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.

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?

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.

PatMarrNC wrote:


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.

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 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.

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...

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.