thefreshestever

nice... thanks. i guess i really can use it some day...

iknow i know, patience is not my strength... hmm, anyway, i want to use the time to learn as much about this rig as i can, so i´ll go on with that and replace it with new new one later, it´s a good practice for me to ge the weighting right and stuff... if i start to animate with this character, will my animation still work when i save a action and drag it on the new rigged model later? or is the update so comprehensive that things will mess up?

stupid me... jes, shure... but here´s another question: do you know what i have to do when i want to place my headbone a bit lower? for now the rotation-point of my headbone is a bit to high, looks strange on the neck when i move it a bit more extreme. i tried to move it, but then my head gets stretched and it doesn´t work anymore as it should... i guess i have to work on some constraints then after moving the headbone down, but i don´t know which ones...

i hope someone can tell me how to fix that without having to start with the installation (that would mean i have to reset all the compensates a second time ) my chest controller is very small and positioned at the neck, and the arms dont move with the chestdirection as squetchy sam does.. i don´t remember making any mistakes during the installation process, i always checked twice before i moved any bone...hmm, guess i must have made one anyhow at some point, otherwise the chestcontroller wouldn´t be placed at the neck... i posted some screenshots to make things clearer... thanks ahead...

i think it depends on the compexity of your model. in most cases cp-weighting is enough for my types of characters, i usually just add a few smartskins for the shoulders and some other tricky stuff... if you have a really complex model with muscle-movements or whatever i agree with the guys, start with fan bones, go over to weighting and then do smartskin...

jep... WORKS!!!! i´m so excited!!! squetchysquetchy!!! that´s so much fun... thanks for your help... almost done with resetting, only the face left, but i got to get some sleep in between... one question: some values were set to zero, do i have to recompensate them to zero again or is that not nescessary? i mean when thetre´s a value of 100 or 50 or whatever, i type in zero, hit compensate and then type in the original value again, when there was a value of zero, i typed in zero, hit compensate and typed in zero again.... was that right or stupid? will there be a plugin for the resetting within the next version? that would be awesome!

i agree... especially the head doesn´t need to have this high spline density... but except that, again: great work

hmm... i´ve no experience with photo-realistic renderings, the things i do are more cartoony... but what i miss in your pictures is field depth, i think that would do a lot... the second one looks a bit too bright for me and too even lightned, maybe you should reduce your fill-light a bit. the third one looks pretty realistic to me, with the reflections on the flooring etc, what i miss here is again field-depth... but nice work, keep on going...

all right, thanks... i´ll do that and let you know if it worked... looking forward to the new update

and another question: at which point should in reset compensates?

i just finishes mtpeaks step-by-step thread for the squetch rig posable installation wich is made unbelievable easy to understand, thanks for that... now my problem is after i finished the last step and auto-assigned my cps, everything looked fine in the modeling / bonesmode window... then i created a new action to test it, and the bones were placed different, the whole skeleton got bigger and deformed my character... i downloaded his latest version, called "Rig_Along_With_Me_Final_Update.zip" and replaced my install_rig.hxt file before i started. screenshots attached, anyone an idea what´s going on?

thanks to all for the probs... but i don´t think that i´m that good at animating and storytelling as i am at modeling, unfortunately... i like your ideas about adding some "black humor" (nice word-play here, he?) maybe kind of family-guy ill humor.. hey nancy: by the way, i am german if anyone has some great ideas don´t hesitate do write them down here, i´m looking forward to it.

fantastic... very stylish! would love to take a look at a shaded wireframe shot...

