Jeetman

Al, Just went through this whole thread and man you are a great modeler! I loved the Lamborghini. Quick question about modeling: Do you peak all your splines and the adjust bias (as I learned in a book about mechanical modeling for A:M)? Or just use unpeaked splines and adjust the bias? Or a little of both? Great work!!!! George

That looks great Eric! George

Did you check out Holmes Bryant's tutorial on cloth simulation? It's Here

A lot of people in the community have made contributions to the rig (it's a very long list), it wouldn't be half as good without the help I've gotten. At the moment, Mark Skodacek has been working with me on the spine update that's going to be in the next version...it's going to be a lot better. Once that is finalized, we'll get an update released, then the tutorial. I don't think it will be too much longer. David, Is the next update going to require the latest version of A:M to run?

Go to google, type "heart" in the search field and hit the "go" button. Click on the "images" button at the very top right. I just did that and I got a ton of reference pics. George [edit] The references are of a human heart. If you mean a simple heart shape, here's something I shaped using the 32 patch sphere in the models folder. It's not perfect but it's a 3D heart. basic_3d_heart.mdl

How long have you been using Animation Master if you don't mind me asking? George

I read this thread from the beginning and I love the progression. In looking at your walk cycle, it appears that her head is a slight bit too small for her frame. I think the costume layout is excellent!! Keep up the good work! George

I'm not quite sure how my bother-in-law and his partner are going to use this. He's been bugging me to finish it and I've been wanting to so I finally did. I agree it's not the best animation but My brother-in-law is happy so it's pretty much done with the exception of possibly adding sound effects. Thank you for the suggestions and compliments. I'm ready to get back to TWO. Time to finish Robert's shot. George

Here's the completed logo I started a few months ago. It uses a slightly modified directors chair that was donated and a modified version of Woot from the TWO movie. Thank you Martin for permission to use it. I changed the shape of Woot's head and completely changed the color of the textures so he didn't appear greenish. I know this is the WIP thread but I couldn't find the thread for finished projects. Oh and Robert, I hope the finished shot clears up the drowsy look of the monkey hehe. Here it is. FMP_LOGO.mov

They look pretty cool! Not knowing who Rush are, I'm thinking they all wear black hehe. Keep up the good work! George

With all due respect, I have to disagree here. I see plenty of variation of these characters that I'd definitely be able to distinguish the differences. Also if we are talking animation, Jirard could easily distinguish the characters through personality, mannerisms, voice, etc. enough to easily tell them apart. The reference to the peanuts characters is a perfect example. Although the peanut characters are very much the same, we all can distinguish say Linus from Charlie Brown. I also like the peanuts style idea. My only suggestion Jirard, is if you do decide to modify your characters based on others opinions just remember art is very subjective and a lot is based on opinion only. Trust your judgment. They look great now. If you do modify them, (IMHO) try not to stray too far from what you've created. Oh and Rodney, your pdf was very cool! I love the poses with them in the various actions. George

Mark, That was great!!!

If I turn on IK for rabbit, and move the hips, the nulls go too. I'll check this on Thom. It's probably something I'm doing wrong. George

I'm trying to see if I can create the tutorial I promised a while ago about overloading actions and blending them with chor actions. I wanted the action to stand alone without an action object to constrain to so what I've tried is to constrain to nulls but It's not working very well. I guess I'll have to use an action object (chair). Thanks again for the response, George

First time I saw it and WOW that's great animating Robert!!!! George

Thanks Mark. I found the switch that turned on the IK but it's not working as I'd had hoped. Even witht he IK on, it still appears that the nulls are children of the hips. Unlike the Squetch rig, if you move the hips, the nulls move with them. George

[edit] I meant IK. I always get them mixed up. I'm so use to just turning on IK that I forgot how to do it on the 2001 rig. I thought all I needed to do was to use a "translate to" and "orient like" constraints for the hand bone but it's not working. After constraining the hands to a null, when I go to move the hips, the hand bone stays locked but the other bones in the arm continue to move pulling the mesh of course. I'm trying to create an animation of rabbit turning to sit in a chair. He's reaching back to grab the arms of the chair to support himself as he settles into the chair. I want to set the FK there so the hands are locked to the arms of the chair. I was going to use a single null or 2 (if you can't constrain 2 bones to 1 null). What am I doing wrong? Thanks, George

