phatso

yup. this can be totally and completely frustrating if you miss some inconspicuous thing in the tutorials. when they don't work, go back and read word for word. it eventually becomes second nature. that's when you start feeling like you could move mountains. (and you can - in 3D even!)

The way you avoid 3 splines joining into one circular one is to tell A:M that the splines are separate. The way you do that is to create a spline that's two CPs longer than you need. Then stitch together the middle CPs. Finally, delete the superfluous end CPs. If you've done the flower tute in the workbook, look up the place where you put a spline across the end of the leaf. (My book is version 12, it's on page 90. Dunno if that has changed.) You see there's a 5-point spline across the end. If you'd just done a 3-point spline, A:M would have assumed you were just continuing the perimeter of the leaf. Those two extra CPs tell A:M you're actually joining two splines. Then a patch will form.

But tell him to check his weapons at the door.

Another thing about protrusions like toes - if you don't need a lot of detail, you can just lathe a closed tube,distort it if necessary to make a paw, and than make shapes that stick out thru its side. Cartoon claws are a perfect example; they're not an extension of skin and fur anyway so you'd expect them not to be smooth extensions of a paw.

Yeah. Try a test render. If it looks smooth in the render but not in the modelling window, you've just got the real-time resolution set a notch or two low. On the other hand, you'll be happy to have a low-rez option when you get to complicated models, 'cuz it will allow you to rotate them in real time without choking your computer.

Took another look at your model and thought of something else. When you shrink a circle down in A:M to try to close off the end of a tube, you can never get it completely closed - you'll get surface folding and all sorts of screwy things. You may not be able to do a 4-section lathe; if you really are doing an elephant's foot you may need more detail if you want to make toes etc. But if you can... one of the things I like about lathing in 4 sections is that you can delete the end circle, join the opposing spline ends to form 2 continuous splines, and then join the resulting 2 control points to get a perfectly closed end to the model. Only with a 4-section lathe can you do this. If you want it to narrow down to a bump and then have a closed end, when you're lathing it just ad another control point that, when lathed, will define the perimeter of the bump. There's another way that works with, say, 6 lathe sections, but I can't remember it. Basically it involves forming 2 of the splines like the stitching on a baseball. Anybody else want to jump in on this?

Och, mon! You do indeed have way more splines than you need. Did you maybe learn modelling in a polygon program? If so, you may be used to thinking complicated=smoother. In A:M it's simpler=smoother, at least up to a point. There are 2 ways of doing a smooth circle with 4 control points. (2 that I know of, maybe more.) 1: In Options, set the lathe segments to 4. Draw a small vertical spline and then lathe it, giving you a ring or tube with a circle on top and a circle on the bottom. Delete one of the circular splines, giving you a single circle. 2. Turn on the snap to grid, so you'll get CPs in the right places. (Never mind about size, you can rescale later.) Click 4 control points in a square or diamond-shape pattern. You 'll get a spline that's roughly but not completely circular. Grab the bias handles and pull them out until the spline rounds out nicely. Or, if you need to be really precise, go into each of the CP's properties and type in a new value for the - Hmm, is it Gamma? There's a specific value, I forget, you can experiment. Once you get the shape you want, turn off the grid snap and resize the circle as needed. For the shape you have (the roughly tubular one with a small hole at the end) you should try lathing with 4 sections. You'll be surprised! I just got thru a job building about 180 models where the circular and tubular shapes were done using these methods.

One thing I've learned using A:M is there's no such thing as the right answer. There's always ten ways to do something. Confusing at first, of course, but eventually that same fact becomes a lifesaver... when you've got a big project and you're out of time, you have a number of options and you can choose the most expeditious.

