Rodney

Thanks Ken. My brain's unstuck now. I like your test MMZ. It is awfully easy to look at the wrong side of a single square patch with displacement. It'll be more obvious on a more complex model I'm sure. Rodney

So far so VERY good John! Would it be safe to say the ultimate trick might be to render your dragon model in its final form with displacement and then reimport those displaced renders as the final displacement maps for final tweaking. Or is that perhaps unnecessary or even overkill? Rodney

Eric, The colors in the greyscale image dictate the height. Color images obviously get converted to grey for the purpose. Black will decrease the height while white will increase. Someone remind me what the number is for zero/middle... my brain locked when trying to divide 255 in half. 127 doesn't sound right... gah... does not compute.... Rodney

Excluding programming solutions, I think this is probably where A:M Composite comes to the rescue. By rendering these elements out separately and compositing either in a choreography or via A:M Composite we can place them whereever needed. (can we adjust location/translate image objects in yet? I don't think so.). Shadows would still be problematic of course... Rodney

Hey... thats nice!

Dan! I'll check those out just as soon as I can get them downloaded. Slow/intermitten connection here w/ firewall blocking out the free world. Thanks for the MAC voice! Rodney

JohnL3D has a few project files you might be interested in showing this technique. They are on his web site. Rodney

Jeff, There are lots of A:M Users returning to active duty with v13. This is the year to join in. Lots of fun to be had in the A:M Community. Hope to see you often here in the forum! Rodney

That snowman looks very familiar... Go Go Go... Make it happen!

...and of course, pixel displacement can be animated.

Forgive me Antony. For those times when you turn off your computer here is a smaller copy of your image. If you want me to remove it I will. BTW - I like! Rodney

Ed, There should be at least one other A:M User in the Tampa area that is active here in the forum. I remember this as I wished I would have known that when I spent 3 months there awhile back. You can look up forum members via the Members link near the top of the forum. Phoenix, It sounds like you've finally found your way to the right place. If you've already viewed the online tutorials you are off on the right foot. Glad to have BOTH of you with us. Welcome to the A:M Community! Rodney

Thanks guys! Even more great info to absorb. I guess its settled for me then... I'll have to look into Open Office. I personally use MS Office but having Open Office installed too shouldn't be a problem. Great info Curtis. On a slightly different but related note I've found that editing the HTML height/width to make them automatically adjust to 90% of the window on the web page makes .swf tutorials display pretty good. The exception of course is text. If the text was created in too small a font it wont be readable on larger resolution screens. My recommendation is to keep Fonts fairly large in tutorials. While I haven't really explored the world of sound and music for my animation I selected Audacity as my personal choice for sound editing quite a while ago. I'm glad to hear its also available on the Mac. Keep the info flowing. As I find time I plan to post a few example Wink projects that people can pick apart and explore. I'd like to do some Tutorials on Making Tutorials one of these days too. Never enough time, especially to explore all the programs and utilities available. Thats one reason I think its good to standardize from time to time. So the list of recommended software for creating Tutorials includes (but not limited too): Camtasia ($) - Flash movie making/screen capture Freeware alternatives include Wink and Camstudio (only v2 recommended) Open Office (F) - Freeware word processing, database and spreadsheet applications for administration Audacity (F) - Sound Editing Rodney

Thanks everyone! Those are some great resources for putting tutorials together. I've learned a lot too here. For instance, I didn't know that Open Office could save out to PDF format. That could be quite useful. The utilities I've used for printing and saving to PDF do the job but sometimes just barely**. I'd love to standardize on Open Office for the Tutorials Forum administrative work but I fear that would leave our Mac tutorial gurus out of the loop. What software do Mac Users prefer when making tutorials? I know Quicktime Pro is pretty much standard on every Mac. Rodney **I plan to try Go2PDF as it looks like a pretty good one stop utility for creating PDF files.