Hi again thefreshestever First, I forgot to say that I found your characters very well modeled, and look forward to seeing what you are going to do with the story/setting. I love Africa. I love the African people. I've been to Africa 4 times. And I'm also a birder - so the vulture (which is excellent) also jumped out at me. I love the landscape. I really hesitated to write what I did - because I too feel that a lot of things are taken too seriously. Since you are sort of new to the forum - you don't know that I can be really off the wall (and also unintentionally offend people). And I can be very outrageous at times (ok, a lot or most of the time), and some people won't like it. I find I have to tone myself down when posting or I might be banned for life. To maybe put it into perspective: I have found that it's usually ok to make fun of ourselves - or to poke fun at our own tribe, religion, country, family, mother. But if someone who we don't know from outside that tribe, country, religion, family makes fun, people quite often take offense. They could find it prejudiced, bigoted - even if that wasn't the intent, or feeling behind the work. It's up to you to decide if you want to take the chance. I am probably of a different generation than you (ok...I am an old person). The male character looks very much like a character resembling those from a "black face" minstrel show (very offensive to older african americans today if done by white folk) - or civil war slave depictions...or the illustrations in little black sambo - a childrens book. Or resembling a monkey ...I believe my older african american friends might take offense at your male character. But I really don't know. I think you have a great idea in showing it to your friends and asking their opinion - because their opinion would be more valid than my guessing. I would be curious to know what their parents thought of it as well. I truly hope I am wrong. I am a firm believer in comedy - It's much more preferable than taking one's self seriously. Nancy no problem nancy, everyone is allowed to say his opinion here. maybe you´re right about the age thing, i guess it really makes a difference if you ask younger or older people. you got me thinking... and thanks, i´m really glad you like my characters. by the way, my name is sebastian...

seriously, i have no idea... any suggestions? i don´t even know if the outfit of the girl fits to the half-naked guy, tribe-wise... the idea for that only came to me when asked myself: what kind of nature-shot can i do without having to populate it that much with grass and trees ... and the answer was africa... This is potentially touchy. The caricature nature of the characters might be a bit too stereotypic looking in an unflattering way. It also depends on your audience (is this for a class? private project ?). It also depends on your story. If you are not of african descent - you may end up offending those who are. It depends on whether you want to be sensitive to that. The physical exaggerated depiction of the man's face is probably the more potentially offensive. I am not of African descent. So my opinion is one of an outsider. The landscape reminds me of East Africa - particularly the savannah type areas - rift valley of Kenya, Tanzania. or even southern Africa areas of Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa. The loin cloth outfit of the guy could be from the bushmen (!kung or San bushmen) of southern africa (but without the neck rings) - the woman's headdress could be from western africa - but her top & skirt is not familiar to me as to where to suggest where it comes from. The San or !Kung bushmen women today typically cover up more (I believe). But I don't know what they really wear "when not being photographed". I find the masai (or maasai) tribe particularly interesting looking - they are found in Kenya in areas that look like your landscape. But they wear different, colorful outfits and probably would mean too much change for your characters. (do a google on masai and then look at images). The masai women would wear neck rings made of colorful beads. If this project is mainly for you as a learning experience - then don't worry about it. If it is to be shown to a class (of mixed cultures) or published elsewhere - you may want to research a bit more on how you want to caricature the people. This is only my opinion. thanks nancy, but isn´t caricature about stereotypics? what do you really mean with offensive? if i´d do a white character with a long big nose and stuff would you find it offensive? would you ask if he´s from the netherlands or belgium or from somewhere else? sorry, but i really can´t get your point... by the way, it´s for no one else than me, just trying to have some fun... don´t get me wrong, i really wasn´t thinking about that stuff @ all, but i think if anyone doesn´t, the world would be a better place... this really isn´t something serious, just comedy, everything should be allowed, or am i wrong? i have some african friends, maybe i should ask them what they think about that, but i can´t imagine they would have any problems with that kind of caricature, i´ll let you know if they do...

thanks.. seriously, i have no idea... any suggestions? i don´t even know if the outfit of the girl fits to the half-naked guy, tribe-wise... the idea for that only came to me when asked myself: what kind of nature-shot can i do without having to populate it that much with grass and trees ... and the answer was africa...

looks pretty good, i like fat cats, have 3 of them myself but if you ask me i would reduce the horizontal splines at the body a bit, seems a bit more than you need... i would eld up some splines from the face with hooks on the neck or something like that. greetz...

