Roger

Working on a treasure chest right now. So far, I have extruded 2 shapes to make up the lid and the body of the chest. I chose to do it this way since I wanted the chest to have some depth to it, and not a knife edge on the walls that make up the lid and body. However, now I'm left with the problem of closing the ends off. What would be the best way to go about doing this? I know I can probably come up with something that will work, but not sure it will look "nice". Is there an existing "best practice" for capping surfaces like this?

Yeah, I know - FK legs would be a real pain. I think I was planning on implementing your "simplest IK leg rig" but hadn't gotten round to it yet. I'm in the bone properties, do you need to turn "lock IK" on the bone in the end of the chain to start an IK leg rig?

I've done my CP weighting, probably need to re-weight the head and neck since I've changed those recently. I'm currently trying to puzzle out whether I set this thing up with FK or IK legs (I think they're FK, at least they're acting like that when I'm moving them around).

I think I am going to have to set up smartskin for my penguin, because for some of the more extreme positions of the joints, the model starts to look like absolute trash the way the skin pinches. Anyone have any tips for working with smart skin?

Yes, unfortunately I did render out a whole minute. I meant to render only 1 second, I must have placed the 1 in the wrong spot accidentally. But, I'm happy that I was able to successfully complete the exercise. At least I know what I was doing wrong now.

None have ever been found. Not in this century, nor in the last. Not in this universe nor any other. Gotta wonder why it is even in there, then. Anyway, I completed the exercise. Its not perfect, but doesn't look too bad after having been rendered. itsapitch.zip

Yes, I've already made sure to turn off the auto-balance stuff. Out of curiousity, in what situations would you want this turned on?

Ok, after doing this and then watching the bones pop up in the PWS when selected, it makes more sense. I'm going to see if I can complete the pitch exercise and see how it looks.

The first problem i see is that you are trying to select bones that appear within the sphere of a rotate manipulator. When the rotate manip (or any other manipulator) is on, A:M is waiting for you to do something with that manipulator and will prevent you from accidentally choosing other bones while you are moving the manipulator. You can go on to shift select another bone you want outside the manipulator which will turn it off and give you access to bones it obscured or you can turn the manipulator off by hitting R or on bones that present the rotate manip automatically upon selection (R won't turn it off) you can manually invoke the Scale or traNslate manipulators which appear smaller on the sceen and may not obscure the bones you want or you can zoom in so that the rotate manipulator is smaller in proportion to the character and no longer obscures the other bones. or if the bones you want are already listed in your chor, you can shift select them there. OK, this is helpful. It may just be easiset for me to select them from the list in the project workspace.

Ok - here is a new post of me trying to select bones. I am holding down the shift key as I'm doing it, about halfway through the video I switch to ctrl-clicking to select the bones. I only seem to be able to click on one at a time, and some of the bones I can't select at all. I am in skeletal mode in the choreography and not an action, I'm still not sure what I'm doing wrong. AM_screencap.mp4

Ok - after watching you do it again, I think that is what I did, because all the bones were highlighted yellow when I did it on my end. I think the only thing I did wrong was use the wrong option in the dialog when forcing keyframes. I will give it another go and see if it works this time.

Well, here is my vid. Ok, I think I see what you're saying - since there are no existing channels (since it is frame zero) then do you do all filtered channels? Or just not force anything on frame zero? Maybe I need to watch the tutorial again and take notes this time. AM_pitch.zip

Doh! Looks like I can't upload flash files, so I will have to redo this. Downloading camtasia now. BTW, any recommendations for screencap software if I don't have $299 to spend and would like to use camtasia (or something like it) past the 30 day trial period?

Well, here is the 18 frames I've got so far, everything was fine until I started doing the poses for frame 18, then things started screwing up again. At the start, I hit the single bone button, made sure all the bones were selected, and then forced a keyframe for all existing channels. Then at frame 10, I hit the full body icon, and forced a keyframe for all existing channels. I then posed the char. Same thing for frame 13. Same for frame 18. However, when I started to scrub through the animation, that's when I noticed that things were staying in the spots that they should be, which you can see from this flash video. I had to close and reopen AM, because the screen cap program somehow interfered with the video. I have AM open now, but can't see any keyframe data in the PWS or channel info in the timeline. I suppose in order for you to figure out whats going on, I would probably have to record myself at each step, and not just the end result.

