Fuchur

Absolutely right. See you *Fuchur*

for instance? Backwards-compatibility is a big thing there... Steffen ran into that for instance with XCode 4 dropping support for features from XCode 3.2. In the end you have to work with the newest OS or you are doomed when developing or buying new software. Windows can run software back to Win95 in many cases, trying running software from Mac OS 9 on your newest one... that is often not possible at all. That is one of the reasons why Windows is a little buggier: Windows is highly compatible in all directions. It is better today, since Macs are now compatible to a wider range of hardware, but still not as good as on Windows machines. Digging deeper into configurations can be quite tricky on a Mac. The Unix base is close to what you know from Linux there only a little more tricky. Even worth: Blogging... it is really quite disappointing what is given on the Mac in that direction. Try to get business software for the Mac... close to impossible. Try to connect your BlackBerry-Phone with a Mac... (best you just dont try it... they want to sell the iPhone and you really see that if you try to use something different they have a interest in. The Attitude is something that gets in the way when trying to program Apps too... every other MobileOS can be coded with any other OS: Android, Windows Mobile, Trizan... no problem at all. Much more open. That seems to be something that tells you to get a Mac, but I for my part am not very happy with supporting a attitude like that. You will run into quite many problems when trying to work with business software like SAP and equal stuff... the limitations are even higher with software from Apple itself. Everything they want you to do works great, but never try thinking out of the box... And dont try to play games on Macs... the amount of games is really 50:1 for Windows here. Again: Macs are not bad at all... they have big advantages in some situations, but Windows has them too. And argumenting with "I do not have to boot for 4 weeks..." is something I cant understand... do you really run a computer that long? For what? And yes, you can run windows that long too (> most servers are not shut down daily, weekly or monthly but yearly if at all and many are Linux or Windows...) Get a Mac if you have the money and want to run different OSes next to eachother. That is something the Macs (with Intel-hardware) are good at today. They can be easier to work with and they are a little less buggy... but the question is: Does that one reboot each day really have such an impact on you that the price is okay with you? See you *Fuchur*

Sorry, but that is too much for me. Macs are stable (in general... there are exceptions I came accross too) but with a good PC you get the same. I don't have to boot several times a day. I am using one Mac and but about 20x Windows 7 PC created by myself (I am a system admin). PCs are not that much bound to what Macintosh/Windows thinks they should do. There are many more Windows Developers (Softwarebased, not App-based which is a totally different thing). PCs have more software written for it and with a few exceptions which really do not matter have equal or better software nowadays. Buying a Mac is more like "buy and forget" IF you can live with the limitations. It is easy to explain why Macs run "smoother". Because Apple limits the Macs to do what they want them to do and everything that would be more dangerously/unpredictable is just not allowed. In general it can be thought of like this: Freedom - Between freedom/ease of Use - Ease of Use Linux - Windows - Macs The difference is the same as with Linux and Windows. Windows is easier to work with for non-nerdy people than Linux but Linux gives more freedom. Macs are easier to work with for not-that-nerdy people than Windows but Window gives more freedom. I tend to go for the middle if I have to choose between easy usage and freedom especially if easy usage is that expensive. See you *Fuchur*

A little too fast for my taste yes... even if the processor is much better, at 2.1 GHz it is unlikely to outperform all the other systems here... but well we will see... maybe it is really that fast? Which version of A:M are you using? Anyway: The Xeon seems to be quite slow to me... much less expensive CPUs are much faster than that nowadays... See you *Fuchur*

Hmm... maybe. I've never looked at the feature that much but assumed that the 'pull' on objects went with the scene's gravity setting. Can an objects be assigned gravity settings? I'll have to look at it...as soon as Hash sends me another .lic file. I re-installed the OS on my laptop and when I tried to reinstall AM it said 'activation code already in use'. But it's only been about a week and I've only sent two email requests. Rusty Depending on what you aim to do you could use transparent cloth-materials to do that: Think of a elastic strap between two spheres which is totally transparent. Other than that I think it is not possible to simulate something like that in A:M. You could do that with particles and forces, but with real object I dont think it is possible. See you *Fuchur*