More detail: this is something beginning animators always trip over. Not just with A:M but with every program. If you have a keyframe at the beginning that tells A:M, in effect, "door closed," and then another one well into the animation that says "door open," the program will draw a timeline from the first key to the second key and progressively open the door during that whole time. What you need to do is go to the frame where you want the door to start opening, and insert a keyframe that says "door still closed." That is, a control point that's the same as the one at the beginning. Then the door will start opening from that point. It's worth mentioning here, so you don't have to figure it out later, that you'll get a little "backswing" before the door starts to open. That's because A:M works in splines and the math calculations will place a smoothly curved spline (defining the door's motion) through the "door still closed" control point. To defeat this, go to the "door still closed" control point in the timeline. Right-click on it and you will see that the interpolation through that control point is the default smooth-spline. Click at the bottom of the menu for more options. Choose the "zero-slope" interpolation. You will immediately see the "backswing" disappear from the movement spline (in the timeline). Now the door will be motionless until the moment when it's supposed to start opening. The zero-slope interpolation is the animator's all-purpose tool for preventing movement before you want it. If I could remember how to set it as the default interpolation on my machine, I would do it. For jerky motions, like the way a squirrel moves, instead of choosing "zero slope" just peak the control points.

Mage, that is one seriously scary avatar. You haven't been taking Ax Murderer lessons, have you?

I'm currently working up a powerpoint presentation on a technical subject. 80 models so far, another 180 to go, and 90% of them are being done in A:M. Once you get used to A:M's special way of doing things, you can accomplish almost anything.

Awww! Iddn' dat coot!

The whole neck should move back. The ear is behind the neck, while real people usually have ears even with the front of the neck. On the other hand - cartooning is stylization, after all. If moving her neck changes her attitude in a way you don't like, then leave it where it is. Look at how distorted Jirard's models are, and how expressive. Gotta keep the big picture.

Blaaaah! And, in an era when kids are no longer brought up to be little angels. If there ever was a misreading of the signs of the times, that has to be it. Hmm. I wonder if he's still copyrighted? (google google google) Dang. He is.

OOH! Damn! Why didn't I think of that! Haven't bought anything on ebay for a long time. Gracias.

Is he gonna do all the cool morphing things Felix used to do, like turning a question mark into a cane etc?

Ditto on the heels. Canine heels don't touch the ground. That said, you may have reasons for doing what you did for the sake of some character detail I don't know about. But to me, having the wolf standing on tiptoe, as it were, makes it more menacing. What kind of voice are you planning to give the wolf?

I like your artwork, W.

Well of COURSE a super-efficient 2D option would be useful. How many 3D animations don't include 2D decals and backgrounds? Hash prob'ly has a six foot stack of feature requests to work on, so this may not be realistic. But it would be nice.

AND much faster. You'll get the stuff back in about 1/3 the time it originally took. cool beans.

A lot of people like to set their monitors up with high contrast, but that's a trap. You lose all detail at the dark end. When I first viewed the evening pix, I couldn't see anything at all. But then I went into the alignment and discovered my monitor settings were way off. Now those scenes look fine. 'Course, one could argue that they should be brightened up on the theory that a large percentage of the people who will be viewing this have misadjusted monitors. "Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice.

I fondly remember something they used to sell at truckstops: Roadkill Helper. Came in a box like Hamburger Helper, with stuff inside - probably wood chips - that rattled. Directions on back about how to roast roadkill on a hot manifold. Sadly, General Mills or Cargill or whoever owns Hamburger Helper sued them and they stopped making it. Gave my box away as a gift; I wish I had it back.

dot's first class work. lipsync seems to be a little behind the audio, but I can't tell, that may be an artifact of the download. but I would suggest moving the whole audio track about 3 frames in the late direction. try it and tell me what you think.

Dunno, but if you had done that on purpose it would have been really impressive!

No, no, it's an evil, evil cat! Which is just what Chuck wanted, of course. Chuck, with that cat's big eyes and eyebrows, I bet you can get any expression you need even with the limitations posed by the mouth. If you watch the original Felix cartoons, you'll see that the mouth does very little beyond a very generic smile or frown. It's mostly in the eyebrows. Lemme guess... he likes to bite mice on the neck.