Pitcher

Thanks. I sent you a project with the regular character and a damaged character in your messages. I appreciate your help.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've looked in the properties for the foot target, and I have compared them to the properties for the hips which do work, and I don't see any difference. Where is a good place to look for a constraint being turned off?

One problem I have had more than once is that foot targets become disconnected. I move them and nothing on the model moves. I seem to remember that one time I fixed the problem by opening the basic skeleton model and dragging the foot targets from the skeleton model to the model with the foot target problem. That was couple of years ago, and I have forgotten what I did exactly. I am not able to do a repeat performance. Does anyone know a slick and easy way to reestablish foot targets? Foot targets, by the way, seem to be the most vulnerable part of the skeleton. If something goes wrong with the skeleton in my brief experience, it is usually that the foot targets cease to work. I don't know enough to understand why this happens. What is there about foot targets that makes them more delicate?

Thanks for the suggestion. I have tinkered around and discovered an answer. For whatever reason, there was no "Diffuse Falloff" set for the parts of the character that show. That seems to be the solution. I'm not sure what happened, because when I was working on the scene earlier, the character had no problem. Somehow, I must have eliminated the settings for Diffuse Falloff.

Thanks! I'll take a look. Is it possible to activate a shader for just one character in a scene?

I have a character riding in a vehicle that looks flat and washed out. The character and vehicle are part of the same model. The character was placed into the vehicle via action file. The vehicle looks fine after rendering as does the rest of the scene, except for the character riding in the vehicle. The character in the vehicle looks fine in the real time render. Other characters look fine in the final render. When I say flat and washed out, I mean no shading at all. There is just flat color in the shape of the character. What am I leaving out? Thanks.

Thanks for all of the information. I really enjoy the way the 64 bit version works. The rendering was my great issue, but you have resolved it. I think this is a great step forward for me.

Thanks for the detail. This will help a lot. I appreciate knowing the advantages also.

You are right Fuchur. I overstated. I remember now that it does render for image sequences. I usually render to .avi. I've not made any movies by rendering image sequences and then compressing them in another piece of software. Maybe I need to learn how to do that. Sometimes I go eagerly into the future, but other times, I am dragged kicking and screaming. Does rendering an image sequence and then compressing it into an .avi later require expensive additional software, or is it something I could download for free? I really like the convenience of getting an .avi out of A:M, but this could be the time to learn something new. I use Windows. I have various movie editing software like Pinnacle, Sony Movie Studio, or Camtasia, but I have always started the edit with a movie (avi or mpg-2) rather than an image sequence. Actually, I thought about it a minute and realize that I could import the images into the editing program (if the format is compatible) and put them on the timeline and edit them just like a video, but it's something new. I'll have to take a few more minutes to think about it and make it part of my normal routine.

I started using the 64 bit version of A:M and loved the way it operated. Then I tried to render. Then I looked online for a solution as to why it would not render. I discovered an answer that indicated we were to look for a license file and transfer that to a 32 bit version when we wanted to render because we were licensed for both versions. I went back to the 32 bit version of Version 15i which I had before because I did not want to change versions every time I wanted to render. My question is whether the 64 bit version of version 18 will render soon (it's been a while since I tried it the first time and maybe the current build already renders. I don't know.)? If it doesn't render, am I supposed to install the 64 bit and 32 bit versions on my computer and move the license file back and forth as I render and work? Is there an easy way to do this? I did not stop to investigate all of this at the time because I was working on a project and wanted to move along with it, rather than figuring out how to make this work around go smoothly. Has anyone been using the 64 bit version, and is it a big hassle to change back and forth, or is there a good way to do it that is not too time consuming? Thanks for your help. (I really hope the 64 bit version now renders. Working in it is wonderful. Rendering is the only problem I noticed.)

Thanks for all the help. I don't know if I would have ever figured it out.

It occurred to me after posting that I also want to know how to change color or opacity not only for an entire character, but also just for a group associated with the character. For example, I might want a character's jacket to change color or I might want his head to disappear.

I am aware of changing color or opacity on a timeline for particles. Is it possible to do this also for regular models? For example, if I want a character to change from red to blue gradually or to become invisible gradually, how do I do this? I've tried going to different places on the timeline and changing percentages of transparency or color, but the program changes these characteristics to whatever the current percentage or color is for the entire timeline. I've looked for a way to put a curve for transparency on the timeline, but have not found it. This is probably a simple question for someone who knows the answer. It's not simple for me right now. Thanks.

