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The only part I added was the fingers, which come from the 2001 rig. Sneer? Didn't think of that... what about bottom lip poke, also? I also forgot tongue side to side. But I will leave that up to everyone that uses it. Thanks.

I could be wrong about that... I'm sorry... So People!!! YOU BETTER HURRY UP, Because obviously we don't have much room left... If DON says we don't have enough room it's going to be too LATE.... You will have lost out on a GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!!

The next thing I will look into will be any pops or bumpiness in the action and try to figure out how to either smooth them out or fix the timing. Thanks to you guys, I'm learning a lot about how this character should be moving basicly. It seems like the process is: 1) Block action. 2) Define action. 3) Clean up weight and timing. 4) Smooth out bumpiness and/or pops. 5) Goto step "3)" again if necessary. 6) If it is acceptable, continue to next scene/segment. I plan on adding lip sync at some time, but I will have to do that in another action, so I can SEE the face better, then in the chor I will layer the two actions and edit in the action windows accordingly. Basicly, I'm trying this out to see if it will be a good way to work. Does anyone out there do it this way? I'll post results after trying to get rid of these pops/ bumpiness problems. Mr. Jaqe wrote: Actually, that was my 23rd render.

LOVE this characture! NOW that is FUNNY! Looks like he works in a circus or on a broadway show. Unique. Looks like he will be fun to animate, too.

Consider the motion and direction he is moving you are right... but sometimes some things can be "unatural" when you take a snapshot in real life too. Especially in sports photos. Try to strike this pose:

thankyou Seven!

He is a fighter pilot. He just came out of a space battle where one of his pilots was killed in space... and now coming into the debriefing room, he deals with his feelings by himself.... Anger--> frustration--> sadness/depression one scene out of many, but it's one of the hardest... so I tried it first. OK, seven?

Yes seven, I do! And so do you. I enjoyed your "Thom with Hunter Dynamics", but you must understand that you are pushing the limits between humor and distastefulness. People are not used to seeing the A:M icon with genitals... so just warn us next time that there is genital nudity (The rating for full frontal nudity here in America is "X".) Try to keep your work within the "R" rating which is "Brief nudity"- and you may get more positive feedback. Still, I admire you for your humor and I understand your joke, but there are others that weren't expecting THAT.

Okay, Smoothed out some of the movements and tonned down his bounciness in the hips. Still have the hands and a few pops left here and there to fix. More to come! Dtest2Lg.mov

"Limited space"? Umm.... When did that problem ever occur? How many members are there, again? I miss one meeting and suddenly... Well, I'll do my part to make more space- I promiss not to gain any weight!

Yes Ken, I'm using IK with foot/thigh targets. I didn't want him to lift his legs too high... he's almost dragging his feet. Each step slopes in long- out short... so his walk looks more laborious for him. I gave him the "jerky" shoulder movement, because it makes him look like he has a chip on his shoulder or is angry about something. I tried making him collapse onto the cube, it looked good, but it's not what I wanted, so I toned it down a lot and added the forearms/hands thrusting down after he sits to show frustration. I plan to have him put his hands up, with his elbows on his knees, and then rest his face in his hands. Then he will take a long deep breath and sigh. Anger--> frustration--> sadness/depression Thanks for your help! *EDIT: Forgot spellcheck!

I like it... but the raindrop character needs some shine-- a nice strong thin specular highlight! It would be funny if he cried and the teardrops turned into drops like him.

I fixed some of the keys and went through and deleted a bucket load of unnecessary keys and got it down to the basic blocked motion. NOW He doesn't look like he is stabilized. HE LOOKS DRUNK!! It's soooo funny. But it's better than the last one. I'm going to work on smoothing that out next... and then the hands & fingers. Thanks for any comments. Dtest1Lg.mov

What happened to the hairline?? Is the hair map still applied? The hair length map was there to only have hair starting at the hairline... or are you going to apply a new hairmap? Without the hair map in place his hairline will include the whole area I selected for the hair group. If you already know this... ignore my comment. Thanks for your replies to everyone... I'm still working on my animation skills.

Are you using "Displacement" for the tubes... if so- That is where your going to "pay up" in time. If so ... try using a heavy bump map instead, just so you can see the difference in time there. That is, if you are using displacement.

I made a proxie model with all the bones and poses included, so you can animate the basic structure with the proxie and then load the action with your GenMan to animate the details. Mainly I did this because it's hard to see movements with the character visible, so if I have a proxie I can see the movements better with the basic shapes... kinda like sketching before cleaning up and adding detail. It's not a "new" idea, but it might be nice to have to test drive the rig I made. Here is the GenManProxie.zip (261 KB): GenManProxie.zip

