detbear

Hey "D" Press on....you can do it. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But be wise in how you approach it. Planning is the most inexpensive and yet skipped part of most projects. Plan on paper.....plan shots out.....plan how each will be done. The more you plan, the less re-do's you'll experience. There's a huge potential for wasted time do to a lack of planning. Planning on your part is free, but wasted production time is expensive. I completed a half hour show. I did a bunch of it myself. Actually most of it. However, I hired a few people I knew were experts in the areas I needed. They did a great job by the way.....Thanks guys(AKA....Robert, William, Nancy, Mark M, Brian N.) A few others on the forums here have created some pretty cool "Large projects". When I say "Large," I'm talking about something more than a short film. Something longer than 15 minutes. In my case, 28 minutes. Whatever the path you choose, I think a small, refined crew is always the best way to go. Pre-production work is essential. How much do you already have completed as far as models, rigs, props, etc. I could go on and on and on.....but If you need anymore advice in getting a project actually finished, I'd be happy to give you my 2 cents. A bunch of projects get started....but very few get finished unless they have big budgets to plow through all the obstacles.....And there will be obstacles.....even ones that can shut the production down completely. With that said, I believe that if you really want to accomplish this....you can do it. Just soak up the experience of people who have actually completed large projects. The best questions to ask are "what were the biggest hurdles you faced and what mistakes did you make." Press on....you can do it.

Very cool. I've been working on a similar model myself. Looks like a great start. Maybe we've all got the "swashbuckling" bug It's funny how the "Hollywood" version of pirate style ships and Galleons tend to be fashioned more around the "Dutch" designs which were very ornate in their build. Therefore the romantic version plays more to the adventurous.

Is there a specific import type you are needing to get into A:M? Let us know here because chances are, we have had to get that type into A:M as well. For some things, there are work arounds. Although some things are still not available. But let us know what type you need.

Yeah... I hope it's been fixed. Another golden tool in the A:M suite.

Robert, You're so right man.....The copy cp weighting and such is very cool. It might be worth trying to run that at some point here. Doesn't work on smartskin if I recall but wooow.....what a time saver. William

Thanks William, Yeah....you're right about that.....I'm having to add the fan bones one side at a time because I'm experimenting with a new idea/scheme for using fans. My hope is to reduce the amount of weighting/ smartskin byusing a rediculous amount of fan bones. This model has more cps than other characters.... and thus very time consuming to go cp to cp. Fan bones are more easy for me to wrangle it all in. For you masters out there, I'm sure there's a better way....but for me....this is working out ok. So far, the results are much better than I even thought. But we shall see. William

Hey all..... I've already run TSM builder and flipper on a character and now I'm adding fan bones before running TSM rigger. My question is......Will adding a bunch of fan bones mess the TSM Rigger up? Is there a naming convention to avoid/ look out for as far as naming the fan bones go? Thanks so much... William

I think that's a good point, but the export selections are very limited. It will require much trial and error. A:M may just not be up to the task or at least not without going through a lot of R&D.

Hey Rodney .... Thanks again... Like I said before, you guys know much more about the programming aspect than I do. ****I took two of the model versions, Made a group on the same cps on each model....named the groups the same thing on each model......and then I moved one group in an action to get keys on it. Then I tried to copy those keys onto the same group on the other model, BUT IT STILL WOULD NOT key the cps into place because the cp names are different.

Hey Rodney. Wow...that is very fascinating. I think that a programmer who knew much more about the nuts and bolts of it could really make that happen. ALSO...... Those numbers for each cp show up when you RIGHT CLICK a cp and choose "Edit weights." At that point, the number/ name of the cp appears in the top left box of the weighting window. It's a number that normally looks something like this: CP# 253629

One possible resolution would depend on how hard it will be to get a bone created and positioned to each cp of the tpose model.

So with a heavy mesh model.....is there a way to place a bone at each cp without having to do each by hand?

Hey guys, Unfortunately I have to import more than one version of the model. It is a model already rigged in another app. I'm attempting to utilize the morph bends in the joints. So I am importing the T-pose model and the same model with joint bends. my hope is to transpose the joint bend cp positions onto the T-pose versions in a pose or other keyed way. Because the cp count is high, I want to transpose the cps in the "bent" joint version to the t-pose version. But since the Cps switch names(although they are the same)....... a translation "muscle" key doesn't work. Hee hee eeeeek!!!! I know....I'm nuts William

Technically possible idea... If every CP were attached to its own bone , that set of bones could be dragged into another model and the other model's CPs attached to the bones. An Action that worked on bones would work on either. Exactly!!!!!!.........That's why months back I requested a function tool that you could snap a bone to a cp.....REMEMBER!! basically select a bone, right click on it.......then have a "Snap to cp location" then click on the cp that you want the bone to go to. It wouldn't be attached to the cp.....but rather translated to the X,Y, Z coordinates of the cp. Then the bone could translate the cp to the right local. But that is a future idea. I'm wondering how to do this now. William

I imported an obj into A:M(via the .obj importer) which converted it into a Hash model. Then I imported it a second time in the same way using the same process. The results are two separate models in AM that are exactly the same. However, when I click on the same cp on both models, I notice that the cps are not named the same thing. You can see this by clicking a cp, then right clicking, then choosing"Edit CP weights"..... Each model has a different CP # for the same cp. Something like "CP# 296183" and "CP# 495742" Anyway to get those numbers the same so that I can make a mesh action that will effect both models the same? I would really appreciate any input you guys have for me on this. William

Hey Will, Happy Birthday! Hope you have an awesome day and get to do some fun stuff!!!! William D

Hey.... Never mind. I figured it out. Turns out that you need to use a new spline or something along those lines.

It use to be that if you dragged a cp onto a spline in a space with no cp.......and then right clicked.....it would make a hook. However, I'm noticing now that in V 17, it makes a cp point on the spline instead. How or what is the process to force a hook instead? Thanks so much William

Nancy, I have a high mesh human character imported from .obj. I've already converted it to A:M and "Halved" it. I've been trying to create a smooth exact replica of it using the S2S tool. If you want to practice on a high mesh, I could use the help The hardest thing I've found is that many poly models aren't mapped out spline wise like we are use to. So you have to choose where all the spline rings will go rather than just reducing the number based on the .obj. William

Hey Fuchur, Thanks. I'll check it out. **I found previously that the splines tend to attach to the back/ reverse side of the model. This was very frustrating. ***Also....the imported model has no clear spline patterns, so there are no real splines to follow. I'll have to make the choice. Very difficult. William

Hey everyone. I'm considering trying to transfer a very dense figure model into A:M. I was hoping that the re-topo tool would help out, but I was not able to find much on what others had been able to get out of it. Has anyone been successful in "retopo'ing" a high dense mesh, human figure in A:M?? William

I'm just noticing that Quicktime render output isn't in the V16 options. And the AVI output gives an error message when I try to render out to AVI. I normally render out tga's or png's so I haven't paid this any attention until now. William

Maybe the Newton plugin is set to calculate in only the PAL scale.

I'm noticing that my droping ball never actually makes contact with the rotor but influences it with some remaining space between it. What setting can I make to allow an actual "touch?"

OK..... I think I got it. Kind of like naming bones specific things to work in a rig....Newton requires the "newton 01,02,03....." group naming convention to trigger it's effect on objects. Hey Agep.......On an earlier post in this topic I was asking about adding Buoyancy to a simulation. Is it possible to do this somehow? Thanks, William