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Installers: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit Intel Mac v19.0 Intel Mac SSE4.2 v19.0 SDK UpDate Change Log: Fixed All: 0006942 Audio in Chor doesn't play Fixed All: 0006941 Crash on Decal scaling New All: for chor new entry in the menu -> "Bake and Remove Bullet Constraints" bake simulation data and remove than the Bullet Constraints from the models If the Shift key is hold while clicking this entry, a simulation run is first done for all Bullet Constraints New All: for objects new entry in the menu -> "Reset Main Bone", set the main model bone back to the default values (helpfull for simulation with bullet constraint, if the main bone not at default , unexpected behavior can occur) Fixed All: 0006934 Bullet "Bounce" parameter has no effect Fixed All: 0006938 Bullet simulates with strange results Fixed All: 0006820 Specular highlights not working on transparent surface. Fixed All: 0006931 Magnet Mode distance handles disappear Fixed All: 0006935 Rotoscope disappears if resized Fixed All: 0006933 32 bit version crashes Fixed All: 0006928 AI-Wizard crashes A:M Fixed All: 0006932 Explode/Rebuild doesn't work Fixed All: 0006937 Crash on adding Null Fixed All: 0006936 Crash on Save Fixed All: 0006895 Depth of field doesn't work Fixed All: 006894 Scale keys lost after save Fixed All: 0006914 NetRender: Corrupted surface on first frames Fixed All: 0006927 Final render darker than previous versions Fixed All: 0006926 Decal Image name lost after adding non-loca material. Fixed All: 006921 Crash on dragging Groups in PWS Fixed All: 0006919 Crash after selecting CPs Fixed All: 0006912 Netrender: Can't expand "Time" Column Fixed All: 0006913 NetRender: Disabled slave Prgress precent freezes Fixed All: 0006925 endless loop for complex undoing operations Fixed All: 0006920 Pose slider made by Push_CPs doesn't work Fixed All: 0006855 Soft shadows not soft Fixed All: 0006917 Reordering Groups after making keyframes in Chor causes crash 11 Fixed All: 0006922 Substeps for frame render is always 0:0... Fixed All: 0006811 incorrect real-time and progressive renders on particle image sequences New All It's now possible to show in which group a cp is in.For existing installations the button needs to be add manually. Add the button Tools->Customize->Commands->Manipulator -> "Show Groups, where the CP is included" to the toolbar, or "Reset Toolbars" For new installations it's default in the manipulator toolbar. Works only for single selected cp's. OSX latest supported version is OSX 10.13.6, because my mac can't be updated to a newer OSX version

Rob your the best!!! I'll check these out. Rusty An ad for my scifi books I made in AM. ExplorerTwoAd.mp4

Hi Robcat, You have always been very helpful. It's too late for the contest, but it just so happens that my project involves a model of a plane.

I decided to hold off on the laptop, but have been working to install Windows on my Mac via Boot Camp today. A much easier process than the one I remember from the olden days (which involved burning an install disc and lots of hoops to jump through.) Everything seems to be fine, so far. I've set up a Dropbox folder that I can use to share files with my Mac and I think it'll be good for my productivity to have a kind of distraction free workspace when I'm working in A:M.

Testing out the Mac version of the MatCap shader (thanks to Elm & Steffen!) Forgot how much fun it was to play with...

This question came up in Live Answer Time today and I thought I would post the official word from Hash (link is to store page): Can A:M use multiple cores? A:M is currently not fully multi-core-optimized. However A:M is able through Netrender (included for free in v16.0 and up) to use multiple cores for rendering.  OpenMP is used to utilize multiple cores for several operations. More operations are altered to use multiple cores in each update.  Since A:M is a rendering application, it is recommended to use a CPU as fast as possible to decrease rendering time. So if you have an 8 core system, base AM may not make full use of all 8 cores however if you pick up an additional 4 or 10 netrender nodes for the nominal cost of $10 or $15, you can utilize the other cores as background render nodes. So those of you contemplating Threadripper/Ryzen/Ryzen 3000 updates may find this useful info. *EDIT: I should add, most programs are not fully massively-threaded aware yet. I expect that to change over time, but for right now Netrender is the best way to make use of those extra cores.

A fine New Year to you all...

