Shelton

Thanks for the help. I will take a look at it when I get back this weekend (Spring Break). I really like the look of what you are doing! Steve

Hi Lee Good to see you back and hope your time spent on the mission was Fruitful. Excellent work as always. Steve

Looks very nice. I would like to see how you rigged the cloth. Once again very nice Steve

This is getting close to the outdoor light I want. The ears still bother me with sss. I am pretty sure it is how close the mesh is from behind the fold that causes the color darkness. I will keep you updated. Steve

Thanks Robert. I had turned off shadows trying to find which light was causing a shadow. I forgot to turn it back on. Now I know. Steve

I have been reading the book about lighting and rendering from Birm. I have set up a few lights in the scene and I have a question. I have a fill / sun light, a light for highlight on the eyes, and two color lights to set the tones. My question is why is the mouth still lit? Steve Thanks Rodney

Hi Gene, Been sick most of the week with a stomach bug. I haven't done anything except read email and forum messages. I did however, layout the park scene on paper. After we talked I got the office set built except for the props such as the desks and chairs. I have the street scene and Cupids house to complete. Steve

I have finally felt good enough to start putting all the weighting in the face. Thanks to David and All that put the face interface together it makes it so much easier! Steve

Nice!! he will be fun to animate. Steve

Gene They look great!!!! I am impressed. Steve

I could never get AO to work properly with SSS. So I will threw it to others can sss be used with AO? Steve I started reading the book that Robert talked about lighting 3d. Wow so far it has been easy to understand. skipped ahead and not sure what some of the concepts they were talking about.

thanks Holmes and Mark!! Here is a shot of reworked smart skin. I deleted all the others in the arms and concentrated on the shoulder area. When I did that it seemed to help. Not sure if one smart skin was causing a problem with the other. Also I focused on the rotation of the bicep. Before I was looking at the shoulder area. I can live with this now. Steve

I love it! How about a side shot with wireframe Steve

Finally had some time to get back to the project work keeps getting in the way!! I am still having problems in the rotation of the shoulder area. It seems to happen when I put the elbow in an L shape. Steve

Very cool Eric Steve

Gene You are the man. keep going love all the animals. I really like the giraffe!! Steve

Gave it a try and the sss on his face remained darker. So a combination of sss and ao possible? Steve

Robert I said I would buy it already!! That really looks good. For this example alone would convince me. Steve

I was thinking about the sets this evening after talking with Gene in an email. It made me think of Robert's lighting thread, and I how was I going to light the outdoor scenes. I started looking at Paul's Playground and how he lit using AO. I have tried to duplicate this but had no luck. How do you set up AO rendering? Steve

excellent, I loved that movie for the fluid movement of the characters Steve

Gene, nicely done. email me ssshelton@tulsacoxmail.com Steve

Hi David and thanks for the critique. I am mainly seeing how the rig is holding up. I wanted to put the body in some awkward positions and see how it moved out of it. I see a great deal of tweaking left to do in the upper body. I have weighted the lower and smart skinned some areas but the rig is well made (thanks Mark) that not much was needed. I am still learning about key frames and the basics of animation so any advice is helpful. Thanks Nancy and of course you were right again. I had to reinstall AM after system problems and forgot to click the alpha off. I am about to throw my machine out. It crashed several times last night (Hardware related). I got the dreaded blue screen of death several times last night. Finally, I was able to give it CPR and got it going in time to upload the last animation. So I am computer shopping tonight. Looking at the HP Z workstations and the Dell Percision workstations. Thanks for the help. Steve

Having problems on the cleanup of the shoulder area. I know it is more to do with the way I modeled the character. Anyway I when I smart skin I have found that I can lock up the arms if the smart skinning is not done correctly. Any advised? Also, in the chor I have the background white and the ground not active as I wanted to see the shoulder area better. But yet it rendered with black background. Is there another place such as an action that can change the background and colors? Steve jumpa.mov

Now, that I am getting the rig in place, to IK or FK? I have watched several tuts that like IK and then some of the more known animators like fk. So my question is, where do you stand on animating, IK or FK? Steve

Thanks to David Simmons who once again corrected my problems and answered my questions. The leg is moving smoothly now. It was something as simple as turning off IK before smart skinning. Things we overlook! Steve