markw

So, this old chestnut again! Maybe Rodney could pin the page in the link bellow for future easy finding by Mac users. The problem is most likely the NVIDIA cards that are in some Macs. Not all Macs have these cards, and so these lucky A:M users may never encounter this problem. Here is my original post from 2014 with a possible workaround: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45848&do=findComment&comment=393775

To see which SSE instruction sets your intel chip Mac has, open Terminal and type or copy/paste the following: sysctl machdep.cpu.features

This sounds familiar. It’s probably your graphics card, I’m guessing its an NVIDIA one. Have a read of this post here: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=47270&do=findComment&comment=405278

Hi Heiner, She's coming along nicely. With regards to dynamic hair, I was always impressed with what Matt Campbell managed with it on his female characters. May be have a look at his "A:M Hair with Collision-Detection!" thread for some pointers. You can find it here: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46413&do=findComment&comment=397250

The modelling tutes in 'The Art of Animation Master' are a good starting off point. (Though personally I'm not sure the one on modelling a face is the most optimal approach... ). But, also have a watch of Barry Zundels modelling tutorials. I learnt a tone from those some years back when you had to buy them. Happily they are all free now but I've never regretted having bought them! You can find them all here: http://barryzundel.blogspot.com/p/animationmaster-2005-tutorials.html They were made as I say some years back so he's using an older version of A:M which lacks some of the tools/abilities of more recent versions. But 100% of the basics of Patch modelling covered in the videos is still relevant. And your biggest resource for learning A:M is right here on the forums! Ask questions, lots of questions and remember there are no such things as stupid questions! Even the most knowledgeable users here knew nothing about A:M once!

$!99 for Windows 10 Pro apparently or $99 if changing from Windows 10 Home to Pro. At least according to this article: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/windows-10-european-pricing-finally-revealed-1297663

Hi jimd You can open the master0.lic file at any time with a text editing app, such as Mac's own TextEdit, and read the exact expiry date of the licence. As I recall when Mavericks was first released A:M was on v17g and would not launch due to unexpected changes in OSX introduced by Apple with Mavericks. Steffen was able to alter A:M and soon had it working again with v17g+. If your v16 is working on Mavericks/Yosemite then that is maybe something of bonus! However those phantom renders you mention may be a sign of a deeper incompatibility of v16 with the latest Mac OS. When you say "the usual disk management" did you use Disk Utility to first check your HD's formatting with Verify/Repair Disk as well as using Verify/Repair Permissions?

Yes, sometimes it can slow but it's never been a major issue. Nancy's suggestion of lowering the subdivision in the realtime view can help. Likewise working in Wireframe. Having Particles/Hair "On" will bog it down always in realtime if you are using it. And sometimes having "Decals" turned On can slow it down if they are large image files. But if this slowing has only just started then the above may not be the cause as they would all have been evident for some time before now. You could try a "Reset" of A:M, that often clears out cobwebs. See if that helps. More generally I would also suggest checking your HD formatting with Disk Utility, in your Macs' Utilities folder, once in a while when you have time. Use the 'Verify Disk' button in the 'Fist Aid' tab. Minor anomalies on the HD can sometimes show up as a slowing of the OS, excessive memory or CPU use, etc…

Hi Simon Good to see you still working away at this project. Nearly there! Now dare I say this? Perhaps don't spend too many hours trying to fix this glitch. As the problem is at least consistent in where it happens, if not when exactly, you could just check the frames where the bears face is visible after rendering and then re-touch any affected frames in a paint program, before turning the image sequence into a video file. It would take but a few seconds to re-touch each frame and would certainly be less frustrating than spending more hours trying to nail down what may be causing this strange glitch in the renders. Just a thought.

This is a long standing problem which sadly despite Steffen's best efforts to fix remains. The problem seems to be related to Nvidia graphs cards and most Macs use NVIDIA. Some Macs use AMD cards and these machines should be free of this problem. See this thread for some more info and a sort of workaround in the last post: https://www.hash.com...848#entry392948

Please somebody at Hash take this post by a.quaihoi seriously and look into this. I'm job less and nearly homeless right now but I would still try and find money from somewhere to put into a crowd funded development of the Mac A:M. Also let me say that Steffen has done great things keeping the Mac version going all by himself this long and I salute him for that but he is just one man.

