jason1025

Thats actually what I mean my mistake. How do you start a poll? I kind find it?

How do you create a questionnaire?

What res works for you? 720X405 or 960x540? Because I value your feedback from now on I specifically create a version just for you. I dont want this to come off like I am being a smart ass. This is genuine. I on the other hand would prefer it if the community would step it up a notch. We live in an HD time. I wish there was a way to default AM so that it started every new Chor with a cameras resolution to 1920x1080 or 1280x720 because that is the resolution my clients request. The fact that Am defaults to VGA resolution really dates it. Just an opinion and I know its just mine. And I know I could be way off base. It should atleast default to a 16x9 aspect ratio. I havnt seen a Standard def TV in a while and am on my 3rd HD TV. I only point this out because in my opinion for AM to survive and keep growing it has to change with the times. And changing the default from VGA to 720p, 1080p, 2k, and 4k screams cutting edge. With that said some people with laptops may have troiuble working in that high of a resolution so it may not be practicle to do so and I take the hole thing back lol.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. Its part of a much bigger picturethat I will reveal have I progress. I also plan to make video tutorials of many of the esoteric AM features I have learned. Because I am using these features in context of a real world end goal I think the tuts may be useful. Its not node based. Apple only uses nodes in color and the discontinued shake. Its a kind of hard to describe. it works the same as in "Pro Animator" I am not familiar with After effects smoother or wiggler. Unless the wiggler is based on an expression that I have used. I will have to check that out. I agree with what you say about Apple. But I kind of like that about them. That is one of my complaints about AM. In fact that is the missing link with AM in my opinion. I remember getting a letter from Has saying upgrade to to Version 14. And that's all it said. I wrote them back and said Why? Whats new, where is the enticement? The new buzz words? I learned along time ago this business is all about presentation. Its funny After I wrote that letter Martin or someone sent a mass email. Saying that they are gun shy of that sort of stuff. You may remember the email, but they did take some of my advice and alter their presentation to include the more advanced features for that release. Not that I had much to do with it. I don't fallow you here "THIRDLY- You can always drag a lassoo around the keyframes for the head bones BVH parent (in the part that's giving the trouble) and scale (s-key)them vertically so there is less activity about them..." Can you give a screen grab of what you mean? I agree AM is very powerful. Its kind of like our little secret. When I show people in the biz my work they are very impressed and always assume I used one of the big 3 or tiny 4rth. lol. If you ever need help with Apple products just give me a call or email. I just got finished teaching 50 ABC editors the new final cut 7, Color and associate hardware like AJA, Matrox, Blackmagic. Here is a video tutorial that illustrates the average filter I was talking about. Its funny the guy acts like there is never a reason to use the keyframe editor. Go about half way in the video to see what I mean. http://motionsmarts.com/tutorials/matchmove1/mm1.html Thanks again your work is some of the best I have seen.

Hey Guys Thanks for the feed back. WHat do you guys think about this feature request. In Apple's MOTION they have approached the concept of animation from a different paradigm. However they do allow you to use a key frame editor if you want to. But most Animators dont use it and for good reason. Here is an example and this specifically is the feature I would like to see in AM. In apples motion an artist had an object that had been tracked and it had a key for its translate and rotation the axises it used. So lots of keys. It too jittered just like the BVH file in my example. My instinks would be to go into the keyframe editor and delete every other key or something like that to smooth out the curve between the keys. That would take alot of time though. in "motion" you simply asign an "AVERAGE" filter to the Axis with the keys you want to effect. Then the Average filter has a slider that lets you set how many key frames you want to Average. It defaults to 10 which works perfectly. Moral of the story, in just a few clicks you solve the problem vs many clicks with little room for error. If I had this filter in AM the problem would be solved like that.

I will put this rig to use. Thanks for all the hard work

Thanks an update will be much appreciated. I still can not easily load a bvh file as you describe in Stage four. I did find a work around by deleting the keys in every bone in current bvh and loading a new one. Its a pain. Looking forword to your much easier way.

