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11/08/2016 16:09:27

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		Hi Muvizuers,

Another project I'm working on for an animal character. The basis is Beefy, but without his legs. In this walking example I've used a second standard character with the feet attached, because Beefy doesn't have sockets for his feet. He's walking in place with an animated ground and background. I am still experimenting with it, but I wanted to show what I am working on...

So Clay, maybe this is a work around for the legs for your idea too?

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11/08/2016 16:15:36

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		That looks AWESOME Ikes!

I notice there appears to be a joint at the lower jaw... are you planning to make his mouth move with keyframing?

I like the short legs... works well for this character!

For what it's worth... you basically have a T-rex there... a few differences in the model and longer legs and he be bitin' on all the other characters!

How did you create hands with claws? In fact the whole arm looks beefier than usual.. is that a stock arm? Or a model attached to something?

You realize, of course, that we want to hear all the detail about how you did this...


Also, I just want to thank you for posting this because it's been almost 24 hours since you posted anything that totally changed the way I understand Muvizu, and I was getting worried.



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edited by PatMarrNC on 11/08/2016
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11/08/2016 16:23:25

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		PatMarrNC wrote:
That looks AWESOME Ikes!

I notice there appears to be a joint at the lower jaw... are you planning to make his mouth move with keyframing?


For what it's worth... you basically have a T-rex there... a few differences in the model and longer legs and he be bitin' on all the other characters!

Also, I just want to thank you for posting this because it's been almost 24 hours since you posted anything that totally changed the way I understand Muvizu, and I was getting worried.


haha, Thanks again Pat! It takes time...

I did try to control his jaw, but you can't keyframe movement of attached meshes (another unfortunate shortcoming concerning attachments).
I do however have some other thoughts boiling for his jaw...
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11/08/2016 16:31:12

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		I modelled his hands myself and put it in the socket of his arm. They are of course static, so no finger movement. It's only hands, not the arm.

The eyes pupils are controlled by textures and his eye lids are also a mesh covering the eyes which visibility is controlled by directing.
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11/08/2016 16:42:55

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		ikes wrote:

I did try to control his jaw, but you can't keyframe movement of attached meshes (another unfortunate shortcoming concerning attachments).
I do however have some other thoughts boiling for his jaw...


yes, the jaw would have to be a separate model.... but... you know how to do that.... ;-) (and more)

I'm sure that whatever trick you have up your sleeve will be highly entertaining and a learning experience for all of us
(I'm looking forward to seeing it)

A note about the store:
The forum is on a learning explosion here, and even the most advanced people are learning new techniques every day. At the end of the explosion I think a bunch of us will have new expectations about what we're willing to pay for.

My suggestion is to hold off on posting progressive changes to the store. At some point you will have a new combination of traits that become your signature character. If you post a collection of interesting characters at a slightly higher price, it will be so compelling that you'll sell a lot more of that set.

The ultimate character (whatever its design) needs to have animatable eyes & mouth and respond reasonably well to most character actions. Once this gator can talk, he fits the bill.

At the end of it all, if the store has a gator with fixed mouth and one that can talk, nobody will download the earlier version
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11/08/2016 16:51:27

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		ikes wrote:
I modelled his hands myself and put it in the socket of his arm. They are of course static, so no finger movement. It's only hands, not the arm.

I'm impressed by how well it follows the movement of the original arm

The eyes pupils are controlled by textures and his eye lids are also a mesh covering the eyes which visibility is controlled by directing.


The pupil textures idea is downright inspired... I've managed to duplicate that one, and it is a highly reusable idea that opens up a lot of flexibility.. especially when you can't get enough transformation distance to use the standard Muvizu eyes!

It never occurred to me to animate by making a mesh visible/invisible!

You could use that same technique to open and close a small mouth or beak. Maybe position openbeak as a neck attachment and closedbeak as glasses, then toggle which one is visible to simulate movement. I guess a larger jaw like the gator's could be animated the same way. An advantage to doing it this way is that you wouldn't be fussing with alignment every time you tried to keyframe it. The models would always be positioned right... keyframes would only turn them on and off
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11/08/2016 17:11:12

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		PatMarrNC wrote:
You could use that same technique to open and close a small mouth or beak. Maybe position openbeak as a neck attachment and closedbeak as glasses, then toggle which one is visible to simulate movement. I guess a larger jaw like the gator's could be animated the same way. An advantage to doing it this way is that you wouldn't be fussing with alignment every time you tried to keyframe it. The models would always be positioned right... keyframes would only turn them on and off


I do this already with the latest bird model. It has an open and closed beak which you can turn on or off with keyframes. But with this long jaw it looks very jerky.
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11/08/2016 17:40:14

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		ikes wrote:
PatMarrNC wrote:
You could use that same technique to open and close a small mouth or beak. Maybe position openbeak as a neck attachment and closedbeak as glasses, then toggle which one is visible to simulate movement. I guess a larger jaw like the gator's could be animated the same way. An advantage to doing it this way is that you wouldn't be fussing with alignment every time you tried to keyframe it. The models would always be positioned right... keyframes would only turn them on and off


I do this already with the latest bird model. It has an open and closed beak which you can turn on or off with keyframes. But with this long jaw it looks very jerky.

