Rodney

That is one fine looking Hippogyraf Will. Nice textures! Looks like I'll be buying the SIGGRAPH videos this year.

Here then is another (late night) suggestion to counter overheating. First buy a really really big freezer...

Great to have you with us Lee. Each time someone new arrives here in the forum we get to refresh our own 'newbie-ness' too. We learn a lot from each other. For instance, thanks for your insight on your Mac installation. Make yourself at home, work through that manual ( LINK ) and get ready for the ride! Rodney (Note: I'll move this post over to the 'Welcome New Users' topic one of these days so if it disappears... it went there. K?)

Emilio Leroux's Sweeper now comes standard with A:M v13 so the current updater should get you that for free if own v13. You should still be able to get Sweeper via Emilio's site (at least the earlier versions). Check out his other tutorials as well! This one for instance is a must view (on the benefits and function of Magnitude/Bias adjustment). The location of (the orginal) Sweeper: http://www.moscafilms.com.br/emilioleroux/workshop.html

Matt and Dan are brothers. Twin brothers? I dunno. I forget. *Great renders. Really clues us in on the scale of things.

Beautiful Render there... the barbarian really looks great all posed, in a setting doing something. The specular highlights (while looking pretty nice in the small image) seem to be a bit much in the larger images. Thinkin more about it... it's probably not the highlights so much as the refectivity on the skin. More please!

Models (and other resources) won't be saved internally in a Project automatically. You have to tell A:M to do this. To save a model in a project you'll need to embed the files. This can be accomplished individually in the PWS at each resource or for all resources (except images which will remain external) go to Project/Embed All and then save your Project. It's not a bad idea to still save models separately from the project from time to time. Just right click on the model and Save As. Then make sure you Embed All before you save the project again.

That was beautiful... 'chills up my spine'-like beautifully said. I echo the kudos to the A:M Renderosity group. I think I saw the posts you speak of. Jin Kazaama, Darklimit... these talented folks and others have represented A:M well in the Renderosity forums. Very solid kudos to them all. Once the word gets out and the leap of faith into Animation:Master is made... its just a matter of time before the smiles start a'comin'! Mixed with the proper trajectory for the learning of the A:M toolset the rest is as they say... history. We already know you here in the forum Jim. You are already well on your way. Just wait until next year! You'll be able to look back again. Just imagine the tales you'll be able to tell. Spline on JPappas!

Hey now! Can he say that??? What if we can get you a 33% discount on certification!? Seriously though, the certificate is just extra... the real reward is what you learn along the way. Welcome to the A:M Community Mark!

Go ahead... twist my arm. Okay... you win! That setup will make a nice addition to the DVD. Thanks Dan!

Bruce, 'Astromony 101' is nothing short of amazing work. I agree that the intros seem to drag a little but it does take time to introduce all the characters. I'm sure that the episodes can really move right along as they concentrate on historical figures and the facts. I know it may be out of your control but to capture more kids attention I think you should leave the ages and grades out of the intros... better to let each kid imagine the characters are their age. The quality of visuals and sound are top notch. This is on par with and I'd say even better than a lot of the programs I see on TV right now. ...and educational too! You should definitely be proud of your work. I had seen some of your historical characters in A:M Stills and in the image folder on the Hash Inc FTP. I always wondered what they were being used for... now I know! Great stuff. Let me close with an apology. In chat last Wednesday I got so focused on your 'Wedgeeguy' moniker that I didn't realize you were the same Bruce Monahan that created such shorts as 'Them Cows is Stupid', 'Everything's Just Beachy', '[sigh]' etc. When I think of Toon animation... those ALWAYS spring to mind. After you left chat and I browsed over your site... my memory returned. Best of everything in your efforts with 'Astronomy 101'. I hope it gets seen by lots and lots of kids and adults too! Now gimme the answers to those Astronomy questions!!! Rodney Edit: I see this was made for upcoming Astronomy software. Is that cool or what?

What file format, codec and compression are you rendering to? I'll recommend Quicktime .MOV with Sorenson 3 compression. You really should render to TGA sequential images first though but that's a different subject.

When you dropped the specular highlights I think you surpassed the quality in the original image source. Nice. Maybe Jody can borrow your scaled image (or at least the layout) for the thumnail image on the Extra DVD? It definitely lets everyone know at a glance the relative scale of the planets.

that'll do.