Thanks!

Thanks, Fuchur! I will look at the resources you have recommended. robcat2075, I looked for your "It Can't Be Done" series. The search does not bring it up. Where is it?

Problem solved. Thanks robcat for the idea of text editing. I do the text editing thing frequently when creating websites, but I haven't thought about it with A:M. I'm not sure how to open A:M in a text editor. Rodney, I did not know about the Decal Editor. That is an interesting idea about joining decals together and using a different area in each situation. I have several cities with many buildings in my project, and having one decal per building rather than 10 or more would be very helpful.

Thanks for your help. I lost the paths when I tried to place all of the decals for the project in one file. I use many of them in multiple models and in multiple scenes. Originally, I put them with the model I used them with first. I was getting too many decals and too many models to remember when I started another scene (you know...where did I use that decal first?), so I put them all in one folder. In the entire project, there are hundreds of decals. I had noticed that when I moved a model, the program tried to reestablish a path, so I wasn't worried. Then I discovered that it does not do that for all of the decals. By that time, I had reorganized so much that I couldn't go back. Rodney and robcat2075, you guys are completely necessary. When I had not found the forum and was trying to answer my own questions, I used to get extremely frustrated with the program. After finally finding the place in the forum to ask my questions (no matter how stupid they are), I have come to recognize that the program is great. It is just very complex. There are so many "bells and whistles" that without someone like you, it is very difficult to find them all, especially for someone like me who never took a computer course in high school or college (or an art course). Thanks again.

I sometimes don't have the file organization as I like it and attempt to reorganize. Sometimes this leads to losing the path to the decals. The program seems to try to reestablish the path for some by having me browse and find a few of the decals, but there are others that are left out. Is there a way to select these decals with no path and reestablish a path. In the best of all possible worlds I would hope I would not have to redecal an object, but just establish the path to the image used in the decal. Is there a procedure to be used in moving a file that will help avoid the lost decal problem? Sometimes I have a model that might have 60 or 70 decals. Thanks.

Thank you, robcat2075. I did not know to look there. I have learned something today.

I have gone to bones, unhidden the fingers, assigned points to the finger bones, but now in the choreography file, I cannot get the finger bones to show when I go to the skeletal mode. The last time I needed fingers, I did the same steps, and the fingers showed, but this time they don't. What have I left out this time? Generally, is there a way to get the skeletal mode to show more bones than it usually does with the 2001 Skeleton? This is probably one that everyone already knows, but I don't. Sorry!

I had to see more too. What I was going on was the frame by frame it does as it renders. There the ships went underwater. When I actually viewed the video, however, the ships were afloat. You are right. It can be done.

I did the paths for each of the ships. Everything looks fine from the Front View, but when I render, they still go underwater. I've decided this happens because rendering does some sort of smoothing to the globe and makes it slightly larger. The result is that the ships go underwater. I hate to think there is something that cannot be done, but maybe this is it.

That's a great idea, robcat 2075. I think that would probably work. Thanks for the idea! It occurs to me that this question resulted from my trying to animate by moving something from point to point until I reached a destination. I became locked into that way of thinking. I kept putting more in-betweens to see if that would fix the problem. It didn't. After I posted this, I sat down and relaxed waiting for an answer, and it occurred to me that I should just make a path for each ship and constrain each ship to its path. Paths often go in a circular way. I should have gotten away from the problem for a bit.

Recently, I had occasion to be moving models on a sphere. To be more precise, I was moving ships on a globe to show travels. Well, guess what? The program moves models from point A to point B in a straight line. The ships kept submerging. Unless I put the ships well above the water, I have to change their location (z as well as x and y) very frequently as they move along the timeline. If I put them well above the water, the angle of view sometimes makes them look like they are very far from where I wanted them to be. Sometimes they look like they are on the land. This becomes an issue especially as they are approaching a port. Does anyone have any ideas? Is there a spherical geometry button that allows us convert to sperical geometry and insert the circumference of a sphere for the computer to automatically calculate the in-betweens using spherical geometry? I don't know much about any of this, but I thought someone else might. It could be used for a mosquito or fly to roam across a person's nose or some other sphere. There are probably many uses I will never think of.

Thanks, robcat2075! That was it.