A:M Rendering
Rendering, Compositing and Special Effects
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99 topics in this forum
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I'm using A:M 18.0p SE3 on a Mac running OS 10.11.6 with an nVidia Geforce GT 750M. When rendering a choreography at Super35 res I'm able to render one frame at a time successfully, but while attempting to render multiple frames A:M consistently crashes. I've stopped many of the background processes on the computer to allocate as much processing power to A:M as I can, but the crashes still consistently occur (only when attempting to render multiple frames - the software successfully renders to first frame I've selected, then crashes). My current workaround is to stay at the computer and render one frame at a time, which does not cause the software to crash. Any idea w…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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- 1k views
I may not be asking this in the appropriate place, If sO I apologise. I have spent a long time rendering out .tga files from my current project. They were rendered at 1920 x 1060 and I am now trying to compile the frames in Final Cut Pro into the finished piece. Can anyone advise as to what video Codec to use to get the best quality at full registration ? The still frames rendered have no visual banding but, when I compile them in FCP, even in uncompressed form, ( all 508Mb for 3 seconds worth ) then banding is very noticeable. Is there acny way around this ? If I am asking in the wrong place, can anyone advise as to where to ask ? sincere…
Last reply by Darkwing, -
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- 1k views
Here's a current job running. Is this common? Instance 0 got started first and is doing something but Render Server doesn't seem to know. But instance 1 appears to be reporting in correctly.
Last reply by HomeSlice, -
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As far as I know, you need to use multi pass to get OpenEXR renders to contain most buffers, including the depth buffer. Or is there some way to use regular render and still get a depth buffer? It can't be a "normalized" depth buffer like the 8-bit renders get with the depth buffer switch ON (because that won't work with fakeAO, AFAIK)
Last reply by NancyGormezano, -
- 4 replies
- 1.6k views
Tried to search but the forum errors because it's a 3 letter word..... My own trial and error attempts have not produced what I expected (ie I am trying to 'hide' the scintillation on the ocean waves in the distance in my animation but I do not want to obscure anything else - ie the sky..... Cheers
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 4 replies
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Hey all, has anyone seen anything like this? Did a search, but the closest thing I could find was material displacement, and I don't think this is that, but you judge. Below is the view from the camera Whereas, this is the actual render Having a hard time figuring out why the "wall" is further out in the render than in the camera preview. Using "use camera settings" in Tools/Options/render. Any ideas? Thanks, Rich
Last reply by Rodney, -
- 4 replies
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Hi all, Working on a scene where some action has to happen, then a parcel of boulders have to fall onto a character. Having used newton sim in the past, I noticed that, no matter where I wanted the gravity sim to start, it always starts at frame 0. I've tried turning the falling objects off until I want them to fall, but always get a "Unsolvable Problem with shortcut to.." etc. error. I figure I'm missing something in the sim settings, but darned if I can figure where. Any help or pointers in the right direction would be appreciated. Thanks, Rich
Last reply by Darthlister, -
Hello Everyone, I am having a problem with rendering a scene at the correct length. I have a scene that is 14400 frames long, and I am rendering at 24 Frames Per Second. But I am getting a file that is a little over 8 minutes long when it should be 10 minutes. Does anyone have any experience in which render options I should choose to have the file rendered at the correct length? I have a clock in this scene, so it is important that it is the right length. Thanks in advance to all those who help. Andrew
Last reply by Andrew, -
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Hi Guys! I'm adjusting the fog distance in my chor's camera (including setting keyframes for both "start" and "end" distance). When trying to render via the netrender Server, these settings get ignored - the standard 200cm for start and 800cm for end appear. Is this a bug? I tried with v 16 and 18. Greetz, Elm.
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
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Hey all, Been away for a few months and seem to have completely forgotten how to create a gradient. I read the Tech Ref, but I'm not clear: When the techref mentions "measuring from the pivot", does that mean the center? Also, is it the center of the example sphere or the patch where the mat will be placed? For example, if I have a line of patches approx 50cm tall that I want to split between two textures, would the gradient read: Start X 0cm Y -25cm z 0cm End x 0cm y 25cm z 0cm This is kinda puzzling me. I've successfully created these in the past, but I winged it, and I'm trying to gain greater control over them. …
Last reply by Darthlister, -
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Is it possible to implement a model render on a transparent background in hash am?
Last reply by Userdelete, -
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I know a number of apps can load OpenEXR files but what current apps can load them and give individual access to the various buffers that one file might contain, such as the depth or normal or light buffers, much as the composite feature of A:M does Does anyone have After Effects CS3? Does it do that sort of thing? If there aren't apps that do that, is there a way to extract these buffers into separate files?
