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I'm ready for this challenge!!! .... Do I have to have version 12 to do this? If so, I'll have to squeeze my pocketbook harder, sooner.

Smartskin copies cp/spline positions acording to bone movement, not bone positions or movement. You have to go and copy bone position for each keyframe (have to click on the bone to highlight it) and then paste mirrored to the other bone... haven't tried this yet, and it might not work. If it doesn't, you will have to do it manualy. You could make a pose slider do what you want and in the smartskin change slider at keyframes so you can independently make changes to the pose later, instead of editing the smartskin over and over again. This is a very complex way of dealing with clothing, but I understand sometimes you want more control than cloth can offer... keep plugin' away at it though... you may have a lightbulb pop up soon over your head. EDIT: It could also be a hierarchy problem... the lifter bones have to be children or parents in the same way in case you have some other constraints involved here with the other bones. I think that AM may "look" for the bone in the hierarchy looking in a place where it expects to find it in the hierarchy. This is only conjecture on my part... but it could be that you have to select the intended bone to paste to, also, so that you are pointing directly to the bone you want it pasted to.

your color map is different from your bump map---better check those poses, Vern.

I see he has some weight. But it's not enough from this camera position. The director would tell the actor to give it a little more "umph"! The weight is just not there... needs some more lifting in the arcs as he steps forward. Not too much or he'll look like he's leaping.

Yes... and actually if you make your own rig just make the names the same and try to keep the proportions similar and you can even use the actions with your own rig. Adding bones will not change what is already in the action... hence-"reusable action"... And I welcome new users, too! Can't wait to see your work.

What exact, positions are available for freelance?

What I mean is to animate the cp's in your path along it's spline.... It does sound hard and I know I wouldn't want to have to do it, but it is just another suggestion. I would pick appart what the tut says and try to find what I'm missing... treadhed was created during version 8 or 9 of A:M... so perhapse there is a step in the tut that you don't need or need to change. anyway it's supposed to start over on 0% after 100% unless your path doesn't have all the splines connected. It could be the timeline: maybe you could change the ease channel spline to a linear interpolation instead of spline interpolation. (Right-click on the spline for the ease channel in the timeline)

Have you tried copying the actual poses at the keyframes (for muscle motion) and then pasting in the same keyframes of new poses in the other character? It sounds tedious, but it beats trying other ways that "might" work. If it sounds like too much work-- maybe you could copy and paste the head into the character and reshape that head... because the relationships would also be copied. (If I'm wrong, sue me... my lawyer's email is ******@*******.net)

This is a very complex situation... can you supply diagrams or animation or renders showing what you did. I think you are saying that the treads are controlled by bones that travel a path and you change the amount of ease in the animation--- if this is what you mean... why not just leave the treads where they are on the path and animate the position of the path. If you do that in an action, then you could make the action into a cycle (like the walk/wheel cycle tut on the hash site.).You would select the tread that is on the ground and start the cycle there and stop the cycle when that tread is one frame from hitting that same spot after going around the wheels. But without knowing how you did it, I couldn't give you any advice.

You could do the volumetrics as a seperate pass and just flat render the objects in the scene as black objects. Then take the volumetrics pass and add it in later. The render time will be better. Plus you will be able to edit the intensity of the volume lighting later if you wish. Light effects are best done in post anyway, I believe. It depends so heavily on other objects in the scene to make it look good. Just a suggestion of a work around till it's fixed. EDIT****** You and Flog and Smudge are so inspirational. There are a lot of talented people here and hope you guys keep it up. Don't be a quitter like me! By the way... Once you work out the kinks in the rendering and modeling and rigging and animating... things will start to go faster for you. I've modelled my main character four times... I'm getter better and faster at it and my rigging has become more refined... it won't take you five years to do a half-hour movie! momentum is on your side!

You could rig the car body with a bone and make a translate to/orient-like constraint to both "LAG" behind the main body motion.

Sorry, got here late... it seems he should start falling before the right arm goes forward. It's a tough nut to crack, but I think it would promote the unstable balance of falling a little better. He almost seems to be yanked out.

OK, I've been playing with some possible "little" solutions to problems with moving bones around in a controlled manner. There are 4 rigs that just do a specific movement. Some were not sucessful (hip rig) but could be used as an example for another solution. You will have to download the prj file and see for yourself. They are relativly simple rigs and shows my tinkering with rigging. I don't think these rigs would be applicable in any other application other than Animation Master, because of the in depth constraints offered to us by Hash, Inc.! In other words: Thanks Hash, Inc.! EDIT* I've included descriptions in the "action" file info blocks to help. You may have to stretch your PWS or Properties window to see the full discrption and notes... I wish you could create paragrphs instead of one liners!TestMiniRigs.prj

The hair map's group is before the skin group... that's why her head has that dull overtone... Move the hair group in last place of groups... or after the skin group. She could use another group of finer hair at the forhead to blend the hair edge better. Use the same hair map.

You could use hair with maps of "puffs" of clouds cookie cut. The Hair would have to be thick and almost flat to pull it off... and the patches you use to emitt them should probably be like a solid clump shape. EDIT# you could even have the hair emitt from the skydome using a map-- like what's being done in the forum where they are using painterly hair! I haven't had time to do anything in A:M for a while, this was the next thing I was going to try... I'll let you know if it works for me, unless you try it and post first.

The first one is fantastic, but it's kind of quick at the portion when the 'wormhole'(??) effect begins... the Earth is blotted out... maybe you could fade it in some places so we can still see the planet. You must be reading the minds of every scifi fan out there... good work!

Why not just make a sky hemisphere? edit* Because you will not run out of sky with 360 of it. And what happened to your lovely fuzzie clouds -that are famous!

Nicely splined. You made good choices with your hooks. You din't have to use double hooks... I used many double hooks in my ears.

Well, you should look at it with some lights on it in the chor. Testing it under those lighting conditions will let you know if you need the lip edge loop or not. The lighting in the action or camera view doesn't help there.

It's a little complicated in the chor... but I just have both models in the same space... ))-The hero one is active and the proxy is not... ((-The hero has normal rig constraints... the proxy doesn't (only dynamic constnts.).

You have a valid point there... they could be nulls translated to the proxy hands and feet, with "lag" on the translations... they would follow the proxy's hands and feet... then you could translate the "hero" rig's hands and feet to these "lag" nulls. You would only have to animate the proxy rig without dealing with the pose sliders for each limb.

Well, There are two different rigs here. So if you wanted, you could stretch the character's cp's in a pose and animate the stretching via the sliders. Interesting...

NICE so far! If you include as much detail in the ears... you'll have no problem, but you will be adding a lot of hooks.

!!!!NICE splinage! The lips might need more definition. Just place a spline loop around the outer edge of the lips. It will cause an edge like a bevel. Same thing around the eye openings. Just to define the edges more... What you've done so far is great and if it suits your style, you may not need to add the loops, but I just suggest this because it looks a little too smooth and lips and eye lids have strong edges. Good luck on your finals!

I thought about it, but don't have time straight away! Just wanted to post quickly the idea of it. I supplied the project file for all to play with and see the inner workings, in case I didn't explain thoroughly. I'll probably play with it later... after I actually make a gun or some projectile for the person to react to. Thanks for all your comments... it makes me want to fiddle more with some other things I never had time to delve into.