AVTPro

All the video tutorial files fit on the DVD, save one. The very last one from an extra set of tutorial on fine Tuning Strength Maps. The rig is looking good. I'm very happy and thankful. It should ship tomorrow on the 1st of Maya. I may trim the DVD down a bit more and see if I can shave some extra data down, while I double check (triple check at this point) and make the DVD cover. If you want both my DVD's at one time you can talk me about a bundle price. Eventually I will be sending the Skin Rig DVD and the Deformer Rig DVD to CafePress to handle shipping and distributions so the price will go. So order quickly if possible. I'm very happy to have an opportunity to share my techniques I have been using for several years in EIAS rigging. I am also very impress with the Strength Maps in EIAS. I worked on the beta and I know a good job was done. I forgot how much rigging in EIAS is, and I will try to get more rigging out

Thanks Steven, This DVD is only a "How-to". It's shows how to skin and rig a single mesh model. A character with clothes should be "easier" to skin and rig than a character who has to look right without clothes. You can hide a lot with clothes ;-) Ideally a character with clothes can be or maybe even "should be" a single mesh. I just show how to make the character look good, maintain volumes, add and subtract extra bones when needed. What you are talking about I believe is a specific "mocap" or pre-animated that can just be "plopped" in the scene. I think it's a GREAT idea. There may be something like it out already but 2D video people on a card (?). I would LOVE to develop a full EIAS "mocap" and robots DVD ;-) The focus of this DVD is based on feedback I have recieve from the first DVD and understanding of the client work . 1. Less Talking. I have to explain some things first, but I try to keep it moving. No big "artsy principle" lectures on anatomy. 2. No big complex automatic rigs. Yes, I can do an IK Spine, S-spine, and a FK spine, but people just want to move the character predictably. Clients aren't impressed with rigs, they just want the character to wave to the audience or pick up a box. 3. Keep it simple, get the job done. Let's get the character ready to animate and we can do complex stuff later. Yes, I still go over a lot of stuff, but in a shorter time. If I make a mistake I fix it and do it again so you can see it clearly. Many times in the DVD, make exits so if you have to "animate now" you can. The whole character is skinned before the rig is finished. So it's modular, skip to the section you need. I have felt clients frustration so many times that I did my best to produce the DVD in a way that avoid grey hair and bald spots.Rigging isn't "easy" but this EIAS rig is "easier".

Rich, Got your order. I love the message you sent. You are so funny Dude. LOL. If I could brag, I could brag about you. You make it so easy I don't have to. LOL. You got me. I'm only going to do something I am proud of. Not only am I proud of this work, but I feel I benefit from the experience. I found better solutions for rigging that I could use in my next project. Moreover, I am no longer "leary", cautious or concerned about EIAS "strength maps" being buggy. I can say with full confidence the EIAS v.8 strength maps work great and are easy to use. Yes, I still have feature requests, like numeric control of each vertex in a strength map, but that's just me. I like techie stuff. But, EIAS strengh is just fun, easy to use, interface, and pretty predictable. it shines with the new Blur map tools. All i have to say is, after you see the DVD, please don't tell any of my clients I can rig a full mesh character in two days. ;-)

Thanks Tomas. I got an inquiry and possible sale this morning and I just posted this. I have attempted to do this DVD twice before but it was always too complex. This 3rd time I have simple, fast and concrete solutions for complex rigging features. This is for the Architectect, and Mograph Designer as well as Animators. Sometimes as product designer just needs to have a character but doesn't need to spend years, months or weeks learning to rig. I did this read in 2 days. (but doesn't tell anyone I can rig that fast) I'm happy that I do not stick to one way of rigging because I found new cleaner, solution for rigging arms. Also I added a Rig setup video for animation curves window. I use Maya a lot but EIAS is still my main bread winner for projects. Thanks again, and Much Success with your new FilmMaking endeavors. AVT

Advanced Visualization Technology Productions (AVTPro) Alonzo Von Threet Hi Folx. I'm pleased announced I am doing the last recordings of a new tutorial DVD for a full skinned character in ElectricImage Animation System 8. This new DVD is different from my Deformer Rig DVD in that this time I am skinning a full character. The character is one full mesh. So the main focus is how to use the new Skinning Tools in ElectricImage. So we weight the vertices with Strength Maps. Strength Maps can be confusing and frustrating but a BREEZE when you learn how to apply the new tools in EIAS v8. This DVD is about Rigging Fast. Yes. I know I had so much info, and detail on the Deformer that this time I only discuss RIGGING and SKINNING and not so much principles. I try to keep most of the videos only 15 minutes each. So we dive in to getting a full skinned rig ready to ANIMATE for architural walkthrough or just product demonstrations. So if you only need the character walk, or wave for pick up a box for a few seconds during your MOGRAPH presentation this DVD is for you. Learn in two or 3 day what it took me two grey sideburns and a grey beard to master. ;-) I invite you to pre-order your DVD now via PayPal for $85. (same as the last DVD) AVTPro5@mac.com athreet@adelphia.net athreet@roadrunner.com Shipping date is May 1st. Thanks AVT .

Just a question. Brian Maffit is preparing photos for Richard's memorial. Does anyone from the old NY user group have photos of Richard? Maybe Lance Evans? Anyone? Any photos of the group would be great. Also, I got a new camera.

