entity

You have to see what I mean... I am only using smartskin on the abdomen area... so all the other smoothing skin is just fanbones. It doesn't have to be perfect... he's going to be wearing clothes eventually... and I want to keep my options open for that area, so smartskin in that area is a no-go. But I will probably try to reduce the rolling of the bicep (just enough to not break the streatching pec) and increase the lower arm swing, as was suggested. I think that will solve this, and roll only looks weird, in the pecs area, when he has his arms at his side- at -90 degrees. (as you can tell, I'm trying to get out of re-rigging that area that caused me such pains.)

... and if you want things to glow with less intensity... lower the intensity too.

Well, I believe my advice to you was wrong in that case. Try putting your speculars settings back the way you had them and use more lights... if you are already using 2 or 3 lights reposition those so the highlights/textures show up more, because you want people to be able to see/feel what your character looks like and is made of, unless you want him to be shrouded in darkness the way he is. Did you input a diffuse setting for his clothing or materials? ---- all this is assuming you want his textures and materials and surfaces to be seen. If he is supposed to be a shadow creature then ignore what I'm saying. EDIT: Just keep playing around with the textures and lighting til you find what you are looking for... is actually the best advice.

I've been wrong before. What types of surfaces are you trying to show on the Dark being? leather, black chrome, stone, plastic?

Yes, Thanks for coming to my aid. I'm going to rest a little before delving into this walk again. robcat2075 says: william gaylord says: modernhorse says: hypnomike says: Reply: Everyone, Yes, the walk needs the toe-push off... and a little more of a "heel plant" before "foot down flat"! It's hard to see from the angle of the camera, but his feet actually angle outward as they leave the ground and the leg swings outward a little and then comes back toward center again before planting the foot. hypnomike, As far as changing the speed--??? I don't think that would help IMO. It seems about right to me. I could tweak that too, but I have no context to animate this walk for... tempo/speed would have to do with timing and it's just the cycle I'm concerned with right now... the rythm and mechanics. It is noted though for future use of the walk. And Robcat it has lost some of the weight I had before. I felt I had to much... this maybe what it needs to, just a little... I don't want him to get too exaggerated. I'd be lying if I said I was going to look into that, so I'll look into that. WARNING: inside joke--> Depends on which Bar you happen to stumble into. And KenH, Okay swinging the lower arms adds weight also, and he needs that but when I walk, I don't swing my arms very much and not even as much as he does! ... and both shoulder joints have the same problem when the clavicle is moved. It's a long rigging story, but he was built as good as I could build him. What's causing that is the bicep roll. The roll moves some of the fan bones a little, but not enough... without getting too post heavy... I can't mechanically fix this and I'm not ripping his rig apart again for MY SANITY. Finally, I have to roll the bicep so I can swing the lower arms forward and back. Don't feel bad starwarsguy and ddustin! I've been at this for 8 months with my first attempt at building a semi-realistic human. This is my second effort and it's been about 6 weeks. It gets better as you go along. Just keep DOIN IT! Way back when I first got A:M version 6 my work wasn't even close to your work. When I got A:M version 8.5, I learned a lot more and built my first humans- I'll look for some old work to show you so you can see my progress...but later... for now, thanks for the replies and don't feel discouraged.

I got it as smooth and as even as I could, but he still has a slight hick-up in his walk. I've BUSTED MY BRAIN over this. There's hot neural fluid leaking from my skull! GmanWalk3.mov

You have a dark being that doesnt have much specular on him. Increase the size of your specular in his "surface materials" or "surface colors". Make the specular size larger than 100%. It works good on dull or shiney surfsces to bring some light on your character. (A good example is the way George Lucas lights Darth Vader.) Experiment with different (opposite colors?) colors to make things pop out against each other more. Tone some things down toward gray, let others be bright in tone. The composition is very good. I like creatures with glowing red eyes!

Good job Biotron2k, Keep working on it. Don't for get to "punctuate" the actions he is doing, to seperate the actions... but for a preview it's going good!

Fantastic ship animation. It's definately got that hover craft feel to the motion. That was kool the way you allowed it to go out of frame and cut to a new angle-- smart way to handle that... most people would have just moved the camera, but whenever you move the camera, it's disorienting... so you have to change timing as a result. I'll have to remember that solution you have for scenes like that. Thanks.

