nemyax

The small bird demonstrates a perfect moving hold =)

It could be The Foundry.

Pfff. The Japanese have been apple-paying for a decade if not longer.

The best way to opt out: don't buy anything Apple.

Just a thought:

Zaryin Don't you think the knuckles are too close to the wrist? Also, in women the index and ring fingers are about the same length, and in your model the ring finger seems to be noticeably longer.

Nope. All-quads is no safeguard.

It might be angle-based. If he agrees to do it, that will be fabulous. Can he publish the sources for prying eyes if he does?

John Bigboote Something like that.

A:M's OBJ import creates a lot of atrocious continuity. It just has no notion of "least tension" flow. If there were a dumb rerouter like the one described above, cleaning up would be so much easier. I'm specifically looking into the unambiguous case of a continuous intersection. Anything more complex probably ought to be handled manually anyway.

Rodney The problem looks a lot simpler than you make it appear. See this shoddy diagram: A spline is directed (note the green pointies). It has an inbound part before the intersection (marked red) and an outbound part after it (marked blue). Suppose you have two commands: Create continuity between inbound half-spline A and outbound half-spline B; create continuity between inbound half-spline B and outbound half-spline A; fuse. That's the state in the middle. Create continuity between inbound half-spline A and inbound half-spline B; create continuity between outbound half-spline B and outbound half-spline A; fuse. That's the state on the right. You can name the commands something like "Reroute Left" and "Reroute Right". You try one of them on a problem spot, and if the result doesn't make you happy, you just undo and use the other one. And that kind of solution is no programming feat at all.

A human wouldn't want that, but to a program, both configurations are fine. So it turns out I couldn't find a quick way because there was none. That's strange: I found myself in need of a spline rerouter five minutes into the program. Can't believe no one's asked for one before.

Is there a quick way to redirect the flow of two splines at an intersection? For example, to go from the left state to the right (and vice versa) in the screenshot below: I haven't been able to find a solution that doesn't involve detaching and breaking stuff.

When you're making a hollowed-out model, how do you deal with the powder that's stuck in the empty space?

But robcat2075 didn't provide a link. Maybe they did resolve it after all. I would, but AnimationMentor don't do A:M =)

So, did the student find a bug in Maya, or did she just screw up and blame her tools?

Rodney I think hamaPatch is a very neat program that offers much-needed features in addition to what you mentioned: A very useful knife tool A better mirror-instance mode than in A:M Option to switch between splines and polygons/subdivs I like the program despite its glaring shortcomings: No hooks Broken OBJ export in the latest available version (it's OK in the second-latest though) Wonky viewport navigation at the up-axis poles No UV workflow whatsoever, not even A:M style It's a shame that the program never really got finished and that the sources were never published after it was abandoned. So even though I'd recommend hamaPatch, I'd attach a "Use with caution" note in small print.

Do you mean the way the Blender Foundation organises its open movie projects? Pardon my fantasising, but Hash, Inc. might do well to take a leaf out of the Blender Foundation's book: http://www.blender.org/foundation/history/. Blender was in copyright and development limbo at one point, but Ton Roosendaal raised enough money (years before Kickstarter) to take it open source and start the development funding ball rolling. Today it's probably the fastest-growing CGI software around that challenges the big guys and has several releases every year. Maybe that's something to consider if A:M development stalls.

Just as it does with polygons if you render them as subdivision surfaces. The only remotely useful spline-based program that's still (sort of) around is hamaPatch: http://www.lightning-generator.org/mirror/hamapatch.php And it's only a modeller.

How many ways are there to UV-unwrap the sphere?

I was thinking the same thing when watching this film and the one about the trapeze.

The policeman keeps reminding me of Half-Life's G-man.

Maya's mirroring is pretty clunky: http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/files/Polygon_selection_and_creation_Create_symmetrical_polygon_meshes.htm The virtual mirror in Wings is perfect. Blender's Mirror modifier is also top-notch. Just in case anyone's interested.

Thanks, that's just what the doctor ordered! I knew there was bound to be some way to make an instance.

It's when one half is an instance of the other, so whatever you do to the one (split, extrude, weld, transform, etc.) is reflected in the other, so you work with both halves at once. The crude implementation is to use the model's instance scaled -1 on the mirror axis. Better ones let you define the mirror plane and keep your vertices from jumping off it. What other modelling software are you familiar with so I can point a finger at the tool?