Ganthofer

first, there are a couple of settings that should be set. If not set correctly for what you are doing, they can be quite annoying. Under Tools>Options>Units lower right group box "Paste/extrude offset" I usually check the "Use CP spacing/direction for extrude" box. Experimentation is the best way to see what this does, but basically it places the extruded spline('s) equal distance and in the oposite direction from the selected spline(s) nearest connected spline(s). I also turn this off when the extrusions are not going to be extremely repetative. Then each extruded spline('s) is created on top of the original (caution - if you accidentaly miss when clicking to move this spline, click the undo and extrude again or you can end up with spline on top of spline and that can cause some nasty problems) and you can move it manually to its desored location (then resize, rotate move individual CP's...) (text example removed - wouldn't stay formatted) the "Or X: Y: pixels" I usually set to 0 (zero) as this is a fixed distance and have not really found it useful since it can be done with the above, by manually creating the first set of spline(s) and extruding from there. Now, to you Canyon creation question/issue. There are probably hundred's if not thousands of way to make a canyon. You could start with a Profile spline (drawn from a front or side view) of the Sides and bottom of the canyon as viewed looking down the canyon ( as if you were standing in the canyon) and then extrude this (while woking from the Top view) along the path the canyon floor follows. Much will depend on how it is to be viewed in the still or animation. Are we going to be looking down from the edge, looking up from the bottom or flying thru, panning left/right and up/down. You can model the entire canyon to the finest details, but this could be waisted time if all that's going to be shown is the edge of the canyon, seen from the distance. A description or sketch/story board of how the canyon is to be used in the scene/animation would probably produce more helpful ( and specific ) suggestions for the canyons creation. Just my 2 cents Glenn

Have you tried the Boolean technik? and if so, what version of A:M are you running (i.e. v13.0r or v14.0alpha5). I don't seem to getting any clipping in v14. Oh Well, off to A:M Reports I guess.

Give this MAT a try. It's basically 4 nested Gradients. You'll need to adjust the start and stop values (I just set the Y) Gradient - start 10 stop 5 Red Gradient - start 5 stop 0 Orange Gradient - start 0 stop -5 Yellow Gradient - start -5 stop -10 DarkBlue LightBlue After a little more thought - the second BetterGradient.Mat is made of 9 nested Gradients. 5 for the colors and 4 to compress the transitions between colors. MultipleGrad.zip BetterGradient.zip

I agree the building of the animated displacement in A:M could be a little bit tedious. Still brainstorming on that one. Possibly Gimp, but I've not played with scripting in it yet. Cinepaint(Linux) might be another possiblity. Here are my tips on using gradients to create displacement map. 1- Only Abiance set in the material at 100% 2- No lights in the scene ( active set to off is fine) 3- set the start and end for the gradient to the extremes of your models movement in world space (set world space on the material) 4- in rendering, turn off everything!! Alpha buffer on. No reflections, no shadows..... 5- Use Orthogonal camera You need to find the highest and lowest point of the displacement object in the animation. Try a cone shape of the same depth (highth), is should come out a smooth ramp from outer edge to center. Glenn

Lets see if I can explain my process of using a boolean cutter and a gradient material to create TGA's (or exr's - although I haven't tried) with any thing above 0 on the Y axis clipped and starting at zero (127 grey) to - whatever (black). Create a Gradient Material with: Global Axis turned on Start at 0,0,0 End at 0,-deepest,0 (deepest is the y value of the furthest the feet go below the ground plane ( y = 0 ) First Atribute Abiance Color = 127,127,127 Abiance Intensity = 100% Second Atribute Abiance Color = 255,256,255 Abiance Intensity = 100% Modify your foot model as follows: Apply Material to any portion (or the whole model) that will break the ground plane in the Negative direction. create a cube (8 cp's) with its bottom face at y = 0 and extend up and outwards to fully contain the model. Add a bone below the highest level bone in your rig, attach the 8 cp's of the cube and turn on Boolean cutter for this bone. (Everythin in the Cube will no longer render, only those parts of the model that extend outside of the Cube will be visible in a render.) In the Chor do the following: Turn off (or remove) all Lights, ground plane and anything else, leaving only the camera and the foot model. You may have to adjust the Boolean Cutter Bone in the Chor to maintain the bottom face of the Cube at y = 0 I use a Stationary Orthogonal camera with the background set to Black. (the background can be set to any color, it will still render as transparent with the Alpha Buffer turned ON) Render Output with Alpha Buffer ON, to a file type that supports Alpha (Tga, EXR) Render Option all OFF, choose your quality and Single or MultiPass. All the TGA's (or EXR's) can then be laid ontop of one another and composited into an animated Displacement map. You can put each rendered frame as a Layer in the Chor in front of the Ortho camera and turn the ON one by one to accumulate the trails of foot prints. (seems to be a fringe on the renedered composite using layers - will have to investigate) Let me know what you think Glenn

I've got a couple of ideas that might work. I try and write them up here. Do you have and actual model walking on the top surface? I'm thinking either a transparency gradient or a boolean cutter to remove everything above the Ground and hiding the ground. More later, got to go. Glenn

Just a thought, if you have TGA's and the part yo want transparent really is white, then set the key color on each image in the PWS. The problem with this method over TGA's with transparency is that as it changes from white to black you uget a fringe, which of course is only slightly darker thatn White. There for, you foot prints can not get to close to each other or overlap one another. For this I believe you would need to process the TGA's and replace the White with transparency. Why not render the Foot print TGA's with Alpha?

