pixelplucker

Looks pretty good so far, maybe have the arms lag a little more and not so much in sync with the body move.

Thanks Rob. The problem is if any edits are done the uv's get lost on those patches. Not a bug, just the way things work in AM.

Resource wise redoing the obj importer for AM and it's complexities might be cost prohibitive. At the same time as wanting a retopo tool for AM might be equally difficult since AM probably can't see the surface of a poly model the same as it sees the surface of patches. Since most AM users don't need to go beyond the realms of AM, adding these features to AM might not be worth while. For those that do or those that want to go beyond and make even more complex structures and more advanced texturing, uv mapping etc., wouldn't it make more sense to have a program such as 3d Coat have the AM modeling tools inside that allowing direct AM spline export? I suggested 3d Coat because it isn't a poly modeler and uses voxels so there is no poly conversion in the creation process. Other 3d sculpting programs use micro-displacement which are poly based.

I haven't bothered with the .x exporter since 3d Coat doesn't support it. One issue I have with the obj files is in the case of hooks, and 5 pointers or if I need to re-attach a spline to correct its continuity, I lose the UV's on those patches. It would be nice to take advantage of the texturing abilities and advanced uv tools. If the obj importer could identify a single vertex on an edge and create a hook and interpret a 5 point n-gon and create a 5 point patch I think this would solve most of the issues. Ideally it would be better to have splines in 3d Coat but I don't know how much of that would be offered in the SDK. More I use 3d Coat the more I like the freedom and ability to refine a model without restriction. For some it may sound like more work but for me, simply relying on rotoscopes doesn't always offer the depth realization you have when sculpting. Just some thoughts

Time wise it takes about the same. Only advantage I had was I could concentrate on the form and refine that before there were any patches. Once the shape was the way I liked, I then could concentrate on the flow of patches. As others suggested a retopo in AM would be really nice. Maybe have Pilqway add AM spline tools to 3d Coat? I could see that being incredibly useful since it would allow the export of a fully textured model with displacement maps etc. Is there any difference in the obj importer/exporter in AM between 15.j and 16?

Excellent models!

Here is one of a bunch of characters that my uncle had for some kids stories so I thought I would give 3d Coat a whirl for the rough model design. I manually retopo'd the model and exported an obj, brought that into am and with a little cleanup got this. Some small tweaks but already have it rigged. Where I needed hooks I made simple triangles so they were easy to spot.

Don't forget the help from other users for AM that is here.. I can't think of any other program that has this much support from it's creators and users. There has been countless times I asked a question and moments later get a response.

Isn't Houdini Escape the lite version and restricted from commercial use? If your a single person AM offers a very complete package with dynamics, hair, reusable animations etc. I'm sure the learning curve is much much less than most other packages out there since the tools are very no frills and streamlined (no abstract icons and slow help popups). I was hesitant at first with AM because there is no demo to fiddle around but am glad I got it. It has become a good part of my workflow and is just a lot of fun to use. It is also not hardware heavy and can be run on a vast number of systems. $79 a year, most people spend more at a fast food restaurant in a month.

Very nice work. Hope you don't put those annoying blue headlights on it hehe

I can calculate the cost of material used based on the volume of material. This gives me the cost per part in consumable. Still have to figure in my waste for the gates and runners also but those can be roughly a fixed amount. Funny I ended up splining the parts in AM because the cad program I was using had trouble with bevels on a ruled surface that was cut out. This seamed to be an issue across 3 different programs. The parts aren't critical but needed smooth edges and all extrusions had to have a draft angle so they can be released from the mold, can't be at 90°.

Ya link is broken on Steffens but I lucked out. I had a copy of one of the older ones on a cd and it works fine. I'm using the plug to determine how much material is used on some objects I created in AM that will be molded. Is there a 64 bit one out?

Hmm, it's missing under 15j, is it a new plug for 16 or 3rd party download? Here is the plugs that load with and without object selected.

Not sure if there was a plug in for this and where to get it if it existed but I'm trying to calculate the volume of an object that is a closed shape.

Happy Bday!

That is awesome... how many keyboards did you wear out on that with the copy/paste? My hands ache looking at that hehe.

A big advantage to baking is you can convert shaders to textures. I wish it was possible to do the same to a model that was uv mapped out and still preserve the uv's. Now if someone could make an LSCM plug for unwrapping a model and add the feature of baking, it would allow for edibility of the texture in any paint program plus the compositing power of Baking. I have had issues painting across seams in Painter and usually end up painfully flattening and unfolding a model by hand.

Make a copy of the model for backup.. Break some of the splines that come to that patch "k" key and see if there is another patch in the same space. It does look like there are double patches. If not then it might be some long edges causing it. I recently had a shape that looked similar. I fixed it by selecting the edges that made up the patch and flipped them over and re-attached it. I noticed there was a problem when I couldn't flip the normals on it. If you show normals, select the patch and try flipping it and if it doesn't change then that maybe the case. You could always post the model or part that is a problem and we can all pick, poke and prod at it.

Here is use for a boolean cutter because it is a huge hassle to model this with splines and have it look good. Not sure how the dimples would work with Newton though. Dice.zip

Wonder if JenP would be up for making a Bevel Shader?

2.5 million people bought that @ 14 euros ea.? Think I'm in the wrong business hehe

That looks great! Did notice that at the end when the coin comes to rest it seems to lag a bit making it seem like it has air under it, maybe tweek the end a bit.

Wasn't an AM bug on the patches, my fault, still have poly tendencies and put in an extra spline that wasn't needed. Think the refract is 1.3, the mat is something I made a year or 2 ago for these award models. It is included in the zip Thanks for the compliments. crystal_cube.zip

Milkshape and Ultimate Unwrap 3d support .x very well. UU3d is just a uv editor. Both are low cost and seem to be pretty common tools in the game dev area.

Still kicking version 15j here, haven't upgraded yet.