heyvern

Fantastic achievement... Above all else... without commenting on anything else... you should be applauded and feel proud that you actually... DID IT! So many of us want to have a completed project... but you did it. ----------- Now the icky part... some constructive comments. Most of my comments won't even require rerendering... just some editing. ---------- It could be shortened somewhat. There is a ton of repetition. Some of the "gags" are done the same way over and over too many times... some of the "gags" or bits were not done enough (I loved the POV of the flying chase sequence). The fight scenes were very well done... and initially it was hysterically funny... a Samurai trying to kill a fly with a sword... that was funny... in the beginning it was hysterical... when the fly was on his back. However this concept went on longer than it needed to and was repeated too much. The humor was there, don't kill it with repetition. In my mind this could be cut down by a third or even more, it would tighten it up and not lose the ADD audience. You kicked some arse dude. I feel somewhat hypocritical commenting since I haven't finished even one of my projects... good or bad... but still. I see the potential in what you have and some judicious editing would make it even better. Vernon "!" Zehr

Uh... Now I am confused... I have been using multipass with Yves's skylight rigs... I downloaded that big pile of skylights... and I usually use the "8" version. I love the results. Vernon "!" Zehr

You got some internal patches in the... uh... mattress? The lines that connect the top surface to the bottom... inside should be removed. When you extrude a grid or a similar flat mesh... you need to watch out for that. Vernon "!" Zehr

Can I ask a stupid question? Okay thanks... How is the spiral light trick... different from other "random" single light actions or "multiple" light sky light rigs? The trick is getting a light in sort of a random spot for each pass... so... is this just another way to do it? Vernon "!" Zehr

AAAHHHHHHGGG!!! Make it stop! Kind of creepy... especially the eyes... Might be useful somehow in the transformation effects needed for the movie project. Vernon "!" Zehr

A manila envelope has an ever so slight... mottled tone... very subtle... like a slight blurry noise. The one I have in front of me also is a bit of a brighter... orangey color. Unless you just pulled this one out of the shrink wrap... yes... some bumps... wrinkles... crinkles... will definitely make it look real. In the past... I actually crumple some paper and scan it. Don't lay the lid completely flat on the scanner. I can then pick the "best spots" and rearrange them for best effect. Yes... I know this is not a "real" 3D wrinkle bump map... but quite frankly it looks wonderful. Bending splines works too. Vernon "!" Zehr

That would be a depth buffer in the render options. I have done this type of render using fog as well. Basically a completely black background... totally white model... and black fog set on the camera... no shadows... try adding ambience to the model... this will blow out the shadow areas I think. The depth buffer gives a better result... I only tried playing with the depth buffer in older versions of AM which required some kind of conversion... however I think v12 does this as part of the new composite feature. Not sure. Vernon "!" Zehr

AM is not Wings3D... are you asking how to make hard edges in AM? Select the CP and press "P". You can ask for help about AM... but I don't use Wings3D because... I could never figure out how to use it... too complicated. I spent HOURS trying just trying to zoom and center the model in my workspace.... so I could care less about Wings3D. It is comparing apples to oranges. they are two completely different methodologies in 3D... polygons... Hash splines. Go to the Wings3d forum and ask them why it doesn't have a better bone constraint system like AM... or why it's animation tools aren't easier... or why it doesn't have reusable actions... or organic modeling... or hair... or spriticles... or... Vernon "!" Zehr