Hey, I upgraded the Generic Man I was planning to submit for the additional 2005 CD. I didn't make it to the CD, but you can get it here in a zip file (12.5MB). It has a Phoneme chart and a text document explaining some info about what to do with him. ::::::::::::: The Text messege reads: GENMAN: Built in Animation:Master v-11.1d ----------------------- Modeling: I modeled him to be as small in patches as I could, but still trying to maintain some musculature and definition. Most heavy patches are in the head and hands. ---------------------- Decaling: I provided photoshop documents with layers and alpha so that you can just start painting him without having to re-decal. I did miss a few patches in the mouth, but didn't see that as much of a problem because the roof of the mouth is rarely seen. Feel free to redecal those patches if you must. The texture maps are 1000x1000. -------------------- Posesliders: Full phonemes are here, some facial motion also(eye upper and lower lids, smile, cheek puff, brows + more... everything has left and right controlls. EVEN PUPILS dialate!) __ Detail how to set for animation in action or chor: In the properties panel: ** RIG folder->Setup folder->JeffLew Rig Setup/IK Arms Setup/IK Legs Setup--all should be turned on. **Jaw-- Jaw hindge--the jaw has a parent bone that can become a secondary pivot point if you wanted to move the jaw forward or back more (like to jutt the jaw)... the pose on will create a constraint to keep you from moving it too far. You can enable this but it is not necessery. **Hands-- Same as with 2001 rig... except left hand thumb not posed correctly. **LeftHAND and RightHAND locks-- no pose there... just left it there in case I needed a pose there. I don't have targets for the hands/arms since the rig for the arms and torso/head follow the basic bones of the JeffLew rig available on his DVD site. **Turn all of the joint smoothing poses... it controls the fan bones **Under Phonemes you have LipSync (Phonemes) and facial-X (eyes,brows,nose,cheeks) and body tweeks (breathing). --- Flatten4Decaling--in case you need to re-decal anything I made a pose to flatten out each part for decaling in an action! _____________________________________________ Model comes with porcelain skin applied. Head hair and eyelashes already combed +colored. You can change the color under "Surface" in the Hair emitter properties. I suggest you look at the various fan bones and extra muscle bones in the model to get a feel for what they do to move the skin, in case you wish to put armor on him. Look at the relationships that smooth the joints to learn more. The shoulders MOVE the shoulders... this was necessary in a human character. There is a constraint on the shoulders to keep them from moving too far... which makes the shoulder look dislocated during animation... I have it constrained a little too tight... you may find it better to allow the shoulders to be more flexible. That's all I could think of to tell you about this character. The rest is up to you. Entity (Rich Jackson) ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: EDIT(10/11/06): Here is the link: GenMan.zip The above link has not been updated yet...coming soon!

Sorry, I dismantled the site. Wanted to make way for new work. The work there is like 3 to 4 years old! I guess I should at least put up an "under construction" page or something. I'll put it back up for now. And as far as that Generic man... Thanx for the compliments and he's been upgraded... I'll replace the old file with a new one (when I get time) with all the phonemes/ facial sliders (he is all textured and I will provide placeholder maps and a small txt file containing some instructions & info.). Sorry I didn't finish him in time for the 2005 additional CD's. I'm not a great animator (probably because I'm really bad at acting)... trying to work through it. Maybe with all your help, hashers, I can become a good animator... trying to break bad habbits and OPEN my eyes to see better... I get so bogged down with all those keys, it becomes unclear after looking at it soooo much.

FORCES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The vehicle could have forces translated to it... and I'd use forces that slightly sway or rock with the rythm of ocean waves... that would make the hose react as if under water.

Nice to see the NEW CLOTH in action. Can't wait to see the variations you'll eventually post. Is there a feature on A:M you haven't tested yet?

agep: *450 frames at ~43 seconds each at 640x480 and multipass set to 9[3x3] passes, also reflections= on and 3 lights. With hair it would be about 1:20-1:40. I'll do one with hair next time around to see what is added. Fishman: *That slowness is bothering me too... I moved the keyframes around so much I became very afraid to touch it again, so I posted here to see if anyone would see what my "cross eyes" are not seeing there. robcat2075: *You are dead right on that!! Sometimes when your blocking and you start to get to the detail and things get too cluttered you delete or change the values of some keys, you get lost in trying to simplifie the movements again, but it seems I lost too much when I did this. pixelmech: *For the movements, I acted it out first, and did it several times as I was blocking it out. The timing is the hard part for me. Subtle speed changes came about when I was moving the keyframes around like crazy... ... I wanted him to be depressed and sad. His slowness is not conveing that though. Time to look at a movie with a depressed person in it, because my imagination is at a loss. Thankyou... will check back when I have something more to crit!

Hi splinesmen, Haven't posted in a while... But I'm working hard. Here is a test of a character walking and sitting on a cube. The dynamic movements I seem to be having a problem with I may post a question about if I can't figure it out. anyway... depress5.mov The quicktime movie is 1.29 MB. I know I went too far by doing a final render, but I needed to test the low rez textures... to see how they measure up. I rendered him without his hair to look at the rendertimes of the textures. I saved max rez textures at 4000x and med rez textures at 2000x and low rez textures are about 1000x. Tell me what you think... even if you don't have a crit.

YESSSSS! Haha! Neat, fun characters!

pixelmech- something I just noticed today--- The robots have rank stripes... the letters/numbers are appopriate. Sargent Forty-four and private six... is there a joke in there somewhere?? Age?? Model number?? amps/watts?? Tinsle strength??

Your project is looking GREAT!!! You are a good animator/story teller. It's getting better and better. I'll bet you are going to create a series from this or even possibly a longer short. It's very funny, I'd like to add, too. Thumbs up!