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Showing results for 'snap to surface'.
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I think you have the concept backwards. The aiming bone should not be constrained to the thing you want to constrain to the surface. The aiming bone should be a bone in the surface you want to constrain to. The bone inthe model you want to constrain to the surface is not a child of the aiming bone. on the bone in the model you want to constrain to a surface Choose New Constraint>Surface Turn off the Compensate Mode Button if it is on Pick the bone the surface is attached to. In the PWS, A surface constraint will be created in the Chor under the model Select the constraint, then go to the properties window Set the Surface Aim Target property to the bone you want to be the aiming bone In my version of A:M, offsets are created even though I don't want them. Set the Translate offsets and Rotate offsets to zero to make the constrained bone follow the surface exactly Now the constrained bone will go to where ever the aiming bone is pointing on the surface. Don't try to animate the constrained bone. Let me know if that works for you.
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I have created a model containing various groups with surface attributes assigned. When I choose the name of the model itself in the project workspace, various surface attributes are assigned in it's properties as well. When I right-click on the surface property (or properties) of the model, only "new relationship" and "properties" appear in the drop-down box. How can I set the model's surface to "not set" and preferably (but not necessarily) leave the groups' surface attributes intact? Thanks, Chris
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As a for instance... one thing I've noted is that we can model with changing surfaces over time. Are you saying we can load morph targets too? Just simply swap out the target mesh with another and move the time slider over, re-snap the cp's to the new surface? Something like that? That would be pretty cool. A:M can not import Morph targets as far as I know. But yes it really doesnt matter what you want to retopologize. It even does not have to be one object. You can draw over several objects at once if you wish too, or you can change the template-object in the process to another one or you can move / rotate / scale the template-object while doing your snap to surface work, etc. You can although use Snapt to surface-option for animation... so for example if you created a model and want to animate the CPs you can use Snap To Surface in the Muscle-Mode in the Chor too to change its shape... So you could recreated the morph-targets from other programs easily by recreating the model in A:M with resurface, export another prop from the other software which has the shape of another morph-target and use it to create another keyframe in A:M's chor which will have the same shape as the morph-target in the other program. That will enable you to copy the CP-movement to a pose and like that you have a translation of a morph-target to A:Ms poses... The real feature is: Snap a point to an underlying surface, no matter if it is a prop, another patch-model, a combination of both or several of them... See you *Fuchur*
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Transparent materials don't display transparent (v17)
NancyGormezano replied to pixelplucker's topic in Animation:Master
Hooo hooo! You guessed that right. I have figured out what I was doing wrong. Yay! It seems I did not have the little new "snap to surface" icon depressed BEFORE I started splining the new model (somehow I missed that crucial step in your video). When I did that - all became wonderful! The clouds parted and the birds began to sing. The problem I had been running into (and still) is that I would create some new patches close to the obj template model, then select those patches, right click (while patches were selected) and select "snap group to surface" option. Not a good idea. That is when things get weird. Some of the cps snap to a far surface, and some don't. It's not clear how to control that. But at least the original laying down of splines on top of a 3D obj template/prop seems to work better. It's the post-"snap group to surface" that works wonkily. -
Hi Everyone, I am making a Honey Pot and I would like the 3D Text to sit on the outside surface of my pot. Instead of using decal, I want the text to have 3d thickness. Would anyone know how to do this? Also, I lost the model 3x when I hit the undo button two times in a row. I thinking it might be related to the curled in top surface. Was I going too fast? Have you ever run into this before? Thanks, Bob
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Hi folks, Could somebody please clarify some "simple" question about texturing for me? -Decaling renders faster then the procedural materials right? So if I would paint ,for instance Tom, in color red in 3D-Painter he would render faster as if I would set his surface property-color from yellow to red, correct? So would I gain some substantial time saving effect in rendertimes in big chors/scenes this way? Would I have this effect as well, if I would use the toonshader? -then ,If I would like to have Tom shiny (reflective) in the painted/decaled version, I would have to make reflection maps for Tom, right? or could I combine the decals with surface properties like reflection or transparency as well? Thank you for some fundamental infos. ;>) Jake
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I'm sure there is. Some of those we can probably do right now... we just don't know how to do that already. Yesterday I also tried a cracked glass look but I didn't think it was worth posting. Patches will always be more powerful for getting splines into 3D space but RAL does have some nice uses. I think RAL would need a major rewrite to take advantage of anything much more significant and that'd be a particularly expensive endeavor given that few use it. I read a tech paper not long ago that suggests a way we could fake some of the more powerful RAL stuff by creating the framework ourselves and because with A:M we can often create our own solutions I may just give that a try. There is one aspect of the current RAL that keeps it from being of practical usage in my work and that is the ability to taper the ends of the line. But for this it's fairly easy to just change to patch geometry (see above example all the way to the right). The one tool that I've found to be of most use with RAL is Snap Group to Surface because with that we can get any and all of our splines to conform to an object's surface. The secret to Snap Group to Surface is Named Groups. Just name a group of splines, position it in front of the object you want to have the splines conform, right click and SGSNG! Once in place the easiest way to get tapered lines is to use Sweeper to add tapered geometry to those lines. Added: This isn't hair but follows the same principle of Geobased Hair. What I think is particularly interesting about it is how that we can decal objects with geometry rather than graphics. Note: I don't think we can Snap Group to Surface in a Chor. If we can then we can do those fancy things where objects can appear all over the surface of an object in a few short steps.
