I've recently been introduced to Apprentice courtesy of 3DWorld mag, but am having some trouble with a tutorial featured in issue 30. Basically I cant even start the tut.

In the read me first files that come with the tut it says that some desks and custom operators have to be installed first. Very clear instructions for doing this are provide which I have followed, but when I open up the backstage.hip file (the first file of the tut) I'm just presented with an empty screen.

Obviously I've done something wrong - can anyone help.

Cheers in advance.

After loading the file, try going under the “Desktop” menu and choose “Build”

If you're using Winzip to unzip the hoodnik files this might cause the problem.

Ideally you should try to extract the files using command line tools gzip and tar in that order (a copy of gzip is available in the Houdini install directory/bin) however try winrar

http://www.rarlab.com/ [rarlab.com]

Which issue of 3D WOrld had the Hoodnik tutorials. Did it go over the preparing for the facial animation and then the facial blending?
I have been trying to figure out how to set up point groups and follow along with the tutorials
Thanks

I've just dug out issue 30 of the mag again (forgot what the tut was about it was so long ago). In retrospect it doesn't really go into much detail, as it only serves as an intoduction into finding your way around the animation interface for the face and how to rig/setup the legs. There isnt anything on facial setup.

Have you seen the tutorials (and scene files) in the html help of the latest 6.1 version though. There is one on facial setup using the Wire Deformer - might be worth a look if you haven't already seen it.