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Do you have an overall "look" to your design for your project? I'm not familiar with your stuff- is there another thread?

Well, after posting the eye tutorial I made I was asked about a cartoony eye and thought about applying the spherical constraint in this thread to the problem. It demonstrates a possible use for the constraint, so I thought I'd post it here. It's just a "proof of concept" type of thing, so don't expect it to be perfect...there are plenty of things about it that could be better. In the project, open "Action1" if it's not already open and move the visible Null named "eyemanipulator". That moves the pupil around and deforms the eyeball. To adjust the size of the pupil, there is a "pupildilation" slider in the "User Properties" section of the "tooneye" model.

It's hot out here at LegoDude's college summer camp, so I made this little fan to keep him cool. Set the movie to loop and you too can stay cool! (Unfortunately for LegoDude, when the conference ends, and he goes on stage to close things down, he's going to be melting in the heat, lose his footing, and get sucked into the fan... sort of a LegoDude meets Mr. Bill ending to a fun debut of LegoDude! ) If anyone wants the project, I'd be happy to share. Need to zip together a package so you'd get the decals (cookie cutter and transparency map). This represents about two hours of work, so things like on/off knob and (d'oh!) electrical cord are left to you to do! For my needs this fan is 'good enough' for the size and focus of the closing piece. CoolMeOff.mov

Thanks for the complements! I actually modeled him on Geri so I'm chuffed you recognised him(I guess you didn't see the previous modeling thread). Unfortunately no body to go with him. I'm working on another project which will make use of all Geri taught me though.

DL, Glad to see you back in action in the forum again! When I need inspiration and a reason to carry a project through with a critical eye on composition and detail I always think of you! Look forward to seeing more of those fish!

Hi Guys! Thanks your answers! I have some problems: Well, I'm living in Hungary and so I don't use the DOPE SHEET of A:M and I can't buy Jason Osipa's book! But we can help me, if you send me a not important lip sync project or action, or give me a link where I will can download it! Because I can study this project and it helps me that I can continue my project! Thanks before, Sharky

Hi guys, it's been a while since I last updated my fish project, Alot has changed over the months I had very little time to work on it... I also took the time to re-design my characters and get a feel for their personality and the way they will act and move.. This project turned out different than when I first started (character wise), I learn so much from your crits and by practicing, I modeled over 20 fishes just trying to get a feel for a design. it's hard sometimes to transfer what's in ur head to paper/computer... Alot of them will not make it into the final movie, but am happy with what I learned... My other fishes slowed down my machine alot which made animating hard cuz I have a slow machine... -----NEW------ PROJECT INFO------ I am very happy with what I came up with I narrowed it down to 2 characters, which are low in patch count and are fun to work with.... My orginal story and idea was to big for just me to do, so I changed it and made it more simple...Just a girl and Worm... Here is the girl her name is ~missy~..... the worm character will be posted soon...

I'm working on a project and on a particular bone, I get two sets of lines(RGB) and when I copy and past them, they get confused and cris cross. Anyone know how to fix this?

Great scene! I agree that the beam of light could use a little work, it jumps out and steals a lot of your attention. But still, well done. I'm casting another vote for seeing that gorgeous Balrog (if that's possible) in these mines. What a fun team project -- and the work is basically done.

Nice face! What I discovered when I first started using A:M to model (and I'm not a pro yet) is that the more I model with it, the better I understand how splines work as a 'group.' There's a bunch of tutes on the ARM (in the modeling head and body section) that I found helpful. There's the SAY head, that you can d/l a project and see how Young did the head. The best thing about that tute is using the "wrinkles" that happen for you. I found that by hitting a CP and then the comma key allows me to see the whole spline and how it is placed and connected. With the models that I felt was going to be trashed, I kept working with them and learned how to delete a spline in a few steps (select a CP on the splne you want to get rid of, hit the comma to select the entire spline, then the period to 'reverse' [complement] the selection twice. The first comeplement will invert the selection, the second re-selects the orginal spline -- my mind uses the paradigm that the second time selects the spline's CP's in "both directions." Then you can hit the delete key and viola! the spline is totally gone. I found that by deleting and then adding CP's and splines really got me thinking about splines and patches and when to hook, use 5-pointers and such. Good Luck and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Redo on the female giant...I like the varied hair colours. Christina: SkyCast is something we use all the time professionally so we'll keep updating it. Although it 'should' stay compatible . There are a couple of tutorials on the website, and I'm reasonably active on the forum if you have any questions. Skycast will scale any image you load as a base to 512 x 256 before running. The action is dropped onto a SkyCast light model in the choreography. These images are rendered in version 11. Xtaz: Yes, because the clouds have very little colour variation, I'll be trying to add more colour/richness with lighting. Frank: This is my 'simple' project. Expressions can wait for another day

