thefreshestever

thanks i cant really tell how long it took, since it was clear from the beginning that i wouldn´t be paid by the hour the budget was in fact the reason i decided to go super-simple with the characters and props... one great advantage of toon render is that one doesn´t have to bevel everything, which saves a lot of modeling time... also i didn´t had to texture anything, and used one character template which i made copies of and then just changed the hairstyle, the clothes etc... i guess it took round about 14 days from start to finish, counting 8 hours a day.. rendertime not included, that does the computer for me when i´m sleeping here are some wireframes of one character, as i said before, they are basically all the same. this one has a patch count of 1100, but some simpler ones might be around 800..

this was actually finished 3 months ago, but the company just went public with that project now, so i couldn´t post it sooner... i hope you all are able to understand german i did the website and the logo as well, the actual website is still in the making, this is just some sort of a preview/microsite... website

nice

ouch... sounds like a nightmare. i hope you´re well insured... good luck with everything! usb sticks are really robust, had one in the washing machine once, still works.

nobody said you can´t carry on using it for now... and i suppose the fix will work for v18 as well, so of course, mac users can use a:m for another year or two. but after that it will be gone as it seems...

thanks, steffen... much appreciated... i can understand your frustration and even not wanting to maintain the mac version any longer, as sad as it is... i´m sure you have a life outside of coding a:m, it sounds very time consuming... again, thanks for all the effort and keeping it alive for so long.

rodney, i didn´t mean to say i will never come back here, but since i will be mostly realizing stuff in another app, it doesn´t make all too much sense to post my questions here. and i certainly can´t post wips and finished projects here, since this is the a:m forum, not a software independent cg-forum. this won´t stop me from visiting once in a while, it´s more like moving to another city and visiting friends and family from time to time... so yeah, i´ll be missing you guys for sure!!! who knows, maybe i´m moving back home someday because i´m sick of polys, but for now i want to explore the big city.

rodney, i´m not saying i wont have a:m installed at least on one computer in the future (given that it still runs on a mac), but i want to have one 3D app to realize a project from start to end, i don´t want to have to switch between several programs all the time. so in most cases that won´t be a:m, because of many reasons: 1. as stated before, a:m has its limits, and given the circumstances the last couple of years it´s only logical. 2. a lot of stuff can be done more productively in other apps (some other stuff not, but for MY purposes in most cases this is true). 3. the renderer. it´s improved a lot, but still slow compared to others. that alone wouldn´t be dramatic, but i have to say i like the look of some other renderers better. you might say it depends on what you do with it, and that´s partially true, but there are renderers that have a special kind of look. it´s a matter of taste, and i´m sure you can create almost every look with a:m, but it always means a lot of tinkering to achieve what some other renderers just spit out like that. i´d still recommend a:m for everyone it is suitable for. if i´d only do cartooney character animation and the future of a:m would be a bit more secure i´d propably stick with a:m for the rest of my life, but 3D is becoming more and more essential in my job, i need it for printdesign, product design, motion graphics and of course character animation, too... but once i´m comfortable with another app, there will be no need to come back to a:m very often. i´m just beeing realistic, if i can do everything in one app and can improve my skills everytime i´m doing something in that app, what would be the reason to come back to a:m that much? let´s say next week some client comes along and wants a character animation done, and there´s enough time, no tight deadline. i´d do it in the other app, because that would mean i´d learn a bunch of stuff. if i´d do it with a:m that would mean i´d miss the opportunity to learn how the other software works. that wouldn´t be all to clever i think... and since the next couple of years i will be learning by everthing i´m doing in this app, i´ll take that opportunity. but as i said before, i´ll probably have an a:m version running on at least one machine. in the beginning for savety, later more for nostalgic reasons i guess.