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I've thought of one more mistake I made... At 4:51 we see the SHIFT options panel for Bake Surface. I should have set "margins" to 0 so that the tile for each patch wasn't padded with an extra pixel. One pixel wasn't highly noticeable, but zero would have been correct.
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I'm am trying to create a cloud that resembles a cartoonish human face. I've attached a model with a sort of 'bubble-wrap' look and would like to know if there is a way to quickly give a nice a rounded shape to the whole model to which I can then manipulate points to define facial characteristics. I'm open to all suggestions, included starting from scratch with another approach to accomplish the same thing. Thanks. Clouds.mdl
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Done some more work on Ursa. Finished rigging his cloak (except the hood) and added his staff (The staff of the north). I set the star fragments in the end of the staff to glow and tried to do a render. But for some reason, even though the star is the only thing in the scene set to glow, A:M is making the fur trim of the cloak glow as well. I even went into the surface settings of the fur and set glow to off, and the group that the fur material is assigned to and set it's glow property to off and the fur is still glowing. Think it might be a bug.
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does anyone know of a good tutorial on using surface constraints. There is an expanation of how surface constraint are supposed to work in the AM help. I have looked at the explantion many times to see if I am missing anything and I still cant bring myself to experiment with the function. It is not clear in the example if the object I am constraining to a surface has any constrants on it too. Surface normals are mentioned but that is as far as it goes. It would be nice to make a chory action with a car driving over bump ground,
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Can someone help me understand the limitations of baking? I keep trying to bake a model and it just hangs at "Organizing Map Layout". How long should baking take on average? My model has crumple, eroded, and a simiont material.
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I'm losing chor constraints between models when I close...
rusty replied to rusty's topic in Animation:Master
I'm not sure I understand your question. Perhaps it is this: why am I attaching a head model to a body model? If so I'll give you the 'medium' answer: Writers and publishers won't pay much for book trailers and so I can't afford to build character models. I must instead use a set of 'virtual actors' from which clients must choose. If they want a custom character, it will cost them. Virtual actors are just bald un-textured heads fully rigged with expressions and flattening poses. Everything else is separate, prebuilt and 'snaps on' to the basic head. Everything below the neck is wardrobe: pre-built, 'Snap-on' outfits. The 'outfits' them selves have Snap-On texture decals and pose controlled additions. Shoes are also 'Snap-on'. Hair is the same--prebuilt hair-dos (all white, no color) with 'Snap-on' pre-developed colors. All interchangeable. Same with face maps: pre-developed face maps for color (white, tan, black, brown, yellow), scars and character age (how many wrinkles). Do to standard head construction you also get standard decaling ( or flattening) poses and therefore, standard mask shapes (granted not in all cases) and so almost all 'Snap-on' elements are interchangeable among all 'virtual actor models' though gender and head shape demand some separation. But I digress...There's a whole lot more beyond 'virtual actors' but this is a topic I can discuss all day. It would mean that an entire cast can be assembled in a day or two. I've been working on all this for 11 years. I'm close to having the processes all nailed down. All of it centered upon and using A:M. If I can't use AM there's a huge part of my life wasted. It makes me dizzy how much I depend on AM. Connecting the head to the "wardrobe" is one of the last things to nail down. r -
How do i control the direction of Snap Group to Surface?
Fuchur replied to robcat2075's topic in New Users
Very well done Bust just to mention it: "Ist es nicht wahr..." should be "Sollte es nicht so sein, dass..." One of the things that are a little harder to get because the term "Isn't it true..." is not used in that kind of fashion in German . Anyway, to answer it a little bit: As far as I understand it, "Snap Group to Surface" is based on the normal-direction (or the negative normal direction, depending what settings you set in the "CTRL + Snap-Group-To-Surface"-Dialog) of the patches in the group you want to snap to surface. See you *Fuchur* -
is there a way to duplicate a simple shape randomly across a surface?
