Roger

Well..... I seem to be making some progress w/ rigging. Once I get all the cp's assigned correctly (I have some areas that are giving me fits) I will post Mr. Dragon in some poses. At least I know now its not the constraints but the fact that the auto cp assign is less than stellar which is causing the problem. Anyway...thought that those of you that are following this thread would be interested in an update. Thank god my other 2 characters are simpler. Anyone know if there is a female in an evening gown that might be pre-rigged? I am surely going to modify the head to have a more cartoony look. Roger (who is beginning to wonder if he will ever get to the animation bit)

Well....... I ended up just deleting them.......my char is a humanoid dragon.... I could try and post a pic with them, if you are curious just to see them. I am using AM 12.0w and TSM:2 (not sure what point version) In my version of setup machine there is a checkbox for wings/no wings along w/ biped legs or quad legs (on the bipedal char tab) Roger

OK.... For those of you familiar w/ TSM, for some reason when I am generating my rigging w/ tsm builder, even though I don't have the wings box checked, it generates wings. I checked the other tabs and I don't have it checked there either. I guess I can just delete them, but I am not sure why its doing this and would kinda like to figure out if I am doing something wrong or if its just one of those wierd things. Maybe I should close AM and reboot??? Roger

Heya Yeah, this looks pretty good. From what I remember, butthead had a pretty large pompador (sic?). You might want to adjust the skin tone a touch, it looks off for some reason.

Oh it doesn't have to be all that big. A few years back I came across a web site describing an experiment that put a 25MHz 486SX machine inside a domestic fridge-freezer and managed to cool it enough to crank the clock speed up to 247MHz.... (link) LOL I think that might be more than a little bit of exaggeration......but it was funny...also involved chilled vodka, if I remember. Ahhh, the cockles of my heart (what are cockles, anyway?) are glowing with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling now. Glad I was able to help you. I was pretty sure that's what it was, because that was exactly what happened to me several years ago, only w/ a pentium 75.

What ddustin said plus this: Chances are if you have a store-bought pc (emachines, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.) it came with a rather wimpy heatsink/fan combo. The fan on the heatsink may have died, and if its a small heatsink it may not be able to radiate heat away from the cpu fast enough. Try blowing the dust bunnies away from the heatsink first, if that doesn't help and/or the fan doesn't even spin up, remove the heatsink/fan combo from the cpu. Go to any computer store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Frys, Radio Shack) and get the largest heatsink and fan unit you can find for your processor and socket type. i.e if its a p4 make sure you get a p4 heatsink/fan, athlon xp make sure to get that type. You may need to write down the model number of your cpu by looking at the top of the cpu or at the bios when the screen comes up and going to a KNOWLEDGEABLE tech at the store and asking for a heatsink that will fit that. Make sure you can bring it back if they tell you the wrong one. Also pick up some heatsink grease/compound. You should be able to find this at a Radio Shack or a smaller independent electronics supply store. You could probably also find it online. Take the old heatsink/fan unit off, scrape off old thermal compound, and apply a little bit of new thermal compound. Then put new heatsink/fan unit on, hook it up to the appropriate power cable and you should be good to go. Make sure that any cables are not touching the fan, as this can prevent the fan from spinning up. I recently had a problem with this when I went to a small form factor case, my cpu heated up so hot that if the thermal shutdown hadn't kicked in I would have had a meltdown. Alternatively, you could probably just buy a new fan to sit on top of the heatsink, but I would go with a whole new unit. It shouldn't cost more than $20 or so, and if its for a modern cpu it should feel heavy enough to bludgeon someone with. You could probably have the store do the installation for you, but be prepared to spend $50 or so for the hardware and install. Hope this helps. Roger

Luckbat, Ilidrake, whoever.... I am going to try rigging my char again, I don't think I had the TSM constraints turned on in the pose slider window and that might have been part of why things didn't work........ Originally, I had the hip or body bone of my char sort of where his belly would be, I was wondering if I should move it further down to where his legs start coming out of his body.......seems to me like that would be a better location. Also, there is only one neck bone but I have a long neck......should I move some of the spine bones into the neck? Or just use the one neck bone for now? I've noticed the arms move ok, but that the hands don't seem to follow.....and that the head and neck move ok, but none of the body seems to bend.......I'm guessing this is because I don't have TSM constraints turned on? I am going to try and re-rig this guy and see what happens after I get back from some running I have to do. I think I will try smartskin but fan bones scare me......will smartskin be enough for the joints? thanks Roger

