triath5147

Hi I posted this in the game development forum, but A few people thought it fit better here. We have completed a game called Super Slam Ball, you can download a demo here Super Slam Ball Demo Also visit the web site at Super Slam Ball web site from there you can see screen shots, a movie trailer, and also find other info, as well as the demo. The game was modeled and all textures were prelit using A:M. It is a revamped version of an old arcade classic. Try the Demo and see what you think. In the full version there are five levels, plus a hidden bonus level, 16 unique balls, with the ability to jump, and steer, plus one hidden bonus ball. There are also three different playing modes, arcade, time attack, and a bull's eye mode to test your skills. Have Fun! P.S. I realise the flash site does not have a laoding bar, so on slower machines, or slow internet connections, the trailer and initial web loading screen may take a bit to load.

Ok I will take a stab at it. Since no one else replied yet. I didn't look at your original post, and I am not sure what your talking about but I will explain some things. Firts off the time specs you are giving are in seconds incase you were unaware, so 00:00:00 is the start, 00:01:00 is the equivalent of 1 second and so on. when you make key frame animations and want the computer to tween the frames, that is what causes the other lines to be created in your time line. So you nudge your right forearm a bit at "0" and there are red blocks on the time line at the bones that were moved. at 1 second you nudge it again? and u get another red block at that same bone and a grey line in between them. and at 2 seconds u moved another bone moving the entire arm to a new position. SO now u see a red block at "0" for that bone, and its children and at 2 seconds for that bone and its children. Correct? Now the arm bone u moved last, the one at 2 seconds now tweens from frame "0" to frame 00:02:00. SO when you move your scrub bar the arm will slowly move from start to its final position in your last frame. So if the forearm is a child of the arm bone your moving, you may not see the forearm nudges, as the entire arm is now in motion. if you want the entire arm to stay put, while your doing your forearm nudges, than select the bone by highlighting it in the time line. ( drag a box around it to select it and by default i think it turns bright green) than go to frame 00:01:00 and paste that bone at the frame. That way the entire arm will not move until ur forearm nudges are finished. Is that what your talking about? If so there you go...If this makes no sense than i don't know what to tell you, except if you really are having this much trouble understanding the way computers animate, check out the tutorials here, and take the AM class thing that Rodney promotes. It will really help you get an understanding of how it all works and why. Good Luck.

Just right click at the images icon in the project workspace. It will say, import image, and import image sequence. Slect import image sequence, and click on the first tga. It will import the entire lot, and than all you do is right click again and hit save as, and pick quicktime or avi and vuala! you have your movie.

Sweet game David , or I mean Dennis lol. Its alot of fun. There are many ways to fix the camera bug if you want to put the time into it, Maybe you can work on that for Froggy Boxing GOLD EDITION!!

The problem is the internal patches in your heart. Look at the attached image. Your heart in your file is at the top right, and the internal patches I have highlighted in green. These patches need to be removed for the booleon to work properly, giving you the cut out u see in the render of the door on the far left. In the center of the pic look at the heart front and back that I amended. Notice that the splines on the front of the heart are different from the ones on the back, that way u do not have any 4 point patches going between the front and rear plane of the heart, because none of the splines are in the same direction. There are cleaner ways to do the splines, but I changed this in literally 5 seconds, to make a point. It is actually taking me longer to type this reply and get the pic to show in this post, than it does to solve the problem ( figure that out!) Any way its an easy fix, just keep that in mind for other booleans too. Internal patches render weird, because in all actuallity, when u have the internal patches,each one of those blocks is like a solid object SO instead of having the heart as one solid object, Your heart was actually like four blocks, or four solid objects, and you were seeing the partitions in your render.( does that make sense?, I hate explaining stuff, I'm not good at it)

I have had this happen too in the past. I do not have an x700 ati card, but i had the 9600 series, and now have an ati x850 which does the same thing. First off, hit the "0" key or zero key, to put it in shaded wire frame mode. If this solves the problem. Go to tools, options, and go to the global tab. Change the OpenGL driver to the direct x driver and all will work fine. I don't know why it happens, I thought at first updating the drivers would fix the problem but it does not. Let me know if this fixes your problem. Maybe if enough of us are experiencing this, we can write to support and try to get it resolved.

sweet so far, he seems to transform like ....was it prowler? the old police car from the original series? My only critique is that we have impalas too, and they are crap, they got beat up in the city, maybe make a crown vic instead. Other wise nice render so far.

well I guess I'll Start writing. I was hoping to wait till i get the latest release to start the tut so that till its finished it wont be too far behind in technology. Although I guess if it's made in pieces, we could continually, just make changes to the updated parts.

thats a long list....