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Well I am still very new to A:M but I have finished the workbook and practiced a little bit on my own but am still very new. Anyways...I am running the newest version which is version 13 point something, Well what my question is, Is how would I go about making a mirro or reflective surfae? Like say a typical mirror in a room or a mirrored reflection off of a car or sunglasses? Do I have to manually "Paste the mirrored image" over the surface? Oris there a way to get the computer to "know" that it is a mirrored surface that reflects? That way it will be better and more accurate with movements than if I did it manually. Because I really waana use this effect and make a character with sunglasses that reflect the landscape and more.
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Good morning, After extruding an eyebrow to give it depth and increased girth, how do you apply the same surface to the newly added control points and splines? It renders out as plain white. Thank you. Larry
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tried out surface constraint ..still have to figure out a few things but it works great [attachmentid=12630] this was done by just moving aiming bone in an action ...added some dynamic constraints to get some secondary action...just a bit too fast..but follows the surface here's the project [attachmentid=12632] wireframe view [attachmentid=12633] surface.mov surf.zip surf2.mov
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I'm working on this very abstracted female model. I'm beveling all the edges. The problem I'm having is that, due to the beveling, I've got some spline "rings" that are very close to each other, and they're creating subtle bands in the surface of the model. In the attached image, you see an example right where the left leg joins the torso. Is there anything I can do to avoid this? I am aiming to animate with this character. I guess I could get rid of it if I peaked everything, but then I don't think I'd be able to smoothly curve things when animating (right?).
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Hello AM, I explore AM's extremely efficient and powerful mapping system ! I have a question about surface displacement : The definition is not excellent and we often end up with a rather coarse physical aliasing if we approach the 3D model. Is there an option to achieve progressive aliasing depending on the distance to the camera? thanks in advance greetings
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I believe the trick there would be to lower the percentage of the decal to allow some of the underlying surface attributes to show through. For instance, I assume the decal is set to Color (as opposed to Specular, Diffuse, etc.). Setting that to 66% would allow most of the decal to appear while allowing some of the underlying surface through. This could be surface attributes or other decals layered on top of each other. A specular map for instance would allow you to determine what parts of the model are shiny and what are not. An ambiance intensity setting (even if only 5%) would allow you to brighten some areas while leaving the other parts of the surface alone. Layering is definitely a great way to get those surfaces where you want them. Here's a hastily put together example... not of praying mantis surfacing(!)... but just to show the effect of combining decals with surface attributes. In this case I just grabbed two random leopard skins from the internet and started layering. In the attached image I've used the same leopard image multiple times with different setups (displacement, color, etc.) but with none at 100% which allows. Ideally each of these images would be different to gain maximum advantage of that decal type. Way back in the day there use to be a nice tutorial on layering of decals but a quick search didn't turn it up. Aside: Most A:M Users tend to leave the roughness setting of a surface alone but I love to use a setting of 1 or 2 with either really small or huge scale to add noise to a texture. The roughness setting isn't like much because of the unrealistic patterns it produces at higher/default settings. My suggestion for using roughness? Don't use the default setting! In the case of a praying mantis I'd say we'd be looking for some translucency and other effects to give the appearance of healthy green leaves. (i.e. definitely NOT leopard spots!)
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By "particles" you mean hair? I can get hair toon lines by setting Toon in the Hair surface props. It doesn't seem to obey color and thickness unless those are set in the render settings. (Notice that toon lines only render if they have patches behind them.)
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If I craft a displacement map for a wrinkle line it has an unappealing grayness to it on an SSS surface
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I don't think Displacement maps work right in SSS. When this rectangular map is applied to a surface it seems that the 50% gray is being interpreted as negative displacement instead of zero. Ouch! Edit: this appears to be problem even without SSS Edit edit: It's a problem with PNG! If that decal is saved as a JPG the 50% displacement works correctly. Must be something to do with the weird way PNG makes its alpha channel.
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I was aware that that is the case for quick renders, but I haven't seen it in a full render. I also haven't checked earlier versions for quite a while. Here are some quotes from Yves from this post. I'm not sure if anything changed following that post. Considering the skin texture would be different on the lips, decals for the actual texture and one Group for the surface settings (SSS, etc) would be the way to go. I got some (what I think are) improvements by dinking with a few things. Here are some settings I've tried: Specular size: 3000 Specular intensity: 30 SSS: 3.9, 2.55, 1.68 (Skin1 settings multiplied by 3) I'm currently doing some flattening in order to paint the textures (I've been messing with 3DPaint and Krita along with a drawing tablet) and I've made the eyebrows sub-dermal. Hopefully, I'll have an improved render in a day or two.
