LurkerAbove

No really, answered my own question. Mods, feel free to delete this.

That's a great looking horse. It might be the angle I was looking at it, but you might want to check the angle on the neck.

You know, I was seeing a bit of 'Madagascar' and I noticed the eyes had specularity that didn't bug me until Rodney pointed it out on my Rabbits. When I removed it, I was very pleased with the result. So yeah, we *might* be overly picky, but I think we have the vocabulary (I never used specularity in a sentence until I started working with A:M) but my tiny brain saw something was *off*. I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning everything, and someone makes a decision on whether the criticism is enough to change something. What makes these forums so interesting is that no one seems to be posting criticism to bash, but to observe and in the end help make a better animation. For example, There's a point in the begining where Rose rests her head in her hand. I don't know why, but the hand doesn't look like it takes the weight of a head. If someone looks at it again and says, "Naw, its good enough" that's cool. It could be just my perspective. And on the other side, the fur on the teddy bear? ooh la la!

If you're feeling ultra paranoid, and emergency repair disk is a good thing to have when you hose your registry. Signed, Guy who hosed his registry. (for fun and profit)

That's slick! It might be my screen but perhaps a touch less specularity? I know most people think legos, and I'm probably dating myself, but I think Fisher Price figures, and they were wooden. Either way, my eye sees it as a touch *too* shiny.

It sure isn't a problem in 13. I do it all the time.

Those look great! Unfortunately, you -- like myself when I posted this exercise -- are in the wrong place. I think it has to do with the idea that sub forums blow my mind. But in any event.... Start Here, and click on the links under the first post. That will take you to the right sub-forum for all the cert tutes. Enjoy!

It's always the same problem when starting new secret societies. I know that was the main sticking point for me when trying to start a new religion. -vern They have almost the whole movie there (if not all of it). Great film, and they even have a character with a TV head... I weep with joy. But I want my own model with a TV head. Mostly because the glow settings can make said figure rock on toast.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering? umm no, that wasn't it. What I was thinking was how cool would it be to replace the wires in arms and legs with...okay, I don't know if this would works... but cloth to make it behave like yarn. So you'd make it look like the hands and feet were connected by yarn, and the body, hands and feet bobbed as if suspended by threads. I'm totally going to try this when I get home, but I'm kinda tied up trying to replace Squetchy Thom's head with a television.

And I quote from the wiki You must spill your plans, you magnificent madman!

Its my understanding that vid card does nothing for render times. Rendering to a file, that is. On screen preview is all vid card. I forget my source for this. I think it was another forum... Go ahead and let me know if the truth is otherwise.

I find this grossly amusing. Great work! I just might have to steal this to get around some modelling issues. Not to mention the inherant cheapness of it (and I mean cheap in a good way) fits very much a style I'm aiming for. I also think that using a style like this mixed with more 'fleshy' models could be a cool effect. But I'm weird that way.

Actually, I was going to fire off a "me too post", but it doesn't exactly match my issue which I don't think is an issue at all but a misunderstanding of how things work. This seems to be related to a discussion in the Radiocity forum... Which culminates here I'd love to hear a bit more of an explanation of how the lighting and global lighting works --not from a technical lighting perspective but from a "how the software does lighting" perspective. Actually, both perspectives are cool, but I think most of the writings I see here are on the lighting behavior as lighting as opposed to thow the software behaves when you tinker with lighting. From the post I liked above, the conversation continues further to talk about how global lighting is by default on and then turns off as you add more lights. However, when I look at the chor settings, I see that front global lighting is off. Is there a discussion or documentation I've missed this further discuesses this behavior. There is nothing in the help, as far as I can tell. Don't force me to use the pun of providing some 'illumination' on the subject of lighting

Are you using Save As...? Hope that doesn't sound silly. I've done that.

Does that actually work? Seems like both instances of A:M would be competing over resources.

The short answer is yes. When you add the action, you can say how long it runs, how many repeats, and you can even run *part* of an action. I believe the walk cycle is something like a second, so just make it repeat 5 times, or let it know its chor duration is 5 seconds. So, look at the action in the PWS (Project Workspace) Huh. That's an interesting one. Do the duplicates remain after you are finished? Can you select both copies? Is this some cool new feature I havent' found yet?

