Rodney

No David... that's just the forum being overly sensitive to drag/dropping. None of your topics should be archived... and the entire category of Special Topics definitely shouldn't be either. Sorry for the inconvenience. Give me a little while to get things sorted. Edit: Things should be (hopefully) back to normal. Added: I do think there is opportunity for moving forward in the new forum in ways that we couldn't before and the topics getting moved into archives was a result of me experimenting a little to see what was possible.

Post 'em if you've got 'em. Images can be anything past or present as long as it was created using Animation:Master. Dimensions are to be determined. An Avatar for the A:M Users Club is also needed. That should not change as often.

Very nice David. She looks solid... as in... present inside the space she is occupying. This is not something that I feel is often the case with 3D characters.

Can someone refresh my memory... Did we have to regress one release to v19e in order to get away from the decal crash? The only v19 f+ I see is for the Mac. Edit: That does indeed seem to be the case.

Being new again to Animation:Master I am bound and determined to actually learn A:M! I've got that spline tinglin' newbie vibe.

Just refreshed my copy of Animation:Master and find myself feeling that old desire to do some splining... just in time for the current contest? Hmmm.... perhaps! A:M subscription updated... check. Brand new shiny forum... check. Gallery to fill... check. Stories to tell... check. Here's hoping I can dive a lot more deeply into A:M in 2019 than I did in 2018... yikes... I didn't do much. And the scary thing was that I had a whole lot of 'free time' to devote than previously. It wasn't wasted time but it also wasn't very focused. I don't imagine I'll be a lot more focused in 2019 but I do hope to be a whole lot more productive.

I thought this was released recently but apparently it has been around since 2013.

Add images You can drag-n-drop files from your computer or images directly from browsers. You can also use the right-click menu or ctrl+v to paste them. Edit images You can edit your images in a few ways to fit your reference need. You can: Select one or more Focus on one or more(doubleclick/space) Rotate (freely or with snapping using shift) Flip Scale Crop Change opacity Delete Save images Control the canvas The canvas is your scene which can also be used in several ways. Features include: Optimize the canvas around your images. Pack your images. Toggle always on top-function. Toggle transparent to mouse-function. Lock the canvas for editing. Clear canvas. Undo/redo. Reset camera. Save/load your scenes. Export scenes. Customization You can customize the appearance and keyboard shortcuts of PureRef to fit your needs. Customize colours. Save color themes. Change master opacity. Customize keybindings.

This program can be very useful for collecting references (and rendered images) and displaying them over/under and beside other programs. Use of shortcut keys is highly recommended. https://www.pureref.com/index.php It's name your price so feel free to enter $0 to try it out. Add a few more $ to support.

I'm about to test out the theory of... it's working....as it's time to update my subscriptoin.

I likely messed up your test on my end... I wasn't able to login. I did opt for resetting the password and was able to login after that. I'll check again after any roll back.

Maybe put the whole scene inside a box so that the rays bounce back into the scene more quickly so you can ramp up the settings even higher. I would imagine that could be a scene that you set to render at the start of a trip away from home so that you can return to having it finished much much later.

Of course there is a point at which using Boolean cutters might be less of a cheat. For instance, if we need to easily change the texture inside the cut out space. This is not what is needed in your case. Your approach looks perfect!

You all are dedicated modelers. I am reminded of why 'faking it' can be difficult. I thought I'd throw together a column with Boolean Cutters and there were a few issues with rendering... Some of this is because I was lazy and didn't close off the ends of the cyclinder shapes used to cut the gauges our of the columns. Some of this is beacause I was lazy and applied all three textures to the column planning to disappear the textures I didn't want in the Column's choreography settings.. Here's the render in question.

Internal patches are causing you pain. In preventing us from modeling with internal patches A:M is saying... "I really can't put a 5 point patch here... that wouldn't be wise." Removing the internal patches immediately adjacent the 5 point patch potential areas allowed me to assign the areas as 5 point patches with one exception. That except appeared to be a potential 5 pointer adjacent another 5 point patch that itself had an internal patch on one side. Removing that spline (thereby removing the internal patches on that side allowed that 5 pointer to be restored as well as the first one that didn't want to work. There are still a lot of internal patches in this model but at least they aren't problematically preventing 5 pointers. (See attached) eyelids_V3a.mdl

Since the early days of the forum there has been some custom code (set in place very like by the highly esteemed Will Pickering) that parsed through some things and formatted them in specific ways. I will guess some of that custom code is no longer connecting in the exact same customized way. Some of this might simply relate to the new IPB forum software not having the same code routines as prior versions of their software. Some might relate to a specific process simply being turn off, in which case we just have to know what that process is and turn it back on.

Regarding the search... the forum is reporting that the search index is rebuilding/reprocessing. Theoretically once built it will have all the forum indexed for searching. Because some of the lookup button (ex. All Activity) very likely rely on search functions they too will come up short until the search index is fully processed.

For those of you that like to point your phones at things and just be taken to the site immediately perhaps you might be interested in a few QR codes to get you there. If your phone doesn't have a QR code reading app... you might have to download one. This one should take you directly to the main page of the A:M Forum:

Looking into the various options now. MP4 would appear to be the ideal upload format. door.mp4

Looking very good thus far Jason!

My guru status is diminishing.... Sorry I wasn't here for you kem but glad to see you got everything sorted. Good things we have lots of guru types hanging out around here. Not that it matters much for you now.. .but for others looking in....the number 1 reason most flocking fails is that the user forgets (or doesn't know) to turn particles on. I'll guess the number 2 reason is not understanding the process of setup such as how to drag/drop the model to create the flock. For older computers it can be useful to set the flocking setting 'Draw as Dots' to 'on' until absolutely needed. Nowadays with more RAM on the average computer that's less of a problem so 'Draw as Dots' can usually be left off..

I received my award/certificate by the way for the previous contest but failed to mention it here. Thanks much Robert! Very impressive!. Folks should consider such a prize well worthy of submitting an entry in the current contest just for the opportunity to have one of these on their wall. And speaking of that... I need to get back to working on my entry!

I think we need to know more about the specific setup/scene but... The two things that immediately come to mind is to set the initial movement from a top view where you can more easily see the angle of any objects or characters moving. The second would be for cases where paths might be used to achieve a higher degree of accuracy. For instance you could set up a set of splines... some parallel and others at the desired diagonal angle and then use those as paths for your objects/ characters to move on. (Remember, a path constraint can be applied to any spline... it doesn't have to be a path object created in the Chor)

Don't forget that if you do get a few keys that explode out of a logical position during simulation you can just delete the offending control points and use the smoother result. Before editing the results of a simulation I do try to save the simulation first so that it can easily be returned to without simulating again. This is what I was referring to above regarding endlessly tweaking a setup and re simulating versus tweaking the results of that simulation. If for instance the waist is they only thing that isn't behaving correctly it might be worthwhile to grab those and animate them manually. This is doubly true for slight crawls and extraneous movement. Simply locate the frames where the animation looks good and then carefully remove the excess keyframes inbetween. Copy/pasting that first set of keys to a later location (and/or peaking them so they don't have a curving interpolation) will ensure things stay in place. With simulation every control point gets keyed in place on every frame. Where possible I try to pare that down to the absolute minimum number of frames necessary. In that way animating the shapes later via a few keys is trivial compared being nigh impossible with a key on every frame. The editing of simulated data can seem quite intimidating until we remember to save the simulated data first under a specific name. The we are free do delete whatever we want... and where we over do that editing return to the original data and try again.