Rodney

Others hopefully will fill in the gaps I miss here... (I see Robcat did just that!) I've not heard of that option being offered before. My reading on that would be that you would have to release your websubscription in favor of the CD or purchase the CD as a separate program. As it stands you'd get the websubscription and CD for $338. Anything less would constitute a discount which only a Hash Inc rep can do. Contact Hash Inc and let them know your needs. There are benefits to both the websubscription and the CD package. As a new user I would take the time to learn what you have. When you exhaust the possibilities (which will be far more than one year!) consider purchasing the CD. The benefits of the CD are many as well but... understand that you can download most of the resources that come with the CD electronically... for free. The books (Tech Reference and TaoA:M Manual) can also be ordered separately in printed form. Enough about that... plugins! There are a lot of plugins available to you. Many are incorporated directly in A:M already. Understand that there is something of a gray area between plugins, utilities and programs. There are quite a few of each out there. Many of them are free. For A:M specific plugins you'll find the most to be found in one place here: http://www.sgross.com/plugins/index.html Steffen Gross is also the author of the Newton Physics plugin which comes with A:M... great fun! There are a whole lot of plugins available for use with A:M but I'll stop there for now. Marcel Bricman is another great source for plugins. Several of his plugins are now incorporated and released with A:M (Treez and Bitmap Plus) Arthur Walasek is known for his Import/Export plugins: http://www.innovateenterprises.com/AM/ For those that wish to hire a plugin created we have a pretty impressive group of programmers and dabblers that may take up the challenge where they have the time and personal interest. It can be a bit costly to program plugins with limited use. An example of one of these is Library Manager which Glenn Anthofer wrote after a request from Rusty Williamson. The program automates building of Libraries for use in A:M. http://www.virtualmediastudios.com/LibraryManager-036.zip As we leave the 'plugin' category we find a variety of utilities and programs available for use with A:M. Some have been designed specifically for use with A:M. In that category you will find A:M Painter/3D Painter. With it you can paint directly on A:M models. http://www.3dpainter.com/ There are also literally thousands upons thousands of programs and utilities avialable on the web that were not designed for use with A:M but can be used with A:M all the same. Having said all this I would recommend staying away from plugins and extra programs as much as you can... especially as you are just starting out. Its far better to concentrate on the basics of modeling and animating in A:M. For that I recommend taking the plunge and working through the manual; TaoA:M. As you master the basics you can supplement and expand upon that with other plugins, utilities and programs. Good luck!

Looking great thus far! Can I borrow some of your patience? I'm learning a lot from all those who have been posting their detailed work here in the forum. Yours is no different. Thats a mighty fine ride.

Thanks for posting that mini-tutorial. I reminds me of the ol' classic 'make a window' tutorial by Jeff Cantin. Okay... correct me where I'm wrong here... It appears for the staggered windows along the stairwell you continued with this idea but adjusted the adjacent windows vertically. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying that a bit... I'm not trying to distract you from your work but I'm always interested in the process. You have a pretty good level of detail for the simplicity in splines. Do you have a current patch count you can share with us?

The following information, taken from the New Users page linked often here in the forum, is a bit out of date: The good news is that the error there is in our favor. The annual subscription is no longer $99... its $49! The websubscription without the CD is a new thing as of 2008. The websubscription saves the average A:M user $50 plus postage and handing every year and you get the same full featured program delivered electronically.

Heck yeah I'm interested! I'm sure others will be interested as well.

We are here learning with you! Wecome to the A:M Forum.

Very nice! I love your economy of spline. I'm sure that helped bring the patch count considerably. The only place that looks a bit odd to my eye is around the windows which I assume you carefully planned. The wireframes aren't zoomed in enough to reveal your method there. I agree with Holmes that this project would work really well as a HAMR walkthrough.

He's looking really great Stian. I wouldn't want to meet him in the middle of a field. I can already tell he'll look awesome animated.

