Shelton

I love the look!! I have purchased, over the last year, about 4 diiferent animation programs. I have only worked in AM because of the capabilities. You are showing a lot of different modeling techniques from cloth to material / textures in this one model. Keep up the work I am learning a great deal just from watching Steve

Here is a shot of our talking toolbox from our childrens video coming out later this year. I have been working on the rig with the folks over in the rigging section. I have finally got some of the lip poses completed. Steve

I have been in the same boat over the past 4 weeks learning the squetch rig. But I want to say thanks to David, Mark, Mark and all the others that have invested a great deal of time and effort for us. I have now set up blinks, winks, and eye movements on my character. Along with the poses already set I have made additional muscle poses!! I am learning but there is so much to the rig it is unbelievable. I love the flexibility of the rig. I can have bone poses, muscle poses or combinations. I will begin to upload the character and some face shots as I get more of the rig installed. I am working on the mouth and the eyebrows at present and should have the rest of the face installed by the weekend. There are some areas that are a mystery to me but what I have learned is not to be afraid to ask questions. Steve

Finished modelling this umbrella and wanted to rig it for an animation I am working on. I found where some one had done the entire movement of the umbrella in muscle mode but I wanted to place bones on this model. I was thinking the frame work of the umbrella is a lot like a knee. As the release slides down the pole it pulls the ribs inward like a knee. Any thoughts? Steve

I have been asked to post a request for a dog model. We are in the final editing stage of our children's video, and how it happened I don't know, but we have overlooked the animated dog. Anyway the director asked me about modeling the dog and I can but I am animated the last sequence and they want the dog ready asap. Soooo, is there any one that has model a dog, preferably a lab, but any dog can be used. (and they are willing to pay) Steve

Will do. I am rendering a large file and will do it in the morning. Thanks man Steve

I thought I had it all fixed, but once again as I was watching the animations the fingers are curled when they should not be. I matched up the animation time when the fingers curled and uncurled and notice once again that it is around a key frame. I then went back to the model and loaded in a fresh proj. loaded my rigged model and then set a few poses. Then went back and while watching the hands, applied a key frame and sure enough the fingers curled. There was no pose on the hands and a slight pose slider curl. When the key frame was entered the fingers curled to a fist. After that I could not uncurl the fingers with a key frame. Once I deleted the key frame the fingers would uncurl. David I have emailed you my model. Any help is appreciated. Steve

David I am glad to report that after installation of the rig the roll of the fingers from the hand was reversed. The only problem I did not adjust these items. It was part of the gizmo and when I would clench a fist the fingers were rolling 180 degrees in the wrong way. At that time no weighting had been done. So I am not sure what happened, but the rig is working and the hands are weighted and I am ready to begin animating the character!!! I have already completed two animations on my way to the third tonight. So thanks for all the help from both you and Mark and I am sure I will mess things up some how!! Steve

Last one for the night this is after weighting and then key frame added and then tried to straighten out the fingers with pose slider. It could not be restored Steve Edit I deleted teh key frame and watched the hand un clench. Then went to new location on the time line and added the a key frame and the hand curled into a fist even though the pose slider as set at "0". David or Mark any thoughts? Edit two Watch in realtime, the hand was bent slightly and the with the hand gizmo applied as well, the fingers would of course be curled. Removed the hand gizmo settings and better results. I think the weighting could still be the answer. Along with all the roll handles will keep playing with it. And watch the key framing of the hands.

Found two roll handles pointing the wrong way on right hand. However, I did temp avi and found that the hand is still collapsing in on itself. I think now that the rolls are corrected teh weighting may be the problem now. It only does this collapse once a key frame is inserted. Steve

Mark and David Went back through and in fact there are some fingers rotate z was not set. Changed them but still you will notice that after 80 frames of animation ( 10 frames open 10 frames curled and so on). the fingers are stuck in the curled postioned

Hi Mark and David Rolling in the Y? second bone should be rotate to 0 on y as well? Steve

As soon as a key frame is added to the chor the end of the fingers go through the middle section and out the front of the hand. Steve David here is a screen shot of what is happening. It only happens after a key frame is added to the model, hand finger etc. Steve

Hi David I will check that after the render process. The fingers will not curl with just the individual pose sliders. The thumb will work however and correctly. I will check the roll handle and let you know back Steve

David I am not sure what happened. I had to delete all the keys on the fingers. It happens when I bent the hand inward. This caused the fingers on both hands to bend backwards. I thought maybe it was the roll on the fingers but it did not solve the problem. After deleting the keys I tried to curl the fingers the slide pose would not work. So for now I will not mess with the hands in the animation. It is a fast moving 11 sec section. I will try to figure out later. Steve

David I was animating and the fingers begin to curl backwards into themselves. I had keyframed a set of movements and then moved on to another movement and noticed the fingers are curled into themselves. Any thoughts Steve

I finally figured out how to do this. I will use the sprite emitter on the next project but for this it took a while to match up the action to the decal. Converted the mov to TGA sequence files. loaded sequence file into AM then loaded a rotoscope of the writing being drawn out then loaded a model of paper and overalyed the rotoscope then attached decal of the same sequence as rotoscope to paper model matched heighth and width to the rotoscope to decal (no easy task in chor!) added transperency to model put the rotoscope in motion and animated to the rotoscope turned off transperency rendered file. Process took awhile but happy with results. I have tried to turn off and on the tga in am by key framing but no results. I have sent an AM report to see if there is a problem in v13 b Here is a screen shot. Like I said I will look into the emitter next time but director wanted to match the writing of mov that was created.

Thanks David I will take a look at this!! Steve

I am at the end of my ideas. I have made a mov file in after effects of letters being written out. I was going to animate the pencil chracter to follow the mov file in rotoscope to get the action and AM allows the rotoscope to be rendered as well. So I have tried for four days to get this to work without success. It appears to be working in the chor or action but when rendered the rotoscope is not in the correct location and it plays from the beginning of the animation even though it has been key frame to start and end at certain location. So does anybody have a thought of how to follow the script I created in after effects or is there another way to create the handwriting look in AM? Steve

Look like this was going to work and render on net render and the rotoscope started playing at frame 0. I animated the model to the rotoscope and everything seemed fine. Saved all files and redered animation and the rotoscope was off by 210 frames. Just not sure what I am doing wrong. Steve It appears that AM is not recognizing the mov in frames but rather smpte

Thanks Vern That is huge help. I was not rey framing the decal/rotoscope but only the model. So as soon as the animation would start so would the rotoscope. Thanks a bunch will try that tonight. Steve

I got that working and started working on the animation but ran into a problem that I don't know how to solve. The rotoscope/decal needs to start playing about 8 seconds into the animation but as I put it into the chor window it matches the time of the of the chor. What I mean is that the rotoscope/decal needs to start at 8 seconds and run through about 16 seconds and hold. The character moves for the first 8 secs of the animation and then sees the rotoscope/decal and at that point the video should began playing. But instead the rotoscope decal begins playing at 0 frames. I have tried several things but nothing has worked. Any help is appreciated. Steve

David You were right!! I had it turned off at the end of the animation but not at the beginning. Once I turned it off, the animation went right through!! Steve

I think I may have a problem. I have turn it off and rendered the frame on the workstation and no controls were visible. Then exported the project to the render farm and when it is rendered on the farm all the controls are rendered as well Steve

David How do you turn off the face interface in the rendering of a chor? I have looked everywhere to turn it off and I have to finally ask for help Steve