WOW! Those are excellent!!! I too think the style is awesome!!! David, I disagree with your assessment about style. All appendages (as in feet) do not need to be the same size. Different characters absolutely can have variations. All the characters to me are all is the same style and I can see a complete movie created from these characters and it IMHO depending on the rigging and animation, would look fantastic!!! Fantastic work Jirard!!!! George

Check out the forum. There's a bunch of threads about it. Basically it's an animated version of the story after the Wizard of OZ. It's called: The Tin Woodman of OZ (TWO). Martin is producing it and it's planned to be a full length feature production. It's being made by a lot of talented dedicated volunteers who have created the models and or rigs, sets, effects, lighting and animation. We are fortunate to have an extremely talented texturer (decals, bumps, etc). Nancy Gormezano does a phenomenal job with textures. There's still a lot to do so contact Martin if you're interested but you have to have the latest version to have svn access. You mentioned a subscription plan for upgrades. I thought that idea was scrapped. As far as I know you can upgrade for $99.00 the same way as it's always been. In fact I'll be upgrading to 15 right after New Years. George

Hi Tim, Well I wish I could say I found the problem but I can't. I had no problem with opening a new Chor and importing the kee Kat model and then loading both lipsync files into two shortcut clones of Kee kat. The lipsync played fine. The eyebrows action wasn't embedded so I couldn't test that. I then opened the 11 seclub_Dec_KeeKat_3 project and they had frame rate issues (lag) because of all the files that were open. If that's what you were referring to you which I doubt if you're using Vista. But if it is an issue, remember that you can set the detail level on screen by hitting the "page down" key. You can also set the models "draw mode" in the drop down next to the model name and choose "bound". I took your shot you set up with the KeeKat in the door way and adjusted your 2 camera angles a little and added a light so one camera has an over the shoulder shot for the male character and the second camera has an over the shoulder angle for the woman character. I then constrained a 3rd camera to the camera that is aiming at the male KeeKat and set the enforcement to 100. At the camera change, I set the enforcement to 0 and constrained the 3rd camera to the camera aiming at the female Keekat. I copied the keys when need to switch back and forth. It's a quick way to create camera changes with out having to use an editor for post production work. I also did a quick test of the house set (which looks really good btw) to see if I could duplicate your problem but I couldn't. It worked fine. My guess is, your problem might be a compatibility issue with Windows Vista and your version or 11.1 might have a bug that was fixed in the later revisions. I'm using the latest released version (14) and I'm having no problems. Sorry I wish I could have had an answer but my only suggestion would to be to upgrade. As I said in my previous post, you will not be disappointed. Here's my render tests. Good luck on the 11 second club contest. I keep saying that I'm going to join but I'm very busy with TWO atm. test.mov test2.mov George

Sorry I couldn't get to this last night. I'll check it out tonight after work and see if I can figure out what the problem is but I'll need the action files unless you embedded them. George

It's hard to say without seeing the problem. My first guess would be that you had the same keys being used in both actions and they are competing with each other but that can't be the case if you have just lipsync and just eyebrows in each action. If you post the project I'll take a look at it tonight and see if I can figure it out. George

There's faster more stable rendering easier controls and a cool feature that colors the bones that have keys on them so you know just by looking at the bones which have keys and which do not. It has a hair and cloth feature that I don't think they had in 11. If they did, it's fine tuned in the latest version. There's new models and it comes with the latest free models CD. There's a very cool svn feature that Allows you to work on projects as a team. There's more but these are the ones that come to mind. Upgrade. Martin will be very happy and so will you. George

If I understand you, you created two separate actions for lipsync and eyebrows? Why not just create one action that does both in the same action? And about upgrading, trust me when I say that you will be very satisfied with the upgrade. There are new features, a better interface and it is much more stable than it ever was I think. It well worth the money trust me. George

David, I think if your staging would have been better, You'd have won. I like your's better. You're character shows better emotion I think.