I found learning at least the basics of modeling helped me understand more of what the animation process was about. It also helped me understand things like: 1) Why can KeeKat and Shaggy be so expressive, and Gala's eyes only open and shut? 2) What do these IK settings on rigs mean? 3) What do bones do? Why can't I just move CPs? (yeah, that was a dumb one) 4) How can I get the apple logo off Gala? 5) When the Troll moves, the chain around his neck swings. How cool is that, and more importantly, how do I get to do it? Since the way the model is rigged and built dictates is capabilities so, having at least some exposure helps a ton.

I had the same problem. Still do, actually, but I don't have it as much. A lot of it is practice, and some of it for me was the realization that moving something from one angle might visually look like its going where you want it, and then you discover its not. I can only second checking from multiple views, and for me, I tend to constrain my motion by either using the advance manipulation tools (the ones that put you into either translate, rotate or scale mode) and selecting translate/rotate in X,Y,Z only (based on the color handle) On the keyboard, you can constrain your motion by using the 123 keys on the keyboard as well. A cool thing is you always seem to have a labeled axis legend on your choreography screen. You'd almost think they planned it. For me, arms were the worst, and are still a bit of a struggle. Animating KeeKat backhanding Sir Nigel made me feel better, but I'm cruel that way. ("I knew you couldn't keep a secret!") But I digress. Cheers.

You're really helping *me* out by asking these questions, since I just recently went through this frustration. My brain wanted to think one way, and the program works slightly differently. It is annoying when a bone starts moving right away, but if you really think about it, since you only set keyframes, how is it to know when to start? You've got the right idea of creating the keyframe, but I've found that keyframe generation doesn't *quite* work the way that I (and it seems some other folks) think the documentation *says* it does. I probably read it too fast. I really wish I had A:M when I decide to write these things, but please bear with me, and if any of my far more experienced fellows notice any errors, please correct me! Its how I learn Anyway, this is *my* understanding of keyframes. When you look in the timeline, and you have the view set to show a line graph, a dotted line indicates there is nothing set. I have not found the insert keyframe button to work when the line is dotted. Instead, I 'nudge' the bone, which inserts a keyframe and viola! the line is solid! Now for a given bone, we have X,Y,Z translation and X,Y,Z rotate. Its my understanding that nudging translation doesn't affect rotate and visa versa. So, you might think that you have set a keyframe for rotation, when you haven't, and suddenly your foot starts drifting at frame 0. What a pain in the keester! Easy fix. In the timeline, go to frame 0 and draw a group box around the keyframes. Copy. Use the scrubber (the scroll bar) to move the red line to the frame where you want movement to *start*. Paste. You can use the group box to select multiple keyframes, which is a very cool feature. What's also cool is that using the mouse to select keyframes doesn't move the red line, so you can copy paste all day with relatively little extra clicks and drags. This will also mean sometimes you'll copy things to places you don't want. Save early, save often Now there is the feature of holding the shift key down when you hit the insert keyframe button. This gives several options, one of which is to put a keyframe on every bone in the currently selected model. There are three modes to the left of the insert keyframe button which indicate how far in the bone hierarchy to add frames. If you want to watch your system crawl, start using it to add thousands of keyframes. This will also drive you crazy because making adjustments means lots of little changes, and sometimes its hard to figure out which bone is causing your hand to smack Sir Nigel in the face. But sometimes Sir Nigel needs a good slap now and then, the prig. (note, Sir Nigel is the only stock model out of the box with gratuitous amounts of hair. He clogged up my system, though Shift-8 turns hair off, which makes Sir Nigel workable). This is all help file fodder and these help files are particularly good. Something else to think about is to take these reusable actions, like drinking, and making them into actions. Someone with more experience can probably tell you what the difference is between a choreography (the one under a model in the PWS) and an action is. To me, I can't give a difference, and choreographies can be exported as actions. Dunno if you're a programmer type, but when I say reuse, I mean "resuse". Using a resolute walk on Gala isn't as satisfying as using a resolute walk on the knight. This is a great opportunity to open the existing action using Gala as the model, tweak it to make it fit the character's personality, and save it away under a different name. A reusable action like drinking is tricky, because there will have to be modifications made depending on if the beverage is a can of soda or a beer stein. At least if you want it to look good. Even if you don't save these off into actions, using separate choreography actions can help keep your key frame timeline from looking like the NY Times version of connect the dots. You do have to be careful about which action you're editing when you change things, but I think the technique is an overall bonus. I wanted to add a point about bumbling around and learning things. Bumbling around *is* an effective use of your time. At least that's what I tell my boss . No really. Sometimes you have to just sit back and enjoy the burn. There will be setbacks and false starts, but for me, many of those have exposed some new trick or feature. If you want to be ultra efficient about mastering the program, do not derivate from the tutorials, but do each one, and read the help files on every screen you use. There are instructional videos. Get the videos,*watch* the videos watch the web tutorials here. I would suggest any derivation from the tutorials be very minor. Mostly, have fun. I can't say that I'll be able to answer all your questions, but I'm sure *someone* here will.

