heyvern

I hate to mention this.. but... (This has only happened once in the last month. It was a freak occurance after a freaky computer crash unrelated to AM... uh... thunderstorm... power went out.) I was working on a project and saving often as usual. When I opened it again after mother nature decided I had been on the computer too much that day... ... the model was "missing" from the project... the shortcut in the chor was linked to a blank reference. There was no model in the objects folder. The model had been embedded in the project. Like I said I never even gave it a thought... it was a simple test project that I created in like 5 minutes... at the time it seemed odd but was not terrifying and I just redid it. ------ The lesson here is to always make backups of everything you work on. Here is a what I do... Imagine... really really think how you would feel if the file you are working on VANISHED into thin air.... pretend like it really really happened... ... if you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach... save a copy of the project and model/s immediately. I apply this technique to ALL my software files... not just AM. -Vern

Not enough info. There is no way to tell from the description exactly what you did or where the file "went" or "is". Do a search for the file name to find out where it was saved originally. If you saved to a new location and it wouldn't let you... it should still be where it was. -vern

Oh man... I left it running on my screen for like... 15 minutes... and that poor kid vomited all over himself... -vern

A bit of a cheat or a quick way to do wrinkle maps is to use the high-pass filter in Photoshop. Draw simple thin lines for the wrinkles then run the high pass filter... tweak the settings. Then use levels or curves to darken or lighten the effect. If the lines are too thick or too thin in the first step... use the Maximum or Minimum filter to thicken or thin the lines. I love the high pass filter... I use that thing all the time. -Vern

Very recently I saw an extreme close up of the open mouth of an aligator. A young one about the size of your image. The teeth were absolutely perfectly smooth and unstained. They were so smooth and perfect they sort of looked "fake". I see only two things slightly "off" with the teeth... Too sharp. The teeth are not sharp to a point. they are much more rounded at the tip. Practically blunt. Translucency. The teeth I saw in the photo were very "perlescent"... they were transluscent around the edges. Granted... this was most likely some kind of "zoo" gator I saw... probably had a gator dentist cleaning his teeth... These are small nit picks to be honest. The only one that jumps out that could be really easy to fix would be to round those teeth off. -Vern

Definately donate these to the upcoming second edition of the Extras CD! This way they will reach the most people... and... there just weren't nearly enough weapons on the first disk. -Vern

How is the foot attached to the leg? Similar concept... uh... but different. Open some of the models included on the CD and look how those are connected. You will need to understand the use of 5 point patches. If the arm or leg and body are already closed shapes then you will have to "break" the splines at the connection area and reattach. -Vern

Depends on... precisely the look you are after... For instance... sweeper is a good choice to have distinct individual... "separate" vines... However... in the case of the "red weed".... specifically... in that example... It kind of "sticks" to the surface of what it grows on... so... maybe individual vines is "overkill"... You could go with a displacement or bump map... you could make a really detailed vine image... and animate this "growing" and moving more easily than trying to "grow" splinage. Or go with a few "real" vines... close to the surface... and then "fill in the gaps" with a displacement map. Even have actual splined vines growing out of the displaced surface... faking actual geometry. The new displacement in v13 would be good for this. It can create incredible detail with very low mesh models.... I have not tried animating it though. Just some food for thought. -vern

The beauty of this model is unassciated with the application used to create it... that is what makes it fantastic to me. It is brillaint and beautiful on its own without any knowledge of the tools to create it. It could have been carved from wood, or clay and painted by hand and still be outstanding as a work of art. I remember the Perk model and seeing the simplicity of the actual model itself. It's perfection was all decals baby. The splines were so light... it was amazing to still see all that detail. I love it. Looking at this "2d" image... I can feel the rough surface in my mind. It truly breaks out of its digital "prison". If this were animated... good grief... I might swoon and pass out. I hope you get the help you need... I am not in a position to offer any... but had to comment. -Vern