Last reply by MattWBradbury, -
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i´m working on my second rubberguy short right now, and i want to have a bullet flying through the air effecting those matrix-rings as in the movie... (you know, when you can see the air displaced by the bullet...) i´m using an animated reflective transparent perlin-combiner as material on the rings, that works pretty well so far.... my question is: how would make the rings scale up as the bullet flows through? and how would you fade them in and out? sure, i could animate that all by hand, but i´m pretty shure there´s a more elegant solution for that, like using constraints or something... thanks ahead... matrixtest.mov
Last reply by thefreshestever, -
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- 863 views
I need a brown dust sprite / brown smoke? I tried the dust from TAOAM but its not looking how I need it to. it would be a big help if someone has such a sprite. Thank you very much! Gene
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 3 replies
- 949 views
I am rendering a scene and want to render every third or fourth frame. Right now I'm just entering the frame numbers with commas between each in the custom frame options dialog box when rendering, but I feel that there was an easier method that I am forgetting. Is there a way to set a render so that it renders only every other frame or however you want? Also, as my reason for rendering this way is to get a choppy, "stop-motion" look to the animation, is it possible to accomplish this in a choreography when there are camera movements and I want the camera movement to be smooth while the models I am animating have the jerky stop-motion look?
Last reply by HomeSlice, -
- 3 replies
- 733 views
After importing Smoke2 as a Sprite it goes Material>Smoke2>Sprite Emitter>Sprite Emitter (2). Why are their two? I could not find an explanation in the Tech Manual.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 3 replies
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I've got a shot in my Nightcallers scene, where Midge lands at the front entrance and the doors open to reveal Biff and his Enslaver Ants. There are only a couple of lignts in the shot, with main light coming from a klieg, in fact I think it's the default rim light. Up to where the doors open, it renders fine, about two minutes/frame. But as soon as the door opens, the render slows almost to a stop, it says it's rendering the rim light's shadows, and it just hangs hangs hangs until I cancel the render. Even with a Shift-Q screen render, it just won't render if the doors are open; the info line says it's trying to render the rim's shadows. As an experiment I mad…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 1 follower
- 3 replies
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Testing out netrender on my animation machine. Ran just perfectly. Steve
Last reply by Shelton, -
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I find it interesting that the Rendering of light 'through' geometry (ie windows/doorways) is different between a Final Render in AM and a Final Render in Netrender (Netrender gets it right). In AM, the light pentrates the geometry. In Netrender it is properly blocked by Geometry. (17g 64bit) Cheers
Last reply by Fuchur, -
- 1 follower
- 3 replies
- 1.9k views
I was setting a test render with v18a and netrender. Simple spin animation and I trying to set/tell netrender to use plugin shaders. However, there is no selection for the shaders. Has this always been the case or am I missing something. Steve
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 3 replies
- 3.3k views
Since I have always constructed texture UV maps, I find myself in unsure waters with baking things. If I have a few darktree materials on a model and I bake textures. What will that do to the darktree textures. Will it form a decal. Will it do some other magical task. What's in it for the Baker William
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 3 replies
- 4k views
A:M has a camera post effect that will "burn" the current frame timecode into the rendered image, but on Mac you can't set the size of the effect. Here is a simple integer image sequence of 000-719 that may be added to a camera as a rotoscope if frame numbering other than what the "burn" effect can do is needed. It can be resized and moved to anywhere in the frame. I'll note that having an animated rotoscope in the frame seems to slow down real-time performance so you may want to turn it off until you render. counterTGAs.zip
Last reply by markw, -
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Hey all, has anyone seen the following errors when starting renderMess? followed by this one after hitting OK RenderServer is on Win10--both PCs I'm gettting this error constantly are Win7--the Win8 PC I also get it on but a restart will ofttimes fix it. It's been some time sine I ran Server/Mess, but I could've sworn that I was still running 10, but I'm not certain. Thanks, Rich
Last reply by Dylan Perry, -
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- 4.7k views
Surface Properties have two rarely noticed options: Average Normals, which when ON enables... Normal Weight 0% -100% This seems to control how the surface normal is interpolated from one spline to the next across a patch which affects shading and reflection results. Notice the difference in reflections and specular highlights in these three images. From left to right... Normal Weight 0%, 50 %, 100% OFF and 0% is the A:M default but ON and 50% is the result most like the intended spline shape and will give you smoothest results for most models.
Last reply by strato, -
- 3 replies
- 2.4k views
I'm toon rendering a model in a simple choreography with the character walking along the ground. How do I get the character's shadow to render on the ground plane? The character's "toon" settings are: Line color: dark gray line size: .8 Toon bias: 2 The ground's "toon" settings are: Line color: white line size: .8 Toon bias: 20 "shadows" are enabled in render settings.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 2 replies
- 815 views
OK Heres the deal , i have a top down view of a building and i have a little ball thats going to move through it , i need a line to follow it in a way similar to how a line follows a pencil sort of like is created at the center of the ball but does not move on its own accord, was wondering if any one had any ideas that could make this work ?
