Rodney

You still rock. Keep on keepin' on. Happy Birthday Martin!

You should have it already. The transaction is usually instantaneous. If you purchased the websubscription via the Hash Store you can login and retrieve your subscription there too. Welcome (back) to A:M!

As Mama Odie in Disney's 'The Princess and the Frog' would say, "This gonna be good!"

Not sure where you heard that one... there isn't a version 16 yet so it's unlikely there is a 17.

That's a pretty good suggestion. A problem with this 'fix' is that suggesting that only version 8 format AI files be used isn't entirely accurate. We can also use AI version 7 (and likely some other versions of the Adobe Illustrator format too). I believe it was with AI version 9 that the format was changed significantly which caused the input incompatability with the plugin. After a few years of suggesting AI version 7 I've (mostly) given up and joined the crowd recommending AI version 8 too. I wonder if the source code for the Font/AI wizard could be released/re-released to the A:M Community.

THAT is very cool Paul! That murky water really looks great too.

Awesome. John Carter has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager. (Can hardly wait to see the Pixar adaption) Your animation is great too! Very smooth.

Looks pretty good to me. It almost has a feel like it's organized for episodes on TV. T'was a time such a film would have been warmly received on television. When compared with some of the Hannah Barbera fare I grew up with, I might have preferred to hang out with Piper and his pals instead. ...and I say this as a fan of Hannah Barbera!

I exchanged a short email with Satyajit about a year ago as checking in to determine if he was still alive seemed appropriate. He responded, which I'm happy to say let me know he was alright. As far as I know Satyajit is active with Animvision but that may be yesterday's news. Perhaps Ken Heslip or someone that created models for Satyajit may have more current information. Haven't heard much about 'Piper Penguin and his Fantastic Flying Machines' either.

Hehe! Very good! I love the AventurasDePancho demo. He's cute.

Robert mentioned the concern of teachers being ahead of students. While this is very true, when it comes to completing the exercises in the manual this isn't as much of an issue as if there was no path charted out for the students. This is why its important to focus on the (provided) exercise tutorials. With any technology it's relatively easy for a student with a passion for learning to surpass their teachers. This can be especially true of computers. The important thing is that when those kids get to the end of their lessons they have a solid foundation to build upon. I know we've had quite a few talented 13 year olds post their work here in the forum. Learning is important but access is everything to the student. Sure wish I had the chance to learn computer animation when I was in middle school.

Lots of teenagers have learned to animate with Animation:Master so you are in good hands here. This is the area I would focus on: As an instructor/teacher, learning as you go can be a frustrating route for both you and your students. You can overcome this by reviewing the exercises in the manual and their corresponding video tutorials. Then you can at least refer the student to the correct location to get the information they need to work through the tutorials. Of course, with each new class your confidence and understanding of animation will increase too. The manual and technical reference are available online (PDF format): http://www.hash.com/reference.htm The exercise videos are online too: http://www.hash.com/vm.htm Hash Inc has some good deals on the manuals in printed form too but I'm not sure about all of that. The best thing to do would be to contact them and they'll work with you. As always, you can ask questions here. We are all learning too. Kids are creative and you'll have no problem getting them into animation. As they discover what they can create, keeping them on task will be the real challenge for you!

Outstanding! Perhaps Sean will revisit this story and create an extended version some day? If he can create a wonderful film like this in three weeks, a retelling with a bigger budget (of time) would perfect the film. Congratulations Sean!

What you are seeing there isn't a six CP patch but rather a special case (rather unique to Animation:Master). In order to transition from more dense meshes to less dense meshes we can attach a dangling spline referred to as a 'hook'. The tutorial from the manual on making a Giraffe covers that in detail as I recall. Edit: The manual I just checked in has a write up on Hooks on page 128. You mention that you are watching the video tutorials but also make sure you download the PDF manual and technical reference. You can find them here: http://www.hash.com/reference.htm To answer your question... yes you are free to use them but don't use them if you don't need them. Ideally you want to keep patches approximately the same size with four Control Points each. 5 point patches and hooks can be used where that cannot be accomplished. The main reason to use hooks is to reduce a meshes desity. The cautionary note on page 128 states: "Avoid attaching hooks to a spline that makes up a five point patch! Or multiple five point patches next to each other!"

That's some impressive mud Kat! The storytelling is the thing and you've captured that. If you had the time to add some sticking and dripping effects that would really sell it. I really like the immediacy of it as the characters along with the viewer hardly have time to think about what is going on before we find ourselves in the thick of it.

Words fail. This is already an incredible piece of work you've got going here and you are still at it taking it to the next level. Impressive.

Off the charts! Yet another outstanding demonstration of displacement at work. As I understand it the next best thing to EXR for displacement is TGA. Its going to be hard to beat EXR though. Please post this guy in action when you get him moving!

Hehe. That was awesome Robert. Very nice.

Two things come immediately to mind: "I want one" "I cannot afford one" Too cool Marcos.

Here is an example of the hat reworked. You could have more or fewer splines depending on your needs but this one is based on a 8 spline cylinder. In this case I've capped the end with what I'd call a basketball style. While its optimum to stick with four point patches in this case it leads me to use four three point patches on the top and bottom of the four point patches. *Apologies for messing with your hat... I accidently tweaked it while trying to remove it from the smurf mesh. One never knows when you'll want a smurf to remove his hat. Edit: Uploaded the model file. hat.mdl

Remy, Welcome to the forum! I'm going to guess you've brought this in from another program. Perhaps more important than filling holes is the fact that you can get away with using only about 20% of those splines. If you want to animate him you really want to get to a place where you have a good economy of splines. An added benefit to reducing splines is that it'll help you deal with and close any holes. (if using only A:M you likely don't even need to close some holes) I assume you mean at the end of places like the nose and hat, but I've indicated places (in red)where you'll have other more important concerns. (Note: I haven't indicated them all) These areas have a poly-minded flow that will not work well at all. They will need to be reworked. Spline continuity-wise you've got something of a mess but... all in all its a nice smurf!

Yes, PC with 15j. I just ran a test of your Chor with your model with transparency at 0 percent and transparency at 20 percent. No change in toon line evident. Something else is going on here. When you go to render what are your render settings? As this is effecting all models (regardless of their individual settings) that seems to be the most common variable to look into. Have you changed any of the default toon rendering settings or just turned Toon on and let it render with default settings? I did not see any Toon settings turned on in the Model's Group itself so must assume you are getting the toon from the render settings. Multipass on? Blur? Anything else? My results are rendering as in your first image. If you haven't closed down and restarted A:M in a long time try that before anything else. Conflicting settings might have got stuck in memory.

I'm not getting this on my end using your file. When I change the (blue color) group's transparency (to 20), the lines still render the same. Is it possible that you've animated the toon line thickness over time? If you are using an Action or Choreography we don't have access to that to test... only your model.

Sweet! If I didn't know any better I'd say Matcaps are a source of the celestial. The eyes would look really nice with a touch of ambiance to highlight them (perhaps with 60% or so fall off)? Not unlike what it appears that you have on the ships sails.

I believe you are looking for the Post Effect called 'Tint'. Right click in the Project Workspace under Post Effects and create a Tint post effect. The default settings should yield Black and White (or more appropriately perhaps Grayscale). If rendering from the camera Drop the Post Effect on your camera and make sure you've got the option to use the Post Effect on in the render panel.