Kelley

Zayrin: Good point. Here's another shot with the only spotlight swung around. Dark Limit: I assume you are referring to the rocks. Which are definitely low-res...both in the mesh and texture. I hastily built the rock by using the Magnet Tool on a 100x100 grid. The final will be different. And the textures were [again, hastily] applied in one application which leaves them smeared on some surfaces. The texture is a Homo Habilis skull fossile downloaded from the 'net. All you can get from that is 72dpi.

Thanks Dhar. Actually, there's less there than meets the eye. Sort of a minimalist rig. I've yet to get my head around all the Balance Bones and Controllers in, for example, the 2001 Rig that ships with A:M. So I install bones as I always imagined them to be...and they work pretty well. When they don't, I work around. In this instance, all Beast has to do is amble around slowly as the Sentinel mutters aloud to himself. The Sentinel only has to move from the waist up, and, even then, not very much. The camera will do most of the moving.

Took a break from animating fish to put bones in the Beast and Rider. 'Will become a short animation. Not sure where it stands in the 'to do' list.

Sorry, I tend to babble. Babble on, Entity, babble on! This is so cool...!

Amen to John's suggestion. I write the XYZ and Rotation figures down for each camera after setting their positions. At the proper keyframe, when it's time to look through Camera_02, just enter the XYZ co-ordinates on Camera_01's Properties and it will seamlessly jump to the new position. When starting the animation, turn off everything except your starting#1 camera. All editing will be done in the animation.

Excellent! Thanks Ken.

Thanks guys, I'll do a run-through on the adviso's tonight. [Got house guests this weekend] Looks like putting multiple mouth poses on a single slider is not the way to go here. I have [for example] a slider that goes from 'AA---EE". How to then build a slider that goes from "EE---OO" with the "EE" position of the mouth being the same in both? There are no keyframes to copy.

I took my fish character, duped the head, installed mouth bones and started playing with building Sliders. 1st question: Can you have three [more than two, anyway] mouth positions on one slider? For example: "AH" at 0%. "EE" at 50% and "OO" at 100%? At the moment, it would appear not...only my two-position sliders move anything on the model...but hope springs eternal. 2nd: When I copied the fish's head, it's textures came over with it. I can do a snapshot in the Modeling/Bones window, and in the Action window, and it looks fine. But in the Choreography, it's solid black. Where did the textures go?

...and so it proved to be. [ have NO idea how that might have happened.] Thanks a million.

Started experimenting with building landscapes, added a Ptero, and made a few dozen 20-sec. renders this weekend with the Ptero flying around. This morning [Monday] I'm trying to fine-tune things and the rotoscopes disappeared. I get a plain black background. Camera_02 had a strarfield roto. It too. is black. But, if I make a screen snapshot, the roto is there. I tried adding a new camera. It also will not see a roto in a movie render. I removed all the rotos and went with the default pale blue backgrounds. Screen shots see the blue, movies are black. I tried closing and re-starting A:M, then my computer. So far...nothing. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Mid-afternoon update. I scrapped the whole choreography and made a new one. Re-installed objects and a roto. Same problem. QT_BURDD_01.zip

OK. Thanks Ken ...and to Robcat. Thanks also. I'll watch the tut as soon as I get Quicktime re-installed.

OK then, in the '.cho action' instead of Skeletal Mode. [ 'got foxed on that because the .cho action uses the Skeletal icon] But how to get more than one .cho action in a Choreography? I right-cliked on the .cho action, and 'new' was not one of the possibilities

Coming into the last of animating the fish. This one [the big guy who eats everything] needs to have his mouth VERY wide open at the last instant. I have three seperate actions that move him. In each, his mouth moves a little. But when I go into Skeletal Mode at the very last, and drag his jaw down, that seems to over-ride all mouth action in all the actions. [ Everything else, like Fins and Tail were OK.] Fortunately, I could do an un-do and not much harm was done. But for the future, does any adjustment in the Choreography/Skeletal trump any Action?

OK. Good to know. I'll try it tonight. Thanks.

I added a shrimp to the Fish Animation. [a bit hard to see in this frame, but...] It was hard to align on a Path, so I slaved it to a Null and dragged the Null across the scene. After rendering the scene out, I added six more and translated them all to the same Null. But only the first seems to want to move. For this iteration, I'll add more Nulls, but for the future, can a Null control more than one object?

...and it's a 'toon' render? I rarely feel satisfied with the way toon colors come out, but this looks great. Good job.

It would have been a great solution...but, that didn't work for me either. [Thanks, though].

Am trying to set stride length on the Wright Sprite. I can marquee the little yellow dot [it turns black in the center] but it won't move. I get the four-headed arrow cursor by touching it to the yellow dot, but it won't slide. Any thoughts?

I opened that A:M scene. It seems to have lights attached to the models in the Modeling Mode. I can't see any listed in the Choreography. In any event, I printed out the article you suggested. Looks good. I'll see what I can do with it. Thanks.

I'm looking for some reference, or a tutorial on underwater scenery, particularly shafts of light coming down from above. [new cast member attached.]

Thanks Luuk. It does sound complex. I solved it by getting a really big hammer: I closed out of A:M and said "Don't Save". I didn't lose too much work. Besides, it was a first rough-cut at placing the Wright Sprite, and would have needed to be re-done anyway. I realized after I had closed that what I might have done was to open the models that were obscuring in their individual [modeling mode] windows, hide all but a few CP's and go back to the Choreography. On the second time around, I did that, and voila!...no keyframes were added. Thanks for the offer of help.

I got my little demon sprite [now known as the Wright Sprite] flying. Unfortunately, I'm only cleared for VFR landings, and in order to bring him back to earth, I had to go into a direct side view in the Choreography [#2] and turn off the Terrain and Rocks so I could see his feet touch down. This added a keyframe which I didn't notice at the time. When I got the sequence ended, I tried to watch it through the Cameras view as I moved the scrubber. The ground disappeared and came back, plus a few lights that I had turned off [and back on] so there were fewer lines running all over the place. I tried selecting them and deleting. I opened the sub-folders under each item and tried over, but they won't go away. Any suggestions?

Can you tell us where to get the PuZh Wizard?

Looks like the thread got re-found. I was waiting for [and have now received] an updated copy of GoLive for the site. All the images have been captured, all I have to do now is write it and FTP it up. With the re-newd interest, I'll get to it sooner.

Oooops! I did not. Thanks.