genocell

Thank you for responding so quickly. Things render fine separately under the same light and render settings. The problem is when I put them together in one chor, 'turn everything on' so to speak, and after a few minutes of render I get kicked out. Also I've checked my models they don't have internal patches that I can see. They are high in patch count I admit. I remember having to try like 20 to 30 times renders when I made the image contest and only one went through for some reason. That's the lowest possible setting I used with SSS.

I've been stuck with the same probolem for years of A:M kicking me out to desktop once I render a 'complex' scene. I've tried everything that I can think of. I need to really solve this problem and I need a robust solution or versatile workaround. I have no money to upgrade to a newer version, and I don't have money to get the latest bellsand whistles for my computer and I'm limited in time. It probably won't fix my problem in the end. Sorry if this post sound like I'm venting, but I'm really desperate and after years and years spent into making models, the feeling that all my hard work can't be rendered apart from using the render lock (render marquee) using A:M's full potential is disheartening. I've relayed this problem some years ago to Rodney, and since then I had been working on ways during my spare time to come up with a solution but to no avail. Recently I've been futzing around with this same problem in my semester break but like the last time I cant come up with a proper solution. It's 'only' version 14c, but the preview renders under the right settings, lighting and SSS is awesome. The reason I went back to A:M is I'm very familar with it and I've been using it for more than 10 years and it's actually very easy to use if everything goes smoothly. A:M's non-linear animating capabilities are very versatile, and I'm especially in love with the SmartSkin feature after digging around desperately for months and finding undocumented ways to actually use it real easy. I've posted about this if anyone can remember. This may be all down to my limited computer resources. And this is what I'm getting at. I've tried rendering objects separately under the same settings and it does fine. Render marquee with all the objects in the chor is fine. But once I turn on the 'active' property under choreography for each and every one of the models and put them all together using the camera settings and lights and render and put the system under full render mode A:M kicks me out after a few minutes. So it has to be lack of resources. My question is, is there a robust solution to render these objects separately or in any possible other way render separate passes as not to over-burden the systems resources resulting in me getting kicked out onto the desktop and ultimately composite it all back together? Or at least can someone in here point me into the right direction as to achieve similar solution. I remember some time a go that a studio used A:M to render for an advertisement and they mentioned rendering some of the elements separately (not sure which elements they are) to tackle down 'certain problems' and composite it back using After Effects. If a solution prevails itself I will defintely be using A:M for my final animation project. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyway just a general question. The latest A:M doesn't have this kind of problem right?

jEdit is capable if you make a macro for the job. Thanks.

Anyone in here knows of a free script editor that can find and replace specified tags and stuff between tags automatically? Can't seem to find any. The file has some nested tags and it's confusing. Also some of my other cho files are getting worse with the duplicate models on the choreography branch. Seems like when I import that particular model it duplicates itself up at the same cho level at a very alarming rate.

I think those are for a shoe model I constrained the model with. Somehow there was a bunch of them popping up sitting in between the phantom models but I removed them in a text editor. I renamed them and excluded the "Shortcut to". This is exactly what happened before this. I had many chor files with similar problems but I've put them through a batch text replacer and removed some of the duplicate instances of models and rotoscopes before the chor branch but I can't pin down the 'phantom models' Thanks. The DRIVER> seems to be it. It reminds me of Ye Olde Empty Rotoscope issue The fix was to open every asset in text editor and remove all empty instances of . I've never seen the phantom model issue before this post. I had problems with this one before this and managed to remove them. Didn't know which tags to look for the phantom models though. Thank you HomeSlice, robcat and Nancy. I'll try and mess with the file a bit more now that I have a lead.

Hi guys, Been on a hiatus because I was very busy with art school. I got a 1 week break so I might as well continue the work that I had previously put on hold... I had a nagging problem with some cho files having these nameless 'phantom' models in the Project Workspace three under the Choreographies 'branch'. They're not inside the choreographies, but they have the same hierarchy level with the chor files but they just came out of nowhere and seem to procreate themselves each time I save the chor. This is what I'm talking about. And this is the .cho file in question 004.cho The linked model files of the .cho were intentionally left out and the result would be the same either way, just to show that the problem didn't origonate from any of the linked files. I've tried opening the .cho file in a script editor and managed to track down and delete some of the duplicate "Cache=..|..|..|Objects|" lines but some of them still managed to pop themselves up when I open the cho. I would appreciate if anyone in here can help me with this. Thanks.

