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Well here is the follow up to the previous animation Simple Pleasures For those having issues here is the Youtube link: MP4 version: Simplepleasures2.mp4

[Mod note: Don't miss the many excellent WIP images above this post!] Okay, it took me a while...I think I worked the kinks out. Here is a test render that I'll probably watch a thousand times and second guess most of what I did (1920x1080 MP4 H.264). It's a quick pan around the room....it looked correct on a few players like VLC and Windows Media Player, but one it was washed out (I'm assuming it was the color correction in that one...it's more geared to viewing EXR sequences). If it looks washed out to anyone, let me know. BreakRoomFlyThrough_04_10_2025.mp4

I was nearing the end of my third and final year in Illustration when my teacher approached me with a volunteer assignment outside the usual class projects. In Oakville, there was a summer festival that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s called the Oakville Waterfront Festival. It was a major event at the time, featuring live music, games, food, and craft shows. The previous year, my teacher’s studio had illustrated the festival poster, which featured a 3D rendering of an ice cream cone. Having seen what I was capable of modeling in A:M, he asked for my help in creating a 3D version of the festival’s beloved mascot, "Jake from the Lake." Over the next few weeks, I modeled Jake and his buddy, Fishy, and the rest is history. Below, you can see a screenshot of the final poster, along with the Photoshop revisions my teacher made, including the addition of the ice cream cone from the previous year. It was such an exciting time I had never seen my work in print like that before. The poster was displayed all over the city, featured in newspaper articles, and even printed large scale for bus shelter ads.

MONADA3_207_AlCHEM.mp4

Installers: Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit SDK: v19.5 SDK Change Log: Fixed 0007218: Gradient Materials not rendered with gradient Fixed 0007244: Bone positions corrupted on save and reload Changed: minidump files may have be greater, in this case please zip the dmp file before attaching to the bug report (command "zip -j9 dmp.zip *.dmp"shrinks the file up to 90%) Fixed 0007243: saving a project with relationships can corrupt projectfile Fixed 0007242: external modified decals not reloaded before final render Fixed 0007240: Constraints lost on close of Relationshipwindow close Fixed 0007238: PNG plugin bugs Fixed 0007237: Constrain cp motions during modelling rotations not working Fixed 0007234: Freeze after cancel load of missing asset Fixed 0007236: Freeze on missing asset Aslo bug 0007241 Fixed 0007232: Hair properties include several Toon Bias selections Fixed 0007235: Combiner not combining Updated For Security Reasons: External Libraries libpng bump to version 1.6.41 zlib bump to version 1.3 ziparchive bump to version 4.6.9 openexr bump to version 3.2 imath bump to version 3.2 jpeglib bump to version 0.9f

Stalled Trek: The City on the Edge of Foreclosure is on YouTube now! The last of the film festivals I submitted to is over, so I've finally set the movie free. 😀 You can see it on my YouTube channel here: Stalled Trek: The City on the Edge of Foreclosure

[MOD NOTE: Edward has temporarily taken his movie down while he enters it in festivals. Look for "Robo Strip Club" to return in the future!] Here it is! This is 10 yrs. of my life. (so THIS is why Pixar needs 300 people to make a film) Thank you robcat, fuchur & other AM forum gurus that helped me!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! A new time-lapse video to share. Many bowls of Lucky Charms were consumed in the making.. for reference purposes 😉

