Rodney

Looking very good Steve! It sure is fun seeing this project come together.

There are a few people that come to mind when I think about math... Anders Averö is one of them. He's got a few models and project files worth investigating on his old website: http://www.dotnet.se/aaver/Misc/Golfball/index.html http://www.dotnet.se/aaver/Water/OceanTest/index.html http://www.dotnet.se/aaver/FootPrint/Tutorial/index.html I don't think his rain plugin is still operational. And the wave/ocean plugin was never developed beyond the initial stages as far as I know. Talented guy! Anders, where ever you are... hope you have a very Happy Birthday!

Less than a month to go for the sci fi contest!

I did a quick test of a single image from a sequence versus the entire sequence and it appears that A:M is reporting the size of the entire sequence even when only one image from the sequence is imported into A:M. This is obviously not correct but the more important question would be whether A:M is using that file size in any way (i.e. reserving memory space based on that variable)

A very wild guess here... Is it possible that your decal image is one of a sequence of images? That might explain the larger file size. (If A:M is displaying the size of the entire sequence) Added: Another thought would be that A:M is somehow uncompressing a compressed image thereby reporting it's 'real' size? More info needed. Perhaps you can share the image file?

.avi, .flv, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg4, .mpeg, .mpg, .wmv There is a working demo. Demo limitations:

For those of you wth money to spend... Zurbrigg has released their video player that is enhanced for filmmakers and animators. Their site states that introductory pricing is $25. Keyframe MP is currently available for 64-bit version of Windows (Vista or newer) with an OS X version in development. http://zurbrigg.com/keyframe-mp There are several videos that demonstrate usage: [vimeo]90056692[/vimeo] Getting Started with Keyframe MP (Direct Link) [vimeo]89196777[/vimeo] Keyframe MP Overview (Direct Link)

About halfway down the page of Newton Physics examples are two projects that demonstrate a floating/bouyancy effect. That might work better than material effects. http://www.hash.com/NewtonPhysics/samples.html The projects have two movie files: Here: http://www.hash.com/NewtonPhysics/samples/fluid.mov and here: http://www.hash.com/NewtonPhysics/samples/tugboat.mov With regard to the second video where there is some 'sinkage', there is a tutorial (with link to project file): http://www.hash.com/NewtonPhysics/fluid.html

The Dress Me plugin should be there in the Mac as well. Make sure you are in the Chor or other appropriate place for the plugin to appear. For usage you want to make sure the Bones of the clothing (or anything you wish to attach to the main model) uses the same Bone structure as the original. One of the best ways to do this is to make a copy of the original and then edit that to include all the various things. I think the Dress Me plugin could be duplicated and the duplicate renamed to something like 'AttachMe' because it does a whole lot more than simply dress models.

That's the ticket! 32bit v18d is working without installing with the SSE4 option. Thanks Steffen!

Changed to OpenGL Restarted computer and followed your steps (double checked to make sure OpenGL was still set) No difference here on 64bit v18d.

I should have noted that I was using the 64bit install. Things are working fine there. I still haven't been able to get the 32bit installer to work (I thought I had but I'd mistakenly reinstalled 32bit v18b) The error message remainst the same for me on startup of 32bit v18b:

ok, now what? What should we be seeing?

Boy does that rendering take me back. Let's hear it for the need to update showreels! Looking very good.

I hope you can take some Stalled Trek videos to the show too! Those are sure to get the attention of folks that won't bite with the Zombies.

I was thinking about your topic when I ran across this photo/drawing by legendary Disney animator Milt Kahl. In it he attempts to distill how to translate the character Alice from the photo reference of the child actress, Kathryn Beaumont who also supplied the voice of the title character. Source: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com Now, there are several things that are interesting about this drawing/photo. The first is that many people don't think Milt Kahl used photo reference. But there is an interesting dilemma to resolve with regard to CG animation for a stylistic approach like this. How does one shrink and enlarge the body or the head at will? Is it better to have multiple models and then use them where needed? Should the rig be created to scale the parts up and down as necessary? And how does one animate on the fly if/when the character moves in and out of the space delineated between close up and long shots? Some interesting question derive from such a simple image. In the case of CG the whole line of consideration (that of proportion)isn't as valid at the end (but moreso at the beginning) because the model can stay (relatively) the same size once it is created unless specifically needing to be changed. It isn't under the same constraints of an artist's constantly shifting perspective and sense of scale. Perhaps this is why some don't like to use reference? Milt is cluing us in a little bit here by illustrating how to distill the essence of his source material and adjust wherever necessary.

