Gorf

Thank you Still getting back into it, and getting some bad creasing on my five point patches.

I've started work on my Prehistory entry but I have a number of five-point patches. While I know how to close these, is there a recommended technique for avoiding them in the first place? (Don't be fooled by my forum membership longevity. I'm still a noob, I've had a twelve-year hiatus and wasn't particularly good before that!)

Absolutely interested in that! Before I was in my teens (over 40 years ago) I was a walking dinosaur encyclopaedia. Now I'm just a dinosaur. Couldn't find an install disk other than A:M 97 so I applied for the trial period just to see how much A:M has changed in my time away from it, but nothing came of that. Does the trial period even work?

Just about to return to it, after a decade away from A:M Just need to find an install disk I just got a 3D printer and want to print something I created myself...

I don't suppose it incorporates the bump map texture into its export? It would make life much easier...

Yep - that did the trick, thanks. I needed to add a null for the translate constraint, but I worked that one out with little trouble. It's so long since I did TAOAM I'd probably never have worked out the "compensate mode" thing. untitled.avi

Thanks, Rob. I'll try those out and post my results. I've done them as separate models because I'm going to be reusing several servos, arms, elbows etc. I realised when I started typing my original post that a model per servo would be easier, but I'd gone too far by then because I like to be economical where I can. Incidentally, these are all to scale. The plan is to use the finished model as the basis for modelling a puppet around the contraption, which can then be printed in 3D, which will in turn be used to make a cast for a latex version to go over the real servo construction...

Four models - the blue one, white one, and two "brass" ones. The coloured ones are those that show up when I go into "bones" mode in the choreography. It's entirely possible I've got my nomenclature wrong. These things were all built from messing about with the primitives that are in the installed library.

Hi, folks - Thanks for reading, sorry for such a basic question. I'm modelling a mini servo with some attachments - the first is the "rotor" that attaches directly to the servo shaft, the second is an elbow piece and the third is an extended arm, as attached. On the attached screen dump, I've photoshopped the bones of the different models in the choreography as best I can so they can all be seen. The dark red one at the bottom is the servo main bone. The big cyan one can be ignored - it's a boolean cutter. You can just about see the bone for the servo shaft - it's in there, but it's overlaid by the light red model bone of the rotor. At the base of the elbow you can see its model bone. I haven't bothered to include the model bone for the arm. When I roll the bone for the servo shaft, the "rotor" rolls correctly. How do I constrain the elbow bone so it rotates about that centre axis, keeping its place on the rotor? I don't want to do it by relocating the model bone, if possible, because I want to reuse the model and might need it to roll around a different centre point... Hope I've explained myself properly... edit: Sorry - should have mentioned the version. 12.0n

Hi, Charles - forgive the late response, this is my first time back on the forum for almost a year... Did you need to convert your model to STL format (or similar) before printing, and if so - how?

It's a Windows "feature" - if you keep the shift key down without pressing a key or clicking, it assumed you have one finger & can't press <Shift> and another key simultaneously. "Ease of access" is Microsoft's politically correct way of avoiding reference to the disabled or impaired body functions of its users.

It doesn't explain why turning hair on shows a different pose to having hair turned off, though. The implication to my dim intellect is that I could set up a choreography and test it without hair (for render speed) and think everything's OK. Then when I render with hair overnight the results are different. In the overall scheme of things, it's no big deal, I'm still trying to get back into A:M, but even so it would be nice to know why it makes a difference, not just that it does.

Project attached. Rendered using A:M 13.0t on a Core 2 duo XP home machine with 2GB memory Render to file straight from opening - I get the expected pose with hair. Render to file but turn off hair, I get the unexpected pose. Kong2a.prj

I liked the second one better. The first one looked like he'd been dragged into the air by some unknown force, and his legs just straightened before they too were dragged off the ground. The second one looked like the character was putting some force into the ground to get himself airborne. If you can get a set of the Jeff Lew animation DVDs, that will help a lot. Review here:

Many thanks for the reply. I was rendering a TGA sequence - 00:01:00 to 00:01:00 Oddly enough - when I rendered with alpha, hair, reflections and shadows, it seems to be OK I'll try to see at what point it failed... [edit] OK it seems very odd. Rendering with hair gets the pose right (or at least, the same as the wireframe in the chor). Without har, you get the odd left hand and head pose. Any ideas?