If you used EIAS and lived in the NYC area, you probably knew Richard Lainhart from the NYC ElectricImage/Aftereffects User Group. He has passed Dec. 30th 2011 due to complication surgery. I remember calling Richard frustrated because I couldn't get the dancing robot to work. He said "it had to be exact" Richard was so precise when it came to this technology. He was also a really good friend who trusted and empowered me. He will be missed. It was an honor being his friend. Rest in Peace Dear Friend and thanks for all your help. Alonzo

How much $$$ would it actually take for you to port it OSX 10.6. Craft Animation in Maya doesn't compare with Reelmotion inertia, and dynamic fluidity. It's a shame for anyone to keep it under wraps. You are a monster to tease us like that Blair it up on will send a million iRobot to your house to probe you for the code.

Super Duper Congratulation Rich!!! ;-)

More MDD test.

It help, but I am going to stick with PointOven. I got some strange character gibberish in the text field with the other app. Maya to EIAS via MDD. I'm still hashing out the workflow.

Is anyone using modomotion? I seem to be having a problem loading it, even though I downloaded PYTHON. the instruction say "-place the modomotion.py script somewhere in your script paths" I'm on OSX. I get an error even when I try to source it.

Did Felix see this yet? I want to see him jump for JOY !! :-)

This type of rigging is covered in my DVD. I think you just use effectors and then you can attach geometry to them for the deformations.

Good stuff, I use PointOven.

Hey Tomas, sorry for the slow response. I need to put notification on this site. Yes, I'm using PointOven to export from Maya to EIAS but I just realized that I haven't imported MDD into Maya. And I am haven't used PO on shattering effects. It can't bake objects that change point count.

That's pretty great Tomas. So if I introduce a wild card character it will read all the MDD files in my in my EI Socket and apply the corresponding MDD to the appropriately named child of the plug. very cool. Glad I ask. Thanks Tomas. Yes, then this is truly production worthy. I have down several test it's very clean. Softball http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150167201164108&oid=129350023766105&comments&ref=mf Baller http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150169399294108&oid=129350023766105&comments&ref=mf PaperChase http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150170027719108&oid=129350023766105&comments&ref=mf

I have a animation that has bunch of parts to it...like a shirt, head, arms shoes, Is possible to import all the MDD to each corresponding part or from the socket folder automatically?

I got the same time value error as Tomas did. I used a couple of layers. Interesting that ZB can import MDD as well. I did a softbody animation into EI from Maya and that worked but export out ZB into EI seem to have a problem. Here's my work files. https://files.me.com/avtpro5/wgzicm

BTW, i offer tech support with the purchases to help you get you up started with any rig project.

I do ;-) Sign on to paypal. Put in my athreet@adelphia.net or athreet@roadrunner.com or avtpro5@mac.com, Punch in $85 and your address and I will send it out today if you like. I pay $5.00 shipping UPS. If you want faster you have to pay for that part. It's just a simple DVD with lots of movies and tutorials.

The car looks great Rich. What's splitting?

Here's another one. I know I'm late but you know me...I like rigging. Only thing, I can't repeat all the steps but the gest of is this. With robots, you can use the geometry as part of rig. This will help with defeating cyclical hierarchies or parenting that loopback on themselves, which is not allowed. In the first example, if you attach the IK to the controller and the hand bone with geometry to the controller, then when the IK is pulled past the length of the arm, the hand separates from the arm (because the hand is connected to the controller). This is easy to avoid. All you do is not move the controller past the wrist. You can move the arm up and down with no problem without moving pass the wrist. The IK snaps straight before the controller will surpass the length of wrist and pull the hand with the controller, so it's very easy to control. It's a pet peeve of mine for wrist not to pull off the arms of a rig. So the hand can be parented to the wrist of the geometry and not the controller. However, the rotations from the parenting must be disabled in the link window. click me: Puma_Arm.prj.

There's probably a couple of nice ways to do it as Tomas and Ian suggested. I was thinking about EI rigging earlier today so I came in the forum and I thought this would be a quick brain teaser. 1. Make a two-bone chain (arm), from buttom up. 2. Make one bone (for hand), left to right. 3. Click end joint of arm and add IK. 4. Make Null Box (controller). 5. Position constraint hand and IK to Null Contoller. Moving controller passes no orientation on Hand.

Hi Joe, Tomas. It's not a Zb4 problem. It just looks like a few of the normals are reversed or flipped. It's not an uncommon 3D problem. As you mentioned, you don't have the lastest version of OBJ which has a feature to help with that issue. There still may be a way to fix the normals by recalculating the surface with exporting and reimporting the fact models directly from EIAS. I think Option click or a "forced correct normals" option might be available on import. I haven't used ZB4 in a while but I don't think it really likes or even uses triangles in ZB4. Use quads as much a possible and shy away from tris. Save the triangulation for the last import if possible. I'm guessing you triangulated in Obj/EI and not out of ZB? Unless you are using displacement maps I can't see a huge benefit to these triangles over quads. Keep your quad models and triangle in EIAS with Dicer or Encage. Last but not least, you can also use a normal averaging/smooth if you have other software that supports it but again, I believe just Exp/Imp from EI could force correct normals direction.