Here is a place to talk up your software of choice for making Tutorials. Tell us about what you use to make tutorials, what the pros and cons may be and where possible show us examples of tutorials created with those tools. Of special interest are those tutorials that demonstrate use of Animation:Master. For the record Hash Inc's preferred software for video tutorials is Camtasia. For freeware the Tutorials Forum currently suggests Wink as the standard for .swf tutorials. Please note that the forum can generate HTML tutorials based on discussions here in the forum via the 'Print this Topic' option. See THIS TOPIC for more information. Formats of interest: .doc (this includes other similar formats such as .rtf) .htm, .html .pdf .mov .avi .swf What did I miss? Thanks! Rodney

First... Welcome home! I am curious... is your computer inside or outside of this room? I ask as I'm imagining the noise that even computers can generate inside such a room. This probably won't matter much unless or until you work with sound. Ummm... maybe. Good luck on your project! Rodney

Right on! That's a great one. The Making of the Leopard Queen by Jim Talbot If anyone wants to champion a specific tutorial or area of expertise just say the word. I envision we'll have some Editors (Champions) who will hold onto the draft and finesse them until finally ready to go to press. The original author, contributors, subject matter experts and Hash Inc will be asked to review the final draft and comment and correct as they see fit. Jim Talbot's Leopard Queen could be mined for some serious gold! Rodney

I'll bet that actually looks cool... swimming into the background and fading into it like that. At any rate... There are three places where you can find Fog settings; the individual camera, the Render Options panel and in [TOOLS][Options] on the Rendering tab. You'll want to check both of those to make sure you haven't somehow turned one on. Rodney Edit: There are (at least!?!) three places not two. Sorry for any confusion.

All, There is information in the A:M Forum on just about every subject matter related to Animation:Master. For many forum members finding and organizing this information can be a difficult task. The A:M Forum provides for the collection, editing and dissemination of information to a variety of formats through the [Print Topic] option and basic/advanced search functions. In short, personalized/customized tutorials are only a mouse click away. Its even easier than it sounds. As such we are looking to collect, edit and format some of these treasures, format them and ultimately make useful information available to the A:M Community. Once enough material is available they will be made available in a tutorial collection. This is a good chance for writers and editors to show their skills too. Here are a few examples of the raw forum HTML that we'd like to collect.** Trees and other Vegetation for TWO Movie - Frank Silas Lighting Tutorial (Thanksgiving Scene) - Yves Poissant I have an edited version of Yves's Lighting Tutorial which I'll try to post in a few different formats to show examples of the possibilities. Formats such as .doc, html, .swf, .pdf and .avi/.mov will be explored. If you are interested in participating in this project we'd love to hear from you. Thanks in advance for your interest! ** Note1: Large graphics may cause a delay in the automated forum tutorials showing on screen. Please be patient. For those that can't wait for cleaned up tutorials printing of these files is not required just save them out from your browser onto your hard drive. Note2: These forum tutorials are 'Live' and will be updated as people contribute to the topics. Check back from time to time and see what has been added by just clicking on the links.

I was afraid you might be confused by this (see my other post mentioning a white background). It is quite likely that you have black outline on alpha channel background. To our eyes that is black on black. If you render out an entirely white background and then add the two images together I'd guess that your lines will reappear. Another way to test the theory is to change the color of your lines in the Toon Render settings in the Render Panel. Change them to green for instance. Do they appear then? Rodney

Yes. You have some winners there.

Entirely too cool Will. Great job! It would be great to see this guy (your guy actually) on displays all over the world. Hope he goes far. Rodney

He looks much much happier now.

In a Choreography window you can go into Modeling mode by clicking on the appropriate icon on the menu. Then you can adjust the path from there. You won't have all of the same modeling tools in the Choreography as you would if the path were treated as a straight model. Did you draw this path in the Choreography (I assume you did)? You can toggle on the Bias handles too but I'm not sure how that works with a straight Path (if at all). Often I like to draw a path as a model, drop it into the choreography and then edit in either the modeling window or Choreography. I feel it gives me more control over the path. Rodney

Stian, Its already been said but I echo. Beautiful! Dan, Start another thread to explore the possibilities/process of distortion cages. It'll be well worth the investigation. Rodney