Rodney

Mike, I'm thinking there are more than a few people that are glad you waited until *after* the Sci Fi contest was finished to return! Great to see you back in action. Outstanding Predator.

Lori, There certainly is a whole lot more to A:M than what the manual covers. You can find some of the information on your A:M CD. Look for the Technical Reference. You can find these online too: http://www.hash.com/htmlHelp/ Then there are the undocumented features. Some of these features have some documentation. (but they are 'mostly' undocumented) Many of the newest features have a Tech Talk devoted to them. You can find some of these pinned here in the Tutorials Forum. The *best* place to find Tech Talks is in the 'Latest Info' forum area but they are also listed here in the Tutorials forum: Tech Talk Links Matthew Bradbury's A:M Features wiki is a great resource. Then there are the website pages devoted to Sweeper, Treeez and Newton Physics. You can find links to these here: A:M Features. Some other 'features' are discovered by the user and only they know how to implement them. They are usually discovered through experimentation. Is there any particular area you are interested in?

You have some intriguing things there but the access is a killer. Your enthusiasm is apparent and there are even hints at genius. But did I mention... access is a killer? The first thing I would do would make the link a bit more obvious and... accessible. It'll get more people to your site. www.againsttheauthor.com Looking forward to seeing more. Keep it up!

That is outstanding work. Not to downplay the time and talent that went into the one currently on the A:M CD but it is quite lacking in detail. Yours really pluses that one up by at least 80%. Yours may not have all the detail of the M4s I get to play with but in my estimation it is more than 'close enough'. (I spent most of today inspecting M4s and then later firing M16s at the firing range... long day.). The decal really goes a long way toward adding the detail that was missing from your first image posted. It'd be good to model the Bolt Catch and Forward Assist though as they stick out quite a bit. If you donate your M4 to the Extra DVD I'll make it a goal to model the internal parts to go with it*. *Not for the Extra DVD but for later.

Everyone is different but I can agree with this. No music is best. Music can do wonders to set the mood of a work but its a distraction I generally can't afford. If music is playing when drawing/modeling/etc I find it best to use music without lyrics. To each his own. Note: This is not the same as listening to music... then stopping it and going to work. Also when animating to a voice/music track its hard not to listen to the audio. Thats not quite the same thing.

I do this from time to time myself... pick up TaoA:M and just start reading. I eventually tire of it and put it down... usually thinking I've surpassed the lessons. As I reread though I always find some new discovery... some new aspect or point of interest to get me excited about animation all over again. Anyway... It's great to have you back Mike!

'semi realistic' is a rather subjective term. Not sure what that really means. Neither did anybody when we put together the Extra CD apparently as not many characters made their way into that category. Have you ruled the models on the Extra CD (and the A:M CD) out? Extra CD Vol I Models/Actors

Thanks Stuart!

Lori, Please post any information you have from the Mac perspective. We want to cover all the angles.

Lori, There are two aspects to this question. It sounds like you have the first one covered but I'll include it just in case. Screen Capture (on a PC) Once you have the image(s) you want to capture on screen press the [Prt Scrn] button. Paste (Control V) that image into the image editor of your choice. Save the image. Uploading to the forum. In a post where you will be typing your text there is a browse button at the very bottom (sometimes off screen). Browse to the location of your image and select it. Submit your post. Variations on the theme and caveats: Screen Capturing. You may be using another method to capture screens. There are a lot of utilities and programs that capture screens (Irfanview, Wink, CamStudio, Camtasia etc.) Post Preview Problem. Don't preview your post before submitting as it may drop your image attachment in the process. Just submit the post and then edit it if something is posted incorrectly. Let us know if there is any other information you need. Rodney (Looks like Dhar was fast with that link... thanks Dhar!)

Great story to go with the characer Satyait. Sounds very much like one (or two?) of Aesop's Fables. Keep up the excellent work, especially the storytelling as that is obviously such an important part in your creativity!

Hey! What was the question? More importantly... What was the answer!?

Definitely showing some advancement there. Whats neat though is that you can see the talent (and even your personal style I think) in all of your efforts. Looking forward to seeing your work in a couple more years! Keep up the great work. Your efforts are definitely paying off.

