Paul Forwood

Oops! I meant to say 10 times but it is in fact 16.62 times the price - $4,971 (£2,637). And when you want to upgrade get ready to sell your granny!

Yeah, well I haven't looked for a while but the last time I looked MAX was 100 times the price of A:M with plugins costing as much as the purchase price of A:M. Bang for buck there is nothing on the market that can touch A:M and with every new version it gets better and better and it only costs $99.00 to take that step forward! These forums will answer almost any question that you can raise regarding the software and cgi in general and the small team of programmers who bring these tools to us are doing an amazing job! If you've got money to burn, by all means jump ship but at the end of the day, it all comes down to talent and tenacity.

Oh, Jim, you have got to try some BVH files on some of your characters! That I would love to see!

Yeah. I noticed that too!

That sounds really cool! But I wonder if it might pull the attention away from the face. I guess you could keep it pretty subtle except for real close shots of the rings. It would be very cool though and allow for alot more freedom of movement. Semi-transparent with banding and minute particles. Coool!

Looks great!!! The only criticisms I have for you are what Colin mentioned about the ears and the eyes seem too flat, they could use some speculars. Just my humble opinion. Well done though.

Oh, wait a minute. I get it now! Don't stop...don't stop...I stopped. Hmmm. Maybe a long side-shot of Mick moving forward and the girl tracking backward would help? Just a thought. Daggnabit! I'll have to go back and watch it again now incase I missed something!

Hey, Matt, that's really cool! You must have done something to your site because I was able to view all of your clips this time, where in the past my pc would lock up. All interesting and fun, particularly the new Stones short! It's nice to see it reach a satisfactory conclusion though one thing bothered me. If that is Mick stuck in the camera shouldn't your female character be moving forward before you cut to that shot? Great work though! Regarding your site: Just the toon render video refused to load and it may just be me and my tired eyes but some of the text on your site is pretty small and getting smaller. It is interesting to know that the TSM2 rig will work with BVH files. I did some tests a couple of years ago with the Hash rig and it worked well but I never got around to smoothing out my rigging glitches. I'll have to try again with the TSM2 rig. Are there any major hurdles to overcome? Well done with all of your output! I always keep an eye out for your stuff.

That is GREAT! Loved everything about it but would prefer to see some dynamics in the flower and his belly. (just a little) Bravo!

Congratulations to you, your wife and your new son!!! Don't go calling him Darth! We almost called our son Luke when he was born, not actually after Skywalker, but then we suddenly realised what he was going to have to put up with.

I think you meant Richard Burton, higginsdj. That was Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. OOOoooooo LAAAAaaaaaa!!!

Hooray!!! Thanks Anders.

Colin That streams beautifully for me and the quality is excellent. Is that the SWF format again? It works much better than Quicktime for me and 8Mb is tiny for somwthing that long His limbs do some strange twists at times but on the whole it works really well.

I should just add that I am very inexpeienced with A:M materials. I usually try to find a solution which relies on faster rendering decals. I am sure that there is a lot of power hidden in there though and there must be someone out there who's got a handle on them. Yeah, YOU, the one laughing his head off at the back! Step up and show us how it's done. Oh, and that first image should be labeled, 'Bumpmap', not bitmap.

Another thread in the forums is asking for methods to reproduce the machined or brushed metal look. I had to have a go and unfortunately only produced this. Can you do better?

By the way, I love the titles and the lighting. Just needs some of the stiffness taken out of the motion to bring Bugs to life.

You have to do a camera switch as a seperate shot and then edit them together afterwards. A:M won't allow you to switch cameras in the middle of a choreography.

Mike This is coming on really well!

Now that is a really good head! I'm sure your kids didn't design that one for you.

Oo, that's a tree with personality. Gazza! I agree that a bump map would help give the bark some texture. It seems a bit too skin-like at the moment but,Hey, this is a fantasy tree so who am I to say what it should look like. As it's a talking tree maybe it needs skin.

If the lid is meant to be the standard pry-off type then how about giving it a little bit of anticipation before it actually comes off? Maybe make it lift and then drop or distort it so that it bows out for a few frames before returning to it's original state. This would give the impression that the Jelly Babies are pushing the lid off from inside. You could take it further and make the whole tin distort as they try to get out and then have the lid burst off. Just a thought.

Hi Steve A whole tin of Jelly Thoms! Mmmm! Just thought I would point out something that is not working for me: The lid seems to be dropping and tilting before it has had a chance to unscrew and seperate from the tin. Shouldn't it just twist with a slow elevation along the Y-axis until it clears the top of the tin? I don't think you would have a child-proof lid on a tin of Jelly Babies, though maybe this is something that has been negotiated by Thom and his followers. Glad to see that you got your pc fixed.

Oo yeah! I like it, Nancy That cat has got has great potential. Camouflaged for top secret missions in the knitting basket!

Rodney It's great to see this thread again! You have got alot of really good characters and techno stuff in here. It must be time for an update soon, eh? Looking forward to it!

Excellent as always, Xtaz. Well done!