In this case you need to key frame the start and stop of the animated image on that model. Click that image in the PWS (the image reference in the model... in the chor). If you look a the properties panel you should see an entry box for Frame. Set it to frame "0" on frame... "0" in the chor... then move ahead to where it should start... key frame the decal/image to "0" here as well... move ahead again to where you want it to "stop"... and keyframe the image frame value to where it should stop. Depending on the frame rate of the chor in relation to your smaller animation... you may need to fiddle around with those frame numbers. For instance if the decal/image animation was rendered at 15fps and the chor is 24fps... it's going to play faster inside the chor... uh... ... my head hurts... but you get the idea. ------- You may want to do a search on the forums for similar techniques. There are ways to create writing matched up to a pen or pencil without having to use animated decals. They might be easier or allow more control. -vern

I am pretty sure that you applied the movie file to a group or the model itself. It is called a "Patch Image"... I think that is it. To have more control you want to apply the movie file as a decal, just as you would with a still image. Unless you set the repeat value specifically it always it set to reapeat just once as default... unless you selected cylindrical mapping before applying the decal. (I bet good money you didn't do that) Or... You could make the "screen" model just one single big patch... then only 1 "copy" will show when you drag the image to the model. To "flip" the image you need to right click on the image shortcut in the model in the PWS window... select rotate image or something like that... keep doing that till it appears correctly... I may have this wrong... it's been a while since I did it. If you drag an image to a model or to a group... the image will appear on each patch. If your model has 4 patches... you get 4 images... 1 patch one image. Honestly... I would just redo it as a decal... much easier. -vern

If this is needed mainly for copy/flip/attach... you may want to "practice" that technique to get it right. I use CFA all the time and it works for me. It can be a bit picky but once you get the hang of it you will find it works great 99.9% of the time (for me I allowed a .1% failure rate for when I try modeling while drunk or sleep deprived). As for scaling the "center" spline before CFA... just select that whole spline, set the pivot to zero on the axis of the flip and scale to zero on that axis. The half model "center" spline must be on the zero axis. The CFA should not leave gaps if this is done properly. I also find that some "odd" splines connect in the wrong place (3 point patches... dead end splines... odd things to begin with actually). Those can be disconnected and reconnected... this is easier than attaching ALL the splines. The flipping on the wrong axis... I use to get that all the time... I don't remember what I started doing differently... but I don't get it any more... well... once in a blue moon. -Vern

Oh good lord... You mean it's still only the beggining of the end? It's not actually any closer to the end yet? Or the middle of the end? I keep hoping. p.s. Your web site continues to... improve. Some actual content would be kind of fun. -vern

Oops! The 5th is out for me! The 1st through the 5th are out for me. --------------------- Apparently The Herding of the Zehr Family Mennonites™ is going to require 5 days to complete all of the rituals and the 5th is the last day. This is usually the best day of all. We dress up as our favorite conservative supreme court justices and lure an "outsider" into a gigantic wooden representation of Menno Simons and get out huge bags of marshmallows then we... ... uh... scratch that. We don't do that. p.s. If some Mennonites invite you to a party at the beach from the 1st to the 5th of August... don't go. -Vern

Another meeting? Didn't we just have one? I am pretty sure any day is fine by me... but I have to verify. I am 98.5% sure none of those days conflict with my busy summertime schedule. A bunch of Mennonites are gathering at the beach in August... they may want me there since I am related to all of them in some fashion. Not looking forward to it. I will have to act like a hawkish war mongering republican Bush supporter or they will try to cast the demons from my body and save my soul. This may involve some sort of dunking in the ocean. Happens every year. I liked the conservative Mennonites better when they were pacifists... plus I like all of those demons in my body... they keep me from getting too lonely. -Vern

No... just someone who looks like me... are you talking about the guy at the table or the small waiter statue on the left? I was unable to attend again this year due to a lack of resources and other issues. I plan to attend the meeting this month... I will try to be more "upbeat"... I have been very "low" for awhile and have taken an unscheduled break from AM for the time being... I can't explain why... but I have lost some of my enthusiasm lately... I hope it is a short term phase... I really do. My lost inspiration with 3D has absolutely nothing to do with AM or Hash. I just want to be clear on this. It is just me. I am in some kind of "funk"... or maybe I just needed to persue other avenues of creativity. -Vern

