Fuchur

Yes, mp4-files are very reasonable in size and have a better quality than sorenson3 at the same bitrate. The only drawback is, that they are not very fast to decode/encode. But if you got a more or less new (so lets say something as fast as an 2400+ or 2000+ Athlon XP or 2.4Ghz P4) PC you shouldnt run into problems. *Fuchur*

Actually you can although animate a color-change in the chor, the action or of course in a pose-slider-window. It doesnt matter, but normaly a pose-slider is the most flexible way. To do it, in a pose, just create a pose. As you can see there will be a new action called "Relationship:Pose1" or something like that. Now use the "Show More Than Drivers"-Button at this action. Everything you change there will be saved in the pose. Now open the new available hierachy and go to the group you want to change the color of. Set the pose-slider to a value you want it to be (for example 100%) and change the color. Now test it out by dragging the slider from 0 - 100%. If the color isnt changing, you have to define a value at 0% and one at 100% (they should be different). This will only work if you are not using a texture on the group you manipulate. A texture always overwrites the surface-properties. If you want to blend textures, that can be done in a equal way by using two decals with different texture-maps. The difference is that you will not edit the surface-properties but the percentage-value of each texture-map/decal-image. *Fuchur*

Any light has a lense flair-setting... it is very flexible. A tutorial about creating a shockwave with A:M can be found here. Another technique that could be used is the Material-Effector. A tutorial can be found here: Material Effector by Jeff Paries A short (old) overview about lenseflairs can be found here: Flares Reference of AM '98 See you *Fuchur*

What exactly do you mean by "moving with bone rotation"? Could you give an example, maybe a screenshot or the model itself to help us to help you? The model is meant to rotate when you rotate the bones... that is normal behaviour... *Fuchur*

A cookie-cut-map is like a masked image. That means you can define with an image, where the mesh should be visible and where not... (like a transparency-map). It can be useful for holes (and such things) which are more or less small and would need much time to model. A good example is a tree. You can just get an imagemap of a tree and make a grey-scale-image from it. Than you get a cube or plane and just map it with the map... now set the greyscaleimage to "cookiecut". In this way you can produce nice trees with very low patch-cpints. THis is a technique which is often used by game-designers to keep the polycount low. *Fuchur*

Nice one... But one question... did you use a cookie cut map for the clapper? Why? Of course it can be done, but I think this is something you could easily model with a few patches which will be faster to render, and easier to change if you want to. See you *Fuchur*

Not really... there was Shag-Hair, but that isnt nearly as powerful as the new one. The new one was introduced in v11 and I think in v9 or 9.5 they got the lock-hair-feature (which is still available and could be another way to do it, even if it is now more hidden...) Shaig-Hair is although an option, but as I already said: It wont produce very good results, even it will render quite fast. *Fuchur*

If there is not a reason for it (for example the light should always stay with a model, like a spot-light of a car or something like that) you should use lights in the chor. (No model with lights but only the lights). It is best to do that because you have the highest freedom of positioning and you can easily add new lights where you want them. It will also mean that you dont have to use the bone-features to position lights and you can handle each light by its own in a faster way. See u *Fuchur*

Do you really need the transparency for a fencing-mask? And if you need it, do you need the mask to be taken away? If it is always there, you could although only use a texture which will simulate both: The mask and the face. Another way would be to model it, if you need to go very near to the mask (lets say you want to make a camerafly above of the mask with all the wires showing up, etc. If you need it for a shot where two people are fighting I wouldnt use transparency at all... it wont be very visible anyway because of the movements and the distance of the camera. For a middle distance (for example a shot where the fighter's head and a part of the body is visible (like in a portrait) a cookiecut-map is the absolutly right way. *Fuchur*

There is no real answer to that... I like the SmartSkins the most, because they are easy to handle and will very likely work. Others will tell you exactly the other way round. I think the best way is a combination of all three. First use Fan-Bones or only CP-Weights, than use SmartSkins to get some last things worked out. If you know how and you are good with one method, you can in most circumstances use only one of them. *Fuchur*

Looks like a nice methode which will create a smiliar-effect like a material-effector but can be used on only one object even if if there are other objects around which dont need the effect. Nice one *Fuchur*

