Rodney

I just tested Robert's project in the HAMR viewer (it still works on Win10) and... The project does work but the viewer does not immediately refresh which for most would equate to 'doesn't work'. I resaved the project as a v17 project file and it works a little better although still considerable lag in display refresh. If resaving (or recreating) yet again via a release closer to that of HAMR (better than 15 years ago!) I'll guess might play smoothly. Edit: I'll have to retest this because I'm currently having display refresh issues with quite a few different programs so that issue might not relate to the HAMR viewer at all. Update: Still delays with the HAMR viewer but... no delays in A:M itself which is of course the important thing here.

The A:M Films site has been fairly mothballed for some time now so it isn't too surprising the site is further broken. Perhaps as a community we can look into what other options are available although those might be more unofficial. In the meantime... There are some other locations (primarily youtube) where product created with Animation:Master can be found although submitting new work has historically always been something of a bottleneck. I believe Martin Hash himself may have uploaded the collection at Hash CG History: : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClx0zURG5-KTOzQewFRpASg/videos

Yikes. That is both good and bad. Bugs or otherwise, what you've got here on display is quite impressive. Love the economy of spline too!

I think I'd follow the suggestion to animate the individual entities separately and then swap them for another combined model when they act as one entity. The cool thing being that by dropping all of the separate models into a Choreography we can then save the combination out as a new consolidated model. The one thing to watch out for (as I recall) would be bones and such that have the same names... at one point we had to avoid that... and perhaps may still need to name those differently. The benefit to this approach is that repositioning and reorienting the separate models in a Chor is easy. Once they are in place them save out the new consolidated model. Other approaches are valid too such as dropping all of the models into an empty model as Action Objects but there are sometimes gotchas and such that might not work well with Action Objects. BTW Nice models... and fun project!

My memory is that there is something wrong with the original blob.tga image. Beyond that my memory rapidly fades...

That is a very thorough video. Thanks Robert!. I learned something there... and I thought I knew everything there was to know about that area of A:M. I don't think I've ever used the image properties 'Speed' value.

I'll guess that by 'drivers' what is meant is 'relationships'. Do the models you save that gain a driver file have poses or something else that creates a permanent 'relationship'? Since poses are the only real 'action'-type data attached to otherwise static models that would be my guess.

Congratulations Mark. That's a well deserved spotlight on your work.

Sorry to say... A:M's boolean cutters are the type that are only implemented at render time.** Therefore they don't actually alter any physical geometry (it only looks like it is altered). There are some things that can and do export well such as displacement maps. **If we consider the infinite resolution of surfaces (patches) made with minimal splines with boolean cutting methodology this is really the only way that can work. This doesn't preclude exporting objects created in A:M out and using other programs to execute physical changes via solid modeling but there the resulting mesh will no longer have the benefits of A:M's minimal splines and patches defining the surfaces. The shapes themselves (both those that will be cut and those that will do the cutting) will export just fine of course. In the other program you then just define which objects are the solids and which are the cutters.

Meshlab is opensource. (I think the program Ken refers to is under a different name?) In addition to the downloadable release Meshlabs has an online javascript implementation: http://www.meshlabjs.net/ It might take awhile to learn it's various options but there are a lot of them to include making meshes water tight etc. For the Meshlab site see: http://www.meshlab.net

Hi Mike, I won't be of much help here as but the short answer is 'Yes'. There is some voodoo magic we have to do to make sure we can see the CPs in order to select them and I think it might be best to create a Pose in order to activate things appropriately. Basically we can edit/animate/monitor any CP that is part of a Relationship and one of the easiest ways I know to create that Relationship is via a Pose. Regarding the voodoo settings... Make sure you have 'Show Advanced Properties' and 'Show Property Triangle' checked on the Global settings tab under Tools/Options. This will allow you to drill down to the Spline and CP level in the Channel Editor and Timeline views. A few other useful things will be to toggle on the 'Show Manipulator Properties' icon so that when we select a CP the CP number will display easily for us to use. The second thing here then might be to use a Filter Search with that CP number as the text to find so that it can easily be found (as the listing of CPs likely wont be sorted numerically... it is sorted by splines assignment. A third thing then might be to Pin the CP in your Timeline so that when you select something else it will stay there in the timeline for you to view. You can forego using the Timeline if you use the PWS Channel Editor. Of course, all of this will be clear as mud so please feel free to ask questions and I'll try to be more specific. And a final caveat...! There may be an easier way to do this via Smartskin but it's been so long since I've used smartskin that I need to brush up on that myself! Bottom line: Yes, it should be possible.