Thank you very much folks. Nice to be thought of See you and thanks again for the wishes *Fuchur*

Hey Luuk, have a good one . Best wishes and happy birthday *Fuchur*

I had a look at this online store in Australia and did a (complete) built: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AMD FX-8350 Black Edition 8-Core Processor $225.00 (I assumed this is the boxed version, since the image looks like that... I could not get info on that so... if it is the tray-version you would need a CPU-cooler too) Antec Three Hundred U3 Mid Tower Case $75.00 Samsung SH-224DB(BB)/BEBS 24x Internal SATA DVD OEM Burner Drive $19.99 Western Digital WD Blue WD10EZEX 3.5" 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive $65.00 Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive/SSD $105.00 ASRock 980DE3-U3S3 AM3+ ATX Motherboard $65.00 Cooler Master Thunder 600W Power Supply $75.00 ASUS Radeon HD 7790 1GB DirectCUII Overclock Video Card $159.00 Kingston HyperX Black 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR3-1600 KHX16C10B1BK2/16X - $145.00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > $933.99 That looks pricy too, but be aware that there is a real graphiccard included (a quite good one), a good case (I really think it is important to have a steady and good one in terms of air flow, etc. and I always get that case because it just rocks in that aspects), be aware that in general the case/power-supply combinations offer not that good power supplies and that is really bad for a computer, a SSD and a normal HDD and a DVD-Burner. I would not recommend a on board graphic solution (at least if you play from time to time or do some GPU-calculations it will hit you heavily afterwards if you do not get a real one.) If you do not want to go with AMD, change the CPU and the motherboard and you are good to go. See you *Fuchur*

Good to know, thanks David. Maybe Australians just don't buy desktops and because of that the demand is just not high enough and like that economic scarcity is coming into that calculation. (which is bad, if you ask me... it will increase the prices massively without a good reason other than that it is not cost-effective for sellers to buy those components in larger amounts but only on a specific question base). Anyway: A laptop is a good choice too today and it should be fast enough to run A:M on it... only rendering-speed may suffer a little... See you *Fuchur*

The question as always is: Is it just cool because it is touch and touch is considered as cool, or is it really better than positioning with a mouse... I prefer a mouse over any touch device because I can just make more precise movements and know exactly were I will click with it. Touch always means, that somewhere where you put your 50 x 50 pixel sized finger it will do something... Mouse means: a precision-level of somewhat like 3 pixels x 3 pixels at most and with the rollover it is very clear what will happen... Samsung has AirView which brings an rollover to touch-devices (available in the new Samsung Galaxy 4 using only your fingers and the Samsung Note 2 with the pen (Samsung Note 3 will have that without the pen too)) which could solve that problem for me but it is not supported by all the software and not all the devices till now. See you *Fuchur*

From a logical point of view this is very unlikely. Building something smaller with less space, less power consumption, less ability to cool it and optimised for being taken away (for instance being resistent against movement, shaking, etc.) just needs to be payed with something. It just has to be slower or more expensive (if both are on the same technology level), otherwise desktop components are overpriced in Australia. Have a look at the highend graphic cards today... none of these can be put into a laptop because of the lagg of space. In addition: You can built a desktop computer by yourself while you have to buy a laptop prebuilt by a manufacturer (at least I am not aware of laptop-cases which can be put together by yourself). This means (in most cases) that you will pay more for the components since the manufacturer has work with it and will charge you for that (including the win they want to earn). The only exception from that could be that the discount the manufacturer can get is that high that it would include the work and win he likes to get and he is willing to give that discount to you. But as I said before: If you need a laptop because you are travelling or you just want to be able to work in the garden or where ever, a laptop is a good choice. See you *Fuchur*

A little too religous and striking for me (I am not into religion but into science but I still don't see myself as an "enemy" to people who believe in God...), but still a very nice first piece. Well done David! See you *Fuchur*

