Rodney

This old Air Force guy would have guessed wrong on the AF Emblem. Thanks for the images Racreel. More pics Ed!

Serg, You sir are a talented guy. Nice work!

Wow. You are speedy. You've been busy. That angle change worked even better than I had imagined. No suggestions for now. I'll just sit back and enjoy. Keep up the experimentation!

I've been hoping some A:M users would take some elements of the exercises and expand on them. You definitely are. It'll probably be best to research and find a way to blur the props but there are ways to fake the effect too. There is a great tutorial series by XTAS in the Tutorials forum that will probably get exactly the effect you want in one frame. The technique uses Multipass to combine the props. The cheat would be to remove (or temporarily hide) the props and place a lathed disc in its place. You can experiment with color, transparency and more to get the desired effect. For an even better look you might have both the props and the disc showing with varied transparency. You might want to experiment with adjusting the angle of the horizon to give a more dramatic aerial effect. In othe words having the horizon high on the left and low on the right with the planes in much the same place as they are. Hope that isn't to confusing... Nice work thus far!

You are making some tough decisions and I think you are heading in the right direction. Its hard to do that sometimes. You last image for a moment led me to believe you had cut back on the number of lights but I see some are just hidden by the new columns. You may want to experiment with cutting a few of them out to better control the light in your scene. Just a spur of the moment thought. A really well lit dungeon works against what you are trying to achieve perhaps. Removing or spreading out the lights might work to your advantage. Is there light behind the camera for instance? I'll suggest removing the middle four lights and keeping the outer four. Then adding two more off screen behind the camera. I like the way the wood is starting to look. nice shadow effects being thrown on the wood from the foreward lamps. Added: While it may work against your purpose I'll suggest you might adjust the camera angle so that you see just slightly more of the right wall than the left. The near perfect symmetry from your current angle adds a little to the modern/perfect look whereas offsetting would help work against that. It would also help in the composition and allow some more detail to be seen on the door and columns that otherwise gets missed. I love the new grainy look in this last image. Its nice! It looks a little like an image that could be found in a print (pulp paper) magazine. One more suggestion in the symmetry area. Please disregard as you see fit. Almost everything is symmetrical in the image. Lights perfectly aligned and distributed. Evil red skull pefectly centered... etc. I think if you pushed the door frame closer to the first column on the right or at least adjusted its position the composition would improve. This would be even more evident with the above camera adjustment and some recentering of the fewer lights. Again... just suggestions. This is not my image and its looking nice as you have it designed now. Keep it up!

Very nice additions. Keep it up!

Joseph, You are going to have a blast. Its like coming home all over again. Not only is the water fine... its ready for you to dive right in! Come on now... you can give us a challenge harder than that! Choose from a fine collection of surfboards, skis, scuba gear, fishing boats, jet skis and speedboats and get ready to hit the waves! Translation: Welcome back! *As far as paying the full fee for an upgrade check with Steve Sappington (steve@hash.com) first as they will mostly likely have you on file. You can send the extra savings to me if you feel the need.

With renders like that you'd better be sticking around. Don't make us have to drag you back.

Your TGA images will have to be in sequential order to import correctly. For instance: image001.tga image002.tga image003.tga ... If you miss a number the import will assume the sequence is finished. Helpful Tip: When you render out to TGA in A:M you may want to use a file name such as 'image000.tga' in the dialog box. A:M will see the 0s and know that you want the image names padded with 0s. You don't have to use 3 zeros of course but thats what I almost always do. If you just want to import the image or sequence then Right Click in the Project Workspace on the Image header and import your image there. You can also Right Click and choose 'Save As Animation' to quickly export out to other formats. Rodney

Nice! One Q though... Shouldn't the beams on the front and side bend with the building or is there something else going on there? A few Bias tweaks would get them in line if they don't have CPs in the middle. Looking forward to seeing more of your project. Rodney

Definitely fooled my eye. Ahem... post more images please.

Looking nice. I'll suggest spending a little time adding detail where the walls meet the floor and ceiling/boards. Using a little displacement will go a long way here too to make it look built rather than just rendered. There is a thread on a basement corridor (I think it was by one of the Bradbury brothers) that has some good tips on lighting and adding detail. Not all would apply in your case of course but some would. The wood at the ceiling for instance could benefit a lot from another map added to it to make is seem less modern and perhaps more hand hewn. The marble(?) columns you might want to experiment to get some differentiation. If you are mostly happy with what you have just adding the grunge maps would go a long way. Its a very clean dungeon hallway as it is right now. The repetition of rock pattern (mirror image) on the left side wall is too noticable right now too.** I like it! **Unless this is the location of a secret door made invisible by a magician in which case... disregard!

Very nice! As has been said these are great characters. They look like they'll be fun to animate. I like the stark lighting style and the stark character color too. Is that the lighting style that you'll be using in animation? I like. Is that hair you are using for the whiskers are is that modeled geometry?

...and for earlier versions of A:M you can just render to TGA and then use a freeware utility to convert to JPG or your other preferred format. I like and use Irfanview almost daily. www.irfanview.com It's a PC image converter/veiwer and I've found it quite useful over the past few years.

I believe what you are looking for is 'hooks'. Technical Reference write up on 'Hooks' If not hooks you may just want to build the model by placing the parts where you need them. Shapes don't need to be connected in every instance.

Wow... I blink and you really have progressed! Nothing to critique just enjoying the show.

Thanks John! Animated Distortion is an awesome tool that could use some more documentation/tutorials. Definitely on my 'to do' list. Its fun too!

Thanks Mark! Tincan's tutorial is a real classic.

Hey... no smiling and posting without links allowed! What did you find?

Teresa, No problem. We'll hold the fort down for you here. Hurry back and good luck on your school work. Outstanding prioritization!

Ooooo yeah. Go Noah!

The classic attack on this problem is to insert a Null at the center of the location where the object will turn upside down. Adding a 'Aim at' constraint then keeps the object oriented in relation to the null. The old manual (available on the Hash Inc FTP - look for it in the 2002 directory) has a tutorial demonstrating this technique with a plane flying in a loop. Good stuff. As Jandals demonstrates there are several attacks. Adding a Null may be the easiest however.

You've hit on the answer Filip. You must assign (or drag and drop) the distortion cage to a bone. Depending on which bone you apply it to will dictate what gets distorted. You can have multiple distortion cages assigned to different bones. I've never tried to assign more than one cage to the same bone however... I should probably try that. Edit: Just in case... You create the animated/fixed distortion cage in an Action Window. Right Click then select [New] then [Distortion]** Going by memory here... Rodney **Added: As JohnL3D demonstrates via his linked project below you can also add the distortion cage as an Action Object. I need to play with that. Thanks to John for his movie and project file. You rock John!

You can find them on your A:M CD. If 'E' is your harddrive they would be somewhere like this: E:\Data\Models\Primitives

I can. Bandwidth, blocked internet sites and firewall issues. The world just isn't fair to us animation fanatics. I'll catch up later with ZachBG's work though. Looking forward to that. Go get 'em Zach!