@ gerald: that´s only one way to see it. for me it´s only logical that when you develop an OS, you want to make it faster and better with every version. sometimes this means to get rid of some old ballast that slows the whole thing down. i doubt that apple doesn´t think thoroughly about making an OS incompatible with previous software versions. @ jesse: i feel pretty much the same way. i think there was a chance back then, and in my opinion there have been many chances for hash in the past, just the wrong decisions were made. i know it´s easy for us to say now they should have done this and should have done that, but looking at a:m and comparing it to other 3d packages, i still believe it had the potential to be a much bigger player in the business, not despite the fact it works with patches instead of polys, more because of that. a:ms general workflow efficiency is still much better than most of the software out there. but there are things in a:m that are quite complicated to accomplish which can be done in other packages with just one or two clicks. it´s not always a bad idea to go out and look how others do it. it seems martin has lost any left piece of interest since TWO and SO didn´t turn out the way he imagined it, and he decided to let it go. for me THATS the real dealbreaker. if there are just users left who care about the future of a software, it can´t work forever unless it´s open source. i´ve made my choice and i´m learning a new software. it´s not easy, but not thaaat hard, too... i still find myself trying to use a:m shortcuts and wondering why they didn´t make this or that like a:m does. but in other cases i often think "hey, that´s pretty clever, and much easier". for me it´s really a relief, because i was struggling with myself for years now, and never had the guts to jump into it. it´s also a relief to know i can do nearly everything i want if i know how, in some departments like particle simulations i felt limited with a:m, that´s not a:ms fault, just wasn´t their focus... compatibility is another thing, i don´t need a 3d package to be necessarily compatible with all other 3d apps, but i need it to be compatible with after effects and after effects plugins, since i do a lot of motion graphic stuff, too. 8 years ago when i first got into 3D a:m was the only software i could figure out, but now that i´ve learned so much about 3D in a:m other software isn´t all that hard to figure out anymore, most things are transferable. so i´ll always be grateful for that. the thing i will miss the most ist the community here, this is by far the best and most supportive forum i know of. thanks for all the support and encouragement over all those years. please don´t be mad at me, it just would be the wrong choice for ME to stick with a:m, i hope everyone can understand that.

very cool:)

i don´t think the issue here is wether apple is developer friendly or not, the reason why a:m won´t run forever on a mac is that a:m is maintained and developed by one single person in his spare time. given those circumstances it is amazing how a:m has developed the last couple of years. but when you compare this development to other apps where several coders are working on it full time, well... you´ll see the difference. i´d rather pay more for a:m to be sure the money goes into development than paying just 79$ a year and don´t even know if it will run on my mac at all in the future. what if steffen gets hit by a bus tomorrow? i really hope that won´t happen, but then the pc-users would have to panic as well... i think there are several different options for hash here (investing money, advertise and raise the price, or make it free, open source, or sell it etc...), the way it´s been handled right now can´t possibly last forever. but that´s not my decision to make, i just have to consider my options. right now it seems a:ms future is quite foggy, and i need something to rely on.

this was nice!

haha, you do... we all do! it´s the system that makes us, practically not avoidable. unless your living deep in the forest feeding on berries and roots... but i think it´s important to be aware of that, that´s what i wanted to say with this short...

You mean like these? exactly the only thing missing is some DOF, that would make it look more realistic.

i´m talking about people driving big cars who actually don´t need ANY car at all. so i´m saying: it would be unnecessary for you to drive a small one in the first place, but you´re driving a big one. yes, i could say "Drive an unnecessarily big car even if you actually don't need one in the first place" as well to make my point, but i thought saying "don´t need a smaller one in the first place" is a bit more sarcastic... here in other words: i see 100.000 $ cars parking in front of the cheapest supermarkets we have here, they can afford such a car and still feel the need to save money on food? cheap food always has it´s price, even if it´s not money. but they don´t seem to put much thought in that. they could go and buy good organic food, fairtrade products, but they rather save money for the next expensive car or something else they don´t need.

congrats... really a beautiful model. but i think this model deserves some cool lighting and high-res renders from different angles!

thanks... can you give me an example? english isn´t my native language, i´d like to know where i went wrong...

i like that a lot... looks so soft somehow. how long will this short be in the end?

the first part of that post is really good news

thats a really good start! did you use a light dome? looks like it when i look at the shadows of the salt and pepper thingys on the table. how long did it take to render?

thanks everyone... nancy, the lines are also created in a:m, it´s just a simple model consisting of 3 patches. i decaled it with a transparency map of those swooshes and animated that model...

easy for you windowsy people to say

that´s true, nobody said anything else... but that doesn´t solve the problem that the day will come when a:m won´t work on newer mac OS anymore.

it is a dealbreaker for me, too... i refuse to work in windows just because of a:m. as far as i understand the code CAN be updated, but it´s a money and manpower issue. a:m has been running on some sort of a shell on a mac so far, and was never properly coded for the mac. i don´t think we are supposed to talk about that here, but to me it seems unfair to all the mac users to let them just crash against a wall at some point. what if they are in the middle of an important project and then suddenly a:m stops working after a system update? either you invest money to guarantee it will work in the future, or you announce the bitter truth... for me that seem to be the only fair options. but since v16 is running on mavericks as you said, i guess it´s possible to make v18 run on it as well, in case it doesn´t do yet.