Hmmm ok well I've got him sorta rigged up..... The arms seem ok, look like they need smart skinning, head moves ok.... legs are going to be a bear, they seem pretty screwed up and like they are going to need major fixing I don't suppose anyone more skilled w/ rigging would care to take a look at this and see where I've gone wrong, maybe? I'm contemplating just building a really simple rig and then doing the constraints myself, since I seem to have hosed whatever setup machine produced. taking a break for now

OK... he's rigged up now, TSM really is neat to watch when its going through its thing. I'm glad I don't have to do all that stuff myself.......... I'm assuming I have to pop him in a chor before I can do anything with him? When I tried to move one of the bones after rigging, none of the geometry moved with him. This is what I did: Built the skeleton w/ TSM builder Postioned bones Flipped w/ TSM Flipper ( I didn't add any additonal controls because I am just playing right now, I will go back after I figure some things out and add smartskin if I need to) Ran TSM Rigger Now he's just got the control bones visibile but moving them does not move the geometry. I am assuming its because he has to be in a choreography. If so, do I import the model into the chor, and does it retain the bones? I'm not quite sure how to do that. thanks Roger

doh thanks Ok, Here are screenshots of what my model looks like with the bones in place, I'm going to use the TSM flipper to mirror the rig and then cross my fingers and assign cp's. If I hose it up, I may take a break and do a few rigging tutorials before I go back to it. However, I think the bones are pretty much where I want them. The only thing I am concerned about is that I used a combination of translation and roll manipulations to get the bones where I wanted them, I am concerned this might cause problems. Is that so? Should I have just translated them to get them where I wanted?? Thanks luckbat, ilidrake.

OK, I decided to post a screenshot of the placement of the bones: I'm not sure that everything is right, but its what I'm going with. I tried to remember the rough positioning of the bones as they originally were, and then moved them so that they fit my model. However.....its difficult trying to position the bones with the model all black like this (it went like this when I went into bones mode) Is there any way to better see the geometry? If I am asking stupid questions I guess I will have to get out my references. One thing concerns me, though: I'm trying to do a bounding box selection of the toes so that I can move them all at once, that mode of selection doesn't seem to work in bones mode. I guess its time to crack the manual. I've posted a screenshot of what I'm looking at right now: [attachmentid=19479]

Ilidrake (or whoever is listening) I'm positioning the bones for the legs in my dragon.... and it give me like 7 or 8 bones......... how do I know where to put them??? they are basically named right quad leg, 1right quad leg.....through to 7right quad leg and I am not sure how to place them within the leg so that they will assign right. I have placed the bone at the beginning of the chain such that it is the hip joint, and the one after that so that it is the upper thigh, but what do I do with all the others???? Roger

Hello, I'm getting a funny error message when using TSM and positioning the bones prior to assigning the cp's..... I'm in translate mode, and I'm hovering the cursor over the manipulators, and I get the error: Model1: error loading string: -1 What the heck does this mean??

Ilidrake, Thanks, I'll check it out. I'm just worried this is going to take the better part of a couple days to rig him what with mistakes and all, but I guess I had best just do it now and get it over and done with, because once its done I will be able to spend my time on other things. Thanks again

Hello, I bought setup machine a while back to aid in the rigging of this guy once I finished modelling him. He's about as fine tuned as he's going to get in that area, so I thought I'd start w/ the rigging. One thing confuses me, though.....setup machine seems to generate more than just 2 bones for the arm....its generating like 3 or 4, which seems odd. I don't remember specifying more than 2, and I didn't think there was a way to do that. Since I have a long neck on the dragon, should I be manually be adding additional bones for that? It seems kind of difficult to get the bones positioned correctly before auto-assigning cp's. How closely do they have to be lined up within the model? Can anyone recommend some good tutorials related to rigging, possibly utilizing setup machine? Thanks

Hello, I bought setup machine a while back to aid in the rigging of this guy once I finished modelling him. He's about as fine tuned as he's going to get in that area, so I thought I'd start w/ the rigging. One thing confuses me, though.....setup machine seems to generate more than just 2 bones for the arm....its generating like 3 or 4, which seems odd. I don't remember specifying more than 2, and I didn't think there was a way to do that. Since I have a long neck on the dragon, should I be manually be adding additional bones for that? It seems kind of difficult to get the bones positioned correctly before auto-assigning cp's. How closely do they have to be lined up within the model? Can anyone recommend some good tutorials related to rigging, possibly utilizing setup machine? Thanks

OK.... I didn't care for the way the modelled mouth was looking, so I sorta did a Gumby/Killer Bean type mouth. It worked for them...*shrug* I think it looks better. I also modelled some floating eyebrows, to allow for more expressions since I am not planning on having lids. I widened the chest, so its not quite so thin. The legs were moved in from before. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I need to tweak the textures on the eyebrows, mouth, horns and eyeballs but other than that I think he looks ok. I may add some decals to him, he seems to be missing something. I need to get busy rigging, but I don't know if I feel up to it right now. Maybe I'll model some of the other things that I need to get done. Comments??[attachmentid=19268][attachmentid=19269]

