Anim8or Community

Ooh, ooh!  I love wishlists!  Even though I haven't had much of a chance to use Anim8or much recently .

OBJECT MODE:
Chamfer/Fillet - it's a pain to "harden" edges for subdivided models.  Sometimes, it's nigh impossible.  If Anim8or could do this automatically, it'd be incredible.  (If you don't know what this is, Steve, let me know)

Cut Surface - sort of like the Knife tool, but adaptable to follow the contours of the existing surface rather than just making cuts in the plane (poorly explained again - sorry)

Natural Merge Points - for a mirrored object, sometimes it's a pain to find a distance that all points will be merged at.  At other times, it's impossible to do them all at once because some areas have really high point density, while others don't.  It'd be so much nicer if Anim8or were able to recognize analogous points, and 99.99% of the time, it'd be exactly what the user wanted anyway.

Natural Bridge - along the same vein, but with bridging of objects.  I believe Wings3d has such a feature.

FIGURE MODE:
Insert Bone - for those times when you realize it would be so much more convenient to have a bone in a given location...

Painted Weights - as much as I love this tool, it's really hard to use because the brush paints everything behind it, thus requiring multiple revisions of a single area.

SEQUENCE MODE:
IK - I know it's in the works, but just saying .

Range of Motion Alteration - currently, the values can be changed, but the mode must be changed afterwards for them to be used.  If this could all occur in Sequence mode, it'd be nicer.

A brief list, but, I hope, realistic, and doable by Anim8or v.99.

All I can say is...THANK YOU!

Hello hello!  Some of you may remember my old models and desire to make some chains.  Thanks to Steve's latest script, I've tweaked an old model to better fit my original concept artwork and my vision.  Here's the original:



I don't really remember how long it took me to do those old chains with the interlocking links, which were copied, rotated, and pasted individually by hand.  I'm sure it was on the order of hours.  And now, thanks to the new spline script, within an hour I give you:



The original concept had a lot more chains, but it didn't have the skulls, so I had to cut out two of the large loop chains that I had planned on to accommodate his war trophies.  As you can see, the script creates a structure along a designated spline, but it still doesn't look much like a chain.  However, with the new spline tools that Steve has offered in the ASL, I hope someone will be able to create a script that will take a set of links and then concatenate them along a given spline, like so:



If anyone is able to do it, please please let me know .

Looking very nice so far, but right now, his tentacles sort of come off his body separate from one another.  Real octopi have a sort of webbing connecting them.  Right now, your topology is very simplistic, so the easiest way to do this would be to delete the face in between the extruded tentacles and merge the edges.  There are more complex methods, but that'd be the simplest, and given the current mesh structure, maybe the best.  I like what you've done with the tentacle positions - very expressive and dynamic.

ENSONIQ5:  Thanks.  I enjoyed your animation work as well .  Inspired me to have a hand at trying animation, but I'm keeping that project a secret for now  .

Headwax: Yup, foramen, or foramina for plural .  Thanks for the crit.  You're absolutely right.  I've given it some serious thought since I read your post a few days ago, and it really is sort of easier to model things perfect for now.  What I'm thinking about doing is completing the modeling, and then maybe porting it to ZBrush to add the sorts of imperfections you're talking about.  Thank you for the thought you put into your reply - it's much appreciated, and even if it seems like I'm not taking your crit, it's definitely been noted .

sciwizeh, flametiger74: Thanks - I'll be reworking the x-ray look as multiple materials since I don't believe it's possible to achieve it accurately with just one.  Stay tuned for that one - might be closer to the end of the project than the beginning.

enzo:  Thanks.  I'll be the first one to say that it's a WIP and definitely not gallery-worthy yet!  I'll try and work up a render that Steve can conisder adding.  I'd be embarrassed to even propose it at this point, though.  What would Steve think?  I've got an idea for a render that I will submit in the next month or so, hopefully .

And now, with apologies for the long wait due to my vacation, here are some updates!  As I said earlier, I'd be working on the spinal column.  It's just about finished, with one last big bone to model and a smaller appendage (the sacrum and the coccyx).  Vertebrae feel like the hardest things I've ever modeled.  It's way easier to do a head!  They're just oddly shaped little buggers and hard to get just right...still, I was extremely insistent on getting all the grooves and such modeled on every single one, so I spent a lot of polies on them:



And here's the first 24 of them linked up:



Poly count as of now, presubdivision: 28092 quads.  C&C welcome as always. 

Thanks for the new forum, Steve.  It's fantastic and much appreciated.

Wow, that was really, really well done!  Congrats on a really good job.  That's an amazing render time, too.  I don't think I could ever just let my comp render that long .