So installing 18L-SS4e System: I'm still running OSX 10.8.5 Macbook Pro 2 Core 2.6GHz i7 Intel Nvidia Graphics card plus Intel built in chip. Ran a Terminal command first to make sure my Mac can handle SS4e. Which it said it could. So… First try: A clean instal. Not overwriting of a previous A:M installation: The A:M folder installed but no actual A:M application was contained in the resulting folder, which was a surprise! Second try: Overwrite of a non SS4e v18i insulation with the v18L SS4e version: Installation completed but A:M consistently crashes trying to start. I suspect this is because as in the first try no new app was actually installed so any new components that may have been installed aren't working with the old non ss4e version of A:M which was not overwritten as perhaps it should have been. Third try: Standard v18L instals and works both as a clean instal and as an overwrite of a previous version. I don't have any Tar assets to try so no idea what will happen trying to load those. Where do we find them? It's also been a while since I last used A:M and I don't really have much time now so I've no idea what else may be broken in the latest Mac version. v17g was about as good as it got I recall and I only used an early v18 for rendering with SSAO.

Hi Doug, There is a basic PS & A:M Alpha Channels tutorial from 2002 by Jeff Cantin on the A:M Extras DVD. Tutorials > AlphaChannels. But if you don't have the DVD, the tutorial can still be found on his website, here: http://tincan.sllabs.com/AM_&_Alpha.htm

Sadly this is a long standing problem which sadly despite Steffen's best efforts to fix remains. The problem is related to Nvidia graphs cards that are in most Macs. Some Macs use AMD cards and these machines should be free of this problem. See this thread for some more info and a sort of workaround in the last post: https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45848&do=findComment&comment=392948

What a great Christmas gift for the A:M community Something for me to get to grips with in the new year. Thank you so much for doing this Mack!

Right Click anywhere in the modelling window and choose 'Refind Normals'. That should get everything facing the right way again. But in truth, not always I've found! Still it should do the majority of the work for you. In the attached example it scored 100%. Also, I have 'Show Back Facing Polys' "OFF" in the render sittings in the example which leave "holes" where the offending patches are which makes spotting them easier. If you have areas of incorrect patches you can group select them. Then right click inside the bounding box of the selection and choose 'Flip Normals'. And then lastly there is the 'Patch Group Mode' tool in the 'Modelling' toolbar (or shift+P to activate it) you can use if only needing to do a few scattered patches.

I think the wand is a clue. A younger Hermione Granger me thinks?

My two pence worth regarding modelling and patch normals: Open A:M's Options and go to the Rendering Tab. Set: Show Back Facing Polys = OFF If you can't see that option in list of settings, set Quality = Realtime and it should then be available to you. Click OK to close. Now any patch with a normal not facing the right way will be invisible and the resulting apparent "hole" in the mesh quickly spotted as you work. I'm not sure why this setting appears in the "Render" settings? I always thought it would be easier to find in the settings under the "Modelling" tab.

Inspired idea Robert, works a treat!

Yes indeed as nemyax says! The file in question is called; master0.lic And will be in the A:M folder in your Mac's Applications folder. As I say grab a copy of it from a backup or another working version of A:M like I did and past it into the new v18g folder. Apologies for not being clearer!!!

For some reason I can't post in the thread where Walter originally posted his question about A:M's licence not being recognised. So... Yes I got that too after installing 18g. All I did to fix it was copy/past my current licence back into A:M again from my v17g version, (or you could copy/past it from any backup you have) and then relaunched A:M. If it's relevant I'm on OSX Mountain Lion still.

This is looking like a Jules Verne/Steam Punk type thing. Very exciting, can't wait to see more of this!

Excellant, a bonus Robcat critique! Thank's for taking the time to do that Robert, getting an outside perspective on what we are doing is always great! It's funny but much of your suggested corrections I was sort of aware of at the back of my mind even as I was doing it and still somehow failed to address them! Like having his hands to high on the box at the start, not getting enough tension into the extension of the legs etc… etc... I think a lot of what's wrong stems from me not getting the very start right, which in turn influenced how I did the next bit and so on… Getting the start of an isolated sequence like this right from the very beginning is key, because it informs all that comes after it. Both from the viewers point of view and from that of the animator's actions. How heavy is the box? How strong & heavy is the character? Will be having another go at this again but sadly only as free time permits, so it might be a little while before I can show you take two. Again thank you, your thoughts on this were much appreciated Robert.

Thanks for those Robert, a very useful counter. Strangely I've just been doing a Heavy Push over the last week or so as and when I had free time. But it's nowhere near as good as yours! Any way thought I would experiment with putting your counter on it. So here it is for what it's worth… Heavy Push & Frame Counter.mp4

That would be a nice feature to have Robert but at the moment I can't see anywhere to enter new values in the FrameBurn Properties.