When I lost my x,y,z pivot value I just highlight either one of the x,y or z in the properties and press Enter. Works every time. If the pivot still reverts back to whatever random number try restarting A:M.

I experience similar problem as well when I did a contest entry. I remember spending weeks trying to solve the problem but no joy. In the end I ended 'airbrushing' it.

I use BOTH PhotoShop CS2 and Photo Paint X3 extensively for texturing and bitmap editing and I only want to say both programs have their own weaknesses and advantages if compared side by side. PhotoShop has features PhotoPaint doesn't have and vice versa and one program approach a particular problem better than the other one and vice versa, which is why I use both. Much of the features in each programs use the same general workflow, they only use different interfaces and graphical element terminology. So if you have any questions about converting the workflow of PhotoShop to PhotoPaint feel free to ask.

Hmmm. The hash CD has Safedisc. I don't think you can a get usable cd image by using imgburn alone or are you talking about non-Hash cds?

These make learning more interesting and visual. Great work. I just want to mention a feature in A:M that is worth putting in these tutorials. I don't know if anyone has already mentioned this so forgive me if this is common knowledge but I've never seen it mentioned here before or in the manual. It's assigining a pivot point of a group automatically from a cp in the model. A simple example : you have box and you want to assign the pivot point of a group to one of the corners using this corner cp's coordinates as a reference for rotating or scaling the whole box. In the conventional way of doing this you would select the group, turn on the scale or rotate manipulator and manually drag the manipulator so it's center matches exactly to this cp's x,y,z coordinates, or copy paste the x,y,z coordinates of the corner cp into the group pivot properties. Too much work. There's an easier way. Select the cp that you wish to use it's coordinate for the whole group, turn on the rotate or scale manipulator first then add the rest of the group by using the shift key, you can also use the complement key (/) or the select spline key (,) as well, depending on what you want to selcect). The group's pivot point will be automatically assigned to the cp's coordinate that you selected before you turn on the rotate/scale manipulator. If you don't want this pivot cp to be included in the group you can deselect it and the coordinates will still be retained. To save this group pivot coordinate just rename it, (don't deselect it just yet) then click on one of the coordinates in the groups pivot property panel and click enter. That's it. It's something that I do a lot and is one of the most useful features in modeling, especially mechanical modelling. I also use it extensively when I want to unwrap models for decalling.

Hisako, try and uninstall and reinstall your video card driver see if it works. I experienced similar problems in the past before where everytime I updated my windows A:M rotoscope suddenly won't work and I could bring it back by uninstalling and reinstalling my video card driver. If that still doesn't work try to check if you have the latest driver form the video card's company website, download tyhe latest one. Sometimes they list their oldest drivers to the latyest drivers, if the latest driver stilll doesn't work, try them all, see which one works. If that still doesn't work try ANY version of the driver of the video card, in most cases videocards have the same chipset but different companies just stamp their name on it, and use their own version of the drivers and software, it's worth a try intstalling it to see it works. Also do you have a built in video adapter in your motherboard? Have you tried using that and see if A:M rotoscope is available? If anything doesn't work, your last option is to buy another video card. I know this is not exactly a solution that you wanted to hear but having no rotoscope capability like you said is very limiting. I'd rather buy a new cheap videocard than not having that limitation. Good luck.

I also need to add if the SS is used in conjunction with CPW it does not solve this problem entirely, only to a certain extent. The cps will also moves out of whack (much like pulsates if I rotate the joint) if the keyframes are not spaced equally. So if I have a CPW joint with SS at 80, and 40 degrees and I wanted to change a some offending cps at 60 degrees the resulting joint movement will pulsate meaning the cps involved, starting from 0 degrees will move out of whack, will be okay at 40, then move out of whack, then okay at 60, then out of whack, then okay at 80. So CPW does not entirely solve my problem. Also I forgot to mention one important thing even IF it works the SS at each keyframe spans 3 keyframes, for example at 40 degrees the keyframe spans at 39, 40 and 41 degrees which results in a 'pop'. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not. But it's there. The keyframe at 39 and 41 can't be deleted. I am normally a patient man. But this problem is taking me to the edge of insanity. If anyone check my post in 2006 all the things I mentioned in here I also mentioned it there. I have to clarify it because I forgot about it because I stopped using A:M for a while. No choreography tweak can fix this so SS is sometimes out of the question. I might as well animate all the muscle movement in action or cho.

