Roger

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.

So I'm taking a break from working on some other things, and thought I would make a mod or two to the penguin character. Something has been bothering me about it, it hasn't looked quite cute enough to me. So I scaled the head in relation to the body, she is now about 3 heads tall and I think it makes for a cuter character. I may enlarge the eyes as well.

I'll take a look at that, thanks. I think I screwed up somewhere along the line, because I posed my character in a Chor window. When I clicked the Action button, then picked New > Pose and set to On, my carefully posed crouching Rabbit disappeared and was replaced by Rabbit in his default pose. I think I probably should have been in the Action mode to begin with. When setting poses, does AM "remember" or set keys for the movements you make to set the pose up, or does it just interpolate pose to pose based on the initial position and then figure the best way to move the limbs to go from the default pose (whatever that may be ) the the next pose? It took some futzing to get my pose the way I want, I'm not sure I want all those movements to be visisble when going to the crouch.

Are the default models that ship with AM set up with IK or FK? (keekat, rabbit, etc) I've been trying to do the IK drag, it just seems easier to me to individually manipulate the bones with the rotate manipulator. I get less unexpected behavior that way. When I try to drag something around, I end up with wierd stuff happening like suddenly the arm flings itself backward like the character dislocated his shoulder, or other wierd stuff. I just set Rabbit into a "duck and cover" type pose, if I want to set this as a resuable pose or use with a pose slider, how would I go about doing that?

That makes sense. There are probably very few instances where you would want to translate a bone that is already rigged to a model.

Hello Working on the "move it" tutorial, using the Rabbit. I've noticed that sometimes when I select bones, only the rotate and scale manipulators are available. Why is that? Shouldn't the translate manipulator be available as well? Am I clicking on the wrong part of the bone? I am in skeletal mode, so that's not the problem. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Yep, that was it, not in Chor mode.

Here's the wierd thing, though: when I click View > pose sliders and then click on the All tab, I don't see any defined poses. I didn't think of this til just now, but I think I may not be in Choreography mode.

I'm a bit stuck on my personal project right now, and waiting for a new license key, so I'm back in v13 at the moment and thought I would go through the tutorials. My thinking is it is better to be doing something than nothing. I sort of glossed over the earlier tutorials in favor of the modelling tutorials, as that is what I was having problems with at the time. I loaded the Keykat model and noticed there is something a bit off about him - his eyes look like they are too far back in his sockets and one of his fingers has a CP jumping way off it. Is this normal? I loaded him directly from the CD. I can fix the eyes simply enough, by moving them forward, not sure if it will be as easy to fix the finger. Maybe I'll just use one of the other models for the exercises.

I've done these exercises in 2d before, and think I have a good grasp. I'd be interested in redoing them in AM, though, as a refresher. I am working on digitizing some of my old stuff, of which there is a bouncing ball exercise, I'd be interested in a critique.

Dragons need treasure to guard, right? So here is a rough start at a treasure chest. I am wondering if maybe I should extrude the interior panel (currently has a knife edge) to try and give some depth to the front and back. I also think it might be neat to do a bevel around the edges, or maybe model some iron bits to reinforce the corners? Maybe strapping or something? I'm going to grab the padlock I modelled from a while back and see what it looks like on the front. I think I am going to do a half circle extruded to make the top.

Working on some odds and ends today - thought I would do some scenery. To that end I remodelled the dragon cave (lost the original somehow).

I ended up struggling through it and got something that looks ok, I just need to reapply the patch colors. Maybe I'll try the fix you did to the corner of the beak, it looks better than what I have now which is a bit of a mess. I'm wondering about something, though - when I do "refind normals" it gets rid of the crease/shadow on one side but it pops up on the other. Should I have done this operation before doing the CFA? Or would this happen no matter what? All in all I think it looks ok but I feel like I spent way too much time on this.

Yay! I right-clicked one of the problems splines and chose "refind normals" and that did it.