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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!

I think it would be nice to have the brows move and then the mouth follow a few frames later. That would make it less mechanically moved looking. Break up the movements a little... maybe have one brow move slower than the other. His eyes look like they could squint a little more. Just some suggestions. It's good so far... just needs a little more character.

Thanks guys, That helps a lot... I just thought maybe there was some new better way to create face poses... so I guess I'm just going to stick with my favorate way... phoneme poses. I made a chart recently of my characters phonemes/ facial expressions... the phonemes are all at 50%, because the 100% look is really exagerated. The facial poses are at -100% to +100% for most of them. I noticed how much some of the phonemes resemble each other, but when you have a human character you need that slight difference even though you could just use a few phonemes as primary poses and mix and match those to make the others, but I think that would require a lot more tweeking. Phoneme-Expression-Chart2. jpg

I would like to know --why is it "easier" or "better" to use a mouth rig then phoneme poses for lip sync? I've never really had any problem with phonemes. Are there any set guidlines to decide what to use to get your character to lip sync?

the 14th--WET! the 21st-- DRY!! I'll take the 14th then as long as it's saturday... but someone that I work with has decided to have his hernia operated on and so this meeting happens to fall on a time when they will be draining me of my lifeforce at work, because I will be compensating for the sick co-worker. I will try to be there... at least in a zombie-like trance- in the back of the room, facing the ceiling, sleeping with my eyes wide open. You may have to administer some coffee to get a reaction out of me! But I will try my DARNDEST to be there. I would like to get Vern and Don to show me how to use the mini notebook keyboard again, too. ...and my human character has smaller maps and a simpler mesh. John said: ME TOO!! I will be in the theater drooling over the special effects... chanting I.L.M--I.L.M---LUCUSFILM!!!!! HURRAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Should I bring anything, besides my other "personality" (you know... the one that can't drink beer during daylight hours) ?

I love the clouds. You got me thinking. I guess , I could also use a displacement map that changes depth/ or is animated over the multipass subframe time it would have the same effect-- except being much harder to make. I think for the amount of work, your solution is FANTASTIC! But for the style that I want, you helped me solve my "cloud" problem. THANX!

Looks good so far. Very entertaining... and it reads well, to me. I think it would be funny if the white robot flinches when green snaps his arm out to point. That could drive home the fact that white is being yelled at or commanded to "MOVE". Just a suggestion... it already reads well.

Thankyou, It's a pleasure to see such hard work devoted to teaching things that exist in the "gray" areas of animation/modeling.

Color=too dark- Let some air in there... you could reverse-out the type? design= I like the v6 one, because it's simple and looks clean/neat. the box with your name should overlap the secondery info. Only one thing... visual tention makes me want to look at the borders more than the info-- when you overlap a box- overlap the corner so you have two sides of the overlapped box connecting to the full box shape. Boxes and lines only when they aren't parralel with the boxes sides... makes you focus on the box rather than the info... Just some advice from someone who looks at ads all day at work.

It is one action from begining to end. The pop is intentional... you have to understand that I walked my own body through the motions, because I didn't have anyone to model for me, so I could be embelishing a little bit. But that is what animation is about isn't it? Animators have been known to do that-- Remember Spiderman-- there is a lot of motion sweetening to clearify the motion/movements of the characters, and since I'm going for a comic book-stylized 3d approach I think IMO it fits. Actualy the character does a skip- then starts off running with his right leg. I agree about the belt buckles and secondary motion. Since I simulated the dynamic bones There are now channels there I can edit. Thankyou for replying. I will be posting changes soon.

Hi Hashers and Spline-folk, I was at a loss when it came to coming up with an idea to animate, so I just wrote some action words on pieces of paper and put them in a can, then blindly picked out three. Words for basic actions in threes almost make a nice little scene. (Hopefully, the words you pick will align in context like mine.) It's a good way to flex your animation muscles, by playing this game with yourself. Well, have fun! Afraid21Lg.mov

I laughed and then voted. Very clean & thoughtful rendering and modeling, too.

looks good so far... any updates?

I like that... How much is a bottle of that.... eh- I'd like a gallon please... LOL.

For my rig I used Jeff lew's rig from his DVD site... it's free... FK arms I like to use and seem to be more controllable. For the hands-- the 2001 rig came in handy... roll the finger bone and the finger bends... I like that because you don't have to move every bone in the fingers... the constraints do the work. I added some fan bones and where the bends are simple, but there were way to many cp's for fanbones to be efficient, I used smartskin in a single fanbone that orients between to bones to smooth out unwanted pinching or warping. Facial stuff... I'm a bit old fashioned... I like using phonemes.

I'm such an idiot! My boss was on vacation last week- I srewed up at work and got "talked to" and so I was so concerened with work I forgot about the meeting... I had a lot on my mind... sorry I didn't make it this time around.

Dec. 11... Okay! Who's coming? I'll be there for sure, dude!

Rodney, I believe it may still be there for "spline guided" hair but not for "grouped patch" hair... I've been using group patch hair and I haven't seen it because I just started using hair at v.11.0i, I think. Believe me... I need clumpiness!