Rodney

This is getting insane. More power to your insanity Stian!

Very nice Jake! Great to see the city drive throughs we got a hint at seeing before. ...and one of your scenes (the lake cabin scene?) even transitions into a Snoopy and Charlie Brown image. Thats a treat. Great job. I'm not sure I can endorse driving up on curves, two wheels and skidding into parking places but hey... you make driving a polo look fun. Congrats on getting this one finished.

As A:M Features is a wiki I imagine eventually others will be able to add in their own links too. Get in good with Matt and I'm sure he'll give you his password. I almost hesitate to suggest this because I think Matt should be allowed to finish the what he has there already. In other words he's doing such a great job that I wouldn't want to be the guy who messed it all up! I am thoroughly impressed with his documentation thus far. BTW - I downloaded your spreadsheet thinking I might add to it but... never enough hours in a day.

...and there is always the ever updating 'View New Posts' link. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=S...amp;CODE=getnew You just look down the right side and click on those topics you find that interest you. Click on 'Last post by:' link versus the posters name or else you'll go to the poster's profile.

Mark, The white rotoscope error is a classic example of video card problems. The first thing I would do is consider what graphics card you have. There are some cards that (I understand but have not experienced recently) will probably always be problematic. Since you haven't changed computers I would say it is likely that something you installed (a game or a new application) changed your driver/settings. Make sure you have the most current video card driver from the card's manufacturer. If updating your drivers has no effect here is the simple workaround that many people have used: Go into TOOLS/OPTIONS and on the GLOBAL tab change your realtime video driver setting from Direct3D to OpenGL or vice versa. If you experience realtime issues in predictable places depending on what you are doing in A:M you can change this setting on the fly with no problem. Just toggle it back as needed. Thats what comes immediately to mind. Let us know how things turn out. Rodney

Wow. Wow. Wow... and Wow! If you have'nt seen (or recently revisited) Matt Bradbury's Animation:Master Features wiki you must go there now! A:M Features by Matt Bradbury Matt has been systematically working his way through A:M and putting the information about A:M's features in his wiki for all to enjoy. Beautifully presentated with great information. Thanks to Matt for all his hard work on this fine resource. ..and since they will fit right in here as well we'll add the links to information about Sweeper, Treeez and the Newton Physics plugins. These are the pages, projects and presentations from Emilio, Marcel and Steffen who have so masterfully demonstrated their programming talent through these very useful plugins. Their plugins are available in v13. The Links: Sweeper - Extrusion and Duplication TreeeZ - Tree Creation Newton Physics - Physics Simulation

See now that makes more sense. I've had similar problems when running entirely too many programs at once. Usually after a restart and uninstalling unneeded programs (I download and test a lot of programs) I'm back where I need to be. Your problem sounds familar but it often takes someone right there at the machine to get it working quickly. As the old saying goes, 'the problem is easy to fix... its just finding the problem that is hard'. Let us know how things turn out. Rodney

Heath Hash has a tutorial on his site that outlines the procedure: A:M Libraries It should be noted that since Heath put together his tutorial the A:M installer has added the option to copy files to the harddrive. If you check the box Libraries will be installed in the process.

I'm just now getting to see these images on a computer that does them justice. In a word: Beautiful!

Agreed. The line has blurred a lot and people refer to CP Weighting more and more as 'Smartskinning'. This can get confusing. CP Weighting seems (to me) a subset of smartskinning that is larger than the set itself. Is that possible? The following will be too much text for this post perhaps but for those looking in... it might be informative. From the v12 Tech Ref: Contrast this with CP Weighting as described in the following also from the Technical Reference: CP Weights Unless mistaken David demonstrates even more clearly the advances in CP Weighting found in current versions of A:M. In any case he provides a nice introduction to CP Weighting.

Generally you find these in the operating system control panel. If you are only getting this in A:M however... very strange. Check your videocard driver to be sure it is setup correctly (and your screen is at an optimum resolution). You should visit the website of your video card provider and download their most recent driver updates. If you just want to get into the Options Panel there is a shortcut key to open it. I never use it... so have forgotten. There is is (The menu has it listed). Try pressing the [Ctrl] key and then [P]. That should get you in there. Off Topic but perhaps useful: You can find a list of other useful shortcut keys HERE.