OK..... Here's another shot....I was trying to add a mouth. Its not done yet, but I think it looks a bit funny right now and I am not sure its going to look better once I add the mouth interior. I am going to leave the eyes the way they are, but add floating brows above to allow for more emotion. Thing is, just the snout w/ no nostrils or mouth looks ok, it looks a bit off like something is missing.... but when I added nostrils and a mouth it doesn't look quite right either. This character is not supposed to speak or do anything like that, if I leave just the nostrils I can still have him "breathe" fire. In my original character design, its just a snout though. Any votes on which way looks better? [attachmentid=19236]

OK I've got some nostrils now, let me know what you think. I had modelled an interior for the mouth, but unfortunately, it seemed to have screwed up part of the muzzle so I am going to try again. As far as the eyes go, do you think I made the right call to put them in actual sockets? I am not sure how I am going to make proper lids for them, though. I don't know that I like how these look, he looks constantly suprised. I was going for a sort of Wallace and Grommit look, but I seem to have missed the mark. Let me know what you think of the modified snout. [attachmentid=19221]

Hey there... I've decided to take a break from rigging and go back to finish up some of the modelling tasks I was putting off. While nice, setup machine is not as "automagical" as I thought it would be, and rather than frustrate myself needlessly right now I am going to finish the modelling stuff and maybe do some of the rigging tutorials in conjunction with Setup Machine so that I will be able to use it better. I thought that the dragon, while ok, needed to have an actual modelled mouth with nostrils and a tooth or 2, and rather than having floating eyes I'm going to build sockets with actual eyeballs and lids. While I'm at it, I will fix the horns. Once I fix these things, I'll post something here, I think he'll end up looking a lot better. Hopefully I will have an animation test to post soon. I wish I didn't have so much other work to do, I still need 4 environments, 2 other characters, and a few misc. props. I think it would be a miracle if I got this done in 3 months, let alone 3 weeks ( I set an arbitrary date of 6 weeks a while back just to see how much I could get done----not actually have a finished product). So, as I tick a few of my milestones off my list I will post them in here. Thanks to everyone that has offered suggestions, aid, etc. Roger

OK.. Here's another shot with the legs fixed..... I moved them in just a bit. Not sure if I really want to screw with the chest, I tried it once and couldn't do it without messing it up. He's pretty close to what I want though, in terms of concept to finished model. Maybe after I have some food I will be a little braver and try to go back and fix the chest a bit. [attachmentid=19168]

Ok... Added horns and eyes, but they're just kinda floating now. I am not sure I can get the horns right without starting over and just extruding them from holes in the head. (I don't think that I can attach them this way without it being a HUGE pita) I agree about moving the legs in just a touch...doesn't look quite right. And I think I will widen the chest just a bit. But I think I will save a backup and experiment on that so I don't fark up my model. I want to do quick test after I get him rigged up.....I'm thinking 30 seconds dancing to Brass Monkey by the Beasty Boys.....lol [attachmentid=19167]

Ok.... I haven't posted an update in a bit, but I was working on ironing out some of the kinks yet with this thing. I have a fully modelled body w/ hands and feet properly attached, it looks pretty decent for a first attempt at a proper unibody model. I am working on attaching the head right now, currently its just sorta "stuck" there. Its times like this I really wish AM had some kind of boolean weld feature, but oh well. All I have to do after that is stick his eyes on, and some horns. Fortunately I will have Setup Machine to aid in rigging, so that shouldn't be too horrible. I hope to have some a really short 30 second animation or something that I can post soon. This model looks really close to my sketches, but I am bothered a little by the chest......seems a touch too narrow. Maybe I should widen it? I am also thinking of putting some decals on....but am not sure if I should put anything else on him....he is not getting wings (he's a flightless dragon) So....what do you think?[attachmentid=19164]

Grass looks good but a touch sparse. I found that when I was experimenting with it I had to bump the density to like 500% before it looked the way I wanted it to look.

I have to say, this is a sharp-ass car. Looks really slick. The top view looks awesome, but that hood still looks funky from the side. I think that if this was a production car you would have problems with wind resistance, as others mentioned earlier. If you modified the hood so that it flowed, or was a monolithic curve sorta....(does that make sense?) I'd buy one....if I had a gazillion dollars for the custom fabrication. Look up the thread of the guy that is doing the Mercury model. I bet this car would look awesome with a more Mercury type hood. Keep the chrome grills, just curve it instead of leaving it flat like that.