As I said before... depending on how you connected the splines... AM keeps the different "steps" that you went through in the undo buffer. It looks like you stitched splines onto closed patches... which would create internal patches which is not good. It could be that one of the CPs got connected to a dead end spline from the front of the model... this created a continuous spline... undo may not disconnect those splines the same way you created it. So as the undo "deletes" the CPs you added... it is deleting the "wrong ones". The mesh is based on splines which are numbered and CPs of each spline which are numbered. If as you undo those numbers get mixed up... which they could given the complexity of the modeling process... you get unexpected results. Hard to tell from these screen grabs since we can't see it from above where you connected the tail stabilizer. Anyway... undoing all of those steps would be really pushing your luck. You would be best off figuring out how they are attached in the first place and deleting by hand. If it were me... I would never try to undo that far back... I would just break the splines delete the section and start again from there. Or revert back to an older version. Undo works. But if you connect a lot of splines in... "odd" ways... the undo might... undo a connection... then... delete the wrong CP... because they were both in the exact same place after being connected... that is how I interpret this behavior when it happens to me. I would suggest you go back and break splines to get close to what you started with. You haven't gone too far with this model... that spot at the end should be an easy fix... just break those splines and recreate it. It will be better time spent. Even the spline that is "messed up" could be fixed without a lot of effort. Don't spend anymore time worrying about "fixing" the undo. It works the way it works... it may seem different than other applications but that is the nature of the beast. One tip: when you use the undo... deselect any CPs first ... then use undo. I get WAY better results that way. Sometimes undo doesn't even work at all until I deselect everything in the model window. Remember... you can't rely 100% on undo in any application. It can become a crutch. In AM this is not the best way to work. Your best bet would be to save a version of the model BEFORE adding a huge section on to it or making drastic changes. You should get into the habit of saving model versions anyway... it is a good practice. If you get to a point and you feel good about it... save a version with a different number after the name... then make some changes... if you don't like it... you can just open the old one. You should do all the lessons in the book that came with AM... it helps explain how patches are formed and what is an internal patch etc. Don't focus on the undo... if this is the most work you have "lost"... well... I have INTENTIONALLY deleted and started over on much larger more complicated sections... it is all part of the learning process. Undo is very helpful... but it shouldn't be used as a "revert" button. Vernon "!" Zehr

Too many patches/splines. I was looking at the effect of the "ribbing" in the leg... ...I could... spline that mesh in... half the patches... Since the parts are "stiff"... mechanical... you could get those leg shapes using less cross sections and adjusting the bias. The ribbing... same thing... you could cut down on the splines. Since it is an "exponential" kind of thing... drop the splinage in one "piece" and baby it really adds up. You don't want to hear that i am sure... and it doesn't address the actual problem... That kind of slow down could be related to the power of the computer. Could you let us know how many patches are in one leg? Vernon "!" Zehr

The undo is not broken. That is how it works. There is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. Depending on what you did last there could be a lot of things in the undo "buffer". I find that the undo works fine when I am moving CPs... it works for deleting... it works fine for most things. I tend to avoid going waaaay back... but even then it still works... for me anyway. I have never had trouble with the undo... Sometimes new users take some getting use to it. Have you ever run a complex action in Photoshop? You can't "undo" it. It undoes the last thing in the "script" of the PS action. This is what may happen sometimes in AM. If you do a process that has to do a lot of steps to complete... those steps are in the undo buffer... If you plan to do something "drastic" to your model... save it first. Or do a save as with a different name... Then if you really have to go back a bunch of steps you just revert. After learning the process of AM and how it works... you start to get into the mindset of the application and learn these "tricks". As time passes and you gain experience it becomes second nature. You shouldn't rely on the undo too much in any application... of course... I was an artist before the computer... there was no undo when the airbrush spits water on 3 days of work. Vernon "!" Zehr

Select the CP intersection and hit "Shift K". What happens is if you have several intersections and delete the one point sometimes you delete more than you need or delete the "wrong" CP. "Shift K" breaks the CPs if they are connected and not continuous. You may want to keep "breaking" that intersection and then you can pull out the CP's to see which one you really need to delete. You would be looking for the end CP of a spline. If you delete a CP along a continuous spline you will effect areas you hadn't planned on. Alternately you could select the CP you want to "remove" and insert CPs around it using the "Y" key on the splines. Then select the splines between the CP you want to delete and the "new" CP and use "K" to break that spline. Also before deleting a CP select the spline and hit "," to see how the spline is related to the model. This will tell you sometimes how deleting it might "damage" other areas. I use this technique if I get into a situation where I am not exactly sure how things are connected and need to change things drastically. Vernon "!" Zehr

i think there is a proble with the file u linked to. If u fix it... we can try to help. Vernon "!" Zehr

Wow this is great. My brother had asked me a long time ago if AM could be used for this type of thing. I told him at that time I had not seen any crash reconstructions done with AM so I couldn't say for sure. He said he knew someone who was doing only crash animations for legal purposes and was doing pretty good business. ------------------------ Do you see being able to "save" this as a template for creating new ones "easier" in the future? Vernon "!" Zehr