Here's a project with my man Knight walking and waving. Not *quite* the same as walking and yawining, but close enough. Happy Actions KnightWalkAndWave.zip

Hey guy, welcome to the intuitive trap. So much seems intuitive, that when you do something which seems intuitive, and doesn't work, its *very* frustrating. Be patient, because when you learn more, it does begin to make sense, but frankly, every time I went off the beaten path from the tutorials, I experienced a headache, only to find out I was missing a piece here and there. So stay strong! Its not broken! I'm no master by any means, and there are multiple ways of doing the same thing. I'll try to give a quick outline of steps, and armed with this new knowledge, you can use the help and play around a bit more! I try to put keywords that helped me in BOLD So anyway, sorry for the long intro. Scenario. Knight walks (exhasted) for 5 seconds, then stops and yawns. Make sure the following windows are visible: 1) Project Workspace (PWS) 2) Project Timeline (Timeline) I use the windows command style, so please be patient if you are a collegue on a Mac. It looks like you can lay some cool paths and you can do a path constraint. Move your time to 00:05:00. So now, right click your path constraint and go to properties. In the properties window, set ease to 100%. This will make sure that the knight is at the end of the path by second 5. Now is also a good time to look up Path constraint properties in the help. Some won't make sense, but just absorb and enjoy. Now add your yawn action. Right click it in PWS and select properties. There is something called CHOR RANGE. Funny, I didn't know what chor meant! (choreography) Set the timeline here from 501 to umm however long your yawn is. You can actually find out from this properties window how long the action lasts, its like 2 or 3 seconds or something like that. So your walk will be from 0 to 5 seconds Your yawn will be from 501 to 7 or 8 seconds. This is still a good time to look at ACTION PROPERTIES in the help. There's all sorts of properties to help you with making the transitions better, but this *should* do what you want in a crude fashion. I really hope this helps! And if anyone sees any mistakes I made, please let me know and I'll fix them! I'm not on a computer I can run AM , or I'd whip up a sample project. Multiple actions is still quite hard for me, but I'm learning. The fact is this area is so feature rich that its hard to put them all together. Best of luck and lets see how it turns out! Oh hey, couple other things to save your sanity: 1) Save lots of backups. As someone said, AM is a sports car, while Microsoft Word is a Jeep. Word will go over any terrain and usually get you there, while AM sometimes, well, sometimes it feels unloved and gives up. I know that seems frustrating, but there's good posts on the topic on how to get AM the very best it can be on your system, and remember its doing a lot of work for you, so keep those drivers up to date! 2) Sometimes, when I screw up a project so bad that I can't recover it. Like I add a bunch of actions and constraints and stuff and stuff and then it just turns into a knot and my knight has an epileptic fit. The first step is knowing the promect has a problem. Accept it, throw the project away, and if its new, just start over, or go to backup. Like for your knight and yawn, just start over. It'll get that setting up a project and putting model into a Chor into your blood. Its still not in mine to be honest. He always winds up floating.

Great stuff. Very inspirational!

So do 'loons make that squicky balloon rubbing sound when they walk, or get close to one another? By the way, should there be the obligatory "this means you" added to that great list of signs?

Wow, even a .mov file! Thanks for your help.

Happy to help out where I can!