MMZ_TimeLord

I had not seen this topic as I was out of the A:M scene during that time. I live in San Mateo and would be interested in meeting more hashers (Met Dahr already). Just shout out who and were you are and maybe we can get a meeting arranged.

I would have to go with the 'can't decide' crowd. I'd agree it depends upon the context of the shot/still. If you are going to be putting this in with other hand drawn stuff of the same style then the cartoon look may work (with some tweaking). However, all the other shaded work you've ever done looks wonderful and I would hate to see some of that depth lost. If the whole scene is 3D keep it shaded.

BAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! *breath in* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!! That's hilarious! Excellent work!

The one thing I can see missing at this point is the lower half of the R2 unit. If I remember correctly it locks into the wing with both the top and bottom poking out. Great work! Nice detail on the cockpit! Congrats!

If you had set the bias on all the splines magnatude from 100% to 0%... you should have been able to CTRL-Z back. If not... the best thing to do in my opinion is either select all again and put them back to 100% or load up a previous version (if you have one) You will not get all the bias magnatude settings back the way you had them by setting all to 100%, but they will be greater than 0% which has the same effect as peaking the splines. (That's why it doesn't matter if you peak or smooth them if they are at 0% on the magnatudes).

In bones mode, simply right-click and add a new light to the model (It should be placed just in front of the model mesh.) and specify a "Klieg" light and adjust it's properties to mimic a real headlight. Also, you may want to add a standard bulb in the same location so as to give that ambient light surrounding the headlight (not sure about AO vs. standard rendering in this area) I used this technique for my TAoA:M exercise "Can you say that." (The lipsync one). You can find it here.

Wow... looks great! Nice job William!

Also, on decals, if the resolution changes but the aspect ratio remains the same, the decal stamp will still work without changes. i.e. - take a 640x480 image and use it for a decal. Save your project and close it. Now scale your image up to 1280x960 and save it. Now re-open your project. Your decal should remain unchanged except for the resolution. This is an easy way to 'rough-in' textures for scenes. Use lower resolution images and then switch them out for higher resolution images with the same name for final renders. I usually create my high resolution images from the lower ones, and then keep using the lower ones for animation blocking and animatics.

*Shivers* I'll defientely keep you in mind for any creature sketches and modeling I need done... WOW!

Jin, Nice flash, that gives me a better idea of how to start vehicles when I am trying to do that. Thanks!

After seeing the number of splines you have, I agree. This can easily be done with poses. Here's what I see in the first take. 1. The doors are deformed pretty close to the picture. 2. The damage does not seem to push in on the driver's side enough near the front door hinge. i.e. - the dash board is still straight as well as the steering column. In the picture of the real damage, these are pushed in quite a bit (safety cage intrusion). I can't tell for sure if the whole A-pillar was pushed in from base to top or not in that shot. EDIT: It looks as if the base of the A-pillar was pushed in quite a bit (6 inches?) and from the top door hinge to the top of the A-Pillar looks to be pushed in as well. 3. The sidestep is not bent/broken with the rear black step missing, per the real damage picture. Not vital, but small details will quickly bite you. I would say to improve the damage and make it more accurate, reference one of the front (head on) rotoscopes and verify your amount of safety cage intrusion and A-pillar push in.

David, How much spline detail do you have on that side of the truck? How are you getting the current effect? Simply moving the cps in an action? or chor action? One option would be to up the spline count on that side of the truck and then use a surface consraint setup. Here is a link to a similar concept that robcat posted a long time ago. Here is a link to the post with the project link it it from the same thread. I was thinking instead of sliding the lump underneath the surface to make it bulge out as in robcat's example, you could push the lump (in the general shape of the vehicle that's hitting the truck) into the side of the truck you are trying to deform. Just a crazy idea... what do you think?

There are many dinosaur models included. Some you may want, some you may not. To model your own, you will need good rotoscopes of the ones you want or at the very least, a good mind's eye and experience modeling with A:M. Best answer is 'yes, A:M is good for making a dinosaur movie' with this caveat... you must learn the software. As was stated, it's just a tool. Get good with the tool, and put in some hard work and you can do just about anything with it... CG wise that is.

Looking really nice... I love the look of the character. I always loved the animal/human crosses anyway.

Your laptop looks just like mine... 'Sager' brand? what model?

To many frames between the shot flash and the puff... but otherwise looked pretty good. I would cut it down to just one frame between or none... i.e. - shot flash one frame, next frame start your dust puff...

Actually you can specify what number of subdivisions you use for the model export if I remember correctly. Just up your subdivisions to get a more dense poly mesh.

Your patch density is WAY to much. You only need about 9 patches for the top half of that central hull. Anything that is a flat or single surface can usually be one patch or just a few. The modeling you are doing here is reminicient of ... *GLUP*... polygon modeling. The detail part of the ship in the opening can probably stay as is, but the hull, wings and outer shell of the engines needs to be simplified. If you want the angular look, you can easily do that by peaking splines. Here is a really quick hull I did which is similar in shape to yours. (Took 2 minutes)

I could not tell you about the distortion without seeing a shaded wireframe capture.

Someone turn on a light... I can't see the model on my expensive laptop's crappy screen. I aggree about the lighting. Yves had a point on this in one of the radiosity or Ambiant Occlusion tutorials. Gamma correct the picture to 1.4 (I think Yves said that). This is closer to what the gamma should be for our 'messed up' screens.

I have seen this before as well, but I'm not sure what the circumstances have to be to prevent you from making two 5 point patches that touch each other. Anyone have a clue why this happens?

EDIT from my above post: Actually looking at my A:M report, it has not been labled as fixed in Alpha 10, it was a different bug.

If you built your dynamics in Alpha 9, then it could be that the file you saved from there was 'broke' in the first place. There was an error with dynamic constraints not being created properly with Alpha 9. The bug was reported by me and fixed in Alpha 10. I had tried to change settings in Alpha 9 on the drawbridge dynamic chain I had and it broke the constraint functionality. I tried to create a brand new chain in Alpha 9 and it broke the constraint functionality. When I imported a pre-Alpha 9 model with working dynamic constraints, it didn't break as long as I didn't try and change any settings in the dynamic constraints. The constraints on my drawbridge chains work just fine in Alpha 10. EDIT: Actually looking at my A:M report, it has not been labled as fixed in Alpha 10, it was a different bug.

Wonderful job as always Serg! Very efficient model (patch wise). Good references for future projects. Love to see her in a clip too... when you have 'spare' time.

Short answer, no. You did purchase A:M 2006 though. Here's the long answer. The CD has the Yeti on it and is the A:M 2006 CD required to run the software through version 13. Version 13 is in alpha right now and you should get the next alpha version as they are only operational for 60 or 90 days. Also, any models from previous versions will be saved in a different format under version 13. If you are a new user, wait for V13 to be officially released. Hope that clears up some stuff for you. P.S. - The box art is old because they probably didn't have the new ones ready yet. Feel lucky, I only got the CD and manual with my 2006 subscription.