Even more good news for you... there is no 'trial' version of A:M. For your $49 you get Animation:Master. No watermarks... no watered down features... no nagging notes to remind you that you need to purchase a better product because what you have is inferior. The main difference between the two options, 1 year subscription and CD, is permanancy. For extensive projects that have to consider feature creep or require installation on separate machines you may want to consider the CD as when you upgrade some features may change each year. If you want to maintain the same version for over a year you may want to opt for the CD at $299. That deal also comes with the printed technical reference and TaoA:M manual. If you just want to use A:M as is via electronic download you'll find $49 a year a really great deal. Its worked well enough for me that I opted for two websubcriptions. Stagger your subscriptions and you'll extend their value even further. Aint life good. Welcome to the A:M Community!

A:M uses a file named 'default.cho' to create new Choreographies. You can alter a Choreography and save it over that file and then each time you create a new Chor all those settings will magically appear there for you. Note: I DO NOT recommend you overwrite the default.cho file UNTIL you copy it or rename it under another name. If you reinstall A:M the default.cho will again return to the one created by Hash Inc so... backup any and all important files. The easiest way to get rid of the Ground plane is to delete the Shortcut to it in your current Choreography. If you want it readily available for other projects you could save the Chor out as 'default_noGround.cho' or under a similar name and open that when you need it.

For a moment there... I was trying to figure out why he had two eye patches... Then I thought they were sunglasses... Then I re-read your description... Makes perfect sense now. He should make for some interesting moments. I should say that you might want to work the design there a little to keep people from accidentally thinking the patches are sunglasses. Perhaps adding some fairly obvious overlapping? Unless, of course they are in which case I'd suggest exaggerating the size or frame design a bit more. Interesting character!

Very impressive. I suspect you are already heading there but adding some (dark) color to accentuate the depth here would do wonders. As it stands right now the image seems to have pretty much the same depth even though the distance ranges from extremely close to miles and miles away. In between there is the rock and mountain lion (all outstanding by the way!). There isn't yet anything to guide the viewers eye around through the scene besides the rather isolated objects. That they are seems to be part of the composition but... they don't really appear to have depth. A little more contrast and channeling of color might remedy that. I know you are working the details however... as you always do. Keep it up! Whats that they say about more detail means closer... less detail far away... Add more blue the farther things are away... I dunno. Just keep doing what you are doing. P.S. I do like your latter pose for the mountain lion much more than the first.

Very nice Rusty! Sam is really strutting his stuff. My only crit... too short!!! You've got me wanting to see more.

I fear answering 'yes' here may not be wise as I don't want to put you to work on something that ends up not being used enough to justify the effort in your estimation. You are certain to find many requests for 'new features' too. I -want- to say 'yes' as I am very interested in using A:M models online and what we've seen thus far is impressive. HAMR is something I simply must get my brain wrapped around. Importantly, your application doesn't duplicate anything available there so I think it would find a welcome niche. A means to convert A:M models to Flash content for viewing online (I confess I've never had much success with AM2SWF)... I can definitely use. So... please count me as a 'Yes'.

Outstanding. Perhaps your experience is an indication that drivers (or updates) are finally catching up to the point where graphics entensive programs like A:M will work better with Vista's Aero features turned on. Wouldn't that be great.

In my experience the graphic glitches are more graphics card specific than operating system specific. Having said that however it may be of use to know that most graphics cards working with Win XP apparently have drivers that work well whereas with Win Vista the goal of glitch free rendering on some cards is still something of a moving target. I noted elsewhere in the forum that Intel had recently released an updated driver for the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (945) which improved performance considerably on my laptop. My card is actually a 950 so that may be the cause of occasional real time glitches. I don't know enough about the differences in cards. (Not that interested actually... just want them to work) I suspect the driver for your card has been updated since its first release as well. Check the manufacturers site for information. At some point (as drivers are updated) most A:M users will be running A:M more smoothly on Vista than XP. If you listen closely... thats the sound of progress being made. Unfortunately thats also the price of progress to be paid. So... in short... You can run A:M on either XP or Vista. You may find more success in Win XP as those drivers have been around for some time. Until you find the right driver for Vista however visit your graphics card manufacturers page often! Added: I see the site says: This means they will work with Vista's new Aero-features but... only means that. Most have found that they need to turn off Vista's Aero-features to get their graphics programs optimally operating. Note that Microsoft has released updates that address real time rendering issues as well. Driver link for your card

Your work is impressive as is but looking back at your initial post confirms it. You've really put a lot of work into this. Great attention to detail. (I'm 50/50 on the barbed wire... sorry... no help there from me!)