Hey everybody, I just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas with a small little card created in A:M :). Best regards, have a nice celebration and keep on splining *Fuchur*

Hello, There is better than Troer (more complete), There is the plugin of Nemyax for Blender, which converts any format that can be imported in Blender, to mdl :

https://zandoriastudios.com/tutorials/uv-tutorial/

i printed it out again with supports enabled and a size of about 7 cm x 3.5 cm x 6.5 cm. It already looks promising. printed with 300 micron layerheight in black pla on my replicator 2. not perfekt but pretty ok already. As you can see we have supports at the front at the nose and the mask. i'll break them away and see how it behaves. best regards *Fuchur*

An alternative to the standard chor paths... We can also use any spline from any model in the chor as your path. Create a new (empty) model and drag/drop that into the chor. Draw a spline and edit that path as desired in the Chor. A reason I prefer modeled paths is that they can be considerably more complex than standard Chor paths. Under the hood Chor paths are just specialized models with limited parameters.

Hit the "A" key and then draw your path. Hope that helps, Rusty. path_tool_example.mp4

Here is an example I did long ago that uses the path constraint to place bones along a spline. Then you just animate the points of the spline. TentacleSplineRingPath04.zip TentaclePathB.mp4

Here is the page with the link to the free version at the bottom of the page: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/fusion When exporting ("Deliver"), select the "Custom" tab and on the video section select a still image format to export. I've been using v14, but the current version is 15. I have the option to export as a TIF or JPEG2000 still...not sure what is currently available. Also, here are a few more options: Virtualdub (http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34)...it is Windows only, I think. VLC (https://www.isimonbrown.co.uk/vlc-export-frames/). Photoshop (https://ihatetomatoes.net/convert-video-image-sequence/) Hope that helps.

Great solution, Robert!

Here is a test implementation of David Simmons' suggestion of a spine switch. It's fussier to create than using a premade rig but once it works it does make for a better controlled spine... tubeFlip000.mp4

I got the TSM2 spine that i was trying yesterday at LAT to behave. Basically this is animation of a pelvis bone and a torso bone to get the flips going, The interpolation of the IK spine isn't as smooth as I hoped so i will look into other solutions. ButterFlip_12.mp4

I fully realize the reason for the snark but based on their paper these guys are doing it algorithmically. Something that an experienced A:M user could do in an hour (or more) will someday be done by anyone … in a few minutes … on their phones … just for lols

Y=30*GetTime

Well, I'd hold off on that. It's possible there are some problems with the store since Jason did some stuff n teh server.

All the subs are one-PC each

I just went to the store and selected Hash, Inc. Software (3). The center choice is the one I've always purchased.

I can confirm AM crash each time i import a video. On win10 64bits AM 19g. But you can import a sequence of images and use it in the layer. With Virtualdub2 you can import a vid and Export as an image sequence.

All it needed was the rotate offsets to be set to "0" on the BicepLeft bone's "Orient Like Control Bicept Hint Left" . Just turn off "Compensate Mode" when you apply that constraint. Hope that helps. Rig_update.prj

I'm wondering if there will be a new one. I'm constantly finding myself making or looking for new scenery, especially buildings. I for one, would be happy to contribute some models. Is there enough interest in the community?

There's a lunar eclipse going on now. Go out and look at the eclipse but remember to wear your moonglasses. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/dallas

I am a bit rusty at splining but it all comes back. I don't want any compensation, AM community has been really good to me and it is a way I can try to return the favor. There is still a good amount of content that has been contributed already, anything there feel free to toss in the dvd. I don't know if other contributors feel the same but might be worth reaching out. It is a healthy start. For distribution, why not an iso on the company store?

Fantastic! Once again,... the "persistent smarty-pants" comes to the rescue....😀 Many thanks!

Hello, everyone the store is in it's new home. https://www.hash.com/store we really https://store.hash.com

I think this one would be pretty much perfect for A:M: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834850877 But it costs $499. This is pretty good too and costs $389.99: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA0S7XB3555 Refurbished once like this one are pretty nice too (but this is not the most modern technique... I own a similar HP Elite Book 745 and it is pretty good too): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834269117R It costs $271.99. Still I do not really like buying refurbished stuff and it just is an older technique. I would not recommend going below those prices... everything that comes below that is just not meant to be used for graphic software. All of the above a AMD based. If you really want to go with Intel (especially for the Ryzen once there is no good reason for that if you ask me), you might consider one of those: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAEYA8M52010&ignorebbr=1 (costs $569.99) In general look for a laptop which includes an AMD A10-APU (or better), AMD Ryzen (close to anything will do here) or an Intel-Chip (i5, i7) but WITH a dedicated graphic card from Nvidia or AMD. The included graphics of Intel are really worse than anything else. Go with a SSD (not really important which one) and 8 GB of RAM (or more). Best regards *Fuchur*

Back in 2004 A:M Justin Barrett created a video tutorial set on facial animation in A:M. He has now re-released it on Youtube for free! Check it out! Thanks, Justin! Animate a Face

This year is already full of surprises, the first one being pointed out by Robert: my account is still active! And on top of that, I somehow remembered the password! Thanks to Robert for being willing to start this thread on my behalf. I hope that Animate a Face will still prove useful to the community!

