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I have been using v19 regularly because V19.5 crashes when I try rendering anything. I believe I sent you the specific files related to the crashing a while back and I think you passed them on to the programmer. I was just checking to see whether any changes had been implemented yet. Thanks!

Yes, it is the latest official release. I keep v19.0 installed for when I run into a problem that is peculiar to v19.5. If you find something that doesn't work in v19.5 try it in v19.0 and let us know either way.

Is AM V19.5b the most up to date version available? ( I am not referring to any versions still in Beta.)

Today at Live Answer Time we learned how to transfer a Pose from one model to another. Note: Late in the discussion we encountered the need to copy the edited CP weighting of one model into another. There is a menu item for that... Clone CP Weights: @ChuckGram @Roger

Rename it to exe. But be a little careful. It means the webserver does not recognize the format correctly.

I just noticed the give-away includes VUE itself, the landscape generator. That's a big deal. But I get a download that is an .xls file... a spreadsheet? Does one need MS Excel to use this?

Interesting final downloads... it is a 2 GB ".jpg" ;). Very likely you can rename it to exe or zip after download, so it is very interesting. Thank you very much for mentioning anyway. *Fuchur*

Get your show back on track with answers to your A:M questions at Live Answer Time at Noon CDT, Saturday May 11, 2024. Songwriter Irving "There's No Business Like Show Business" Berlin was born on this day in 1888.

Rob- Thanks for doing the testing. That is a very informative analysis of how the software emits sprites. Thanks!

I have often wondered if particle emission rates are per patch or per group. Your test project is a good chance to examine this. First, however, I'll note that the two squares in the Chor are not quite equal. DenseMesh is about 100 cm across while SimpleMesh is about 150cm across then scaled down to 62%. Scaling an object will scale the particles it emits so that may explain why Simple has sharper corners than Dense... If I edit the squares so that both are 100 cm across and both 100% scaled in the chor, they are starting to look much more similar... The emission rate in the Sprite Emitter is set to "1000"... It's possible that is so high that an overload of sprites is masking any difference between the two results. I'm going to scale that value down by adjusting the Emission rate in the Sprite System. This value is always a percentage, not a count. Why are there two controls for... the same thing? It is possible to have more than one "Sprite Emitter" as children of the "Sprite System". For example a fire material might have a flame sprite, a smoke sprite and a spark sprite, each with its peculiar settings for many of the parameters we see in "Sprite Emitter". Having these percentage settings in the "Sprite System" lets us uniformly scale the whole effect without needing to edit each emitter. With the emission rates scaled down to 1% we can observe the sprites being born... Frame 0: Frame 5 Frame 10: Frame 15: Frame 20: Frame 25: Even though DenseMesh has 25 times more patches than SimpleMesh, both seem to be putting out an equal number of particles. This is the opposite of what I expected. I thought the number of particles would increase with the number of patches. I thought the lumpy result your original PRJ had for SimpleMesh was because it had fewer sprites to blend together, but it was really because they were scaled smaller and perhaps had less overlap among the sprites. Thanks for inquiring, Tom!

Not Sure to mention it here, but it looks as if Eon Software decided to give the PlantFactory for free download! 🫠 https://gamefromscratch.com/e-on-vue-plantfactory-and-plantcatalog-now-free/

Running a test with the Sprites material and the question is, does the patch count effect the "look" of the material emissions? Here is a picture of two meshes (project attached) and the denser mesh seems to have a smoother looking cloud... It would seem that the more patches, the "busier" the picture would be but this is not the case.. Can anyone explain this phenomenon? (BTW- the picture is from 30 rendered.) CloudSpriteNewTests.prj CloudletDisc.tga CloudletDiscDarker2.tga

Those were very interesting cloud transformations! BTW- Here is Clouds.wmv a force blowing some of the sprite clouds away. This approach has possibilities...

Thanks for your declaration, Robcat! It seems like I need some more patch knowledge. It works fine now. 😊

Your original question... how to do these morphing clouds in the fashion of my more recent clouds made with noise combiners... I'll have to think about that more.

Yes, that was a cool particle project. I will have to play with the zipped sprite cloud file I just downloaded. Thank you

there's a zip with a PRJ in this thread https://forums.hash.com/topic/41565-cloud-fly-thru/?do=findComment&comment=369290 A sprite needs to be custom designed for each shot to appropriately represent the light/darkness/shadow direction that matches the lighting in the scene, so the sprite in that PRJ will not necessarily work for another scene. I recall we did a Live Answer Time where we got a force to blow particles away from a shape:

Very interesting......thank you How big are the sprites in that render? They appear to be rather large and shaded...

As a first gambit, recall this test from several years ago... Those clouds are modeled shapes that emit one layer of sprites on the first frame, which then live for the duration of the shot. The clouds could potentially be any shape. Since they are sprites one could add a force and turbulence that slowly blows then out of the sculpted shape. For getting into the shape, how about another shot with the force blowing in the opposite direction, then reversing the frames so that the sprites appear to arrive at the shape rather than leav it? Then edit the two renders together.

MadFoxResplining.mp4

I haven't tried it yet but try this... Delete all the poses and do a test render. Is the spline problem gone? If it is, reload, delete the poses one at a time and test render each version until the problem is gone. That will give a clue that a particular pose might be the problem.

I have made a model, a recomposed Thom model. After giving it the right relationships and decals, I came up to a rare fallout. One of the splines in the base model won't attach to eachother. Every time I save them and reload I get an error. The model apears in the model studio, but one spline falls to the buttom. I tried several times to save the model with "that spline" attached to the nose sector again, but for some reason it keeps slipping. When I tried to make a netrender job, the model slips again. The only way seems to be to correct the model again and render the avi in AM studio. 🤔 brainz06.mdl

Rob had come up with a cool way to make clouds very realistically tumble in the sky the way real clouds do. My question is, is it possible to create an animation whereby realistic looking clouds take the shape of something recognizable (like the profile of an animal.. a horse? ) and then tumble back into a wispy shape.... I myself am unaware how the clouds would be able to take the necessary shape but maybe someone else does? Tom

played with these 2 guys tonight