This one could help: Blade - Trinity Have a look at 1:04... I think a Material-Effector in combination with a nice Particle-Emitter (Sprite) and the "Eugene"-Model ( a skull-model on the A:M-CD) could help. A tutorial for the material-effector can be found here. It is old, but should still work more or less like that: Material Effector Tutorial by Jeff Paries *Fuchur*

The easiest way would be to do it by hand. A more precise way would be this one: - Activate the Properties-Window / Show Manipulator-Options-Panel (button can be find next to the bias-handler-button) - hit "Crtl+A" to select everything - You will see that the pivot-settings will show some numbers and the offset will be x:0, y:0, z:0. If for example the pivot-settings would be x: -5, y:2.5, z:0 you could just input x:5, y:-2.5, z:0 in the offset. So the model should now be centered. The problem with that: The bones will stay where they were. If you already rigged your model, you should use another technique: 1.) Go to the bone-mode and select the first bone in the hierachy (parent-bone/root-bone/whatever you call it). 2.) Go to the translate-mode, press and hold the CRTL-Button and move the bone where you want it. You will see that the geometry which was assigned to the bones will now follow the root-bone. 3.) Position it to x:0, y:0, z:0 by hand. I am not sure if it will effect the other bones / geometry if you insert numbers into the properties of the bone here, so I would do it by hand (or try it out ) *Fuchur*

I would say, you were just assuming that the five-point-patch would be there automaticly. In SPatch or something like that, this option is available. It is however not very useful if you ask me. A five-point-hole can be useful in many situations if you just need a hole and not a patch. So it is nice to control that by yourself on each individual patch. If you have the typical "five-point-button-doesnt-work"-problem, you can try one of the following: - Select all the points (including the first one) with "shift" pressed then try to use the button. - Select all the points and hide everything else, then use the rectangle-selection (which is the defaultselection-mode) and try it again. In most situations, it is not one of these problems. It is most often a continuity-problem. A spline which isnt continute even if it should, a point which isnt connected, etc. Another possibility would be, that you try to use a hook next to a 5-point-patch which doesnt work in most circumstances too. Here you would have to rearange that area. *Fuchur*

I dont know exactly, but just to be sure: Does the light have Shadows activated? If not, try it out. (You can set that in the properties of the light. You can even give the shadow-darkness a very low value (for example 0% oder 10% if you dont need the shadow, but it could help you with your problem here. The other thing: Every light has got a property where you can set the light-type... Every light is created with the default-value "point" but you can change it at any time. You can set each light to point, sun or spot and it will behave like you expect it. *Fuchur*

Do you want to use a pose or just animate in the chor? Animation in the chor: 1.) Create a model with a group with surface-properties. 2.) Bring it into the chor. 3.) Click on the short-cut of the model in the chor and activate the "show more than drivers"-button next to it. (looks like a folder-structure) 4.) Now open the folderstructure below and search for your surface-properties. 5.) Open your timeline and set the color (for example) to something you want it to look like. 6.) Move the time-slider to another frame and set another color. 7.) Now go to the shadedview and drag the time-slider around. You will see the animation of the color. A pose can be created in a more or less equal way: 1.) Create a model with a group with surface-properties. 2.) Create a pose (for example percentage). If you do that, a relationship-action-window should be created under "Actions". 3.) Expand it and click on the short-cut of the model in the action and activate the "show more than drivers"-button next to it. (looks like a folder-structure) 4.) Now open the folderstructure below and search for your surface-properties. 5.) Open your pose-slider-window, set the percentage to for example 0% and set the color (for example) to something you want it to look like. 6.) Move the pose-slider to another percentage-value and set another color. 7.) Now go to the shadedview and drag the pose-slider around. You will see the animation of the color. Info: If you dont see the animation, have a look at the left-down-part of the screen and make sure that you have the "ETC"-button ("Key Other") and the "keypose"-button activated. Hope that helps... There are other possibilities too... you can for example use a smartskin(multidimensional relationship) to manipulate the color of something. For example you could tell a arm to become more red if it bends, or something like that... *Fuchur*