Don't forget "Step by Step". I realise have have not been active in its development lately. But it is still on my list of priorities. I have the character made for the series. I just need to rig him, than start collecting the information to make the tutes. I was also hoping to wait until Version 12 in January, so that the tutes would be with the latest version on AM. Start writing down all the info you would like to see covered in part one which will cover the interface, and post it here, or email me.

well it was made quickly and not intended to be a master piece. All I did was stamp the model on both sides to get the decal on, of course if u would spend more time, and unwrap the model u could decal it otherwise., secondly to get a good glow off of the bulb, u do not want it to be transparent. In the total of maybe 4 minuted i spent making this i did not worry about the light diffuse either.

Here hopefully these links work, if not let me know. I spent a couple minutes and made a quick lamp prj. to show u what i mean about decaling. hope they help. The lamp itself has no materials for the stand or lamp shade rims, but u will get the idea. EDITED BY TRIATH5147 the other links didnt let u in without a password, so here are new links. hopefully they work. http://home.comcast.net/~triath5147/art/lamp.zip

probably what i'd do is: 1) change the light from that bright yellow, to a more subtle tone, you can keep yellow, if u want, but make it much lighter, or more gray. Being that bright of a yellow, is wahing out the color on ur chair. 2) for the lamp shade. proably the easiest thing to do, would be to use a tga with transparency, or 2 bmps as decals. Make one ur paper like texture or cloth for the lamp shade, and than another one flag as transparency map, and make it about 60% transparent in the center where the bulb is most intense, and fade to "0" transparency as u get to the edges of the lamp shade.

I think the pic is good, it has a cartoony almost Scooby Doo fell to it. I wouldnt change much of the modeling. As far as lighting goes. The easiest way to do lighting is to place lights where they would be naturally, dont just throgh lites in anywhere. For example. What stands out the most in your pic, is a blue and yellow light. The blue light seems to be radiating from behind and to the left of the camera, and the yellow from over near the fire place somewhere. The blue light should be coming from through the window that the knight is infront of, and try to use a slate color like you see at night when the moon is out. Use that light from the window to give the room its initial hint of ambiance. Than use ur orangish yellow light, from the fire place, not to saturate the room with yellow light, but to add some warmth to the slate colored light, and keep the fall off of the fire place glow small, maybe only going out as far as the back of the chair. Than to play with shadows, just add a few soft lights here and there, to highlight certain details of ur room. So to sum it up, don't flood rooms with distinctive colored lights, unless its a disco, use a soft color from windows to give a default ambiance, than use other soft short fall off lights, to shadow, and accent features of ur room, so u dont drowned detail out with bright colored lights. hope that helps. If not just ignore everything i said.

Hey everybody, I am agreeing with everything Rodney has already said, and am just adding my 2 cents. I approached Rodney for help with this, in the hopes that we could make documentation for A:M that doesn't quite exist. I would like to make these docs, very visually intensive. I don't know about you, but artists act emotionally, and learn more visually, than just reading some boring text, with no examples. Let's face it, reading some of those Reference pages is like reading the manual that comes with your appliances. The information is all there, but it fails to keep your attention. I also know that most people learn by doing,... not reading and hopefully the series we create will inspire people to start building from their imaginations with the confidence that only comes from experience, and satisfaction of doing it yourself. Theres nothing more gratifying than starting with nothing and watching your work come to life, and we're going to give you the nudge you need to make that a reality. I plan on making the series, based on what I would have liked to have seen when I was just starting out with A:M. Which means alot of detail, alot of pictures, and above all, alot of examples of different settings and what they actually do for you, so it will take some of the guess work outta this magic software, and allow you to really tap into it's power, which eludes many of us. Lets see some more topics that are really buggin you guys. We plan on basing the series on the PWS, and going from start to finish, to try and cover everything. As the project matures hopefully we can get support from Martin, and possibly even develope these tutorial sets on new features before the CD comes out. That way you have a clear doc. on the feature and what it can actually do to help you. OK thats all for now.

You could also get rid of that center spline it really serves no purpose, and from your first pic, it looks like the reason for the creasing.

If the model was just a mess of triangles, than the problem is the file format, when it was exported had mipmaps. You want to avoid this at all costs, and start from scratch and export the model or get an exported model that does not have mip maps for the skin.

Just a suggestion but when I import from other miserable programs, I usually go through the model and get rid of all the triangles making them 4 point patches, by breaking points and deleting splines. It takes about an hour on 800 to 1000 poly models, but it animates smoother, is easier to manage, and looks better. and once you export back out of AM it will be peaked and smoothed where it is supposed to be, so it holds up against the original look of the model.

nice work, but for being a racing system, that set up seems archaic. There are much more advanced fue injection systems on the market don't you think? That looks like a set up from an old buick deisel. Or something you'd see on an old Mack. hmm.. off topic, yeh the camera is very fluid, and keep the background simple, good work.

This is alittle late, cause I only saw this topic now, but on April 24 2020 I will be celebrating, my birthday. ANd hopefully retirement.

hey rodney, do I count? I sure could use a new version. Did I mention your the greatest moderator ever?

have you tried the Simbiont AM materials? they are really nice, and customisable. they may help out as well as a base for your painting.