Aye mateys.... I miss those guys. In a perfect world, someone would see the potential in 'The Wannabe Pirates' and offer you so much money to franchise them that you could not refuse. Of course, then we'd all be sad that we couldn't afford all the cool toys. etc.

Yes, confirmed that something is definitely wrong there. ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/windows/ And... I confirm that the 64bit release is working well. It is so very good to have 6793 corrected. That feels so good to have back.

It occurs to me that I am one of those A:M Users that wants to see more contests and have stated exactly that over the years. If I don't get an entry in for this contest then that isn't speaking well concerning my interest in having more contests. So... I do plan on entering I just need to get to splinin' and refinin'.

Nice! That's a great approach.

It's not looking good for my entry... but there's still a little hope. A lot will depend on if I can make a energetic sprint toward the finish line during the... very... last 24 hours. I thought I was off to a pretty good start, then procrastinated entirely too much over the past month. I'm reading that deadline as midnight on the 18th of September... so hope that is right. I seem to take that old saying 'a task will expand to fill the allotted time' a bit too literal.

Thanks Harun. I haven't had a chance to check out the latest release so I always appreciate when others post their experience. There are a lot of video editors that can get the job done but for those that need higher end video editing tools I sense it going to be hard to beat DaVinci Resolve. I'm still waiting for the latest release of Blackmagic Designs Fusion to stabilize because I will very likely purchase the Studio release and it should be highly integrated with Resolve. The free releases of both Fusion and Resolve then pave the way for scaling up production. If the software tools currently available would have been available back when 'Tin Woodsman of Oz' was in production I've no doubt they would have been put to good use.

Robert Holmen is not splining everything from scratch?!??! Scandalous I tell ya! Where's a news reporter when you need one... That is a great model to borrow from and I recall some superb animations being created with him. My favorite is probably from the animated card where he was stuck in the middle of a snowstorm shivering in the cold. Makes me cold now just thinking about that. Brrrr,,,,

Time to kick this into high gear!

I gotta admit, It is an improvement over the mohawk.

Steve, Turn off the 'Save before Render' option in Tools/Options which is on by default in v19. There is an issue with that feature regarding when the saving occurs that doesn't account for the completion of longer calculations (which I must assume would include hair, etc.). I submitted a report on that and Steffen submitted a fix in a recent (pending) update. Try that and see if that doesn't solve the problem.

Most excellent.

Like I said. unfortunate and frustrating. Don't read too much into that post Fuchur. Read between the lines and know that the underlying issue isn't about you. I wonder if the powers that be (Jason? Martin?) would approve a different system for distribution of associated files and executables? Perhaps even target those items that never change as being separate from the primary installation to streamline updates even more. And yes, I'm talking github here. Post a disclaimer on the download page that tells users to 'Use at own risk' and then... off we go. Jason? Martin? (And of course... all of this would also depend on what Steffen is willing and able to do)

Hang in there. You raise valid points and we (collectively) do need to look at options going forward to prevent the bottlenecks.that can occur I think Fuchur is as frustrated as you and was winking because he thinks v19b will likely arrive before v19a... most unfortunate and frustrating. But also nothing that is under his control. I'm hanging with you here eagerly awaiting the next release too.

That file is what is created upon activation... which hasn't yet happened for your v19 install. BUT... copy that master0.lic file from your other folder into the v19 and (all other things working as required) it will run and v19 will then be activated/licensed. The problem I see is that your program itself doesn't appear to be working (i.e. that DLL thing) so you've got (perhaps) two problems only one of which relates to activation/licensing. But take care of that license file first and as long as it is a current license you'll be fine.