I would try to make surface which is for example about 75% transparent (or more) and has a index of refraction of for example 1.05. Give it a try and play a bit with the surface-settings. A specularity, a bit roughness and maybe a small amount of reflection could help too. Keep your surface-color at a white color at first. I only know the old predetor-movies but it could be archieved like that. If this isnt enough you may want to use a water-like-material and animate it to get small waves. The object will depend on the background so. So if there is none, you wont see much of an effect. *Fuchur*

What exactly do you mean by isnt smooth? That may depend on the frames you are giving A:M to work with... if you use 4 frames (00:00-00:04) you will get 90° per frame. You can scale the keyframes down to smaller numbers, but a frame is the smallest number you will see later (A:M is actually calculating inbetween the frames, but the output wont show anything that). That means that you will see jumps of 90° per frame. Normally that isnt a problem because the eye cant cache up with more than 25 frames per second. If you are after a more blurred look of the wheels you can however use Motion Blur to smooth things out. Have a look at your render-settings (make sure to use the advanced-settings, not the one with the images). There you will find a motion blur-setting. Play a little bit around and render it out. *Fuchur*

You could of course just use an action I think you can even use Has Stride Length with the action and assign the car to an path. Or you can use a Pose to control it. Or you can do it like caroline did... this will of course only be functional if the car is driving at the same speed for all the time. You can of course although try to use an expression which will turn the car-wheels by the translation of the chasi of the car. "Rotation of Carwheel-bone = 2 * PI * Z" Z = (Translation of car on X-axis * Translation of car on Y-Axis)^(1/2) (works if none of the translation-values are 0) or Z = Translation of car on X-axis I may miss something there so... Another way to get it done would be to use a Path and an expression and use the ease-value of the Path-constraint instead of the axis-translations. I think the action or the pose-control-methode will be the best once. They give you most of the control while being more or less easy to use: 1.) Give both car-wheel-axis a bone. 2.) Make a percentage-pose. 3.) At 0% rotate the bones a little bit to activate them. Then bring them back to 0°. 4.) At 12.5% set the rotation of both bones to 45° 5.) At 25% set the roation to 90° 6.) ...and so on till you are at 100% and your rotation should be 359°. 7.) Animate the car-wheels by the pose. if the wheels are around once, set the percentage to 0% again (Frame 30 = 100%, Frame 31 = 0%). The action-methode should work like a character who is walking along a path like it is described in the manual. Hope that helps... *Fuchur*

I think that the Animate-Button (big "A" in the right upper corner) can do something like that... but be sure to make a backup before you try it out... the Animate-Button is very powerful but can be very destructive too. The better way would be to use a pose and do it again from that position. Anyway: If you use the A-Button, be sure to turn it on again after you made your default-changes. *Fuchur*

The backside of the coin: Your Graphic-card will have to work more. So if you feel that your system is slowing down, you should turn the subdivision-level down again (Page down)... It will anyway only effect the realtimeviews, not the final rendering. *Fuchur*

The Extra-DVD will give you access to many hundreds of models, actionfiles, etc. . It is not free, but it doesn't cost the world (can be found here. Another place for A:M - Stuff is here at EggProps. There is although a free area at eggprops which can be found here. *Fuchur*

I would use the *.obj or the *.x-format to import / export from other packages... you cant import *.max-files anyway. *.max is not a open format so it is not possible to write a plugin for it... Polytrans and Deep Exploration for example can convert it, but only if you although have Max installed. 3ds-format is the open format of max, but that isnt very good if you ask me... *.x or *.obj are better supported by A:M. BUT that doesn't mean that it will give you perfekt results... The problematic between patches and polys is still there. *Fuchur* PS: The *.x-Import/Exporter can be found here.

If you really want hard edges (your way is most likly better looking) you can peak the splines. To do that, you first should reset your changes. So give it a Magnitude of 100% and Alpha and Gamma to 0%. Now just select all of the CPs you want to be hard edged and click on the icon on the right side of the modelling-screen(below the Add-Spline-Tool) which looks like a hard-edge-spline(or press P). After that you can use the bias-handlers to give it some sort of curve where you need it but the edges will be more or less hard (depending on your bias-settings). *Fuchur*

Can't answer that... but this thread will maybe be used for the FAQ-section and someone at hash thought this would be better to find this way. *Fuchur*