See if you can't view the author of a 'Like' now.

Happy New Year!! <<<--- link to animation. Click on it to watch.

Wait, so what they're saying is you make a 3d model based on a subject in an image, rig it, weight it, texture it using the original photo as a reference and then make an animation out of it. That's amazing! Revolutionary! Its never been done before, Nobel prizes all around.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my fellow AM users.

Installers: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit Intel Mac v19.0 Intel Mac SSE4.2 v19.0 SDK UpDate Change Log: Breaking Change: sdk changed, external plugins must be recompiled Fixed All: 0006908: Layer are not visible in chor rendering with Render Lock Mode (green button) Fixed All: 0006899: View Undo, View Redo shortcuts not editable Fixed All: 0006906: Reordering Null in heirarchy causes crash Fixed All: 0006907: Adding one model to another model causes crash Fixed All: 0006904: Cloth object doublesizes and misses deflector objects Fixed All: 0006902: AppHang on Render Fixed All: 0006901: Five pointers and splines disappear Fixed All: 0006903: Duplicator wizard doesn't work. Fixed All: 0006900: Can't Undo after Lathe. Screen redraw stops working. Fixed All: 0006898: UV-Editor does not show any wireframes/CPs of mapped objects... Fixed All: 0006896: Distrotion box in Action causes crash Fixed All: 0006893: Multiple Models on Path not on path and wrong multiple For the second problem (does not insert choosen number of models) a new checkbox "Allow overlapping" is added , then the choosen number is always imported , otherwise a overlapping bbox check is done and this can reduce the number of imported models. Fixed All: 0006887: Pose Sliders do not show current value of Pose Fixed All: 0006888: Image sequence "Frame" settings are ignored Fixed All: 0006890: booleans broken in final render

How many polygones do you have in that model? In general you need low poly to even get anything out of it (otherwise even if it works its very likely close to unusable in A:M). In the case it is not low poly, you will need to retopology it (which is the feature "Stick to Surface" Robert is talking about. Best regards *Fuchur*

Welcome back, Warlock! If you just need the OBJ to be in a Chor and move around as solid object, don't import it into a model window, import as a Prop. That will import in a few seconds. If you really want to convert a polygon model to splines, because you really want to edit it as splines, A:M gets very slow at creating CPs once you get above a few thousand and most glamorous OBJs have many more vertices than that. It will be slow, but i have left OBJ imports to run overnight and it did finish eventually. New in version 19 is "Stick to Surface" that lets you draw new splines on the surface of a model or a Prop. You can quickly import an OBJ as a Prop then use it as your template to create a new, properly-splined A:M model.

You probably have noticed that Z-buffered Kleig light soft shadows (most of what we use) are not rendering soft. Shadow cast on Ground Plane... However, it turns out that models can shadow themselves correctly. So... Use the Grid wizard to add a flat plane to your model and give it a bone that is independent from everything else in your model. In the Chor, constrain that bone to the Ground, then set the Ground to OFF. You can scale that bone to scale the plane to be as large as you need. Shadow cast on plane that is part of model... Of course this won't work when you have more than one model in a chor. For that, take your project to V18 and render there.

What if my grandma got run over by a reindeer? I mean dealing with that could eat up a lot of my time.

Further dev on helmet hair with displacement map and "Westin" specular shader (lower right). The image map is Photoshop "noise" with a horizontal blur.

Guilting Tuesday

and https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/44-animated-gifs-r1102/

So now that the Animation Master forums is on a new server that supports the latest software! the forums will be always in the latest and greatest version. You can read more on what is coming for 4.4 below. https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/44-turbo-charging-loading-speeds-r1109/

To those of us in the US, Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi Edward! Mirror mode is for when you have made a model that is symmetrical on the X axis, like if you used Copy Flip Attach to make it. Turn this button on... and then when you move CPs on one side, the other side will move also.

Hey Wally, This is a common glitch in the Mac version. The workaround is to switch to another app and then back to A:M. I use CMD-TAB to open the app switcher and I usually go to Mail, since it's usually open and seems to work every time. Once I'm in Mail, I do the same thing to go back to A:M and you'll find that it's not greyed out anymore. I almost do it out of second nature these days.

YouTube it is. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/yLnrZywVnbA Sorry about the misfires... If anyone can provide a Mac-based workflow for reliably producing videos that will play in the forum -- much appreciated.