I'll try that if my problem gets any worse. At the moment it's a hit and miss affair. What I notice the more cps involved in a joint SS deformation, the higher the tendency for this problem to occur. Thank you for the links and trying to help me out. Also I apologize to anyone else (especially the original poster) for the way I hijacked this thread.

Backup... you open AM and have a model in the modeling window in muscle mode (there is nothing else). Now tell me what you do. Rusty What I meant is I access the smartskin feature either by right clicking in the modelling window in bones mode or in an action and select new smartskin (if there wasn't any) or the name of the smartskin container. In action window I right click it While in action window I always make sure that the relationship icon (chain link icon) is turned on while I am smart skinning and turned of while I am not, for example when testing the rotation. I always make sure key muscle is turned on too. By the way I don't think there is any other way in accessing the smartskin accidentally or something like that which is why I didn't mentioned it. There's also the choreography way of accessing it but I don't use that often. One thing I need to mention is this 'problem' or whatever it is occurs most of the time. Sometimes it occurs in varying degrees depends on how many times I smartskin it and delete the smartskin after that. Like I sometimes need to smartskin the same bone over 3 times until it subsides. Sometimes it goes away sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it took me weeks to smartskin a single bone until it goes away. Sometimes it only works (to a certain extent) by copy pasting the SS keyframes incrementally from another copy of the model into a completely empty SS container in another model.

Hi. Sorry for the late reply. My line was disconnected. I am using version 14, version 13 the same thing happened. I apply smartskin as I had been since v8. Rotate bone to the maximum degree. Make sure muscle keyframe is on (it's always on for me), move around cps. Go to half of that angle, deform cps and so on. Now the cps only jumps when I put keyframes in other angles other than that I have put previously. For example, for an elbow I put it through 45, 90, 130 and it's fine. I'm talking about a realistic joint movement here referenced from photographs and I'm using quite a realistic model so there bounds to be a few angles that still wont look right with those keyframes i.e. those 3 keyframes are still not enough to represent any subtilities or little imperfections so some keyframes needs to be put between those for instance at 110 degrees, but when I do that suddenly all cps involved in that angles jumps at random in positions and relative bone angles when I test it. Please note this did not happen in SS in v8 for many years. With this statement I am not saying v8 is better. I am just saying I had tried this approach with v8 - any angular increments in 10, 20, 40, even at 5 degrees increment as long as it is within the bounds of the purposed normal muscle movement nothing wacky happened. What I'm saying is this is not supposed to happen in the first place post v9 multiple axis SS. I did a few test before and I did yesterday to solve this with CPW it did solve it but to a certain extent i.e. a hit and miss affair. I have come to the solution of not using CPW most of the major joints, except for the fingers. I would love to say 'CPW all the way' but it would defeat the purpose of using any smart skin at all, and the type of model that's I'm using, it's double the work if I use CPW. Now I only use minimal angular SS keyframes 3 to 4 equally spaced and deal any offending cps in choreography muscle mode. And I would ask myself, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could just put SS muscle keyframes anywhere I please? In case anyone's wondering, fanbones still makes the cps pop out of whack. Well. The only thing I could say to that is "I rally hope so", because this problem has set me back one and a half years just trying to deal with this one problem. I really really hope I am wrong. and I hope this is just a bad dream. But in reality it's happening. And the most weird thing is, I am the only one experiencing it (although mtpeak has confirmed me he also experienced it). Also thank you for trying to help, again.

Hi. It didn't work. I tried that before. Thank you.