Well I think I figured out a way to select all bones instead of just one - shift-click the root bone and that seems to do it. Seems like you should be able to shift-click or ctrl-click one bone, then keep going to get the rest. Maybe I'll have to make a screen cap or something.

I'm pretty sure in that video I never tried dragging a rectangle around anything in the Chor. Did i do that? That won't work. I hold down the shift key while I select the bones. No, you didn't but since rectangle select works for things in other areas of AM I thought it would work for this. I have tried shift select but can't seem to select multiple bones. I am sure I'm doing something wrong but can't quite figure out what.

Ok - I made a mistake, should be using only filtered channels that pre-exist. I am in skeletal mode, trying to force keys for all the bones I anticipate having to animate. I am trying to do a rectangle select around the entire model to select all the bones. I can't seem to do that, though. All I seem to be able to do is select one bone at a time. I must be doing something wrong but am not sure what.

Ok, so I've watched your video on keyframing basics - just so I under stand, do I want to create the start pose, then force keyframes for all filtered channels for only the bones I will be moving so that I don't get unwanted movement? If all the bones will be moving at some point, would you force keyframes for all filtered channels on all the bones that make up the body? You are basically forcing a keyframe for the bones that are moving when transitioning to the next pose, if I am following. Again, if you are doing a full body movement like the pitch exercise, I would select all the bones (arms, hips, legs, feet) and force keyframes, correct?

I've watched several of your tutorials, which are consistently good. I'm not sure I have watched that one yet, so I'll be sure to go back over it. I'd render out the animation or do a screen cap so you could see the timeline along with the animation playing back at the same time, but I already deleted it. I'll watch the tutorial and if I come across the same problem, then I'll do a screengrab so I can show you whats going on. It is pretty bizarre.

Well I've deleted all the keys except for the ones at frame zero, yet somehow I've still got undesired motion. I went ahead and deleted all the keyframes on the timeline, but he is still moving his right arm and right leg from frame 1 to 13. Is it possible to make a keyframe invisible accidentally, but think you've deleted it? I guess I can go back to my previous save, I'm glad I saved the initial pose.

ok, something really wierd happened - my pitch was looking fine from frame 0 through 13, then when I went to frame 18 and started the release, I got that looking good, but when I went back to frame 0 to step through the animation, its all screwed up - instead of leaning forward to throw the ball, the knight looks like he is hopping in the air. Did I accidentally set a key somehow? How do I go about figuring out where I screwed this up? I am pretty sure I was not on frame zero when I started making the changes, but on frame 18 instead.

I'm working on this exercise today, and it is just brutal trying to get this character into the proper pose. I must have spent a good 20 minutes just getting the initial pose down. Is this something that gets easier the more familiar you are with the character? I'm wondering if there is something I am doing that is making it more difficult than it needs to be.

Is there a way to temporarily hide the camera? I am finding that when I am trying to position a model, it can get confusing with the lines from the camera obscuring things.

Was fooling around with my penguin model doing some test moves after working on tutorials earlier. Noticed something funny when moving the bones - there is like a ghost image of the bone in its original location. Not sure why this is happening. Maybe I need to switch to Opengl as opposed to direct3d drivers? I am running AM on the integrated GPU and not on the Quadro, so I don't think the Quadro is causing problems. Anyone have any thoughts? I've uploaded an example of what I am talking about, here and in my WIP thread. These are not extra bones, but some kind of display issue.

Also noticed something really odd when I went into bones mode to futz around with the model: when moving the bones, a sort of "after image" of the bone is left behind, and doesn't go away if I try to refresh the screen. Any ideas why this is happening and how I can get rid of it? I didn't have this happen before.