Thanks. I'll definitely have to work on those camera angles. I was aware of that looking kinda screwy. Not to be repeated though. And finishing it was the achievement. I started the project way back (so far I can't remember). Just to finish something is good. Usually I've got dozens of unfinished projects.

Well, I've been working on this project a bit. Tweaked the mesh for Tauri a bit (mostly in the head, neck, shoulders and hips). Adjusted the gradient edge material and render settings. Here's the latest render of Tauri in a scene. The things in the scene with her are cacti-like plants. This may not surprise the old hands at A:M, but they are all the same model. I added some relationships, actions, muscle-mode poses to it and placed about 8 "instances" of the cacti in the scene. Then I gave each cacti a different setting to the Height, girth and twist poses. They are all percentages and 50% is the "orginal" pose/shape of the cacti. So I can make the cacti shorter or taller, wider or thinner and even twist it clockwise or counterclockwise. I think I "get" relationships now. What I like best about what I've done, is that I can have the cacti look like the same species of plant, but give each one some individuality w/o having to remodel the wheel, so to speak. This is now "offically" a project, I have a storyline figured out. Will storyboard it tomorrow (I'll be going to the N. California coast with the spousal unit, so I can be amonst the ocean and storyboard a desert scene. go figure). There's a song I want to use as a soundtrack. It's by Robyn Hitchock named "Catherdal" from his "I often Think of Trains" album. I'll have to model some rocks, desert ground, bg mountains. Then there's the other characters, a hummingbird (based on the Violet Crowned Hummingbird) and a 6-legged newt/gecko-horse beast of burden. As far as props go, there's a blanket, an amulet, fire, saddle and some camping-type eating utensils. Then there's the Catherdal itself. I want it to be intricate and slightly Gothic/Victorian looking ( thinking of the Palm House at Kew Gardens and the Albert Memorial, both in England) and looking like it's made of Crystal/Prisims. There's going to be lights inside and will provide a distinct glow to the enviroment. I'm hoping to have this in some kinda shape by the end of the year. --- I'm still having massive problems with moving Tauri's arms around and having the frickkin' elbow mind itself. I'm missing something, I fear. Should I leave the Arm IK on or off? Does any one have a rig description that works for them? I may buy the Setup Machine when the refi comes through. Still feel that understanding how the 2001 rig works is important. I really wish there was a complete description of the Hash 2001 rigging that I could look at. The links in the ARM either is for a rig that has all different names for most of the bones (and different constraints, I think) or just not accesible ( 404 or downloads nothing but a directory structure and files my Mac can not read). The biggest help with the video tuts from the Art of Animation Master. But then, it was a more of a move this here, do this, do that without any detailed explaination of why is it done that way. And the elbow bone is a complete mystery to me. It moves all over the place, and when the roll handle is turned just by a degree or two, the forarm and bicep area of the arm just goes spastic on me. I can get the arm to look good in keyframe "a" and then I move forward to keyFrame "b" move the elbow so the arm looks good, repeat for keyframe "c" and "d" and then I go back to keyframe "a" -- and it's all frelled up! I would like to start working on giving Tauri some expressions (I have a eyeblink pose made, but that's just rotating the bone that controls her eyelids), I think I should use poses and muscle but I look at her mesh and just brain-fart, I don't know where to begin. Any help with using the 2001 rig and where to start with making facial poses would be greatly appreciated! I'm hoping that once I get tauri working well, I can then move her skeleton/rig to Kenth and hopefully have a bit easier time of things. Darn this learning curve thanks for reading this far, and thanks very much in advance for any and all suggestions, criticisms and /or help!