I'm sorry, and I don't mean to slam you however... I don't know where you got these ideas but they are simply utterly untrue. We had SS (both 3-axis and later multi axial) years before WCPs and even today many people still use only SS (I did for at lest a year after WCP came along plus the majority of my character models {realistic} still use only SS). SS, when used correctly, works fine all by itself. WCPs are used alone without any SS by many people (or so they say... they say WCPs completely replaces SS). There is no requirement at all that one does not work without the other. SS jumping around is a symptom of placing SS key frames too close together (you adjust one way then come back later and at almost the same rotation you adjust it another way). Again, I don't mean to slam you but what you say is simply untrue. Martin resisted implementing WCPs for years because they crimped joints (as I recall his post saying anyway) and all we had was SS for many years and all of us used it without WCPs. Rusty Thank you for replying. I enjoy a healthy discussion. I have experienced this since v11 and as you can see I have a thread about this more than a year ago and I remember you also responded and tried to help me out in that thread. I have also sent part of the model to mtpeak2 and he arrived at the same conclusion as I did (from what I remember) and it was solved by cp weighting the offending cps. Also the problem does not occur on all bones, only some at random, regardless of the number of axis involved. As a note I have used it the way it is supposed ]to be used (place keyframes in halves) but the problem still persist as a matter of fact I used SS in v8 for a few years with no problems whatsoever so I am sure it is not a mistake in my part. And by saying that I am not saying Am V8 is better than AM V14. I am not in any way complaining or making stuff up but no matter what I do (I tried dozens of stuff for a year and that's including setting the radius factor just to set the record straight) the same problem occurs. Please note what I experience only happens if I use SS exclusively, but the problem goes away if I use CPW in conjunction with SSand it doesn't affect all cps involved in joint deformation, only some cps and at random. If I use CPW in conjunction with SS this problem goes away, to a certain extent. Also this happen in certain bones only. I am not in any way making a sweeping statement as I have used A:M for a long time. I am just saying that I have an still am experiencing this 'phenomena'. I really hope that I am wrong since I have reskinned completely 3 realistic human models because of this and I have looked into every possible cause of this 'problem' for a year. I am past that problem now and I do not view it as a serious problem since it CAN be solved, and I am happy with A:M at the moment, but what I can see is you cannot use SS exclusively without ANY CPW most of the time, and I am assuming this is what John BigBoote mentioned The only possibility that I see it as my mistake is the model was not created entirely in post v9 multi axial SS feature but I can only speculate. Remember I have deleted all the relationship containers and rebone and rerigged and resmartskinned the whole model again from scratch. Actually I hope you see my post as an attempt in discussing things in a positive way and I really appreciate your response and I am in no way trying to put A:M in a negative light. I do not have anything to gain if I was making things up. I am posting from what I am experiencing, and I am not sure if anyone has experienced this problem or not. Thank you.

Smart Skin will not work without CP Weights. You MUST use CP Weights in conjunction with SS. Every cp that uses SS muscle keyframes MUST be weighted somewhat to avoid the cps from jumping around randomly. This is what I have experienced with this new kind of multi axial SS. The only advantage that I see in using CPW with SS with realistic muscle joint simulation is the ability for multiple bones to influence a group of cps simultaneously for example the skin/muscle area between fingers. I wouldn't use CPW at all if it wasn't for the factors mentioned above. Like the manual said, if you have a realistic character it is better to just use Smart skin alone. But in reality using smart skin alone will cause the cps to jump like crazy without CPW. CPW when used with realistic characters is much more of a "lets set this variable to this and see if it will deform properly" and SS is much more hands on and direct approach. But one cannot exist without the other. I prefer to use the latter the most as no amount of CPW editing can make a realistic joint look 'right', you have to sculpt it directly to get it look the way you want.

Ok I was joking. o_O Seriously. That's a nice alien there. About the question. I think it has to do with symmetry. Also I watched a mainstream documentary in TV something about scientists can't figure out why human breasts are bigger and much different than primates. No, I'm not joking.

We have almost similar genetic makeup to primates, so that tells how many boobs we have. Also we have been genetically corrected 65 times by initially combining ape and off world humanoid aliens. This was all done by an advanced alien life form we have never met before. We've skipped a few evolutionary step which explains a lot of the missing links.

That dude looks like the villain in Ninja Scroll...

Well, for me drawing is just an initial stage of model design. I think if you if you don't draft it on paper first to visualize what you are planning to model you would end up wasting time trying to make the model as similar as what you imagine or visualize in your head. It's important to have a specific target. Relying entirely on "image planes" or rotoscope (especially characters) will bring about some problems though, especially perspective distortion (in photos) or images/drawings do not line up or orient properly. This is where talent is important so you can fill in these gaps. For me I always use distortion boxes and modelling in cho mode to compensate for the use of rotoscopes at various stages in modelling. For speeding up modelling process there's too much to write and I don't think I can write it all in here. I can suggest that it takes trial and error to see what works best for an artist's own style. Some artists use their own personal models that they have built up over time as templates to speed things up, others use the free models in the cd. It takes a while though for you to 'get the hypnotic zen factor of pulling points around' to be proficient in modelling.

Hi, Just use 4 sets of 5 point patches for the patch at the corner of the mouth instead of the 4 sets of 4 pont patches with the crossed spline in your model.