Installers: Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit Mac OS X 10.13.6 or earlier: Intel Mac v19.0 Intel Mac SSE4.2 SDK: v19.0 SDK UpDate Change Log: Fixed All 7081 PNG transparency not working Fixed All 7074 Chain of bones scales erratically Fixed All 7077 Bone color not displayed only OpenGL affected, not OpenGL3 (recommended to use this driver) Fixed All 7057 Crash during A:M Backup it should have now a better error message for this (both as messagebox and in the logfile), let me know if the crash still occur. Fixed All 7073 OBJ export or Prop import not working 5 point / hook export fixed Repeated decal export not fixable, due obj file format doesn't know anything about repeatable decals Fixed All 7075 5 point patches render with gaps Fixed All 6976 crash on Paste Mirror on a Pose Fixed All 7072 Progressive renders are blank Fixed All 7070 Shift-cursor key doesn't move rotoscope. Shift + Cursor moves now the rotoscope/bitmap 10 pixel Ctrl + Cursor scales around center Fixed All 7071 CFA creates unnecessary copies of Materials Fixed All 7062 Copying patches dosen't copy decals on patches Fixed All 7060 Copying a patch (only 1) with a decal does not copy the decal Fixed All 7054 Decal exporting A new menu entry for single stamps / a opened stamp view is added. "Render Stamp to File" This renders the actual stampview to file with a user defined resolution. If You start from the stamp entry in the PWS and the stampview isn't open, a new stamp view is opened. In the dialog , which opend after hit the menu entry, You can change the Path and Filename (the button on the right side) fileformat is selected trough the filename extension (supported OpenEXR, TGA, PNG and PSD) the "Width" and "Height" for the newly created file limited to 16384 x 16384 for Win64 version, 8192 x 8192 for the others the limitation is the result size, means a resolution from 32768 x 8192 is also possible. Warning: On the highest resolution around 14 Gigabyte is needed at the creation process. The width and height are always changed to a even size. (1025 becomes 1028 , always modulo 2) "Save layered" If this checkbox is checked, two layers are created, one for the decal self and one for the splines. For all formats ,excluding OpenEXR, in this case two files are created with the naming scheme "Filename"_Decal".Extension" and "Filename"_Splines".Extension" OpenExr is saved as one file with two layers. "Render with CP's" rendering also the CP's on the spline layer Fixed All 7061 Snap Group to Surface snaps to wrong surface. Fixed All 7068 Rename Bone renames wrong bone Fixed All 7066 Crash on Radiosity render Fixed All 7052 Environment Map materials not working Fixed All 7059 Tooltips only show for keyboard-shortcutted buttons Fixed All 7058 Progressive Render of shag crashes

Hello All, For about a mount plus I my real job has been taking over all of my time and I had some personal stuff too. I have fell behind on Animation Master stuff. I'm at work now and have a 4 hour drive back to my office. But I'm going to work through email and PM backlog tonight and tomorrow. I'm really sorry about not being around and I'm back at it

Hey yall! I've had some trouble uploading images to the forum and finally got around to starting my own html page on neocities: yopachi.neocities.org they give you 1gb of free website and it's super fun to make a simple page using LLM as a helper for the code. The site is just one page for now but I'll be adding my worthy splines are as I go. I even made an animated favicon! did you know you can animate favicons?

May you have a festive Ground Hog Day.

So...I think the Break Room is done now. I reworked everything and added a few things.