Martin is very protective of forum contributors' time isn't he? He gets right to the point and bottom line he's right about TAoA:M; completing TAoA:M resolves many of the issues presented here in the forum. Those it doesn't resolve it usually sheds some light on. I'm there for you in the TAoA:M exercises if you want to work through it officially online. To answer your question on the Extra DVD: It is slated to have some tutorials on materials, texturing and decaling. Martin may step on your toes but take it in the way its intended. He wants you to succeed. It may sound strange but you'll find yourself wishing he'd stomp a little harder the next time. Best, Rodney

Starting to really get the look of being a world that is lived in. If you don't put in some concrete curb barriers you might want to dent up the lamp post. I'd imagine someone would have hit that many a time being in the parking space like that. It reminds me of the time I was in Japan... backing into a parking spot and found out designers do indeed place huge posts and poles in parking spots. The pole was really really huge and yet somehow it had been hit many times before. Umm.. and it was my wife's car. Great improvements!

Cool. Thats good news. I need to look at Bitmap Plus anyway. Right now I can't get it on the schedule as I'm deep into putting the Extra DVD together. Can't afford to miss that deadline. (I'm behind too... I was suppose to upload the directory/DVD structure 1 August!) Eeek. Extra DVD vAlpha2 is burning in the DVD drive right now.

Glad to see you're making good use of your free time. Forgive me if I don't show my wife as it'll remind her that I need to throw away a lot of 'stuff'. ...and YES everything I have is needed thank you very much! I know this isn't a WIP but I'll add this: It would be nice to see the scene with some more texture... dirt, dust, grime etc. but that's just me. The lighting experts could weigh in on that aspect too. The composition (from camera POV) could use a minor adjustment to really finish the image. Cropping the image to balance the top and bottom a bit more would accomplish this too. The empty space at the bottom doesn't contribute to the theme of the image; "garbage", so could be removed. But... 'Garbage' tells the tale as is. I like.

Hmmm.... I haven't launched Bitmap Plus in v13 so that might be the problem. Will have to investigate.

There is an entire forum area dedicated to experimentation and refining of materials. It's forum 46 on your A:M dial: The Material Laboratory I mentioned it briefly before and I think you should check it out. In the Material Laboratory you should find information about Bitmap Plus. I now thing Bitmap Plus *is* the solution you are looking for as it combines the power of materials with the flexibility of decal images. Here is the link to the pinned topic: Bitmap Plus A plugin by Marcel Bricman* *He knows bricks apparently... he's a bricman.

Save your project file (Embed everything first!) under a new name and then close and restart A:M. If your view still doesn't return that would be strange indeed. If A:M has somehow grown that attached to the weathermap (which is very unlikely) you could always add the file back in from the Extra CD. I assume you might have deleted the weathermap decal while viewing the model in realtime. Edit: I see you deleted the decal rather than the weathermap. .

Okay... decals. I'm using my wall again because 5 point patches should be avoided where they aren't necessary. In walls they generally aren't necessary. Here's a little movie file demonstrating one decal with one tileable image placed on top of a strangely shaped wall that has a brick material preapplied. The number of bricks on the wall depends on the number of repeats set in the decal image properties. The setting can be animated over time. In my example the repeats should increase in size (in the X axis) in order to shorten the width of the bricks in the decal to make them look more realistically porportioned. DecalImageRepeat.mov

The sharing of files definitely tells the tale too. Here's an adjustment of some settings on your file from my end. Okay then... Decals it is. Note in the second attached image that this is just 1 image stamp/decal on the wall. The image itself is of a few bricks. Once the decal is applied (New/Decal in the modeling window) the decal's image can be set to repeat. In the second attached image the setting on the X axis probably needs to be increased to 12. I've made no attempt to flatten the object, hide or separate the various sides, etc. You'll see the undecaled areas in red. I've modified the object (made the door off center/the top of the wall drop down) to demonstrate how the decal images are effected (or in this case not effected) by the geometry beneath. This will not be true with patch images.

The direction you extrude shouldn't make a difference *with a material* outside of the direction the normals are pointing. First things first... select a large part of the model and hit the slash key / to group all. Name that group something new in your PWS and add your material to it. Does anything change? I see your edit: Nothing like the feeling of success and the eureka moment eh?

It'd been awhile since I tried to use tiled images in a single decal. I'm happy to say this is a lot easier than I remembered. If you stamp your wall with the 3 brick image (or any image for that matter) you can then tell A:M to repeat that image horizontally and vertically to get it to look right on your object. If you stamped it with another image you can just swap images and the repeat settings are applied to the new image. The only problem then (with decaling) is making sure you decal all sides of the object. This is relatively straightforward with the UV Editor. Yet another option is Bitmap Plus (by Marcel Bricman). It provides a nice solution similar to decaling but with materials that use images to penetrate objects.