The consensus seems to be that it has. Now to get the word out!

Oh... and David does some of that.. whatchacallit... that new thing... yeah thats the one... CP Weighting! Its a great introduction to CP Weighting for those that have never used it.

Presenting Part V in the Squetch Rig Installation tutorial series by David Simmons. If you have not yet reviewed Parts I through IV please download and view those first. Squetch Rig Installation (Part I) Squetch Rig Installation (Part II) Squetch Rig Installation (Part III) Squetch Rig Installation (Part IV) Now on to Part V! Here David first refines the face, optimizing the bone setup, hiding the FACE Rig inside the head and testing the poses. He then goes on to demonstrate similar refinement of the feet, hands and fingers. Tip of the Day: Note how David modifies poses so that bones appear and disappear as you need them. When you are done rigging and put on the hat of animator this could be useful. Squetch Rig Installation (Part V) with David Simmons (43MB Zip file) Presentations are in MOV format encoded with H.264 which requires Quicktime 7. Other formats will follow. Commentary and exploration are encouraged. Let David know what you think! ---------------------------- Additional Information ---------------------------- Download the Install Rig Plugin! The Rigging and Relationships forum has an onongoing discussion of the Squetch Rig. There you will also find the plugin and files used with these tutorials.

Meant to get Part V out a few days ago but... didn't! Will make amends soon. Look for it!

It'd be interesting to see Humpty Dumpty have his day. You'd definitely want to make him enough of your own character to make it worth the effort though. I suppose there are worse things than spending the rest of your life as 'that guy that did the film like Jeff Lew'. One thing to consider... The bullet trajectory is probably too high. Humpty actually jumps up into the path of the bullet. Nobody has established that he's got a brain in that shell yet... so that might be okay. Lowering the path of the bullet to indicate Humpty is avoiding the bullet is the look I'm sure you are after. The premise is good... now make it your own. Finding your own voice and establishing your own distinctive style of storytelling will help you become the next Jeffrey Lew. Rodney

I see UCL in the UK has an MS Word document detaling making tutorials with Wink available on their site: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/learningtechnology/content/tools/wink/ They apparently also offer a course.

I was responding to Jody Krivohlavek's cylinder decaling tutorial thread when I decided to visit the Wink site. We've been waiting for the release of Wink 2.0 for quite awhile now. ...and I missed its recent release! Here are some of the new features and updates: To Satis (Wink's creator) who doesn't even know we exist over here in the A:M Forum yet... many thanks! The Link: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/download.php Woo Hoo!

Half done? Show off! Looking forward to the next update.

You need to be in Model Mode. (What Markh said)

In 'The Law of Supply and Demand' Chapter 9 Para 2.5 it states rather emphatically: 'Do not quit your day job'. I am not entirely sure how this applies to your particular case with kitchen tables and sales via Turbo Squid and in that you don't have a job but just in case... In other words... Good luck!

Sounds almost like you need to take on a third. Very nice work thus far.

While I didn't follow the Highlander TV series much the first Highlander movie was intense stuff. Great storytelling. The later movies I wasn't so impressed with. Most of the series stuff I watched was enjoyable. That you took on such a project in and of itself is quite a feat. As has been said you should be very proud. Do you have other plans for it? (I assume Star Wars Fanfilms will be targeted) What comes to mind is going back in and perhaps making a web comic or something similar. Such a thing would convey the intracacies of your storyline better I think. Star Wars without lightsabers is a difficult approach. For a lot of people Star Wars without lightsabers isn't Star Wars. I understand the reasoning though.

Shouldn't you be animating? Great to have you with us in the A:M Forum Bruce!

'Insane' is the word that now comes to mind. It just keeps on getting better Stian. She's a thing of beauty. Did you ever tell us what scale you are building this to? (If you did I can't find it)