pixelplucker

Ever consider making an am plugin for Ultimate Unwrap 3d? UU3d has pretty much all the uv mapping techniques available as well as edge matching, stitching and uv island management. BTW I believe the reason you have trouble with hooks is because in AM they allow an edge to end on a spline without a cp. This may not be exportable to something that converts cp's to vertecies.

That is really cool, seeing that you got the obj translation down somewhat how about using the lscm code in it's place. You will need to define pins that keep the axis and distance fixed then define edges that are like zippers and do the whole model in one shot I started trying to learn C++ and attempt making some plugs but my time gets eaten up it's just too tough to commit too. LSCM.txt

Thats strange, is it just a 14 issue? I have never seen it in 15 here and I started with 15 so I can't judge on it. As for file management I make a local folder and copy everything I need for that project in that folder. This makes it easier for me to archive files. Maybe it's extra work but something I got used to doing from my service bureau days before programs had features like collect for output. Wonder if doing something like that would prevent this from happening?

Awesome!

Subscription based software looks at the current system configuration. All software protection software that is authorized to a single seat works the same basic way and would have to be re-authorized if changes are made. Other companies that use similar systems have the same issues such as Corel and Adobe. Unfortunately the only other way to protect the software is either the CD which acts like a dongle or a physical dongle. Hash is really good if you make changes to your system and need to re-authorize your software. I had some issues with another company and heard of pure nightmares others have had with other companies.

Subscription is limited to one system but I think the way it works if you make changes to your system you would have to tell them so they can reauthorize it. Personally I like the cd, if I want I can plop it on another machine and run it. Of course that means I have to actually get out of my chair and go to another computer, but at least I have that option.

Adding tools and dragging the end one can sometimes cause the File menu to drop in the middle and the others below. I have noticed this but only had fiddled with it the one or 2 times I completely changed or reinstalled AM. Simply drag the file menu back to the top and then from left to right, drag the others back up below that and they all should fit. Make sure you have atleast one window open such as model, chor or action.

Did you uninstall h first before installing g? The installers won't overwrite newer files with older files so to step back a version you need to uninstall first. Menu's under g seem to work fine under XP here.

That looks pretty good. Are you doing dashboards and inside view for racing? I noticed that the backdrop tree line has an anti aliased edge that doesn't match the alpha, you may want to trim the alpha back a pixel or 2 so. In photoslop you load selection from alpha and expand it then re-fill it black.

Bummer the variable doesn't work in this case. Does exporting an mdl without any subdivision and doing that within uu3d on just the areas needed such as bumpers work better?

Does look good but there are still many edges that aren't needed along the flat areas where there are no curves. Too bad you can't dissolve those in UU3d. What the dissolve function does is deletes the selected edge, face or vertex and automatically reconnects the adjacent. How does the base mesh look if you do the Variable option on export from AM? I'm thinking this might work pretty well where you have a good contrast between edge angles.

You should be able to keep the poly count really really low. If you reduce the AM visual smooth to it's minium then you would be able to get an idea how the base poly export would be without any subdivisions. Low poly work is really tough because it is 90% good smooth angles and textures to make up the difference. Lower poly counts will give you more options such as alternate models for crashes. When I did a slew of weapon models for some UT mods, including the arms, hands and weapons were under 500 polys. When you do your poly counts if your counting quads then double that number to know how many triangles there are. Games don't use quads since they are too resource heavy to calculate. Video cards can display quads but are actually rendering polygons in pairs. I don't know the limits in Dark Basic since I never used it but most game engines typically work better with lower polys. This frees up resources for the rest of the stuff such as collision detection and physics. The car does look really really nice btw.

When you export there is an option for "variable" this might do the trick for you rather than a fixed subdivision. In some cases Variable works ok and in others you may need to manually reduce edges. The problem with dissolving edges is that it will destroy any uv work you may have done in AM. Within UU3d you can use the Mesh Smooth Faces and selectively smooth sections and still preserve the uv's. I did try to get Brad who makes UU3d to make a plug-in for it to read in AM mdl files but he wasn't able to use the SDK since it lacked some information. I thought this would have been a great tool to use with AM especially since it has LSCM which would allow people to literally unfold their models into clean stamps. This would be really sweet for game development and would really work great with 3d Paint since there would be very few seams.

Looks pretty nice. For a real time sim you need to reduce the number of polygons. Seems a bit much unless that is the only object in the sim. You may need to play with smoothing angles rather than add polygons to make it smoother. There are a bunch of intermediate edges that can be removed to save you poly counts. I would export from AM in the lowest count where a single 4 point patch = a quad (2 polygons) and you can sub divide that within UU3d to various levels of detail (lod). I don't know that much about Dark Basic but if it handles lod targets this would let you build and texture the object once within AM and export out to .x then make your lod targets from that without the need for re-rigging and texturing. Take advantage of the flat spots on the car body and reduce the patches there such as the door panels and roof.

Look good but are those a couple of artifacts on the arms on the character on the right? Might want to check the normals and make sure they are ok.

Seems to work pretty well, thumb control is still pretty touchy. Almost done with rigging my character but have one really stupid question, Do I assign the majority of the cp's on the foot to the foot geom bone? I don't like the auto assign cp's because it seems to make more work undoing what it assigns to. I find it much much faster just to assign manually.

Sweet Thanks!

Was bored so I tossed this together

That came out really nice. If you can't extrude or lathe the wheels, you can always post a circle image as a rotoscope and tweak them to fit. I don't mind the not so round wheels, it should keep the handicapped from screeming out of control or act as a message machine if they go flying down a hill. Does it come with a kidney belt?

I think Polyloop still holds speed modeling contests. Those started back in the old Amapi days. Pretty amazing stuff but I think in AM it wouldn't be so easy. If you can do it, toss some images over there. I sometimes post some of my AM images there.

I like them, good job.

Really Impressive. Someone have a godzilla rigged up to run though?

Very nice job on the textures, the windows look great.

You may want to make a separate mesh for the windows in case you are animating it. You can just copy the patches, paste them then delete the ones that are attached. (use the patch tool to make the selections)

That looks really nice. I would do one of a city in China, this would allow you to use fog and hide all geometry beyond 3-4 ft in front of the camera. This would save countless hours of modeling and texturing