Fuchur

You can move the camera from the camera-view by pressing the CTRL- / Shift-Button(depending what you want to do) and then use the view-navigation-tools (or for example use the middle-mousebutton to pan around, etc. I can't reproduce your bug. The camera is moving in the normal way at my place when I drag it around, etc. Maybe you inputted some numbers into the translate-values? I am using v15 (. *Fuchur*

Did you select a point? If not, do that first... the rotation-pivot of the viewport will always be the selection or selection-pivot. The rotation-point of a model-window is by default its 0/0/0-Position. To position it, go to bones-mode, select the root-bone (bone at the highest hierachie-level), press the CTRL-Button and hold it and than move it around. A rotation-point of a group can be move in translate-mode. (So not the default mode but the real translate mode. There you can find the pivot-point and move it around. You can although have a look at the model-bone of the model. Go to Bones-Mode, click into an empty area. You should now see a black bone which is the model-bone. *Fuchur*

What operationsystem? Vista? If so, turn of Aero. *Fuchur*

You can always post them on youtube. That is the easiest way if you dont have own webspace. Or you just get webspace. There are very cheap offers (something like 2.99 Dollars/Month or even 0.99 Dollars / Month. I recommend to buy a webspace instead of using a free one, because it is without advertisings and is more stable and secure. But of course there are many other free webspace-offerers available. Just do a search on Google with "free webspace". *Fuchur*

For such things, I would use a projection-map (it is a material-type) instead of an decal. If you want to use a decal for that, you should unwrap / flatten the sphere by hand... it is much easier to use the projection-map-decal so. You will find it at Material -> Attribute - RightMouseButton -> Plugins -> Hash Inc. *Fuchur*

Attached means you added the light in the model-window? Is it the same behaviour in Shaded-mode and rendering? Is it not working in the modeling-window or in a chor? If in the chor, you may want to press the space-bar to refresh or you can try to close the chor-window and reaccess it. - If you need a workaround: Make a bone at the position you want the light to be in the model. - Go to a new chor and drag and drop the model in... - Create a new light and constraint it with a translate-to-constraint to the bone in the model-shortcut in the chor. (- you may want to use a orient-like-constraint too, if you want to use a headlight you could for example use the orientlike-constraint on the head-bone with compensate-mode on...) *Fuchur*

It is a material-creator-programm which can be combined with Animation:Master. Have a look at this website: Dark Tree for A:M *Fuchur*

Not really... most game-builder-proggys are very very unintuitive and most often not very powerful. A:M is definitly better to model things... the problem occurs when you try to get the models from A:M to the Engine, but if the engine does import the *.x-format, the obsidian-exporter will be very very useful. There are some other exporters like the *.obj from Arthur Walasak which can help very much too... 3d Game Studio, Torque or Quest3d can be what you are searching for. All of them should work quite well with models modelled in A:M because all of them can read in *.x-files or at least an exporter is available. (Obsidian has a Torque-Exporter too). *Fuchur*

A Poseslider itself should be enough... you can use an expression, but I dont think you have to. Expression would be a simple sin-function, but in general, an expression wont give you the flexibility as a pose-slider would. *Fuchur*

You need an Euler Limit for example. You can set it with its Min / Max-Values so that only one rotation will be possible. For example -> Min - X = 180, Y = 0, Z = 0; Max - X = -180, Y = 0, Z = 0. But I would recommend to use a Pose-Slider or and action for this purpose. You can just define one rotation in the Pose-Slider and in the animation make this one repeat. A Poseslider is more work than an action would be, but if you want to slow the rotor down or alter the speed of the rotor, it is the better way to go. *Fuchur*

Very cool conzept and nice progress. I am seeing forward to it ---------- And I like the guy with the lawnmover too You used an image to control length of the grass? *Fuchur*

One of the best ways I know is an animated displacementmap. In combination with a nice sprite-emitter you can create a pretty nice looking ocen/waves-effect. Have a look at this: Breaking waves on a beach Boat and Waves Hope that helps a bit... if not, you should really try to start with something more simple than water... *Fuchur*

I am not sure what you are after... but you could although try Glow. It is a surface-property. It wont light up other models but it looks nice on the model itself. A combination of a light and this surfaceproperty can be nice too... *Fuchur*

