".

thanks Rob, but I'm going to take a step back and rerig. If there are more problems I'll let you know.

Without actually seeing it my first guess is that the roll handle of one of the bones was not oriented correctly before Rigger was run. Is there a way to fix this though? I tried turning off constraints, then rotating the thumb bones in the modeling window, but when I turned the constraints back on the thumb twisted wacky.

Hey Robcat, that's a great tute as usual. However I'm putting the TSM2 rig into my Skarab model and I'm having some trouble with the thumb controls. Rotating the "Left thumb control 2" bends the last thumb joint sideways instead of backwards/forwards like it's supposed to. I tried turning off the constraints and repositioning the bones in the modeling window but that screws up the model in the action window. Is there a way to rectify this? Everything else is working great and I'm getting into cp weighting which is going fine.

Creepy! No, brilliant! No, creepy! Hey, whatever happened to that cathedral model?

Footless Joe Jackson?

That's a really nice start! great sound syncing. I love the no-feet look. Will the face be animated decals?

Wow, quite an evolution! You should keep all of them. Hey Robcat, are you by chance thinking of Crazy Ikes?

I think having the sign obscured by the character until the very end is what makes the gag work.

This looks great. Nice gag. I wouldn't worry about a fancy render. They're mostly interested in the acting. And I also think it does fine without eyebrows. the body acting sells it. I gave up on my entry because it was more than I had time to do. I was trying to get in some character practice for a paying project I was working on, but that's since been put on hold for a couple of months/forever, still waiting to hear. Good luck! I'll vote for you when its time.

In the model window where you want to place the text, press the right mouse button and you'll get a contextual menu. At the bottom you'll see "Wizards". Pop out that menu and among others you'll see "Font". Select Font and you'll see a window where you can select a font, and the various bevel options.

Yep, it's easy. Right click in a model window, then go Wizards>Font> and type. There are settings for bevel, front and back caps, etc.

that rat solo is coming great!

Hey Fuchur - I'm looking again at this water tute and I wanted to ask you about where to put that -200 value you mention. EDIT: Here's a single frame using the .mov disp map decal downloaded from the tutorial. I'm getting these blocky artifacts as well as lots of dark specks. I'm leaving off this for now to get back to the decaling tute I'm doing in the "Nightcrawlers" thread but any comments on these artifacts would be welcome.

When i discovered that the community pane in the app needed a separate login from the forum I pretty much blew it off. If it were a *shorthand* version of the forum that would be neat, but it seemed redundant.

Thanks, fuchur. I'll try that tomorrow. The render I was working on isn't worth showing. Something still isn't working just right.

Since Nancy pointed us to that water tute on the Babbage site I've been trying to get it to work, with paltry results. Since it was created in Version 6 (!) there are some alterations called for, but it just doesn't seem to want to work for me. I created an animated decal for a displacement map but it doesn't want to "move" in the final render. This is obviously not a version issue, but something's stuck and I can't figure out what. I have nothing to post because the renders are extremely slow and I've been aborting renders after only five or six frames. If anyone has any luck with this I would like to hear about it. EDIT: I have gotten it to work, but apparently the relative scale of some settings have changed since v6 so the effect is there but not nearly as pronounced. I'll post a render shortly.

I've often wondered about the relative expense too. But i think the equation comes down to the fact that the initial creation is expensive, but later re-use and re-purposing becomes cheaper and cheaper, and the models and setups are permanent and will always be exactly the same. Also, changes, alterations and reshoots are easier to do on the fly.

Wow, Nancy, Great Link! Thanks so much!

Really super excellent work!

Hi Dalton and welcome to the forums! This place is packed with helpful users, and the most gratifying part is to see folks who were newbies just a couple of months ago start answering and helping folks with their own knowledge. So stick around!

I keep telling myself that!

yes, this is way too cute! Looking forward to more.

Let us know how your tests go. If you're rendering from a camera view the render will be the exact size of the camera settings, so there's no chance there's out-of-frame garbage rendering by mistake. However I've never rendered with a photo rotoscope so there may be issues there. Also note that AM on a Mac is a sensitive little critter. Always do the following when rendering: Close all other apps and windows. Close all AM windows except the chor. Save before rendering. You're better off rendering to a targa sequence than a QT though it's usually fine, it's just that if the render has problems midway through, the first half of the render will be intact. And like Rusty said, name the file in the render settings! You need to know where to find it when it's done.