CompuServe Messages

Hi Michael, I've sent you an example skinned & animated cereal box project via E-Mail. Don't expect any impressive animation here, I just moved through a few morph targets. But, do note the following while examining the Shaper, Lofter, Editor & Keyframer contents : 1) Note that the Deform/Fit Shapes have enough vertices for flexibility in deforming the morph targets, but not too many, which can screw up the surface continuity & shading. Note that shape & path STEPS = 0. 2) Zoom-in on the corners of the shapes and note 3 vertices placed very close together. This gives localized control over the sharpness of the corners, rather than using the TENSION parameter as someone here suggested, which will likely cause global creasing that you probably don't want. Control points in close proximity will locally pull the skin surface closer to the control lattice. 3) Note that the mesh has regularly-spaced U&V lines which is ideal for this project, but the caps are a potential problem, due to the way 3DS caps the mesh, which also happens to be the control lattice. Since the uniform nature of the U&V matrix is disturbed across the surface of the caps, this can cause shading/smoothing flaws when deforming the co-planar caps. So, note how I've placed & spaced the vert's in the shapes….this helps with the capping. 4) Also, note that I've chosen to turn Cap Best ON, and Cap Once OFF, which will eliminate any shading irregularities due to the caps, in this case. Otherwise, you'd still have shading problems. This will take longer to render. 5) Note that Skin, materials, & any mapping (use any method, it doesn't matter) is applied to the POINTER cube. In the Skin dialog, the root morph target is defined. Control placement of any texture maps using the U&V scale and orientation parameters in the Materials Editor dialog, as the mapping coordinates will be tied to the spline surface parameter space (0.0-1.0). 6) Note that a B-Spline surface is chosen in the Skin dialog, with a smoothness setting of 40, and no tension or bias applied. Hope this helps. BILL