Thanks Jason, I attempted to download again from the FTP site but that installer failed as well. Steffen suggested installing without the SSE3 option checked and that worked! He'll be rebuilding the installer to take care of that issue but in the meantime installing without SSE3 works for 32bit v18d. Thanks!

This (ability to change the default keyframe interpolation) is a highly sought after and useful addition: Very nice!

A subtle yet very nice improvement to Render As Lines! Thanks!

This has led to several fixes in A:M Composite. Nicely done! Added: As an example; for the first time ever the response of Denoise is quite snappy!

OOOOooo... I like that!

Good news and bad news. The v18d 64bit release fixes the problem. However... Something is wrong with the 32bit installer (at least on my end). I posted a screen shot of the error message in the release topic. The short of it... I can't get the v18d 32bit to run. (But I can use 64bit! Thanks!) Jason got me going again with the 32bit installer so I'm back in business. So the fix for my problem is to update to v18d.

Thank you! 64bit has fixed my previous issue with v18b. What a relief! But... I'm having an issue with the 32bit installation in that I'm getting this error message after installation: (I'm guessing this might be related to the issue I was having in v18b) As I did an install over the top of the previous install I will go back in and install v18d into a new folder to see if that solves the problem. Update: No, a clean 32bit install still produces the same error message. Update2: Nope. 32bit installation isn't working.

There is no sample model. I just create a new (empty) model and try to add a few splines into it. That is why I suspected it was only on my end. It prevents me from modeling anything. I will test out some previously saved files (Thom would make a good test subject) and see if I can add new splines to those without any issues. I first noted this after starting to test a slew of methodologies for rapidly splining a body and face. In this I occasionally locked some splines down.... hid some splines.... used lathing... used extrusion... standard modeling stuff/nothing too strange. Then when I went in to simply draw a head/face from the front view I found I could no longer draw/spline anything without the problem appearing. I do recall having to turn off the Snap to Surface icon... thinking it was strange that it was activated because I hadn't been using it. I may go back and try to repeat what I was doing in those steps because perhaps I locked myself into some mode unintentionally and I just think I'm in a normal modeling window. Recall that I did 'reset' A:M, and later reinstalled after seeing the same results in 32 and 64 bit and confirming the problem wasn't occurring in v17g so that is what is so odd in this case. It's got to be something simple...something I changed specific to v18b on my end. The only change to my computer system that I am aware of was reattaching an external (second) monitor although I need to scrub through my installed apps to make sure nothing was recently installed that might be grabbing hold and not releasing memory. Update: It is occurring with previously saved models as well.

Thanks for the confirmation guys, this is a serious enough problem that we want to get some attention on it so we make sure it is fixed in v18d (and any subsequent release). As I'm hearing of talk of a pending v18d I will assume v18c had issues that prevented it from being officially released. I did go on to reinstall and reactivate v18b 32bit with the same results. Occasionally I have been able to attach a spline as normal but a few clicks down the line the problem arises again and A:M is locked up in its infinite loop of calculating something behind the scenes. This isn't an intermittent problem on my end, it's highly repeatable, because I currently can't model anything. But here's the real problem... if everyone is using releases other than v18b (the current official release) then we aren't seeing the same thing. And of course, Steffen won't spend time fixing problems that don't exist (hopefully). I realize some folks live on the cutting edge (Rodney waves at the highly valued Alpha/Beta testers!) and some like to be grounded in the tried, true and thoroughly tested (Hello highly productive artists and animators!) but someone needs to keep their finger on the pulse of the average user who only sees and experiences what is 'live' in the current official release (Hi um... me). In this I've obviously let my guard down if I failed to notice a problem that keeps us from being able to spline in the way that I currently seeing in v18b. I still think this must be largely local to my computer so I'm trying to narrow down some of the variables. (and if local then the fix could be shared with others at their local level as well) It's almost like A:M is running into a 'read only' wall that doesn't let the spline that is being drawn save into memory. As was mentioned before (by Mark I believe) this occurs less often when adding a new spline to an existing Control Point. It occurs almost every time when adding a new spline between two existing CPs.