Dhar, I think he downloaded the whole thing... which consists of mostly unzipped resources. The standalone pages has individual zipped files. So once downloaded and the one file unzipped A:M just needs to be pointed to the Library file(s). Of course not all resources on the Extra CD Vol I made it into the Library file on the CD. Newblood, Once you've upzipped your Extra CD file go into A:M Then TOOLS/OPTIONS Then on the FOLDER tab find Libraries in the drop down list. Browse to the location of the CD Library and select the Library (.lbr) file. If you do a search on Library here in the forum you should find Heath Hash's tutorial on connecting to a Library.

I'm convinced we can find even better ways but those methods work pretty good for now.

Make sure you are dragging and dropping the actual model files (or project, materials etc.) Dragging the folders they reside in doesn't work. Easiest way to test: Create a new folder in the Models Library (Call it 'Test') Open/Enter the Test folder Position your Windows folder and A:M so that you can easily drag and drop Grab a model and drag it into the Test Folder Works every time here. Now... I can hear you already saying "What the heck... that' gonna take years!" A really great way to add lots of resources to a Library quickly is to run a search (Start/Search) Perform a search for *.mdl and all your models will be found. If you want you can drag them all into your Library folder and sort them there later. Keep asking questions and we'll explore further.

Yes. You can drag and drop from your file window (Windows and I assume Mac too) into your Libraries.

Thanks David! Remind me to check this topic before putting the Extra DVD away. I want to make sure I have the absolute latest (most current) files on it. I appreciate all your hard work keeping these up to date.

You'll probabably have to hunt down the plugins. Although it sounds like you have some plugins... just not the right ones to get the errors you are getting. Some will be on the Hash Inc FTP site. Some will be on the creators websites. Do you know which ones A:M is asking for?

I'm sure I sound like a broken record... But the fastest I've ever seen people get a good grip on animating (modeling too) has been watching people work through the manual right here in the forum. Its certainly not required as people find success in other ways too but I've never seen people brand new to computer modeling and animation find success as quickly in any other way. At a minimum it gives you a solid foundation to build upon. The Art of Animation:Master

That is most likely the reason for the problems you are experiencing. Most of the models were created/recreated/updated for v11/v12 (2004/2005) so there have been quite a few changes since 2002. I suspect most projects with particles won't want to open. If you still want to use most of the files you probably can but you may have to do some modifications and adjustments to them. The other option would be to upgrade to v13 ($99). All the files should work fine then and you'll be set for all the models about to be released on the Extra DVD too. Over 4 Gigabytes of projects, models, materials and other great resources!

Ken's right. Some models won't be set up with the poses required for automatic lipsync. Exercise 12: Lip Poses covers how to set up a model with the Preston Blair Phoneme Set. There is your manual, the online discussion area and the video tutorials to explore: Exercise 12 Area

Its is better than most but not the best. Sorensen 3 does seem to be the codec of choice for the most part. For these exercises I'd suggest using it. It'll ensure the most people can view your animation too. As you watch other people post their work you'll be able to follow the trends in video compression to hit even higher levels of quality/compression. The H.67 codec seems to be really popular at the moment but requires the latest version of Quicktime to be viewed. Rodney

(Yup. You should keep posting in the same WIP... people will get lost otherwise) Its a technique that not all people like but by adding lights to the Model itself you can add some nice location specific lighting on your model. The Lights will be treated as Bones in your model and they are created at the 0,0,0 position so once created you'll want to go in and move them. Another good technique to test your lighting would be to open a second window and watch the effect of the light in one window while you adjust the location in the other. Rodney

For buildings I can safely say the DVD will be open until the very last day before deadline. One of my own interests for the DVD has been buildings but... never enough time. I know there was a Cityscape project not too far back. If anything came out of that any building (at any detail really) would be appreciated. Proxy buildings, cartoon buildings, images of building that can be used for decals, detailed buildings... they'll all be most welcome. If too late to get into the interface they can still be included in a Misc folder. See my signature for email. Thanks! Rodney