Rodney

Brian, My apologies if the following guesswork is off the mark. I'd say that after selecting the Bone/Null you want to rotate you need to hit your R key (for Rotate) or select the Rotate icon. This will change the manipulator from a Translate manipulator to a Rotate manipulator. If the yin/yang object isn't colored rings then you might be looking at something else (perhaps the mouse pointer?). Posting a screen capture/image of what you are seeing will help figure it out.

v8.5 was a wonderful program. But there really is no comparison. v15 is easily 10 times better. Should you get v15? Oh yeah. As Fuchur noted, the direct purchase of the websubscription can be had from Hash Inc for $79. That'd let you know. Then if you find you cannot live without v15 after one year resubscribe or opt for the CD install. Fuchur said: 'a few new features'? (Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee or it'd be spraying out my nose). Now that(!) is quite the understatement. Do yourself favor. Move into v15. Then to get even more return on your investment, hang out with us here in the forum where we all have a great time learning.

Very cute! Do something/anything with that default sky and ground plane though.

What Robert said. TaoA:M is set up to get people animating quickly (It is called Animation:Master after all). As such the very first exercise deals with animation. Most manuals begin with modeling and as such most aspiring animators never... let me repeat that for emphasis... NEVER... get around to animating. TaoA:M is broken up into 3 parts; animation, modeling and technical direction. While you can start wherever your interests are its very much by design that the books starts with animation. I can say without a doubt that working through TaoA:M won't make anyone a great animator, modeler or technical director but it will provide a solid foundation for putting basic theory, processes and procedures of computer animation into practice. The manual mearly exposes A:M users to those things they need to be successful. Putting its lessons into practice is entirely up to you.

I'm just getting caught up on my forum reading and what a wonderful project you've got going on. If you were missing a brick or two how on earth would we know!?!! Incredible detail as aways Stian. Impressive.

Ooo! That's beautiful. Very cool!

Video tutorials of the Exercises from the manual (TaoA:M) can be accessed here: http://www.hash.com/2007web/vm.htm

It should be noted that older variants on the manual are available in some other languages as well: AMFrenchManual.pdf 1MB AMJapaneseManual.pdf 6MB AMSpanishManual.pdf 21MB

Hi right back atchya! Welcome to the A:M forum. When it comes to the manual you are in luck. Download TaoA:M (the Manual with 20 exercises designed to set you up for success) and the Technical Reference in pdf format here: ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/docs/ 12/06/2007 12:00AM 22,592,160 TAOAM.pdf 12/06/2007 12:00AM 15,301,936 TECHREF.pdf (Note: When using these two links its best to Right Click and 'Save As' to your computer) For any and all questions related to A:M please feel free to ask them here in the forum. This forum is 'the manual' that simply cannot be beat. Working through the manual online here in the TaoA:M forum will get you up to speed quickly:

Looking great! No real crits from me except to say the camera angle seems to make the image pretty linear overall whereas I think you have some nice opportunity to play the manmade features against the natural elements of the scene a little more. A the mountains seem a little too symmetrical and make me think the camera being a little farther over to the right looking over at the left mountain range might make for nice contrast. Nice work!

I wouldn't be as optimistic if this was just anybody. But it isn't just anybody... it's you. Go for it Mark!

Welcome back. I hope the opportunities are there for you to dig deeper into A:M and pursue your goals. What would you like to change it to?

Gene, I'm with John here. My bet is on particles turned off. If no particles... no flock.

It may be a pretty obsure reference but it made me smile. Little touches like that may not mean much in the short term but over time they tend to develop lives of their own. I'd guess the artist who first put those numbers on the Beagle Boys shirts had no idea how deep that referencing would go. I should probably add this to your Blog comments but... Regarding the Clone Wars film: I liked what I saw but it didn't hold my attention long enough to sit through it all in one watch. My mind kept wandering. It seemed a bit too dialogue driven and long. I'll have to watch it again with my adventure-ready-movie-watching glasses on. I didn't see the series as it was released but suspect the shorter/episodic nature of it helped a lot. The pace of Star Wars has always been... chop.chop.introduce new stuff.chop. Regardless, I really liked your flemming of the clone wars and the interview on your blog.

Nice one. I've got to ask... 176-167... Hmmm. Is the number on Flemm's chest plate a reference to the Beagle Boys?

Very nice interface David. I love the simplicity of it.

Check my earlier post for a few email addresses.

Fedex is right down the block in most cities. As timing is important perhaps you can phone Fedex and intercept the delivery? The webstore only ships packages to where you specify delivery. A phone will be faster but... If you aren't emailing 'support@hash.com' that is probably the best address short of a personal address to someone at Hash Inc. You could try: jason (at) hash (dot) com Jason is pretty quick at responding to email.

Nice Nancy! (I'd like to see the camera pulled back just a little more) Those Hippogyrafs are truly fascinating creatures. Legend has it they are the eyes and ears of Ozma of Oz. Spellbinding.

Very nice Marcos!

Here's a quick project that demonstrates the idea. I set it to 400 rotations in 1 second and I think it just laughed at me. Looks more like 10 rotations. It would be helpful to know more about your goal here. I think MUFOOF is the only thing that will keep us from attending the funeral. I'll miss everyone. Is there a particular reason this 9 minute shot needs to be contained in one choreography? spinspinspin1.zip spinspinspin1.mov spinspinspin.mov

You might want to do the rotation in an Action. Actions excel at cyclic motion. Then you could specify how many rotations by number (1, 2, 3 ...559) in the Action's properties once assigned to the Model in the Choreography. So the idea would be to divide and conquer. In this way you could develop different rotations and swap them out in as needed. Do you know how many rotations you need?