Installers: Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit SDK: v19.0 SDK UpDate 0007210: [Net Render] NetRender Crashes during startup (sgross) 0007216: [Interface] Clicking outside of Chor locks out Manipulators (sgross) 0007222: [Bones/Rigging] Deleting bone causes crash (sgross) 0007225: [_Other] Crash on v19 model load (sgross) 0007217: [_Other] Crash on load of old model (sgross) 0007214: [Interface] Accent color of Windows does not change window color of tiled windows in A:M (sgross) 0007213: [Particle Systems] Hair width over length is somehow repeated several times (sgross) 0007208: [Hair] Crash on reset of Hair Parameter (sgross) 0007137: [Dynamics] Dynamic Constraints broken (sgross) 0007203: [Net Render] NetRender nodes close with format error (sgross) 0007200: [Interface] NetRender interface spelling correction (sgross) 0007194: [Net Render] Actions render incorrectly in NetRender (sgross) 0007196: [Modeling] Crash on Copy of Groups (sgross) 0007195: [_Other] Crash after edit of Expression (sgross) 0007189: [Bones/Rigging] Crash on delete of multiple bones (sgross) 0007186: [Bones/Rigging] Path Constraint target list crash (sgross) 0007185: [Bones/Rigging] Bone name trouble (sgross) 0007184: [Bones/Rigging] Crash on Bone Drag (sgross) 0007162: [Rendering] Surface transparency causing Hair transparency (sgross) 0007188: [Sounds] Playing any audio in A:M sets system volume to zero (sgross) 0007175: [Plugins] Mirror Constraints not working? (sgross) 0007180: [_Other] Crash during Backup? (sgross) 0007181: [_Other] Crash on Revert (sgross) 0007179: [_Other] Crash while renaming Pose (sgross) 0007177: [Decaling] Crash while examining decals (sgross) 0007178: [_Other] Crash on PRJ close (sgross) 0007176: [Modeling] CopyFlipAttach adds unnecessary dot suffix to new names (sgross) 0007174: [_Other] Crash loading PRJ (sgross) 0007173: [Realtime] OpenGL3 Hair with textures drawn not correct (sgross) 0007172: [General] False rounding for float/double values (sgross) 0007171: [Realtime] OpenGL crash, if a scaled copy for the realtime texture needed (MipMap) (sgross) 0007166: [Sounds] Sound stops before end of play (sgross) 0007157: [Rendering] SSAO not working (sgross) 0007165: [Composite/Post Effects] Feature: allow Blur greater than 15 (sgross) 0007160: [Realtime] Fluid particle false shaded render after load (sgross) 0007159: [Rendering] Crash on render (sgross) 0007129: [_Other] v18 D Box PRJ no longer works (sgross) 0007155: [Rendering] Fluid Particles render as Camera Background color only (sgross) 0007154: [Particle Systems] Blobbies don't die, don't resize (sgross) 0007152: [Particle Systems] Can't Bake Blobbies? (sgross) 0007153: [_Other] Default Resolution in Camera settings: Change from VGA to HDTV - 720p... (sgross) 0007146: [Lighting] Use Front Realtime Light reverts to OFF after onscreen render (sgross) 0007142: [_Other] Reverting property in Chor doesn't * project (sgross) 0007147: [Materials] PRJ saves forces unwanted keys in Material instances (sgross) 0007148: [Rendering] Custom Frame list renders only first frame multiple times (sgross) 0007143: [Plugins] Simcloth doesn't simulate (sgross) 0007145: [Net Render] NetRender Memory Allocation Error (sgross) 0007144: [Images/Animations/Rotoscopes] EXR missing from allowed image import types (sgross) 0007139: [Rendering] Shaded/Wire Renders don't show "Show Grid" or Rotoscopes (sgross) 0007138: [Rendering] renders use CPU SSAO instead of GPU SSAO (sgross) 0007140: [Animation] Euler/Vector/Quat default selection not retained (sgross) 0007134: [Net Render] NetRender nodes get stuck on "Loading Frame" (sgross) 0007121: [Materials] Increase the viewport size of a material? (sgross) 0007151: [Particle Systems] Crash on change of Attribute to Combiner (sgross)

Hi Guys, I'm happy to share an animation I've been working on the past few months, I'll try to make a long story short... Since all this Covid 19 stuff things have been different, previously most of my spare time was spent working on fine art projects a lot of work I did preparing for art shows was put on hold and like many people it's been a stressful time. I guess psychologically the best way I've been able to deal with it has been to tap into my silly side and rekindle some of the things that inspired me in my younger years. Using Animation Master was one of those things, it was the first app that got me seriously into 3D and actually helped land me my first job out of college. I made a friend on this forum over 20 years ago (Bud) Mike Lium, we eventually lost touch and reconnected on Facebook even though I wasn't using A:M much or posted 3d stuff he was always a friend... always encouraged me and my art. These past couple months while working on this animation I couldn't wait to surprise him with it. Sadly I didn't finish it in time, and found out he passed away a few weeks ago. So I dedicate this to Bud. Mike https://vimeo.com/417019628

If you ever wondered why "likes" disappeared from the forum... it was my fault. I figured they reduced actual commenting and thought that getting rid of the "like" button might encourage more responses to posts. I still figure that is true but since removing the option to "like" things didn't increase the commenting, we might as well have them back. Thanks to Rodney for trying my experiment and for undoing it as well! I wonder if anyone will like this post...

Update of flame simulation i did long ago, but I can't find the old long ago thread!

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

not mobius mp4 version: MOBIUS3.mp4

Simple Pleasures Well I have rendered the animation. 17 cores at 16 passes utilizing 77% of CPU and 38%, running at 5ghz at 39 Celsius, 1440x1080 resolution, 156 frames, took netrender 59:07 minutes. Here is Hans finding something new For those who can not see it on the forum here is the Youtube link PickupFlower.mp4

Getting in the spirit of Halloween, so played around with an older model and some lighting.

wow cool ! I used it in a video!

Hey guys, I wish you all the best and a great celebration time Best regards *Fuchur*

Long time A:M user William Hennes @willaim is so busy with A:M that he never gets around to showing the cool stuff he does with it... so I'm posting it! Oct 15, 2022 Dwarf Head modeled in A:M, 3D printed in resin. For his "dragons of winter" project.

