SplineSoup

Nice tests, Paul! It seems that to keep the volume of flour in the sack (and possibly even have it shift) interior deflectors will go a long way. T'would be nice if we all had Pixar's R&D department at our disposal for perfecting SimCloth applications, wouldn't it?

As an animation teacher, I appreciate the great benefit and as well as the deep frustration of animating a flour sack in 3D. A short while back I took it upon myself to put together a small library of basic characters for my students to use for class exercises and a flour sack was one of the characters I tackled. Yes. They are hard. Unfortunately, I never completed it to my own satisfaction in time for this academic year, but the concept still chews on my brain from time to time, waiting for a day when my proficiency with Animation Master matches my ambition. Two suggestions for you: 1. Rigging. A sack of flour doesn't actually have bones, so when you rig one in 3D you'll constantly encounter problems with the sack looking too rigid. A good way to soften the effect of your rig is to use minimal bones and liberal tweaks with smart skinning. If you haven't worked with smart skins before, check out the tutorial in TAO A:M manual that either came with your CD or can be downloaded from the Hash site. 2. The flip is an interesting action to pull off. You'll notice that if you model your character standing on the X axis (and don't move the model bone) that it will stand on the choreography's ground plane but it will also tend to rotate from its feet. Since you're trying to get the sack to pivot around its center of gravity you might try adding a null object to your animation, placing it at the COG and linking the sack to it using the "Translate To" and "Orient Like" constraints. This way all you need to worry about is animating the arc and rotation of the null and reserve your sack rig for adding nuances like an arching back or flailing appendages. There are volumes that could be said on this topic but my personal curiosity was piqued by the project file that John uploaded. I took a look at it to compare his rig to mine and am interested if any other A:M users have modeled working flour sacks. It might be worthwhile to go over different approaches and come up with a working character that could be included in the A:M library in future releases. It certainly is a ubiquitous character and the process I feel could benefit a lot of people. For consideration, here's the model I worked on last year. Feel free to use it, improve upon it, or incorporate it into your own character. Look forward to seeing your work. Happy animating! Chris FlourSack_simple_altSkel3.mdl

Glenn, thank you for the expression sample. It's a little choppier than what I have in mind but I plan on studying your project file to deconstruct how you're getting this version to work. By the way, nice interpretation on the running/jamming/ghost/shadow/thing. With a bit of experimentation and exploration I stumbled across the ToonNation X-Ray shader, which does the exact *opposite* of what I'm trying to do, and was mildly consoled. What I'm trying to do doesn't seem possible with materials at this point unless I've missed something. I'm recalling working with gradients in another program and being able to link the gradient ramp to surface angle which lent itself well to things like soap bubbles and velvet. Keyframing it is... Here's the next incarnation of the shadow guy with the transparency of two choreography layers keyframed in opposition. As one fades in, the other begins to fade out. This cured the distracting stripe that occurred when the planes turned into the camera. While it still looks a little funny in a full rotation, this is actually more than adequate to give the illusion of volume in a walkthrough scenario. I may even devise a 45 degree view to transition this rotation further, like those classy sprite-based FPS games of the 90's. They'll be floating, inert in tubes when all is finished. Chris FloatingThing_trans.mov

I've surprisingly just run into the same error in A:M on my MacBook Pro. Any video exported from QuickTime Pro 7.4 (92) imports into A:M as black, though for a split second, the first frame splashes itself across the project workspace before disappearing. Is this problem isolated to Macs? If so, what version of QuickTime did you downgrade to in order to eliminate the import glitch? Ugh. Downgrade. Chris

I'm working with a small team on a short animation where a character walks through a room filled with obscure objects floating in large test tubes. Based on previous still image work, I immediately thought of using image maps to speed up the production process (since modeling dozens of obscure wispy objects would eat up a lot of time). What I ended up doing was creating two perpendicular planes and mapping them with front and side views of the same object. All looks reasonably well when both planes are about 45 degrees rotated from the camera view but when one of them rotates parallel to the camera direction it creates an obnoxious dark line in the middle of the object. See attached movie....and ignore the fact that the head parts don't line up! My next idea would be to set up a material expression that causes the planes to gradually increase transparency as they approach a parallel angle to the camera and fade back into opacity as they rotate perpendicular again. I'm at a loss about how to do something like this, though, short of keyframing material transparency levels by hand. How can I set a material to change based on viewing angle? Is this possible without knowledge of scripting? Bueno, Chris FloatingThing.mov

Whoa, I didn't even note the date! I actually went looking for the model myself and discovered this thread. Ha! Well, I've made a point to be more active anyway. I suppose there are worse ways I could go about it! You're welcome.

