It really seems that this Moose just doesn't want to smoke. I haven't posted anything in a bit because I'm finding XSI on my machine quite slow and I've been trying to figure out the best way to see the animation that I'm working on ... my friend wotomoro tells me that my problem is an old graphics card, and it is old ... 4 years now. He says if I had a newer card with more GPUs I'd be able to see me animation almost in real time ... my problem is I don't have the money to buy a new graphics card ... This is a real catch 22 because I think the film would go along much faster if I were able to see my animation in XSI.

He did give me a trick to at least render quicker and in hidden line. There is an option in the viewport/camera menu to capture so, I've set up a camera turning off all the display of the chains, effectors, texture support and other support objects and set the type to hidden line with the hidden line option to use the color of the objects. When doing a capture you can go directly to QuickTime, this will reduce a step for me.

I still have the eyes to animate, as well as the fine tuning on the hands. I'm having a problem with the animation of the newspaper. THe moose is holding the newspaper until he drops it to pick up the phone and dial 911, I had tried to use constraints and then turn them off when he picks up the phone, but this isn't working well. Tomorrow I will turn off the constraints and just keyframe the newspaper.

I will have to tweak the animation of the legs in the animation editor, I didn't get the extreme movement I was hoping for.

If I didn't mention it, I'm leaving particles for later!

Soon I will post a link to the animation of the moose.