Happy New Years Everyone! 🎉 Just completed a Time-Lapse video been working on over December. Cheers

I used the Transfer_AW plugin to move the weighting of the spline-controlled lo-density tail to the higher-density Eugene model.

Here is the next phase

Here is a truck I modeled for a friend to use in his advertising. The truck has been fully restored now, but this version sat in his driveway for several years.

I have been going through all the old models and I have noticed how some of them have held up while others, well, are not very good. Cupid is one I am pleased with and the rig is in and now rigging the face. Here is an action shot of cupid.

Just wanted to say a quick "thank you" to Rob for going to the trouble of running the image contests. It's always interesting to see the different themes and see what everyone comes up with. Thank you again, Rob, for your efforts.

Robcat spotted this movie on my YouTube channel and suggested I post it to the Forum. The movie is composited from two clips made in A:M. First clip (the color pattern): Years ago I made light boxes using Xmas lights on posts that supported cylinders with cutout patterns; the tops of the cylinders were vaned so heat rising from the lights drove the rotation of the cylinders. The light patterns were projected onto a sheet of translucent plastic. Recently I got to thinking about light boxes and wondered if I could simulate the mechanism in A:M. After some trial and error — that being trying to find a method for doing the cutouts without actually modeling each hole and discovering that while a cookie cutter map would perforate the cylinders, light would not pass through and appear on the projection screen; perhaps someone knows why? — I modeled the cylinders using the brute-force method, lots of CPs and splines. The choreography is simple. Two cylinders, one within the other rotating in opposite directions, with red, blue, and green lights inside the cylinders, and a screen to receive the projected lights. I set the rotation speeds for the cylinders so that it takes more than 10 minutes before the exact same pattern repeats. Here are birds-eye view captures from A:M showing a wire-frame of the cho set-up, a render of the set-up, and a frame from the resulting movie: While the colors and patterns are pretty and the simulation is quite representative of the light boxes I used to make, I wondered if I could get something more visually interesting. Second clip (the black and white pattern): I decided to experiment with sprites. I made a simple white square and modeled an emitter to spin the sprites outward. The result was a little too clumpy. I put a black edge on the white square and got a much more interesting look. Rendered with Alpha channel = Off. Here is a frame: I edited the final movie in DaVinci Resolve with the sprite clip on top of the color clip and Composite mode set to Multiply. Here is a frame from the movie: The soundtrack is a generative music composition I made in LogicPro. The piece uses standard orchestral instruments with some effects processing — reverb, delay, etc. — and a quasi-12 tone compositional approach. Each chord in the piece is made up of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, or in some cases 2 and even 3 octaves of notes. A Probability Gate is applied to each note of each chord in each instrument track to determine whether or not a particular note will sound. With a sufficiently low probability value, the likelihood of hearing the same music twice is vanishingly small. The movie is intended to give a pleasant audio-visual experience inducing a feeling of stasis, motion without progress, evolution without advancement, calmness, trance, even a semi-visionary state of consciousness. Or boredom, perhaps. Here is the YouTube link to "Prismatic Fracture": https://youtu.be/Em6VyzsNcgc Best to all, Joseph

https://youtu.be/1WSxujQAmxM Hey folks all the CG was done in AM about 5 years ago. I used BVH mobcap for the Animation which worked great with AM. Im actually going to start selling the tubes shortly because of the corona virus. I still have 30,000 tubes in my basement. 004.mov 003.mov 001.mov 002.mov

Hi Guys, Been experimenting with rendering some gem and glass like objects in A:M and decided to try my hand at rendering some quartz crystals. Have a few more things I'd like to add and experiment with in the scene so figure I'll keep adding here as a WIP when I get around to it. ( have to get back to my Snoopy post as well ) A few post tweaks were added in Photoshop like exposure and blurring.

Before I move on to the next railcar I beg your indulgence while I brag about getting a believable "look" to the rear running lights. The rear facing lenses are tinted red with the other three are tinted green. The light from the internal bulb is quasi collimated i.e. the lamps appear illuminated only if viewed close to on-axis with the lenses. I wheeled the caboose back into the dark factory to get a better view.