thanks, i´ll surely try to save grass population wherever i can, but i think the characters will walk a bit through the landscape, so there has to be good looking hair-grass everywhere near the camara-position, i guess i have to fiddle a bit yeah i did the dust foot step in the manual, for a little bit of dust that works pretty well, but when in try to cover a wide range of ground with it it doesn´t really look good, even if i add some extra turbulence etc... greets...

hi @ all, here are some screenshots, renderings and a short qt-movie from the actual project i´m working on. please tell me what you think about the characters, lightning, etc, i´m sure you can find some critical points i haven´t thought of yet. i have a few questions: 1. the forces setting: i want to have a slow breeze flowing through the grass and the tree... the movie is my very first attempt with forces, i know it´s much much too fast etc... but i was wondering if anyone of you could give ma advice about the settings on the force and the hair-materials. sure, i could figure it out by try and error, but maybe some of you guys figured some good settings out for the effect i want to achieve and i can save some hours of my precious time ... 2. rigging: i want to rig the characters with the squetchrig (would be my 2nd try, the first one didn´t really work out ) the question is if you guys who have experience with the squetchrig see any problems with the splineage of my characters, maybe there´s a splinering too much or too less to get good results... 3. the terrain: at the moment the terrain is´n very big (it seems bigger than it really is in the rendering), but i need to get it bigger. problem is that the grass population slows down my rendertimes enormous, the picture you see here took about 17 minutes (big render, 1024x768 with 16pass... think that´s ok, but if the terrain get´s much bigger it will be much slower too...) does anyone have some tips and tricks to improve the render times on big grass-populated landscapes? 4. dust on the ground: i tried to add some dust to the ground, that it looks more like a real savanna, i tried volumetrics (experimented with dust and mist, but couldn´t get them look good), i also tried out sprite-emitters, but i couldn´t get them slow enough in the movement... how would you do that? i can´t get no sleep anymore because of all this questions in my head, night by night im sitting on my couch with my macbook thinking: "let´s quickly try this one out before you go to sleep", and then i look at the time and it´s 4.30 am.... dammit! so pleeeease help me! thanks ahead to all... windtest.mov

There have been a lot of fixes and updates since that version...and I'm not sure I have that one anymore, I'd have to do some digging to see. It won't be very much longer until the next release, that one is going to make the rig stable for a long time (barring any problems that are found) and will allow me to put together an updated installation tutorial. There isn't a set timetable, but it will be done as quickly as free time permits. thanx, i´m really looking forward to it, you´ve done a really great job with that rig...

hello @ all... i´m trying to rig a character with the latest version of the squetch rig with the help of the video-tutorial... almost everything worked as in the video until i installed the rig, the bones that were displayed then were totally different ones than in the video, and i just couldn´t figure out which to hide and unhide before auto-assigning them... on the legs for example i saw many little bones instead of the thigh and the calf bone as shown in the video... i know there´s no updated tutorial yet, but is there any chance to get the squetchrig-version (04_25_2006) used in the tutorial? i think it would be much easier for me if i could follow the tut step by step for the first time, otherwise i guess my head will explode.. thanks...

are there already other models in your movie? very important stylewise, you don´t want to have your alien in a different style than the other models, the amount of detail in fact would matter... maybe you can draw the face a bit more detailed, and add a picture from front view too... all right, i have to party now , more tomorrow...

looks like much much work... i like the body, but i think the face is a bit more neat and funny than scary, maybe it´s the big eyes... i don´t have the time to model the whole thing for you, but maybe i can help with a few tricky bodyparts, i´m not that bad at modeling...

alien is not very specified, no one knows if aliens exist an how they look... no, just kidding, but i think it helps if you post a picture here of something similar to what you´re looking for...

dammit... so simple... i´m asking myself why i didn´t think of that by my own... i tried so much, defined all my groups new etc... but the deflectorgroup was always beneath the bodygroup... i mean i didn´t know that this is relevant, but i could have tried this... thanks, you saved my day!!!!