FYI, from a long-time lurker...
Surreal places is gone, but they do have an archive site (not the wayback machine). Loads faster, but has popup ads (no bad stuff, just annoying).

http://surreal-archives.50megs.com/tutorial/tutorial.html

better late than never I guess.
Ken

Best bet in this case is to group the Skeleton and Mesh together, then dupe it... sounds a little wierd, but it works... Ken

A point to make when Duping w/Symmetry... DO NOT have a constraint set for the parent bone of the sequence you are duping. This just rotates the sequence to the limits of the constraints. EX: If you are copying the arm, and the shoulder is the parent bone, then remove the constraint from the shoulder bone and dupe w/symmetry. Found this out the hard way. Ken

Mark, God don't I know it... I've had C3 since beta and still find new things every now and again... (like the Rotation point a few posts down) Nick, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! You've just saved me a little more time... and when I get C4 I'll run a test and upload the anim when I'm done. I'm finding more and more to like about 4 and when I get it, I might actually be able to realize a few ideas that just didn't pan out in 3. On a sad note (OT), most of the prelim work done for my little animation (.car files with the prelim animations) were destroyed when my computer bit the dust... I'm back now, but with a slower machine, and not as much drive space. I've restored the character files for the animation from backup CDs, but have to do the tedious re-animation procedure... this is why I hope that the new IK lives up to the hype from the site... It'll make the movement seem a little more natural... and it'll be faster than posing joint by joint. Thanks again, guys! Ken

Darnnit all.... Oh, well... I've had the constraints saved for a while now and to put the pieces back together in one model would just requires an export to OBJ and then import as a single mesh. Had to ask, I guess... Ken

Just an FYI, I got a call from Bob at Eovia (cause Element 5 screwed up my e-mail addy) asking about my t-shirt size... must mean that they're getting close.... Maybe not... Ken

*Zhann - we have something similar here, Nick's Liquor with Hiram's Guns Shop right out back... Kinda makes you think... *Drac - Where DO you find this stuff... or do you just have TOO much time on your hands? *xenic - Smack HEY, I'm eating here! Ken

Daigoro,
See above. And I may do a little animation along with it, but we'll see. I may not even make the entry date, but I'm going to have fun with it while I can.

Falcon,
Total VM. I had a bear of time to get it done. I even modelled the lines in his face as I just couldn't get a bump map to do it... I tried though.

Beetle-car,
Alas, a traditional tutorial would not be something that I could do. You see I didn't use the traditional method of box modelling. Rather, I booleaned 4 spheres to create the head and nose, then started pulling vertices around until I got what I wanted. I may have a few words to say about modelling face lines, but that is rather boring, and in most cases tends to add a lot to the poly count. In this case the whole thing is a low poly model, including the above new shot of his body. Still have a lot to go, but I guess it's a start.

Some cred to the right folks...
Thanks Litst for the eye shader. I don't think this guy'd be believable without that.
To the guys who share the Wings3D forum, for letting me lurk and learn that I can't model that way... Maybe someday...
And let's not forget Kix for Modding this forum... Haven't heard from him in a while...

Ken

Dex, On the object property panel, select "Backfaces: Show" not the default smart faces. This will make the object show up correctly in the display... Worked for me! Ken

Blue and todd, The interface in Multimorph is pretty simplistic. You create the morphs from an original and set them in a group to the side (hide them or otherwise). You then add a modifier to the original object that targets the group of morphs. The morph targets then become sliders that range from -3 to +3 (+1 being the morph iteslf). If you exceed +1 or go into -'ve numbers, the modifier exagerates the morph which can get really cool. I love the fact that the modifier exagerates the morphs you create, just like other morphing software (like in Poser). The interface is really easy to understand, and can be expanded up to however many you need. Each target group can hold 10 morphs, so if you animate a face you shouldn't need more than 2 or 3 groups. What I don't like are things that this software can't account for. The morphing process is perfect, IF YOU KNOW HOW YOU ARE GOING TO MOVE THE FACE. In my case I had to rebuild the morphs because I needed to add the teeth and gums to the morphs. This allowed me to maintain a realistic Phenome with teeth (but no tongue, not in public at any rate... ;] ). The keyframins is done just like anything else in CS, so you have to be careful otherwise you have a couple of different morphs vying for attention (CS has a habit of doing wierd things if you don't keyframe correctly). There aren't really any things that I don't like about this plug in, though. It takes a bit of time to get your own naming conventions down and if you are doing facial animation you may want to do a bit of 'net treading to find out about pheomes and such. Also, if you are going to lipsync stuff, get used to creating and using "dope sheets" to set up for accurate keyframes. Magpie is a good way to start, but it can be a bit confusing at first. Any other questions... Ken

Mateo, There are 12 total morphs for this face. The clip only used 3 of them... The closed mouth, the "Oh" and the "Wha" phenomes. I modelled each of them from the original face design. It would have been comprehensive enough to do a fairly sizable dialogue bit... had it survived. Now I have to remodel the morphs from the original saved design... no small feat.... Ken

Boy, do I feel old... but you're only as young as you feel... The movie called them "Recognizers" and they were the flying craft of the MCP (or Master Control Program). Basically the equivalent of helicopter recon vehicles... Ken

Sorry for the late response, but ebot seems to have missed me on the thread.... Chuck, What I mean is that you can use the alpha to cut the image of the reflected sphere into the on with the rectangle not rendered... but bluetone's suggestion with Premiere works as well... and yes, blue, premiere can do that as well. Ken

Chuck,
A tedious way of doing this is to do 2 renders.

The first is the full scene and will include all reflections...

The second is the alpha render and will include only those objects that you want to have an alpha channel...

Take the alpha from the second and transpose to the first image (overwrite or delete the old alpha).

This should get you what you want. It IS tedious, but it will work.
Edit: I just noticed the full comment in the post. You have to move more than just the alpha, but if you have (and know how to use) PS or PSP you should have no problem with the compositing.
Ken

Message edited on: 06/28/2004 11:12