Installers: Windows: Windows 32Bit Windows 64Bit Mac OS X 10.13.6 or earlier: Intel Mac v19.0 Intel Mac SSE4.2 SDK: v19.0 SDK UpDate Change Log: Changed All Particlesystem Streak and Blobbie there is a new Boolproperty "Color change over lifetime" , this controls how the color is changed as default the color is changed over the lifetime from each particle, if it set to "Off" the color change is done for all particles equal Fixed All 7011 Particle systems should only display modifyable properties Fixed All import plugins if peaktolerance is set to 0 , all cp's are peaked ,usefull for importing mechanical models if peaktolerance is set to 360 , all cp's are smooth New All obj import plugin dialog changed added option for displaying the info messagebox (default the messagebox is displayed)added option for open a frontview for the imported model after the plugin has finished Fixed All 7010 Selecting a spline by "Spline select" with Mirror Mode on and hiding everything else results in a different selection Fixed All 7012 Crash , when loading a obj file created from blender Fixed All 6827 Changing Decal parameter turns all light off Fixed All 7008 Crash when activation pose slide (on/off) in Action Fixed All 7006 Editing Toon Gradient causes freeze Fixed All 7009 Crash when rotation STL-Prop in Chor Internal Dumpfile for unhandled exceptions has now a new naming scheme "ApplicationName_DayMonthYear_HourMinuteSecond.dmp" Dumpfiles deleted , when the Master / Master_64 starts Dumpfiles now enabled in release builds and netrender Posteffect Frameburn changed added PercentProperty "Opacity" -> control the text opacity Default : 75% (as before) Min Value : 1% Max Value : 100% added BoolProperty "Display name" -> display the filename Default : True (as before) if it set to False, only the framenumber is burned the default font is now "MS Sans Serif" Windows only added BoolProperty "With shadows" -> display the text with shadows Default : True (as before) if it set to False, only a white text is displayed (better readable in my opinion) Changed All Stampview , "Plugin properties" not longer displayed , makes no sense in this context (if You have one let me know and I revert this change) Changed All for groups in a choreography fixed a crash , when a object in a named group was deleted from the chor removed properties, which makes no sense in this context added the possibility to add other objects to the named chor group(select the chor group -> than Shift + LMB Selection objects can be deleted with a Dialog (RMB -> "Remove From Groups...") popup menu only displayed menu items , which make sense for this type of group

Hi guys! Here's our new minishort clip. Corona related GREETINGS, stay safe. FYI: Everything was completely one in A:M, except for compositing (AE) and sound etiting (Samplitude).

I've been messing with cloth settings to try to get a decent material for a shirt. Here's a test of what I think might work...still have to try it on a tank top. Cloth_Test_01_23_2019.mp4

Hey everybody. I want to wish you all a great pre-christmas time and have as each year a little treat for you created with A:M, which will hopefully give you a smile or two with each little clip each day till the 24th of December. I hope you have fun and wish you a nice time (don't forget to visit it each day, since there will be a new clip for you each day opened up): https://advent.targomed.de/adventskalender.php?lan=en Best regards *Fuchur*

Some new models I made lately. For some reason this fidling with game options keep me facinating.

After the last couple of days I had to render a new pose for Hans. I got a call about a clients computer network. I ended up rebuilding it and still have some to do but they are operational for tomorrow. So to celebrate Han's new pose showing a little frustration like some of mine for the last 48 hours.

Hi Guys, Modeled these wicker furniture items for a project a few months back but thought would be cool to render together in a little scene. Cheers.