Why the jitter? Is the jitter from the BVH? FCP_jump.mov

Great idea. Ill try that

Thanks one more question. I am stuck on stage four. I cant find the channel he is talking about to right click on

I am stuck on stage 3 of this tutorial 1. He says to create a pose from an action. When I right click in the action window I do NOT get the New pose relationship option. So how do you achieve this? 2. Its kind of hard to tell which filters he has selected is it just the first 4? 3. Does anyone know how to get a bvh file that is in the Standard “T” model pose. I need that pose to constrain my bones the the BVH otherwise the offets are OFF by too much.

I am stuck on stage 3 of this tutorial http://zandoria.wordpress.com/tutorials/am...ial/#comment-35 1. He says to create a pose from an action. When I right click in the action window I do NOT get the New pose relationship option. So how do you achieve this? 2. Its kind of hard to tell which filters he has selected is it just the first 4? 3. Does anyone know how to get a bvh file that is in the Standard "T" model pose. I need that pose to constrain my bones the the BVH otherwise the offsets are OFF by too much. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Great work!

Read the instructions in the link below. 3 important tips. select a spline using the , key aka the right click without loosing the selection select the zevel plugin from the plugins set your distance and hit ok 1. immediately after using the plugin select your entire model this will get rid of the distortion. 2. I dont think the plugin works on splines with hooks. 3. If you have trouble try decreasing the distance value. Fuchur has a great video tutorial about modeling that includes how to do this. http://www.kci-group.com/z/zevel.htm

Never mind. My mistake

I have a light in a pose shining at an model. The Pose is turned on The light is set to active it has plenty of intensity. But it does not work? Did the bulb blow out? If I do the same thing in an action it works fine. What is the deal? I should note that I can see the effects of the light in the relationship aka Pose but not when the model is in the chore. And please dont say just do it in an action. That will not work for this.

the zevel is a .hxt file there is a HXT folder inside the main folder that AM lives in. Throw the .hxt file in there.

Thank you

Here is a video of the fix Hope it helps Dynamics_fix.mov

Figured it out. thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I wen into my relationship for that bone. in addition to the dynamic constraint I right clicked and added the euler constraint. In the euler properties I zero out the y and z axis. It worked perfectly. Its amazing how much control you can have with the dynamic constraints

Will that constraint allow the dynamics constraint to continue to work the way I want? How do you perform a euler constraint?

Thanks guys

Hi Folks I am having trouble Limiting the rotation for a bone with a Dynamic constraint. Basically I want I have a hinge that should only move on one axis. I have limited the bone to that axis via the manipulator options. Now I want to make that bone dynamic so that it swings up and down along that axis as the rest of the model moves. Unfortunately the Dynamics constraint does not seem to adhere to the limit manipulator option. Any Ideas? Is this something I should request as a feature in AM? Is this something I am doing wrong? The video illustrates my problem. Dynamics_question.mov

Thanks David You and Rob are great. I dont know what this community would be able to achieve without you both? I have a few more questions? 1. I kind of got mirror bones working but I had to deviate from Carolines settings and Un check "search for name only using bone name" Otherwise I got the result of the extra bones as you see in my model. 2.Although un checking that option helped and I got all the fans over to the left side of the model or right side of the screen without duplicating any of the geo bones they were not in the right hierarchy. Is that normal? So I had to make them children in the right spots. 3. Caroline has us perform the tsm flipper in stage 2 of her ultimate tsm2 guide to rigging. I am confused because she says to do it again in stage 10. What am I missing? My instinks tell me not to flipp in stage 2 but instead wait to do it in stage 9 just before the mirror plugins. Anything wrong with that?

Hi Rob Thanks for that valuable info. Much appreciated as always. I have a few questions for you. 1. I kind of got mirror bones working but I had to deviate from Carolines settings and Un check "search for name only using bone name" Otherwise I got the result of the extra bones as you see in my model. 2.Although un checking that option helped and I got all the fans over to the left side of the model or right side of the screen without duplicating any of the geo bones they were not in the right hierarchy. Is that normal? So I had to make them children in the right spots. 3. It apeared that the mirror bones plugin also mirrored the cp weights at first because I can see the circles around the cp's when the bone is selected, however I had to re weight them as it did not seem to actually mirror the cp weights. Is this normal? does mirror bones transfer the weights when used correctly? 4. Caroline has us perform the tsm flipper in stage 2. I am confused because she says to do it again in stage 10. What am I missing? My instinks tell me not to flipp in stage 2 but instead wait to do it in stage 9 just before the mirror plugins. Anything wrong with that?