Last reply by jakerupert, -
- 2 replies
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Is it normal for A:M to grind to a crawl when working in a Chor using particle sprites? I'm not be able to scrub through the Chor timeline as normal in order to see how they are looking or how the animation timing is for the emitted particle sprites. I can step through the Chor a frame at a time but I have to wait for a couple of minutes before the each frame is displayed. This is happening with my old nemesis, the Rear Window set! I have deactivated most of the set and character to try and speed things up, which has at least got the wait between frames down from 4 minutes! As soon as I turn off "Show Particles/Hair" I can scrub through normally again. I don't t…
Last reply by markw, -
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In the "Heat Distortion" Thread I posted a sample project that uses a Material effector to change the refraction value of a small portion of a lumpy transparent tube. HeatDistortion.zip The idea is that where the refraction is greater than 1.0 the lumps will bend the light and distort the background seen through the object, creating something like the wavy distortion you seen in the air above a very hot object. You may also recall a similar tactic used by Jeff Lew in "Killer Bean 2" to make the "trail" of a bullet in the air visible. However the effect only appears properly in Progressive render, not Final renders. Steffen Gross has looked at the pr…
Last reply by johnl3d, -
- 2 replies
- 1.1k views
I'm doing a test render of my holiday animation and even at one pass, at half-size (360x180) each frame is taking around ten minutes. I'm only rendering every tenth frame and it looks like around 45 hours just for this test. And it *doesn't* have the snow falling, just some hair material and the shooting "roman candles". I need to look into this and then I'll be in touch with a couple of folks here who have render farms. I should also test the render times on the Mac as it's always rendered faster, but I'm a little leery that the Mac may render the particle systems differently. It has in the past but that's a few versions ago.
Last reply by Gerry, -
- 2 replies
- 1.4k views
Well I'm not sure if this is new ( on a Mac ) but I can now drag and drop a quicktime movie as is ( no tga stuff here ) into AM as a layer or roto and even a decal renders and player great !! at least so far so good I'm using the latest version love it ! j
Last reply by jimd, -
- 2 replies
- 1.7k views
Looking for advice/tute on animatable material to make the ash of a cigar 'burn'/'glow'. Cheers
Last reply by johnl3d, -
- 1 follower
- 2 replies
- 2.2k views
I am slightly confused. I am trying to get to grips with ambiance lighting and occlusion in A:M rendering. The problem isn’t abscense of options but the opposite: there is so many different places ambience parameters can be set, and it is not clear (to me anyhow) which of the similar labeled functions does what and what cancels each other out. Below is a collection of the possible settings I have found ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Camera: Global Ambiance (%) Camera/Render Options: Ambiance Occlusion (On/Off) Occlusion Sampling (%) Transparent AO (On/Off) Camera/Render Options: Plugin Shaders (On/Off) Ambiance Render Shader (shade…
Last reply by Tore, -
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- 1.8k views
http://aaa-studio.cz/furryballforum/viewto...f=18&t=4010 Any takers? I believe they pay.
Last reply by itsjustme, -
- 2 replies
- 2.4k views
Hello - I'm got a relatively simple humanoid character model that I want to render as basically flat black with some white specularity reflections, but I want it to have a more "matte" rendered look without the glossy look that specularity normally gives to the model. Any ideas how to accomplish this?
Last reply by cribbidaj, -
- 2 replies
- 1.3k views
Is there a way to achieve the "perspective" view of a model or scene in a choreography like one achieves by pressing the number pad 9 key in the modeling window?
