Cool! I like it. Nice work. Sounds like it'd be an interesting class.

It was a lot of fun, and the teacher is awesome.

The update makes it much smoother. I approve. Heh.

Very pretty and unique. I like the special effects, but your animation needs to be a lot smoother. If you sue the curve editor or keep your key frames simple- your animation can be a lot smoother. Did you use Biped inside the skin or was this a mesh animation?

I'm currently studied animation in £D studio Max at university. You'll hate the program in no time.

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No, I love 3ds Max! Most of this was not keyframed - it uses motion capture data recorded of my motions. The program to hate is not 3ds Max, but rather MotionBuilder, which has the most horrendous interface I have ever worked with in my life. Words cannot describe just how non-intuitive and backwards it is, nor how convoluted the pipeline is to get motion capture data actually onto your biped. Another problem is that our motion capture studio is the size of the average handicapped public restroom stall and has the absolute minimum number of cameras, so when I acted out the motions, I was very confined, and if I did something like lift my hand too far, the cameras would lose the sensor and in the animation the hand would fly off into space. This was my cleanest take.

I started out with the biped inside my mesh and I skinned it obsessively. I wanted it to be perfect. For some reason, when the motion capture data was put onto the character, all the bones ended up converted into helper objects, and some of my hard work at skinning seems to have been lost. Also, even though MotionBuilder specifically asks you if you want to keep inverse kinematics, and I specifically said yes, there are no inverse kinematics on the output from MotionBuilder. I could use rotation safely, but I could not move the hand and have the arm follow like it is supposed to.

I lived inside the curve editor. When you first get the motion capture data put onto the character, there are an extremely excessive amount of keyframes. I simplified it like crazy, but, as you say, it could use being simplified even more.

The only parts I keyframed by hand in this animation are the tail, antenna, left arm, and the fingers. Do they look okay?

At the beginning of the animation, Raq was going to climb down a wall like a gecko, but with that data, the hands for some reason spin around like Exorcist hands, and it was jerky overall. I fought with it in the curve editor for many hours before I finally decided it would be easier and look better to just keyframe them from scratch using my original model with working inverse kinematics. Since I am proud of Raq and how nicely I skinned him, I may just make that part for fun later on.

You would have been better off using bi-ped in the mesh rather then using this MotionBuilder. It has made your animation terribly jerky, which is a shame, because from a animtors point of view, we would have throught you didn't touch the curve editor when you have. For something this fantiful, you need a filmed referance, but not motion capture. this creature isn't really on the ground for a start and no one has it's build. same reason we do not sue mo-cap if we are animating anythng that is not very human, it's too jerky- your better off filming yourself doing what motions you can and refernacing the film as you move the model.

The hand and anteane are not bad at all, but they still seem stiff and the anteane looks very odd waving about. This is where you use the curve editor to fix them and make sure the bi-ped is on 'euluar' for a smoother animation curve. also- for the antenae, remember a basic prinicple of animation:

When the head moves, the anteane follow through afterwards with the same motion. it's a sense of follow through force. You sort of have it, but the anteane sometimes have their own motions going on. you need to decide if they have their own control, or if they are contolled by the head. If you e-mail me your model (with it's bi-ped) I may have a go at animating it and showing you some tips 9after my dealdine on firdya that is. ).

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Thanks, but that's okay. I understand what you are saying. Good luck with your deadlines!