Maybe you are missing the Codec that it was recorded with? Ensharpen Codec

Matt, I can't speak for Martin (He's quite capable of doing that himself , but if the comment he made was negative, he could have just as easily removed the post.

Nice work. Did you use photos for the Face decals?

OK, I'll jump in here and try and answer some of this. There is a collection of links and tutorials Here As for Saving your model: When you start something new, like File>New> Model, a modeling window is opened up, but also a new project is opened up. The Model is by default, embeded in the project. To save the model as an MDL file, you can simply right click on the model name (Model1 by default) and select SaveAs. choose a location and name and the Model is now saved in a MDL file and is no longer embeded in the project. A word of warning. When you do this, clicking the little Diskette icon next to the Folder icon on the tool bar does not save any changes you make to the Model. If the Model is not embeded in the Project, you will need to remember to right click the Model name in the PWS and select Save. I usually leave my Model embeded in a project, until I'm finished creating it, then save it out separately. There are a number of good tutorials and going thru TAOAM (The Art Of Animation Master) is very useful. There are videos for most if not all the exercises. Glenn

I have marked in red some problems. It is not good to have a spline end at an intersection. For best results, only 2 splines should cross. i will look for the tutorial that explains what is the best way. Regards Glenn Basic Splinemanship I, II and III The ARM Tutorials A:M Forum Tutorial Links Yo he marcado en rojo algunos problemas. No es bueno para tener un final de tira a una intersección. Para mejores resultados, solamente 2 tiras deberían atravesar. Yo buscaré la guía que explica lo que es la mejor forma. Respetos Glenn La traducción es del ordenador.

are you talking about the creases? Please post pictures in wireframe. it may be helpful if you tell us what your native language is. You have no information in your online profile. At least if you tell us the country you are from, we can attempt to translate. Glenn

Are you meaning Copy/Flip/Attach when you are typing "copy/paste mirrored" ? I don't have a "copy/paste mirrored" (at least if I do, I don't know where it is). If you are talking "snap to mirrored points", you may need to change the tolerance setting under Tools>Modeling>Mirror Mode>Group Snap Tolerance. Glenn

I think what is causing the "crooked" appearance, is that the back corner is not straight up and down, niether is the lamp post. It leans a little to the right at the top. You might check your camera angulation. While the horizon lines of the Floor and ceiling will angle in a picture, the verticals usually do not deviate. There are cases where they do, but in this case I wouldn't expect it. If you are going for a wood floor look, the width of the boards looks overly large IMHO. size it about the same as the picture frame, give or take a little. Glenn

There seems to be a bit of a visible pattern in the corner of the walls. I think it may depend on the lighting as to whether it will be visible or not. Could be just the angle the render was done at, but the couch does look a bit narrow (back to front wise). Looking good, tweak, tweak, tweak! just my 2 cents Glenn

I have not heard of any dictionaries for other languages, but perhaps some individuals out there have added to the Dictionary.dic file. If you have a look in the Dictionary.dic file, there are some German words in there already, of course not the words you are probably looking for. In the mean time, you may find this useful. Dictionary.dic - Hash Forum Thread Glenn

Very nice. Are you planning on expanding it to the whole body? Paul - It looks like he's using Sorenson V3 for video compression (uncompressed PCM audio - no sound recorded as far as I can hear though). Glenn

Make sure you do not have Mirror Mode on. You can get really strange results, especially along the zero axis.

many things have changed here in the Forum, but I believe it still depends on what forum you are trying to post in. For instance: I can not upload an AVI in this message, but I can upload a MOV (quicktime). Most, but not all video clips you find here are MOV or mpeg because they are more (or seem to be more ) universally viewible. Many A:M'ers use MACs and many avi codecs seem to be problematic without extra software and added codecs.

Sorry for not reponding sooner, been away from the forum for a while. I posted while you were posting, so I didn't see the question. I have a large number of incomplete models, mostly experiments to learn a specific feature. So I'd have to say, I'm not really good at modeling.

Don't know if there is a physical limit, but many large decals may become a problem in realtime review, as I believe they have to be loaded into memory. Just my observation.

Glad to help.

Take a look at the lower left corner of the time line. I believe you may have the graph Icon selected instead of the other (don't know what it's called). Select the one to the right of the graph icon (see pic) If that's not it, we'll try again.

Give me a few minutes to try it (v13.0o that's the letter "o")