Last reply by cribbidaj, -
- 2 replies
- 663 views
Mod note: this topic has been split off from a Live Answer Time discussion. Very cool class today! Here is a project addressing a possible refraction bug with two identical glass balls on a table with a decal. The glass materials are identical except one has refraction set to 1 and the other has refraction set to 1.5. The material with refraction at 1.5 is black... Not sure why that is happening... Is this a bug? Image for PRJ: RefractionTest.prj
Last reply by Tom, -
- 1 reply
- 988 views
Hey, all, delving into texturing and I've created a Color texture. I'm wondering since I've created this texture, would it be possible to create a displacement texture using the UV that was created for the Color texture? I say this as when I created the Color texture, I did a test and run kind of method (flatten, apply Decal for Color, not save Action). So, I'm almost done with the character and started to wonder about other possible decal textures - displacement, bump, etc. I'm wondering if there is a way to utilize what I've already done or would I have to start all over again and just create more decal images (one for all I suppose because, how would I determine how ma…
Last reply by ernesttx, -
- 1 reply
- 2k views
A:M has a format for importing/exporting camera data. For what it's worth, it seems to work like this... It is a text file that appears like this 30 16 1 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3.72529e-009 1 12 -0 100 0 0 2 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -1.11022e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 8.33262 100 0 0 3 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -1.66533e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 17.0863 100 0 0 4 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -2.77556e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 26.1848 100 0 0 5 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -2.22045e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 35.5286 100 0 0 6 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -2.22045e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 45 100 0 0 7 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 -1.11022e-016 3.72529e-009 1 12 54.4714 100 0 0 8 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3.72529e-009 1 12 63.8152 100 0 0 9 1 2 3 0 0…
Last reply by 3DArtZ, -
- 1 reply
- 1.3k views
Just goofing around here .....What I have is a clothsim where I have is several deflector half tubes spaced below the cloth and moving towards the camera, the cloth settles on them and I adj CS settings to try to get a bubbley effect ..a little jerky here and there ..the cloth is decaled with an image....with a little work on settings I think it could look nice.......... Lava.mp4
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 1 reply
- 1.4k views
Anyone using AM on Windows 8? I installed it on my crappy little Acer i5 2.1ghz with 4gb RAM and it is rendering 3 time faster than my Windows 7 Toshiba Qosmio i7 1.8ghz with 8gb RAM. I wouldn't have thought that the extra 0.3ghz processor speed would have made that much difference..... Cheers
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 1 reply
- 1.6k views
This is from a production design commentary on one the the Mad Men DVDs, a series I'm only now getting around to watching. Their premise is that the series is set in the early 60's so they want period furniture on their sets. They found these secretarial desks and ordered them in beige because they wanted them to appear not too extravagant. To make the beige panels photograph more interestingly, however, they put a larger than normal desktop on them so it would extend over the sides and cast a shadow (two really ifyou look close), breaking up the color without explicitly adding another color to the object. I also think the overhanging shadow gives a depth c…
Last reply by John Bigboote, -
- 1 reply
- 4.5k views
Anyone else get these unusual render frames... I left my PC(nothing else running) to render overnight and saw I have some frames that take unusually long... 5 hours 34 minutes when the frame before was 2min20??? A:M V18.0G 64 bit... using SSS hair.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 0 replies
- 877 views
Is it possible to copy the settings from one of my older projects into a new project Have a new project where that was tracked in PFHoe and, I could not get the ground to have shadows on it. I imported a 4x4 grid that I used many times before but still can not get shadows. So I found one older proj. that does work, Thus my question. Can the Grid settings from the old Proj., or Chor., be imported to the new grid?
Last reply by Walter Baker, -
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- 1.4k views
Staging and Composition probably should have a forum area of its own but perhaps a separate forum isn't strictly needed. Discussion of these two themes is certainly encouraged and insight into them by practitioners of the craft is always appreciated. There are a lot of similar concepts in 3D staging and composition to photography, filmmaking, illustration... carpentry.... flower arrangement... Staging and Composition can be found everywhere. And what can be applied appropriately can enhance what we produce in CG. Here is an article from Videomaker.com that proposes to set up standing sets for use with live action filmmaking. The concepts found in these fiv…
Last reply by Rodney, -
- 0 replies
- 894 views
Jody (aka MMZ Timelord) has been setting up a render farm and we did a test shot for Nightcallers that came out great. I'd recommend his help just on this basis because it went so well. Not posting it because the flame effect needs some serious tweaking but once all the tech stuff is managed and we do another render I'll be posting.
Last reply by Gerry, -
- 0 replies
- 1.1k views
Hey Folks I have an old model that I build a ways back in v14c of a c-130 aircraft ....... I'm trying to get it to leave a smoke trail as it goes along a path in a chor. I had it working in 14c back in the day but I am having problems in 64b AM 16b on windows 7 64 bit......when I put it in a new chor alone on a path it works fine but when I bring it into another chor..to be specific the chor used in the "rear window" group project started by robcat ..it does not emit sprites... I want to use this c 130 in a flyover scene .....with the smoke trail behind it...now for more detail.....the 4 engines on the c 130 are brought into the chor as action objects ...... and firs…
Last reply by Kamikaze, -
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- 1.9k views
Something in an old project doesn't work right in NetRender so I'm running three A:Ms to do it instead...
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 0 replies
- 1.8k views
Hi Guest Returning User, The death of Quicktime is a problem. One solution is to render to an image sequence of TGA or JPG and use an 3rd party video editing tool to compress that to a video format like MPG. In Render to file settings click to the far right of "Format" to get the drop down list of available formats you can save in. AVI is a video format you can still render to in A:M but it is poor and I don't recommend it. If you merely need to watch your animation you can still load image sequences into A:M and it will play them if you have enough RAM.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 0 replies
- 1.3k views
Last reply by Rodney,