Thats quite a hobby you have. No suggestions here but I think your investigations are impressive. Edit: As an online application perhaps an interface/application that allowed for viewing and downloading the model file from one location? Both the viewer and download button would point to the same model file. It would perhaps be a new way of sharing models on the internet.

Wonderful. You continue to suprise and entertain. I wasn't expecting (the stuff you put in there that I won't say because it'll spoil it). It does explain the research you've been up to. Hey, you keep making these rubberguy episodes and I'll keep watching!

Don't forget Jim Talbot's very useful Decaling Tutorials! http://members.cox.net/jtalbotski/tutes.html Required reading...er... watching.

As much as I want to see the next episode... pace yourself. Gotta keep the audience hungry!

This 'stretching before the contact' is a pretty common technique used in animation and is championed (at times and certainly not universally) by such animators as Richard Williams. Williams seems to have a special interest in it for character animation but also cautions against the use of it indescriminately. Where Williams suggest it not be used is where form or function suggests rigidity that would not allow for squash and stretch. The effect must work within the confines of the animated world the objects move through. Consider a head for instance. The jaw might squash and stretch considerably whereas the cranium would squash very little if any at all. I'm a fan of the 'stretch to contact' technique. On of the reasons to use stretching in the first place is to allow the eye to register the movement of an object about to change direction. Through stretching the eye is allowed to see more of the object before and after the contact and register the change. My animation books have not yet arrived so I won't be able to point to specific references but there are sections devoted to the use of stretching prior to contact in several places in Williams's book 'The Animator's Survival Kit'. Again, the warnings are there too that caution against creating 'floopy' animation (if I recall the word Williams uses for it correctly). Yves points out the combined use of motion blur with stretching in this animation. Both are mechanisms designed to achieve the same thing; illusion of rapid movement. Both motion blur and stretching are shortcuts that can help achieve the illusion of speed. As Yves suggests if you have one you probably don't need the other. Where timing and spacing is used effectively or an object needs to be seen as solid you may not need to use squash or stretch at all. It can be noted in this animation that the ball stretches for no apparent reason and there is no 'stretch to contact'. With 'stretch to contact' the idea is to have the object stretch and make contact with the ground 1 frame before contact/squash is generated. In this animation the stretch would have to be considerable to make this happen.

Another great one. Bravo. Fun stuff.

Hey George that's some great information. When I need to test something simple in A:M I find I often resort to creating a crude little vase to work with. It seems that demo effected me too. It should be noted that the steps from Greg's do work so I'm not sure exactly what went wrong with your attempt. I've frame by framed through Greg's demo before. When you say 'Nothing' works... thats a bit too general. Perhaps you can provide more information. Work through George's example and ask questions here. You'll be lathing vases in no time. Greg's experience does show clearly in the demo and his considerable ability makes creating, texturing, boning and animating the vase look easy. Trust me it is but there are some pitfalls you'll want to avoid as you increase your own skill. There are also a few steps that won't work if not properly considered. For instance, when Greg drags and drops a texture onto a selected Group if you accidentally unselect the Group as you Drag and Drop the texture won't stick to the vase. Greg instinctively knows this, he avoids releasing the Group and the texture sticks. Another way to do this would be to create and name the Group first. Greg avoids the step of Group naming by letting A:M create the Group automatically. If you release the Group it goes away. Once a texture is applied to it... it stays. Lathing is often misunderstood as well if you are not in the Front View. While its possible to lathe in ways other than the left side of the Y axis in the front view most A:M users use that location exclusively as it gives them more control and produces results that are expected. Work through George's tutorial and ask questions. If you can identify areas where Greg's demo isn't clear we'll add those in too. Good luck!

What image format are you using with A:M? Targa? JPeg? Something else? The format you use must support Alpha Channels. JPeg doesn't.