pixelplucker

Blender might be a good converter in this case to export out textured obj files to use as props. If your props need to be animated then you may need to link them to nulls with orient like and rotate like.

Not sure why it may crash. Typically I will select the row of cp's near the x axis 0 (middle) and set their x scale to 0 then zoom in a bit to make sure they are on the center line. Can you post a pic?

I do th castings here, have an old Contenti 12" spin casting machine, 25 ton vulcanizer and a couple of metal melters, one gas one that isn't hooked up and a small electric that runs really nice.

You also need to hollow out and add drain holes to polyjet models or you end up with raw resin trapped inside. With SLA it is more critical because each layer is exposed then squished to compact it while the resin is in its semi cured state. Full cure comes from post processing and post curing in uv light. I use the sun because it's easier. When layers are compressed, thin walls may get blown out causing some cured resin floating in the resin tank which can cause a catastrophic print failure as more and more of the print fails like a domino effect. Big benefit of SLA printers is their accuracy and print quality especially with tiny details. I do love my printer but it can drive you crazy if a print fails, takes a lot to get it right and it is a pricey learning curve. Here is a sample casting from a part I printed.

You may want to op for the ISO and snag the update and key. There has been some bugs with some hardware drivers such as video and audio. If you have Win 8x then 10 is a good fix. I reserved my copy for all my machines. First one I am updating is my Win 8 machine. I am. Little hesitant with my machine I run my laser with and my workstation that has the same install since I put 7 in quite a few years ago. My brother has been on the Win 10 beta since first release and it is really nice performance wise.

Nice parts. Yes on my SLA them models have to be manually hollowed out and you have to allow for drainage so the in cured remind doesn't cause a blowout on a wall.

You could be right. I would think Companies like McNeal, SolidWorks and Others have an interest in this and could provide proper sdk's to the 3d printer companies. Maybe the 3d printer companies are just tanking the lazy way out? Seems crazy to me because manufacturers widely supply free models of their products via sat and iges which would ideal for product designers to better layout proxies and make dummy equipment for various purposes, ie funding, design etc.

Many modern 3d printers can accept obj files now and that has been used on the color printers already. Honestly there is no need for additional formats but rather better 3d printing software. In particular it would be nice to load cad files directly and support sat, iges, 3dm. Direct import of a cad model would insure highest possible resolution of the model for that printer and be better optimized and more portable (smaller file size). Essentially this would be the postscript of the 3d world and shy away from the fixed resolution of poly based geometry (the bitmaps of he 3d world). How do you like your printer btw? I love the Form1+ but as with all photopolymer printers the parts lack durability and tend to be brittle and fragile. Fine for majority of the type of work I use it for. Holler if your interested in printing parts for $.

does the big crease in the spine line up with the rigging section? Book looks about as thick as TAOAM book and the reference manual combine.

Yet another format. Wonder if it end up like the wmf and emf that was widely used for clip art and graphics that is no longer viewable because of some vague security flaw. My money is on stl. It works and is easy to fix.

I occasionally use AM for printing 3d models but not that often. AM is more intended for 3d character animation. The splines won't by design offer the precision required for 3d prototyping of mechanical parts. The poly output via stl is nice but you may need to close surfaces so the parts can be sliced and printed. Another issue with AM is making models with a thickness that has booleans and complex recesses etc. This though possible can be a daunting task in AM because you need to manually model the thickness where as in a cad program you can simply specify a wall thickness. Cost wise it probably isn't worth it for AM to have cad capabilities because the return on investment isn't there in such a field that has so much money behind it and the programmers to back it up. You may want to check a program that I use quite a bit called Moment of Inspiration (moi3d). Price tag is $295 and it is rock solid error free with a very short learning curve. I use it quite a bit and tag my surfaces out into groups, export out an obj and have been importing them into AM as props with the surface groups separate so I can change the attributes on them for rendering. It isn't a bad idea to bang out a conceptual model in AM and use renders of different views to make a cad model.

AM kind of does have a sub-d surface if you look at the models with poly mode. For AM to implement this they might be better off with a hybrid system as not to disband the splines they already have. Splines offer better manipulation but are much more difficult for modeling. The biggest drawback is they are very proprietary and converting quad models to and from AM and other programs is problematic with in particular Hooks and 5 point patches. Until Hooks and 5 pointers can be effectively translated it seems just about every converter out there falls short. A hybrid system would allow other model types to be imported in without translation. Maybe FBX, maybe adopt Silo engine for the poly side of things. There probably isn't any real need to import a nurbs model since all you need to do is manipulate and render not create brep surfaces etc. so most cad programs already export obj or stl etc that work fine in AM already.

Seems better with 18m I don't have to refresh anything. Video drivers are up to date, this is an old thing going back when I first installed an ATI card on this machine. Easiest way to show is with the movie I had to take with my iPad since I uninstalled some programs I wasn't using that had recording. IMG_0326.MOV

Must be an ATI driver problem, ATI has always had mediocre drivers but really nice hardware and NVidia is the opposite. Is there some way of fixing this?

I don't remember it being this pronounced on Nvidia cards, really bad on my ATI. It doesn't clear until I release the mouse. Just curious if others have the same or if it my ATI card on the brink.

Not sure if this is an ATI thing or something with the last couple of updates but when I move a ruler guide I get poor refresh and mouse trails. It clears as soon as I let go of the guide. Anyone else have this?

Wonder if it's the compressor used in those formats. Does it work if the compression setting is set to none? With jpg files stick with baseline standard, not many programs handle progressive very well.

Congrats! The filament printers make very usable parts, great for mechanical stuff. For sculptures and models with extreme overhangs and need for fine details you should look into a polyjet (inkjet style photo polymer printer) or a small sla system that uses resin. I love the Formlabs I got but it is pricey to run. There are DIY kits out there that use DLP projectors instead of blue/green laser that have really nice resolution but the print sizes tend to be small. You might get a kick out of this film made with 3d printed parts done on a Form1+ Film is stop action and there was 2,500 prints and 80 liters of resin! Figure about $210 per liter and tank + shipping so your looking at approx $17,000 for the parts production!!! http://www.chasemefilm.com

If it means anything I have had stability issues with the dark tree plug since the 64 bit version of AM. This is on pc. Probably not just a Mac issue on this.

If your image is externally loaded you can just ref to a higher res image as long as the directory is the same and image name is the same. I'm pretty sure you can bake pretty large images so if the exporter doesn't work directly maybe you can export out the image separately and re tag it to the obj. I'll have check that out. ,oat the time I have the image separate initially and load it into AM.

Atom should run it, probably agonizingly slow but should. Not sure what Windows it is running, If it is running Windows it is probably Win 8 RT. Does AM run in RT?

Snag a hub and have the smallest and possibly slowest render farm! Atom processors are only 32 bit.

Bronze it and move on hehe

In its day AM had a great nitch for those wanting to learn animation and tell their own stories. With the release of lite and personal editions of the big packages, many seem to be overlooking AM. Many adapted to horsing out characters in Z Brush, tossing the models into the bigger name applications and grunting out massive polygonal scenes. There is a whole generation that don't know the simplicity AM offers and they try to compare it to the more popular modeling techniques and try to apply those techniques to AM which don't work and causes frustration. Many of the users out there are also simply lazy and would rather import objects and characters from external programs, import the motions and stake claim to their final renders.

This looks like it: http://www.ebay.com/itm/55mm-ATI-NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-240-VGA-Video-Card-Cooler-Fan-Replacement-42mm-2Pin-B-/171092853561?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d5edc339