Good! The only suggestion... is to keep going! Are you going to go on to animating the brows? I see a lot of possibilities there. I almost missed this posting. There are a lot of wip's going on, right now. **EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see the brow movement the first time around. It's very muted. I suppose you don't want it to interfere with any of the other jestures going on there, but I think a few strong arches are good for puctuation "!" . Just a suggestion since I'm not much of an animator. Just my first impression, concidering the subject matter here.

How far into pre-production is the mentioned "testbed" project...and where will it be available at the end of 2006?

I think it looks fine as is... She seems to me to be calm... so her mouth movements should be lazier than normal. But we don't know her yet, so we are seeing this out of context. All we know is she is a Vamp. She's an ethereal character so I think that she NEEDS something wierd or odd in her movement. If that's how you "invision" seeing her say it. But don't change it to suit a technical perameter acording to the way humans act. There are no guidlines for human emotions or actions. It's all relative and changes with each persona and generation. *EDIT: You payed for a URINAL picture.

I say include both... one with pupils and one without-- or at least use a pose slider for it. That gives people a choice. You could change the properties of the clear part of the eye to become opaque and white+ more ambience, and I guess it could be an off/on pose at that... I like the classic-- without pupils. They look sooo heroic without them-- beyond human. It kind of just looks like a human wearing a costume-- with pupils.

What about DAVROS? Will they be fighting the Cybormen? I remember, there was a war between them... or they had joined forces at some point. Doesn't matter, they both loathed the Doctor. You could use a strong rim light, on them to define the dark blended edges.

The A:M online video tutorials have the subject pretty well explained: 3:30 minutes into the video they talk about stride length... the link direct to the video: http://www.s1.hashmirror.com/ftp/VM/walk_w...walk_wheel.html Or link to the actual page (it's the walk/wheel cycle tut under MISC.): http://www.hash.com/VM/ That pretty much explained it for me. EDIT: Ohh... and if you should change the size of your walk cycle remember you have to do a new stride lengh setting for it, too.

Why? It's HIS film.

Could you give a little more info on what you did there: It looks like the mesh is turned on it's side and flat.... Really weird.

Yes... and Yves cleared that up also. It is too high.-- back to the rigging board, again...

Yes, and this model doesn't require it because I won't be showing this much skin. It is a starting point so I can model the clothing over it later. I plan to actually make his clothing as a seperate piece but use the same bones... then, deleting the "under" body and using only the clothing and any part of him that is exposed. I plan to do this for each costume change for the character, so I end up with several copies of the character in different clothing- or even states of decay or transition... depending on what the story requires. And as for detail... my story isn't exactly serious drama or something... so I like this stylized look you get with a low patch count, also I tend to lean toward comicbook art influences in the way I draw and visualize things. This style suits me--(Semi-realistic). I'm aware of your test... Load time and rendertime are not as much of a concern as getting the rigging and poses done efficently and not having to spend so much time on tweaking mesh and bone. I just want to create a nice neat character that is flexible and has that semi-realistic look. I'm not trying for realist--- I tried and the mesh/bones are just a headache for me--

Ken, That's great! I love it. How big is he in height? I saw your other posts about modeling him. Does he have a lot of displacement or are you just using bump maps? He's well textured, I might add!

MY GAWD!!! It's FULL OF STARS!! Edit: Sometimes I just shouldn't post. That's the most rediculous post I've ever made... sorry guys.

You mean the arm? Where? The targets or the elbow bone?

Well... Still working on this generic man model. I've given him the 2001 rig. Also, I put in many fan bones w/constraints to smooth joint bends at the shoulder, leg/pelvis, and knees. I smartskinned his Back/ Back2 bones also, so far. This time around it was a lot easier to rig him, because of the low patch count. I plan to donate this model (when complete) to the content CD project. I seem to keep running into an arm twisting the wrong way problem if the hand target is too far away from the hand position... anybody know how to fix that- I just moved the hand target closer to the hand, trying to maintain the poses. In the animation I included here, I tried the actions supplied on the A:M 2004 CD. There were a few things I had to edit, because his scale is different from the scale in the actions in more than one branch of bones. I doubled the time from 2 sec. to 4 sec. because it looked better for the proportions of a realistic human. ShamelessCCMed.mov

WOW!! I like that, John. How is it you got it to move more smoothly? Did you keyframe the materials or use a camera trick? How would you create starstreaks this way?

This guy had me thinking about this model... and then it hit me... This guy looks like prehistoric man right now... like a cave man or barbarian warrior or something. That's neat! I think the low forehead/ thick jaw gives him the cromagnum look. I won't comment on the body until I see you un-flatten it.