This is somewhat of a trial and error process. I'm not happy with the density of branches near the trunk. I'm going to reduce the number of main branches and add more of the short secondary branches. This should give me a much better looking tree form. I'm also not happy with the uniformity of the arrangement. Doesn't have the aesthetic appeal I want. I'm going to arrange the branches less uniformly to give it a more natural look. More of a bunching of branches and leaves here and there, with some more space between "bunches". One reason this project is taking so long is the number of "rehearsals" it's taking to optimize the look vs. performance. The number of things to tweak each time is pretty huge. Definitely not an efficient workflow sort of thing at this point. That would take a software utility to build it for you, with some nice features to allow you to tweak it efficiently. I think I'm really pushing AM's limits in terms of the sheer number of constraints and relationships involved. Some of the branches are loosing their texturing during the camera rendering. And this is only one tree... May have to send another sample to Hash to figure out what's happening and fix it. Bill Gaylord

I've finished my latest project ('bout time I say). The 160 x 120 version is at AM:Films. http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=850 For those with more bandwidth, there's a 320 x 240 video at this address: http://gutterbrothersllc.com/video/ I welcome all feedback, however I am finished with this project and will move on. So if you don't see your comments being used to fix the video, it's not that I didn't listen. In fact, I'll likely use everyones suggestions for future videos. Laters . . .

thanks for the suggestion I guess I'll have to think about it a bit more... have some ideas and maybe some enhancements to the models. If anyone else wants to play with them I'll post the project file tinkering robots before I throw out the material I added it a second time turned it into a displacement map and animated it like the material ..to speed up render I hid 2 robots and changed animated to 15fps. tuenned out interesting but not right for this project robot3.mov

Vernon Zehr's Basic Boolean Tutorial with project file and animation

I apologize gents. I should have checked to see if the tutorial/demo was still online. While waiting for the experts to chime in I'll post some additional information. I'll even check to see if the links work! Boolean Globe project description

Mike. after looking through the thread again I remembered I had this image of Tony from an old project, like many characters there are a stack of different evolutions to choose from

Hey, I'm trying to download the sample project but all I get is a browser window with text in it. What am I doing wrong? I guess I don't know how to use this internet thing...

okay tweaked the colors and added a light (volumetric with turbulence) now have to get habitat better action(now action controls turbulence the rest is hand postioning in chor) and maybe some force oh and not sure if the eyes on front and back look okay will post project when finished robot1.mov

Anywhere those of us late to the party can check this out? I went to the site and got the 3D Farmington, MI slide show (now where are my 3D glasses when I need them?). Also, can you post the project?

Anywhere those of us late to the party can check this out? I went to the site and got the 3D Farmington, MI slide show (now where are my 3D glasses when I need them?). Also, can you post the project?

I never did comment on the overall project. This is brilliant. It is one of those short simple concepts that practically "pre-exists" like the laws of physics. It is such a great idea that it seems to have created itself through you. Like the "idea particles" that stick in peoples heads in Terry Pratchett's "Disk World" books. There is no fat in the story. Vernon "Sorry! I'm gushing again" Zehr

Thought I'd drop a line here. I down loaded the project back when you posted, but hadn't gotten around to looking at it. Saw Rodney's post and thought, "let's just make the time and take a look at it", so I did. I've not worked much with constraints yet, but it seems they can save you a lot of work if done right. Interesting piece of rigging. Not sure what situation it would be used in, but none the less, just seeing how the relationships are setup and being able to follow what's happening (without having dissect a complete rig ) has been very enlightening. For those of us, OK just ME , that have only use simple bone structures ( parent - child ) and very few if any constraints. Aim At, Translate To, Translate Limits ... seem like fairly simple things, but figuring out how to combine them together to achieve a control is at times confusing and at other times beyond comprehension. Enough babbling. As much as I like figuring things out for myself, I don't think life's long enough to do that with everything. Thanks for sharing, and as far as I'm concerned, keep it coming.