I think I can make it on the 20th. But I can't promise any new AM stuff. -Vern

There is a "trick" I use sometimes. On the tail fin where it intersects, add a few extra "extension" rings of splines and create a "curved" sort of "seam edge". Instead of intersecting completely through the fuselage you can sort of nudge it up tight to fit against it. You can even slightly alter those splines to conform against the fuselage section. It doesn't have to be a perfect fit. The tightly curved edge of the fin seam will hid that hard transition. This gives you the benefit of low splinage and avoid that sharp line of intersection. In this case the small ventral fin would be a separate mesh... but the same low splingae. Vernon "!" Zehr

FlyingMonkeyBoy, I hope for your sake others can be more patient than myself. Good luck to you. Read the book that came with AM... The book... it has a cover with pages inside... the paper back book of tutorials that came with your copy of the application. Inside this book are simple instructions on opening and loading models from your hard drive, CD or models you created and saved separately... ... hold on.. you loaded your crabby model into a project so you should already know how to do this. Winzip has its own help system that came with it. Vernon "!" Zehr

You need to embed the model for the project and also include the image. Put the project, crabby model and beach image in a folder. Zip the folder. Not just the project. ------------- Also, try to be patient and do some more of those tutorials while you wait for a response. You should actually understand what those tutorials are teaching you... don't just follow the steps. Try to see what is actually happening. Do them more than once. I understand your impatience to learn... but just like in school... you have to study and do the homework... all the answers are here, in the book or in the online help files... or from the helpful people on the forum... but the answers won't always be specific to your project. You need to experiment, and also try to become familiar with the tools and concepts in AM so we can help you better... I learned through tons of trial and error... If you read the TOAM book that came with AM... do all of those tutorials and become more familiar with how things work... your questions will be more focused and our answers will make more sense. Vernon "!" Zehr

Holy crud... I never would have thought of that... I am too obsessive! I would never even consider leaving those hanging splines! I always just use more points. a low patch half sphere... nice. Vernon "!" Zehr

You are keying the poses in the emotion poses correct? Check to make sure that the key filters are set to record those poses within your other poses. At the bottom of the interface are all those gizmos that control what gets keyed like bone motion, muscle motion, etc. I think there is one for pose sliders... it may be the "etc" thingy... can't remember off hand. Anyway... that might be a place to check. Vernon "!" Zehr

No problems Paul. I know you well enough to know that you wouldn't have posted that link intentionally if you knew what was in there... ... now if it were sandgroper who posted that... I would have not been so surprised. I clicked on one of the comics that had some pretty explicit hard core images and story lines... I mean... no imagination required if you get my drift. ... usually I need my credit card for stuff like that... so... Thanks! Vernon "!" Zehr

Uh... I guess Bode (father and son) is an "acquired" taste... You may want to give a slight warning to people next time for links like that... It is a bit much to see that at 5 am before I've had my coffee... although... I don't feel I need my coffee as much now. Vernon "Wake up call!" Zehr

AM is a fabulous program. It is however unique. It relies on the concept of "Hash Spline" technology to create models and to animate virtually all of the attributes of anything in that model. If you plan to work with other polygon based applications or models you may find the pipeline for that a bit tough. Hash splines and AM are NOT based on polygons. Going "back and forth" between AM and polygons is not a trip to the happy zoo on shiny flying magic shoes. There is export and import to various polygon formats and if you visit the game forum here for AM you will find there are tools and pipelines for working with polygons if you need to. I am one of those AM users who has no need for polygons and doesn't really like them anyway. So this whole topic has no effect on me at all. But apparently there are some people who do use polygons and get frustrated when... ... a whole pile of polygon models they have created or downloaded can't magically be transformed into the AM format. ... they can't send their AM projects to someone else and have it magically rez-up, completely intact with images, rig and animation in Polygon Pro MCP®. (sorry I just watched Tron again) AM is capable of doing ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. But is not a polygon based application.. if it was it wouldn't be any better than anything. It is the spline technology that makes it so fluid and simple to model with. Taking that away or... adding "more" polygon support... would just make it "like everyone else". Slippin Lizard is incorrect. Unwarranted or unjustified comparisons are the only things that Martin doesn't approve of. You will find a very helpful community here. Good luck on your decision. Vernon "!" Zehr