Wildsided

I'm using my Granddad's house as a base for the one Bernie lives in and the room I have allocated as Bernie's really wasn't all that big, roughly 10ft x 10ft. There were 4 rooms on the second floor. A bathroom and 3 bedrooms. There were two pretty big rooms and that one little one that I assume was a guest bedroom (although granddad had a train set in there for a while when I younger.) The cobble stone is a decal using a tile set I found online. It came with diffuse (colour), normal, height (displacement) set to 1000% and specular maps.

Not posted in a while so here's Bernie and Nellie hanging out in Bernie's W.I.P bedroom. Still, so much work to do, not to mention the fact I have to finish actually writing the first book.

The like button disappeared a little while ago for everything. No idea why.

Looks good, Robert. Was that spiky test at around 36 seconds deliberate or did something go amiss?

Oooh sparkly. We approve of sparkly here at Dan, Dan and Dan Incorporated.

Is that using 'thermo' shading, Simon? Or is it the lights?

That is a nice bit of medal right there.

The GPU is a Baytrail from what I can tell The tablet is an Asus Vivotab Note 8 with the OS updated Windows 10. It's not a powerhouse by any means but I can run office on it and photoshop as I mentioned. I've got it connected to a Zagg Autofit Keyboard and a USB hub so I can hook up a mouse. I've also set up a Playstation Move Navigation Controller paired with a program called Xpadder that lets you assign keys to the buttons on the pad which gives me a 12 button shortcut controller. So far A:M seems to be fine with rotoscopes, haven't tested any image sequences yet. Rendering is pretty quick on less demanding models. All I really want to be able to do with it is transfer whatever model I'm working on to it and work on them while I'll watching telly on an evening.

Just did 😁, testing now. Early impressions are that it works and am surprised to see that pinch zooming is supported.

I put in a trial request, sent off my host id etc, a few days ago but haven't heard back. I've bought a Windows tablet with a Wacom Digitizer for drawing and working on when I'm not at my main computer. Photoshop works great on it and I've seen a video of somebody using Z-Brush on it but I know A:M doesn't always play nice with Intel onboard graphics and want to test it before I get a license. I'm gonna be on a plane for 7 hours this coming Saturday so was hoping to tool around on A:M during the flight.

Work in Progress of Bernie's teacher, Mrs Cassandra Burrows.

When you installed it did you have to enter your new serial? Sorry if that sounds like a silly question but if you just re-installed the software over the top of your current install your current master.lic will still be in effect. Usually, when I renew the subscription it has completely expired. Then I delete the master.lic in the animation master install folder. The next time I launch the software (because it can't find master.lic) it asks for a serial number. Then I enter my new serial and it generates a new master.lic in the A:M folder and the new subscription takes effect. Hope that makes sense.

Well the icons themselves are much smaller. Those pictures are just smaller versions of the 1000 x 1000 renders I used to make them. Also what was the biggest icon?

I don't know if anybody would want to use these, but I whipped up some higher res AM shortcut icons because the ones that come with the software go a bit blurry and misshapen on my desktop. AM_icon.icoAM_icon_64.ico

I used a screen grab from that site to roto a 1-inch diameter 24 tooth cog. It's not got bevelled edges or anything so I don't know how suitable it would be for 3d printing but the teeth intersect properly. Gear.mdl

Don't know if this would make things easier but according to this simulation site http://www.thecatalystis.com/gears/ A 'sun' cog with 24 teeth would need 3 'planet' cogs of the same size with the same number of teeth which would save modelling.

if you could find a view from directly above you could rotoscope the teeth so they're proportioned properly and then do a lot of copy/paste rotate. then you could scale them to size. If that makes sense. Sorry if it doesn't.

Congrats to all the winners and great job on the video, Robert. Loved your used car salesman jacket.

Learn something new everyday.

Sorry I didn't explain properly. The bitmap plus material can apply a texture over a large area without you needing to tile it manually but it can't do things like normal maps. To use the normal map you'd have to tile the decal yourself manually and then add the normal map as a secondary image to the decal and set its type to normal. The screenshot I posted was just to show you how to get to the bitmap plus material if you ever wanted to use it. Sorry again

Here's a rough demo of what I mean, John. I ended up decaling the water with a royalty-free seamless water texture I found online. I've attached the texture and it's normal map to this post. Adding transparency and a bit of reflectivity gives it a more natural look, lets you see what's below the surface and gives you that mirror-like quality of water. Also bitmap plus is a material that lets you cover a big area in a texture without needing to tile it yourself. I've added a screen grab of how to get to it.

This is coming along really nicely, John. To spice up the water you could try googling something like "seamless water texture" and apply it to the water as a bitmap plus material. Then play around with the level of transparency of the water group/model. Maybe add a bit of reflectivity and some white specular.

I've been working on my kids' book project and modelled Bernie's best friend Eleanor 'Nellie' Aisling. Also, it seems that when I transferred all my A:M stuff from my old computer a few of Bernie's textures didn't make the trip. I'll fix all that eventually, anyway, I just thought I'd post this little W.I.P render.

Experimental hair using cloth simulation. test.mp4

Thanks, Robert, it wasn't a business/client transaction. I was just doing it because I like his science Yoshi avatar. He has asked for permission to use it in a video at some point and he and his community has been very kind with likes and retweets etc, is almost my most watched piece of content in less than 24 hours so getting some exposure at least.