Ye Olde v12 knight model does in fact have working knees as many people have noted on the forums. Hopefully, the knight packaged with v14 works as well, though I'll personally have to wait to find out. In the mean time, here's the correct knight model from the old v12 CD Knight.zip

Fantastic! That's just what I'm looking for. Back to the drafting table! Chris

I'm working on rigging a character and noted that most models have a folder called "relationships" that define bone/null constraints. In an Anzovin tutorial I went through, I made a new action to define bone constraints but it was all outside the model in the end. What is a good resource to learn about constructing a model's constraints internally with relationships? Almost there! Chris =)

In other 3D programs, moving a camera is pretty much set up for you within the program with pre-rigged setups and all...then again, so are primitives! Robcat, the link you provided was immensly helpful in getting me familiar with the camera controls and I quickly deducted from the other posts what exactly it was that I was trying to find. To orbit you need a central point. Oftentimes this is a null object that the software defaults with an "Aim At" constraint. It's just a nice helper to have when setting up where your camera is aiming and the rig is very simple: create a new Null object, rename it something like Camera_Target, select the camera and apply an Aim At constraint and select your null. Yippy skippy. Still the best way I've found of aiming the camera is to have a window open with the camera view and a window open with an orthographic view side by side. In one you position and in another you get live updates. BTW, Will Sutton had a nice primer for camera controls at that link above. Here is a transcription. Thanks a ton, Chris =) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Camera Keystrokes (Use when looking through a camera) submitted by Will Sutton -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Holding down shift while using the hand/pan tool[M]will dolly forward and backward Hold down control while using the hand[M] will shift the camera sideways and up and down. Holding shift with the zoom[Z] tool will adjust your focal length. Holding shift using the Turn tool[T] will aim the camera. Holding control while using the Turn [T] tool will tilt the camera. or in the words of Mike Stamm: The shortcut keys are 'T', 'M' and 'Z', just like in the modeling window. But here's the trick: If you don't hold down a modifier key, it'll just move the Bird's Eye view, as you probably already know. These are the modifier keys. For 'T' Hold down Cmd: The camera rotates along its own axis, like the hands of a clock. Hold down Shift: The Camera swivels to look in different directions, but without moving. For 'M' Hold down Cmd: The camera moves side to side or up and down with the mouse. Hold down Shift: The camera moves forwards and backwards. For 'Z' Hold down Cmd: The camera simultaneously zooms out and moves in, or vice versa. Hold down Shift: The camera zooms in (changes focal length), but doesn't move. Note: For this process use the 'Cmd' key on the Mac and 'Ctrl' key on Windows

I had a student ask me how to move the camera around in the choreography window and after showing him a truly awful way of doing it I realized I had no clue. =) Is there an equivalent to turning and moving like the modelling view that can be used to manipulate the camera views in choreography? Much obliged, Chris =)

Hello everyone! I'm really excited to be finally getting a taste of what Animation Master can do. After learning all the industry standard programs at school and bemoaning that I could not afford to legally own any of them, I'm finding a promising home here to continue my passion for animation with far fewer obstructions and more intuition than say, Maya. That said, I have actually hit a bump that you might be able to help me with. I am doing the A:M tutorials, naturally, and thought it would be logical to preface "The Door is Stuck" (exercise 6) with a walk cycle like I did in the previous exercise. Cool. Shaggy walks up to the door, nonchalantly to set the stage for his little adventure. So how would I blend this preliminary action with the animation to come? Essentially, the first half is animating a cyclical action along a path when he approaches the door. Then once the path animation reaches its end and shaggy freezes in his walk, how does one begin keyframing in the choreography window to complete the story? I've tried doing this by keyframing Shaggy at the end of the path and adding motion in skeletal mode but whatever I tweak, be it a hand or a foot, overrides any animation *before* it on the timeline as well so that his springy walk cycle suddenly resembles Day of the Dead or something like that. Thanks, Chris =)