If you want to do it in that way, check the worldspace-icon (the earth-button next to activate bias-handlers and translate/rotate/scale-button). It could be a problem there... but in general orthogonal-cameras arent easy to handle manual anyway... It can be easier to work with rotation, if you use a Null-Object as target for your camera. So just use a AimAt-Constraint on the camera and use the Null as Aim. You now just have to move the camera around to rotate it. Bias-Value-Lock: Copying shouldnt be an issue (never had that before) but if you move points the bias-informations wont look right anymore. I made a featureequest for that but I think it is low priority for now. So all you can do is to only make bias-changes if you are at the stage where everything else is looking right. If you got that problem, I would export the model, use "embedd all" (can be found with a rightmouse-click on the project in pws) and import the model to the modelwindow of your original-model. Delete everything else but the parts you wanted to copy. It is a workaround and will only be useful for larger parts of the model so if you just have small parts, it wont save you much time if you ask me. Animated Focal Length: If you use the Null-Object as Aim on your camera, the focus-point will be at the null-object. that means you can move the null-object far away to get the foreground blurred and visversa. I never tried to animate the focal length in another way so I cant tell you much more on that, but in some circumstances the null-object can solve your problems. *Fuchur* PS: If you are using a Mac, I highly recommend v15.0b... maybe one of the problems is gone with that version. A clean reinstall could although solve some problems...

I am exporting a character with Animation to Quest with the Osidian-Export. Now I got the problem, that the character is always coming in mirrored (that means what was on the right will be one the left. To solve this, I would go the easy road and do all the animations visversa. But now I made a mistake and animated not mirrored. So is there a plugin or a function which can bring all the animation in the action from one side to the other and visversa? *Fuchur*

Activate the Draw-Tool-Bar (and the Views-Toolbar)! I cant recommend it often enough. You will have a button then, which will let you turn on and off hair and many other things. It is a good visible indicator. Turn Hair (if you are using hair or particles) off if you are working on something else! If you render, turn it back on again. And of course turning down the realtime-settings will greatly speed up your realtime-performence like others said before. *Fuchur*

I didnt mean to cast a shadow with a object. I meant overlay the particles with dark(black) geometry. Now render the geometry to one imagessequence. Then render the particles to another. Each one with an Alpha-Channel. In a Post-programm (for example AfterEffects) you make the dark geometry transparent (for example 30%) and now the underlying particles (which are covered by the transparent geometry) should be darker for 30%. That would work... *Fuchur*

Are you able to animate the tinte-color over time? Other than that, the post-approach could really help you. Render only particles out, than the other scene-elements. Now load everything in for example AfterEffects and determine where the light/dark-borders are. Draw a mask on a dark color-layer where the particles should look dark. Overlay it over the particles (not the other scene-elements). Now you can animate the mask if your camera is moving, etc. Another way would be to create a dark geometry which will cover the particles in dark areas. Now render this one out. After that, render particles to a separate image-sequence and then render the other stuff to another image-sequence. Now you can use the dark geometry as the coverage and it should work. It is a little bit annoying, but it should work. *Fuchur*

I would try the following: !!!- BACKUP YOU FILE BEFORE YOU EDIT IT! -!!! Open the file in Animation:Master and have a look when it comes to the error. Which model is loading? If you can determine that, you can than go to the text-editor and delete the model, so that you only have to remodel one model, not everything else again. If you can see some irregularities on the file or a model itself (for example strange characters or so) you can although try to only delete this irregularities (or maybe the whole line it is in). That would for example force you to re-add a spline or two, but that wouldnt mean much. If you are not able to solve the problem like that, please post the prj here. We will have a look at it, even so we are not some kind of wizards we may see something you didnt notice. For the next time: ALWAYS save in different versions/files. It can happen from time to time that something wents wrong (doesnt matter if you are in a 3d-program or anything else). There is although a autosave-plugin from Steffen Gross -> can be found here. Even with this plugin, I would recommend to save in different versions from time to time manually. You never know. *Fuchur*

I assume you are talking about the tutorial "Make a Face" in The Art of Animation:Master(chapter 11.5), right? I just had a look at the TAO to see what you where after... As far as I know there is no video available for that. It is only a text-tutorial. But if you got any questions on it, just ask and we will sureley try to help you with that *Fuchur*

Have a look at this link... this are the videotutorials from Hash. Hash Videotutorials *Fuchur*

