Duke

Hers a link to all you need to know about sweeper.. download the tutorials and you'll be blown away.. you'll wonder why you never used it before.. Sweeper tuts Have fun Leo

as a Maya user I also had a struggle with it in the beginning but what I would advise is to just get used to the shortcut keys.. for the different views the shortcuts are the number key buttons.. on youre keypad once you start getting into it,, it works quite well.. hope this helps Leo

Great model, I like it. especially the back lighting effect. good job Leo

What file type are you using? you wont have much luck with .mp3's. you need to use .wav files Leo

Hi William Welcome to the forum. Hope to see some of your stories soon. Leo

I have had some problems in that area as well. after rendering a scene and playback the movie I had a screeching sound in the background. to solve this I rendered out the sequence without sound (it saved some render time) then I added the sound afterward in my video editing software. it works fine that way for me. I'm not sure what caused it to screech like that but it may be the same thing thats causing your muting problem. Hope this is a help to you. good luck Leo

Great work Dhar I love it, its very well done. keep up the good work dude, you rock!! Leo

Hi Ramón If that were possible then it would make it amazingly easy to do a lipsync on a character. as far as I know, the only way that you can do that is to set up a pose slider and do it manually in an action along with the audio clip. its actually alot of fun to do. I wish there were shortcuts to this, it would my life a whole lot easier. thats as far as I'm aware. if there is a way of automating it I'd really like to know about it as well. Leo

Hey Case Ok, this is a problem that I have run into before. this usually happens when you lathe something like your dome shape and the first CP is not exactly on the 0 of the axis.. Here is an example: see the marked CP is not exactly on the green line. (0) [attachmentid=21414] When it is lathed it will make a hole in the top like this [attachmentid=21415] now if you go to the front view and lasso the top CP's like this [attachmentid=21416] and resize them (make them come together and you go too far over then they overlap causing this [attachmentid=21417] but if you then size them to the exact centre you will get this [attachmentid=21418] The best way is to get your very first CP exactly on the 0 and then' make your shape and lathe. I hope this helps Leo

Hey Case what is it that you are asking? is it the creasing that is in the front of the pod? if you post a wireframe of the pod it would be easier for us to give you advice, off the cuff it looks like the group of CP's at the tip of the nose(half dome front) are not together. or are not aligned. that would cause this to happen. but its better if you post a wireframe pic and then we would be able to see what you did and try to help you fix it up. Leo

you're welcome. good luck with your project Leo

Hi dude it is possible that you have somehow selected glow on one of your surface properties. to check this you must open do the following: I have numbered the steps in the pic here: [attachmentid=21207] 1: in the project workspace 2: if this triangle doesn't appear here then go to Tools/options/Global and tick this tickbox here. 3: crack open the triangle next to the surface where you are experiencing the glow effect, or all of them just to make sure. 4: go down to glow and if it is set then rightmouse click on glow and click on not set. that will take it away and try to render again. I hope the instructions are clear enough. hope this works. Leo

I would render out each choreography separately and then use some or other composite (video editing) software to put all the scenes together. I use Avid Xpress. there are various other programs. check out this you could possibly fine help here Compositing Thats my 2 cents worth. hope it helps you. Leo

Hi Matt The top is a bump map I used, it is the same as the bottom image which is a color map, when I selected displacement it gave me a very fuzzy almost hairy looking finish so I selected bump and set the percentage down to round 20% and that came out like the image above. I have decided to rather leave the bump or displacement. as I rendered it out in my chore and it came out nicely. I'm happy with the end result. Here's the result. [attachmentid=21157] Thanx for the suggestions, I appreciate it. Leo

Thanx Jeetman I'll add your directions to my collection of handy tips. I appreciate it. BTW, love the Sponge Bob, He's the nuts! Leo Hey Jim I have been giving some thought to the cables, Ill be needing allot of them for the guitars and amps etc. I would probably do it with sweeper and then make some pose sliders for the movements. but then again, I am just thinking as I write this post. might not work with poses.. anyway, I'll definitely show what I've done and possibly how I got there. BTW, forgot to mention that your mike looks cool Leo