Roger

Hello I am not really sure what the yellow dot is done at the bottom near the origin and between the feet. I wonder if it is the model bone, but it doesn't seem to have any scale to it and if I rotate around it it appears to be a singel point. It has the name of a previous project ( think I opened that project and save it with a new name) and if I right-click it and choose delete my entire penguin disappears (which leads me to think it is the model bone but I thought normally those aren't visible?). Also when it is selected all the points on the left-hand side (right if you are looking at the model) are selected. Any ideas as to what the heck this might be?

Will importing a saved model file from your local disk screw up a project, such that you get the problems with prior versions losing their changes? I thought this only happened if you saved something from the project as a model file. So I am assuming it goes the other way as well? Or am I wrong here? Because I just imported an eyeball model from the extras, it turned my entire penguin orange (not sure why but it looks like it applied the beak color to the entire body) and then when I went back a version the penguin was also orange. The version before that is ok, and I didn't lose much in the way of work but this makes things difficult. I guess I will have to model everything in the project and only import models into a chor.

Also, thank you Jakerupert for the merge&purge plugin.

tools/Customize/keyboard/export will get you all the shortcuts in a KeyboardShortcuts.html file in your hash folder on your HD. Wow - that is really cool. Printing one up right now - thanks Nancy

/ will select all CPs connected to the one you have selected. I bet that was in TAoA:M. I suppose I deserved that dig. I used to have a quick reference card (from wayyyyyy back in the MH3D days) but seem to have lost it. Is there one still floating around anywhere? Or a current version?

I fortunately don't have a ton of 5 point patches, and there is something very Zen for me in the act of closing them by hand. I would probably change my tune if I had more than to do, though. I think I am just going to delete all the extra groups. I've notice some of my groups no longer activate any splines, though? I thought that was strange. It is like they are no longer associate with the splines that were selected when the group was named. I suppose this could happen if the model was changed enough? I know if you hit the comma key, that will select every point along a spline - is there a way to select all the points that make up an object? I'm trying to figure out how to select the eyes so that I can move them around, now that they no longer appear to be part of a group.

So I am working on cleaning up the penguin - I am redoing the patch coloring after doing my CFA. Is there an easy way to choose additional adjacent patches to have the color I want, or should I just create a new group and reapply the material? The only reason I am not doing that is I have a ton of groups as it is and probably should start deleting them. I'm not even sure what some of them are. I don't know how I ended up with so many groups, it looks like they are copies of the existing groups I have (numbered 2-7).

Ok, that worked. Maybe I still had the action window open when I was trying to do that? Would not have thought that would keep me from doing that, but I guess that is the way it is.

Well a forum search revealed (duh, should have done this first) that You need to delete them from the Properties panel > user properties > right click the pose and choose delete. Except when I right click it, there is no option to delete it. Hitting the delete key on the keyboard also does nothing. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I am working on fixing the stuff witht the penguin rig, I am still wondering how to get rid of that pose1 though. There doesn't seem to be any way to delete it. I guess I will worry about that after I get the other stuff cleaned up.

Ok, will do. I must have forgotten to fix that when watching your tutorial. I am not sure, its been a while since I worked on it. I really need to get back to working on this on a regular basis. The knee targets I am guessing should also not be children of the feet? I moved the feet up to the level of the pelvis.

I'll gladly send it to you. I just had to fix a minor problem with my other system, give me a sec to get it logged back in and I will send it off. I appreciate you taking a look at it, I wish I could figure out what the problem was.

That's just it, though - I'm not moving anything around. I turned the constraint on so I could start doing some tests and see how things are moving, and as soon as I turn the constraint on everything jumps out of place. The window that is active while that is going on is the action window. At first I thought it was the orphaned "pose1" pose that I can't seem to delete and also does not show up in the Relationships category in the PWS, but it happens with the Leg Constraints pose too. It is almost like when you are turning that pose on and off it is stepping through keyframes, but as far as I know I haven't set any keyframes. But even then, why would it do that when toggling a pose on/off? I'm going to check the timeline and make sure that I haven't set some keyframes somehow by accident. Really not sure what else to do at this point - its the odd stuff like this that trips me up.

Sorry for the delay on the post, I was waiting for the file to upload and didn't notice the failure dialog. I thought .avi files were allowed??

Thanks Robcat - I will check that one out. Here is the .avi of what is going on: capture_1.zip

Hi all, Back to working on the project after too long away from it. I am doing the last bits of cleaning up the rigging on my penguin character, and I have a pose that I have no clue what it does (or was supposed to do). I want to delete it, but can't seem to. If I hit the delete key on the keyboard with it highlighted, nothing happens. If I right click it, there is no option to delete. This happens in both the Properties area and in the Pose Sliders pane. Also, something I thought was strange, it does not show up in the Project Workspace. My other poses do (pose 2 and Leg Constraints) but not pose 1. I really want to get rid of pose 1, because if I turn it on it does strange things to the character, and doesn't seem to have any function. Actually, scratch that, all the poses seem to be doing odd things when I toggle them on and off in the pose slider area, and I can't figure out what is going on. It is almost like there were keys set and it is playing back an animation. I will post a screengrab but I need to download camtasia again. (I would just buy it but damn $300 is steep)

I would do the Cooper tutorial in The Art of AM. Lathing/extruding doesn't really work for a face, you need to build it patch by patch. The face will be made up of circular splines radiating out from the lips - kinda hard to explain, but the Cooper tutorial is pretty good. Or you could just use that as a rough guide and choose your own rotoscopes to model from. Get a friend and take a front and side view of their head.

They can follow whatever the shape of the leg is. In your case that looks straight up and down from the side but a little tilted inward from the front. I eyeballed it but you can look from the top to get the best view for such a bone. Ok - from the side view should the thigh line up with the spine? Because currently the spine is a little forward of the legs. Also, should I be zeroing out the spine from the side along the Y axis? Or is that not as critical as the X axis?

Also when using the mirror bones plugin and using the pelvis as the parent (and not for instance, the right thigh) shouldn't it mirror ALL the bones that the pelvis is a parent of and not just from the thigh down? Because that is what it did with mine. I deleted the extra bones, but I'm not sure what I did that was different.

Wasn't sure if I should start another thread but since my questions are related to this I figured I would just tack them onto this one. 1. From the side, the bones which make up the leg should be straight up and down, but from the front it doesn't matter if they are a little off-center (for this particular character) as long as the roll handles are pointing forward, right? 2. How do you make sure the roll handles are pointing straight forward? In the video it looks like you're just kind of eyeballing it.

I didn't think you would have - I guess I was just being paranoid.

Something about that disturbs me - like I'm going to see security cam footage of my penguin holding up a 7-11. Hopefully the model is only residing with myself and Robcat for now.

Doh posted the same comment twice - deleted

I'll give that another try. Played around with it after work today but could not get it looking right. Looked odd. I think I'll need to experiment to get it looking right.

I have been working through TAOAM to bolster my weak areas. I know my modeling skills improved quite a bit after doing those tutorials. Having said that, rigging is a real bugaboo (for me). TAOAM has the basic info but I feel the tutorials there are lacking. You could probably do a whole other companion manual just on rigging. These videos have cleared up some misconceptions I had. Thank you Robcat. (now I need to get back to implementing these fixes )