MP4 is included in newer quicktime-versions and the VLC-Player. Both freely available on the internet. I anyway recommend the VLC-Player. It can play a really wide range of formats, is light-weighted (concerning systemresources) and it is free. You can play flash-files, movs, avis, mpegs, mp4s, mp3s, and quite everything else imaginable. I am not totally sure but I think it can even play rm files (RealPlayer). The Codec-List: The Problem with such a list is the following: A codec will work quite well on one resource and very bad on another. So it is not too easy to say which one is the best for your source. In the following there are some basic rules and statements which doesnt claim to be totally true... But here is a small list: MOVs: 1.) Animation Codec = Very old... so the quality will highly suffer on smaller bitrates / quality-settings. The compression isnt very good neighter. It can be used as an animated texture in A:M and doesnt need fast computers. 2.) Sorenson 3 = Quite old, but still a nice codec which will generate more or less nice images at a moderate filesize. But it is getting old and there are other Codecs out there which are better suited for small filesizes. It works great for homogenous surfaces. Not so good for real videos. 3.) Indigo, Cinepak = Both very old and will just make crappy results. These codecs where developed at a time when windows 95 was available and they are just no longer of any use, if you ask me. 4.) H261 = Quite old. Was developed for video-conferences, etc. I wouldnt recommend to use it for Animation. It will create more or less big filesizes. 5.) H264 = Quite new. It can create very sharp and very nice looking movies at a more or less small filesize. I would highly recommend this codec. A drawback is, that it needs are newer computer to play smoothly. This is a nice alrounder-codec which can handle high resolutions for screencaptures as well as Animations. I am not aware how it will react to fast movements, but I think it is okay for that too. There is not "one H26x-codec so... different manufacture did develope different codecs which will create slightly different results. Apple wrote one, MainConcept has one too and so on. 6.) On2VP3 is the codecs used by flash for their flv-files. It is a nice codec too, which can create sharp images at a moderate to small filesize. It is compareable to H264 (maybe it is based on it). I would recommend it for small videos. I think for bigger resolutions H264 can create better results. 7.) TechSmithCodec = Is a production-codec which isnt at all systems (you have to manually install it). It is developed by the camtasia-guys and it is lossless. So it can be edited without any problems. AVIs: Some of the codecs are available for AVI-containers too. So I will just talk about divx. 1.) Divx 3.xx = Moderate old. It was a very nice codec with very nice results, small filesizes and a very nice image-quality. It was the best one available for a long time. BUt it has to be installed manually on the PC. For a longh time there was no mac-version. Dont know if that is still the case. 2.) Divx 5-6 = Are okay, but are not that far ahead like the 3.xx was at its time. They might be one of the best choices on the AVI-container. 3.) DV-codecs = Are production-codecs which can be eddited without a lose in quality. So for such things and for compatibility-tasks, this codec is nice. It is not meant for distribution so. WMVs: 1.) The WM9 and 10-codecs are not as well as some other H264-based codecs, but they produce anyway nice results and they are installed on every PC with XP or Vista (in general). I dont think they are supported by Macs, but I dont know. -> Biggest drawbacK: AM cant render to them directly. YOu need something like Sorenson Squeeze or a Editing-programm (for example Vegas, Premiere (or After Effects)) etc. I am quite sure that not everything is true what is written above. And some of the comments are just "feelings". So other people will tell you other stuff. If something is just wrong, please tell me so we all can learn something *Fuchur*

"00:30:00 = 01:00:00" 00 => minutes : 30 => seconds : 00 => frames... So what he is describing is, that 30 seconds are equal one minute in A:M which is a very strange behaviour. Didnt notice that till now, but if you can reproduce it, you should report it to hash. *Fuchur*

So I did a test and tried to approximate the position of the mystic-rotation-point. I went back to Animation:Master and adjusted the bone at the model-window. Now the animation in A:M doesnt fit anymore, but the animation in the x-file seems to be better... Very annoying... anyone has a solution or a reason why this is happening? *Fuchur*

Hi! I am trying to export Eddie with the *.x-export by Obsidian Games to Quest3d. So far so good... everything seems to work very well. So I tried to add a simple eye-lid (just half of a sphere which is bigger than the eye itself. I gave it a bone at the center of the eye and attached it to the head-bone (children of the headbone). Now I made an animation (action). It is looking good in Animation:Master. Then I exported it. That works well too, but somehow the animation on the eye-lid isnt in the right place. The eye isnt covered by the eyelid. It seems like the eye-lid is rotating around some mystic center I didnt specify... it is not the position of the bone (neighter base nor aim). It may be the center of the geometry which is applied to the eye-lid-bone, but I dont know exactly. EVERY other animation, even with the constraints and so on is working well! In Animation:Master everything seems to be okay, but in Quest it doesnt work. It doesnt seem to be a thing with quest, because I downloaded a trial of a small programm which can view the x-file and it seems to be wrong there too. So I think it is something in the x-file itself. The strange thing about it is, that everything else works well... I exported a walkcycle and some other actions and it works well. So I don't think it has to do with the exporter but with some settings somewhere... but I simple dont see anything. Any thoughts? *Fuchur*