Hi! I never introduced myself. Kinda shy. I' m MadFox. Referring to the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog. Where shall I start. I'm a graduated academic free graphic design. That implicates working on etches, lithographic's (yes, that ancient stones) paintings. http://home.kpn.nl/lo2kf8/homepage/gimli00.htm After being passed the first year grade the question raised what I wanted to choose: the commercial degree, or the free graphic enhancement. Knowing myself I always had a bad angor against publicity. Not sure why, but it always felt to me as a lie to offer a product that's made to please a customer, but stands against my own moral. OK, whatever. So I choose the free graphics, and I must say.., sure it did'nt bring me much luck in profit sense. So as stubborn I was I kept on working, feeling like a fish tempting to swim against the current. Now I'm much older now (graduated 1978) but there was one thing that stayed on my mind and that was there was also a film and movie education. But that direction was very expensive and had a high standard to access. Anyway. While doing so, it must be around 1995, I received a second hand 386computer from my brother. I was really stunned by the thing. So surprisingly when buying a sound card for it, I received three floppy's of Gold Disk, animation works. (Yes, they still had that feathers and goodies with their products). https://archive.org/details/TNM_Animation_Works_software_-_Gold_Disk_20170827_0311 I was really raged! Here was my chance to get into animation. So I bought an Intuos Wacom drawbar and scribbled away for years. It was there I made TubeHead, the living monitor. From then it went faster. There was CorelDraw4, with another movie studio, that was better and more convienent. Not limited to 256 colours, and more power to store animation and write out to avi format. It must be around 2000 I was with a friend, who was tinkering with A:M v8. Again I was stunned. Now I could even change to 3d. Had not much money to spend (again, that free graphic artist was crumbling on its witzend) but from then I was stuck to this program in any way. There I go, puzzling Gary Anderson''s Thunderbird's through heaven. ( seeing it used as an example on A:M movies for a queried film student. gimme back my copyrights., HA!). Using it for wrecking out monsters for my beloved Quake game addiction. And I must say, wouldn't it be for the love of the game, or for the expansion if my fantasy I would share this A:M programme 24 hours a day. I'm still working on my graphis, painting and music. Just trying to avoid the magnet this program offers me. Shine on, you passive spline! 😍

OK. Well... It's much more under developed than it may appear. Hopefully someone can take the basics and turn it into a really nice model. enjoy!! detbear Colt Peacemaker A 2023.mdl

Here is a mesh with many splines but I can curve any portion of it, large or small with just three controllers. CurveController2.mov

My "Planes Trains Automobiles" Contest entry was an experiment in displacement mapping... The body of the car is just a simple spline form... All the surface details... the doors, the handles, the windows, the rubber and chrome trim... that is all made with displacement maps. There isn't an easy way to manually paint such maps in a paint program but it was easy to model the shapes on a flat plane. I put a white-to-black gradient on them and shot the arrangement with an orthogonal camera. That render to OpenEXR format was applied to the body to be the displacement map. I made maps that way for the front and back details also... I recolored the patches of that details model with white, gray and black to render versions of the map for Transparency and Reflectivity... A turn-around of an earlier WIP version of the car... 155Lefts_3500.mp4

The archway to the concourse.

Here's a re-rendering with better behaved sheet metal seams. Not only is the seam now a bump map but it's been reduced from 100% "intensity" to 23%. Being produced at the Instagram worthy ratio of 720 X 480 also makes the noisiness in the reflections more tolerable. piggyback_walkthru_insta_h264.mp4

This isn't related to Adventure Cat but was drawn about the same timeframe. I call her 'Feature Request Lady': And yeah, she could probably appear in an Adventure Cat episode. Why not? The theme during this drawing was 'cats'... so, see if you can find the cat!

Well my latest rolling stock release has taken more time than usual since the cargo required way more work than the railroad car. Before interstate highways and stackable containers, rail "intermodal" transportation was defined as driving transport trailers onto railroad flatcars to "piggy-back" their loads from city to city. Railroads started by towing the trailers up long ramps onto a slightly modified standard flatcar and anchoring the trailers with chains. Soon modified flatcars were given integral fold down ramps so multiple trailers could be driven onto a long series of coupled cars. Before trailers started to grow in length, they could fit one standard or two shorter trailers per typical flatcar. I justified the creation of two trailers since they could also be used to tow around my backlot once I get around to building the tractor truck. Since trucks didn't have as much horsepower as today, trailers were much shorter. Fortunately short trailers are easier to model because they don't need side doors. But all that painted on signage meant that creating the decals took almost as long as the modeling. To make the anchoring process faster and more secure, one flatcar manufacturer invented a retractable trailer hitch. One man with a pneumatic wrench could lower or raise the hitch and lock the trailer in place. This was one of the more difficult models I've tackled as there were very few reference photographs of them available on the net. And what was available were lo-res, isometric views. I basically had one good hi-res image that had a human close-by for dimensional reference but only showed about 75% of the hitch. So some of it is guess work. I may have over-compensated with the beat-up materials and dirt decals. However, I think the old, dirty diamond pattern steel plating that I showed off a few weeks ago looks even better installed.

Even squirrels bent on world domination require help every now and then. Here are Dick and Mongo waiting for their new job interview. Produce_0.mp4