My brain hurts. I tried to respond but hard to do with out having AM open and some sample projects to play with. I will fiddle with this and give a clearer description of how I do it. I have encountered these situations before (my "bag of goop" project as an example"). So I know I came up with something... unless... some kind of miracle occurred... I don't think that is likely though. Vernon "!" Zehr

Woohoo! The chair looks SO MUCH better! It looks much more real now. ------ p.s. Yes, that is not clutter. I recreated my "office" in '99... it hasn't finished rendering yet... still a few years left to go... Vernon "!" Zehr

If you use an RGB targa with an alpha channel, you can "hide" where the decal effects the mesh. If the mesh group is 90% transparent, and you use a decal to make a grid with 0% transparency... without the alpha, the map would need the 90% grey. And if you changed it, you would have to change the map in photoshop or whatever. So with RGB and an alpha, you don't need that 90% gray, just a solid white with the alpha that cuts out where the rest of the mesh is controlled by group surface properties. This is how I have been doing it. There is only one, singular problem I have found... halos around the alpha mask. The alpha goes to zero, to black... if your mesh group doesn't have 100% transparency, you get a halo of 100% transparency from the black. There are ways to hide this. Vernon "!" Zehr

Oh crapola... i think I may have goofed. The maps are black and white and use a percentage of the image in AM for the other map properties... this would mean that they would "over ride" any attributes of the group settings... darn it. I like using images this way since it allows me to control tweaking in AM without having to go to photoshop. You could change the map to RGB and use an alpha to allow the canopy glass group settings to "show through"... but this would give you a halo... but it won't be as pronounced as the halo on a transparency map. Whenever I encounter these situations... there is always a bit of a "learning curve" as I figure out what I need to get my results. I don't have any idea how this would work with AM "materials" if that is what you mean. I don't use materials very often... I'm a decal kind of guy. Vernon "!" Zehr

I think you could figure this out using some math... I can't give you specifics... but... The action can be divided by the number of passes related to frame rate possibly, not sure exactly, to force those propeller "positions" to render "more often" than the others. Or you could have those positions in the action "hold" for more than a few frames... maybe add a jitter at those positions to blur it some more. I had this problem with a very fast pattern moving along... the frame rate was not in synch with the rotation and it appeared to go backwards. I had to figure out how many repeats of the rotation would line up with my frame rate. p.s. I have used the brain cells that contained my math education for Bewitched reruns. Vernon "!" Zehr

I just tested this technique and it... works... but... you get halos. The transparency mask for the supports gets anti-aliased and causes a halo around the supports that is more transparent than the glass. You should "match" the transparent value of the glass to the grayscale value of the transparency mask for the support struts. You also need a map for any other properties. This is easy. Just create a grayscale targa of your canopy support "grid" white lines on black. You can add this image to the decal and use any property you like and just set the image opacity to control that value. One map... multiple properties. I keep trying to write this in as simple terms as possible... very hard. I have included my quick (5 min) test project with targas. [attachmentid=10845] -------------- As I am describing this... it sounds like a pain in the arse... but in reality it isn't THAT bad... Is there anyway you could use the canopy as a reference to extrude the canopy supports as a separate mesh? This would be a bit more work and more patches to the model... but you wouldn't have to use all those images in a decal... control everything with groups. Vernon "!" Zehr canopy_decal.zip

You are... the lord of... MUFOOF... -------------- Can you tell us how that is pronounced? Like a sneeze? (mä-füf) or like a... cow? (mü-füf) Vernon "!" Zehr

Nice render! From what I recall... Yves mentioned that highly saturated "unreal" colors don't render "realistically"... mainly the cube and the logo on the hockey puck. I could be wrong on that... but they look unnaturally "bright" in the setting. p.s. The cube puzzle seems fine to me... the "second" red yellow combo is red white... looks slightly yellow from the warm lighting. I really should try radiosity some day... I have long render times already... and I am getting older... Vernon "!" Zehr

For some odd reason... I instinctively reached for my 3D glasses... ...they didn't work of course. Vernon "!" Zehr

My bag of goop is very jealous... ... dynamic bone... hidden with a material... just trying to work this in my head before I see the answer... I am intrigued. Vernon "!" Zehr

xade, Sounds like a video driver issue. Go to the card manufacturer site and make sure all your video card drivers are up to date. Have you updated to a new version of AM since the last time you worked on this project? Sometime settings get reset... and also those driver issues can get "accentuated" with a new version. Vernon "!" Zehr