Cool! Good to hear that my thinking is on track with what you're doing here!

Regarding this thread, I sent a support request to add the ability to put multiple attachments in the same socket, then toggle between them with keyframes. Whereas one toggle sequence may sometimes look jerky, a series of intermediate positions could look quite convincing

Unlike a lot of our requests that require new models or changes to the game infrastructure, this would just be a coding change. Instead of storing the attachment in a single variable, they could use an array variable
edited by PatMarrNC on 11/08/2016
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11/08/2016 18:31:17

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		Too bad you can't attach transparent meshes. You don't get the option on import to map the alpha to opacity. Then you could use transparent meshes and animate the textures.
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11/08/2016 19:14:48

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282 		Some idea for talking could be to attach the head mesh to the neck socket and the jaw to the hat or hair socket. Then you can direct the head movement to simulate talking. In this example I use the body of Beefy and the feet and head are attached to a standard man character.

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11/08/2016 19:19:19

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Stick wings on that thing and there's Dreeko's Dragon finally come to life! Awesome Ikes, awesome.
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11/08/2016 20:22:41

Rocque
Rocque
Posts: 359 		None of the images are showing up for me. Maybe I have too many windows open. I will check back later to see if others are having this problem.
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11/08/2016 20:25:21

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Rocque wrote:
None of the images are showing up for me. Maybe I have too many windows open. I will check back later to see if others are having this problem.

They're videos automatically embedded by the forum. I've sent in a bug report so hopefully it'll be fixed soon. (I suspect it's YouTube retiring the flash player in favour of HTML 5)
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gefmJrAoy9A
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAD8KWhkfEg
(Remove the space after the h for the links to both)
edited by MrDrWho13 on 11/08/2016
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11/08/2016 23:09:24

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		if dragons are anything like T-rex, they probably don't use their tiny hands much anyway... so you could always make them static models and use the arms for wings

(I'll be searching the actions for something that approximates flapping...)
edited by PatMarrNC on 11/08/2016
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11/08/2016 23:44:20

Rocque
Rocque
Posts: 359 		Thank you MDW13 I could see the videos and enjoyed them. I hope it is a bug and is fixed fast. I love the crocs. You are going to give us a lot of new items to use in the future. Now to get the imagination working.
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12/08/2016 01:12:41

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		ikes wrote:
Hi Muvizuers,

Another project I'm working on for an animal character. The basis is Beefy, but without his legs. In this walking example I've used a second standard character with the feet attached, because Beefy doesn't have sockets for his feet. He's walking in place with an animated ground and background. I am still experimenting with it, but I wanted to show what I am working on...

So Clay, maybe this is a work around for the legs for your idea too?




hmm...nice croc, once I put the finishing touches on my tropical birds I'll give that a shot, just want to get some more assets in my sales.
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12/08/2016 03:45:31

Rocque
Rocque
Posts: 359 		Hopefully everyone could put their links in here so I can view the videos. MDW13 had a way with the space in it between the http and the rest so that I could just copy and paste it. Or I can just wait until I am able to view them again.
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12/08/2016 05:21:22

mindiflyth
mindiflyth
Posts: 77 		Just amazing. I wouldn't even know this was a Muvizu character. He's so cute he looks like he could be in one of those morning shows for pre-school kids.

In this walking example I've used a second standard character with the feet attached, because Beefy doesn't have sockets for his feet.

Wait, a second character? So, there are two characters in that one gator skin?

In the one where he's talking and holding the bottle, I assume he's drinking Gatorade?
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12/08/2016 05:48:04

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		LOL! Gatorade! Good one, Mindiflyth!
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12/08/2016 05:55:29

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		ikes wrote:
Some idea for talking could be to attach the head mesh to the neck socket and the jaw to the hat or hair socket. Then you can direct the head movement to simulate talking. In this example I use the body of Beefy and the feet and head are attached to a standard man character.


I almost missed this because I thought it was a repeat of the walking video.... very clever Ikes! It's a good way to open and close the mouth without the need for a lot of keyframing!

Having a couple of different variations of the same character for the scenes that need to walk or talk whatever might be the way to use these ideas effectively. It doesn't really matter if the character can do everything ... as long as ONE of its versions can do what you need for each scene.
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