Tom

I haven't looked through all the models on the AM Misc Disk...but do you know of any pre-rigged face models that are already boned with Lite Face? It would be very helpful to study a model that is already rigged... Thanks for any info Tom

I did come across Shaun Freeman's video on the AM-pro series training video from Siggraph(?). I'll have to give that a second look! Thanks Tom

Hello- I was revisiting the Lite Face Rigging and I wondered if anyone has ever posted a tutorial video showing the best approach? The pdf file (which has a tutorial printed out) is very nice but I personally seem to have the information to sink in quicker when I see someone actually SHOW things in real time.... many thanks for any links of video face rigging tutorials. Tom

Thanks for all the suggestions! Hmmmmm.... I rechecked everything and the step was set to "1" and the FPS was set to 30. I rendered out individual frames with no problem so maybe that is the best approach...As long as it will work correctly with individual frames, I don't think I will sweat where the glitch was, whether my own human error or some weird software issue peculiar to my machine. Thanks again! Tom

Hello- I just purchased a web licenses for V. 17.a. I started a project and rendered a scene that was 130 frames long as an avi. When I loaded the avi into After Effects to do some tweaking... the length of the avi turned out to be only 64 frames long (?) I tried rendering a QuickTime movie but it also only rendered about half of what I had told the Render engine to do. I am a long time user of AM but can't figure out if I'm missing something simple. Any suggestions are welcome! Thanks! Tom

Thanks so much for all the suggestions and examples! I will definitely be playing with this more! Tom

Hello- In the properties panel you can turn on "Glow" for a group. It seems you can either turn "Glow" "ON" or "OFF". I tried searching the database but couldn't find an answer to the question, "What if you want a "Glow" to grow,... over time?...from nothing to a bright glow... Is there a way to do this without making two different renders...one with the glow "ON" and one with the glow "OFF" ...and then just cross dissolve the renders in another program like AfterFX? Thanks for any insights Tom

It sounds like he might be trying to achieve something like a super slow mo that is seen in action films..when people are fighting and everything slows way down.. That's just a guess.. although..how would you achieve the effect that I just described? Maybe...just make a regular speed action and then pad it out by quadrupling the action when it is dropped into choreography? Tom

It would be fun to see the final result if possible... Sounds like an interesting approach... Tom

Excellent! Do you know the name of the model that you used from the Extra Disk? It didn't look familiar to me.. thanks! Tom

Many Thanks! Your knowledge of AM is encyclopedic! Tom

Hello all- Trying to something VERY simple and thought I would ask the List... Just trying to create a cylinder shape that has a transparency map applied so that the cylinder object gradually fades out. ( please see attachment) At first I thought I would create a Material as an "Environment map" and chose the "cylinder" drop down menu; but I don't think you can define the bitmap that you chose to be a transparency map when applied. Then I thought of simply stamping the transparency map from all four directions (front,back,left,right) directly on the cylinder... but I'm guessing there must be a simpler way to apply a transparency map to a cylinder. If anyone knows, their help is appreciated... Thank you! Best, Tom

Many thanks for the quick reply!!! Tom

Hello- While reading the LiteFace tutorial I noticed a picture of a head model which is being used to illustrate the tutorial. Attached is the picture of the model. Is that face model available anywhere? I am having a little bit of trouble trying to understand where the placement of the bones are around the lip area.. Many thanks for any info... Tom

No, that's for problem solving and advice so you'll be able to do it yourself. Something you might try with the net you have is to delete one spline ring at each junction and reattach the leftover CPs to teh spline ring that remains. I'd start with a simple structure like that that just crosses 4 strands in a tic tac toe grid shape and drop test that first to see if it simulates at all. Then if that worked i'd do that to the whole net and see if that still simulated, then i'd try putting the ball through it. I see in your prj you had the ball as a deflector material, that will work fine as long as you animate the ball in an appropriate fashion. That test you did looks great! Your suggestions are excellent! I am aware that you help a lot of people on this forum (including myself) and will keep your offer in mind in the future. Thanks again! Tom

Thanks Rob! Good points about the strands not being attached! Hadn't even thought about that.. When you say consult at 25$ , do you mean you would produce finished animation for that fee? Thanks again, Tom

Very cool John! ------------------------------------------------- I was thinking of seeing if the AM dynamics could create something where there is a lot of net action (see attached clip). If it could, I can see a lot of cool camera angles and maybe even creating it in slow motion. Thanks for the feedback... Tom Swish_1.wmv

Hello All- I have been trying to make a basketball swish through a hoop with netting and do it in a dramatic way. Alas,..so far ..no success. I have embedded a project for anyone who wants to take a look. Basically I took a basketball backboard (from an old hash model library) and eliminated everything but the metal hoop and netting. Then I took a Basketball (also from an old model library) to use as the "deflector". Using Mark Weller's video tutorial on using the Sim cloth simulator I took his suggestion and used the very top row of cps in the netting as the "attached" part of the cloth so that the netting was stuck to the hoop. Before I even added the basketball to the scene I tested the "netting" to see if it would have any stretch during a "SimCloth Simulation" in Choreography. At first I received an error message that the cps were intersecting so I carefully went back to the "netting" model and moved the points around so that they were not overlapping so closely. I tried running a "SimCloth Simulation" again and got a deformed netting on frame 7 before the software sputtered out with another error message. (please look at attached image to see deformed netting). Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has been able to successfully created a basketball swish using Newton. I'm guessing the software is robust enough but I'm just doing something wrong. Thanks to any insights you might have. Tom BasketballSwish.prj

No..unfortunately I saved the newer version over itself. That is a very good idea though.. Next time will do so. Thanks again for the help! Tom

I fiddled with the klieg light "fall off" distance and the black dotted ring went away..... There must have been some sort of calculation going on whereby the "fall off"was just in the wrong spot. I'll tuck that "fix" info away until the next time. Many thanks to everyone for their help! It is appreciated! Tom

It's one of the control rings that you normally see in shaded mode ? That's interesting. Tom, what happens if you nudge the light a few pixels in some direction?

Yes, It is a klieg light...do you know how to fix it? Tom

Thank you both for your suggestions! I tried increasing the line quality to 3000 (!) and it helped just a little. I tried using multi-pass and it seemed to only blur the line. My next strategy was to jiggle the light a little and see if it helped,and the line was still there. Hmmmmm.... Interesting.... Thanks again! Tom

Hello all- Tried rendering some volumetric lighting and came across a weird anomaly in the rendering. An thin arc of black dots seems to be appearing in the rendered frames. Check out the image. Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this? Thanks! Tom

Excellent!! It worked!! Many thanks!! Tom A:M can only use TrueType-Fonts. The PSFONT-Folder is often filled with none-true-types and they will never show up in A:M. Pressuming you are using Windows, TrueTypes are stored in C:\Windows\Fonts. See you *Fuchur*