It is quite easy: Laptops are less powerful for the same price as normal systems. There are many people using laptops and it is reasonable. I on the other hand have left laptops behind for the lag of power. An Alienware tends to be fast, but it cant compare to a high end workstation OR if it would be the battery time would be that low that it would not be a laptop anymore . And of course the laptop would run quite hot, because there is not the same space for cooling. Especially for graphic works I need a real mouse, a real keyboard and a big, good display. Yes you can use a laptop with that, but if you get all that together including the speed in a laptop, you more or less have a workstation. If you need the flexibility to use it anywere you want, you will have to make compromises on the other stuff... The good thing today: A:M itself does not need that much of power. But rendering is something different and it is likely, that you will notice the difference... See you *Fuchur*

The bake from props is a feature request. Actually I have already ask for something like that. (With a little extra actually). The other things are how u should do it . See u *Fuchur*

There are two hotfix from microsoft which fix that since around January 2012: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060 I am not sure if this is a problem at all with the newer processors, since that happend only with the 8150 (which is not a good processor and should not be bought if you ask me... get the 8350, which is a much better one). And it never was a problem from AMD but from Microsoft. Rumours even say, it may had have to do with Intel too. That is one of the problems I am having with Intel... For instance: The biggest electronic stores in Germany (Media Markt and Saturn) had a non-public deal with Intel, that they would not sell AMD's products if there was something from Intel around. Intel gave them better prices for that... it came out about 1,5 years ago and since then, Media Markt is offering AMDs again and Intel, Media Markt and Saturn had to pay a penalty... the loss for AMD was much worse than what these companies had to pay... I am not very happy about that kind of economic "strategy"... in fact it is illegal and it is not very sympathic... Anyway, I am not saying Intel produces bad CPUs... they are just a little pricy for my taste. See you *Fuchur*

Okay, whatever you want... exactly the opposit here . Am currently on an AMD-processor with an AMD graphiccard and have more or less all my machines I maintain at work (about 20 computers) equipped with an AMD-CPU (APUs and CPUs)... have a few older intel-models around here too... am not too happy with them, especially with the prebuilt once... too expensive even when they were new and a few hardware failures which would not have been necessary... See you *Fuchur*

If you are on budget, get an AMD FX 8350. See you *Fuchur*

Should be like that yes. See u *Fuchur*

A:M can use hyperthreaded threads / faked cores with Netrenderer. I have read (do not remember where right now) that hyperthreaded cores are at least 33% slower than real cores. (if you use 4 real-cores and interpolate their performance up as if it would be a 8 core-machine and run that against 4 cores with hyperthreading, the interpolated Cores are together about 33% faster. This of course asumes, that the other cores are scaling linear, which often is not the case) If this is true for A:M (I think it is), the i7 is the better CPU. But in general it is more expensive too. Like that: Your choice. See you *Fuchur*

Here is another nice info on the AMD FX 8350 someone posted at your link: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AM...ore&id=1780 For rendering this is very likely a very cool processor... I am playing with the notion of getting one... But anyway: Nice systems and a good help for anyone who needs to built something like that without having too much insides about CPUs / MBs / RAM. See you *Fuchur*

Does that work even if A:M cant sign in in the first place? See u *Fuchur*

IF Nancy's way does not work, I dont think there is a possibility to disable that from within A:M. A:M's community-service seems to be offline right now, and you get that message because of that. In general if you deactivate the community window it should not come up again trying to connect. I am not sure if it does that in the background, but in general it does not for me. Anyway there actually is a setting in the registery called "ServerTimeOut" which is set to 20. You can try to set that for instance to 1 (I am not sure if it is wise to set it to 0) to shorten that time. If you are on a windows-pc, this is how you do it. Be AWARE that changing something in the registery is something you do on your own risk! You may want to back it up before doing anything there! 1.) Go to "Start" and type in the searchfield "regedit". 2.) Click on the resulting regedit.exe-file. 3.) Navigate to "Computer > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Hash, Inc. > Animation Master v17.0 > Config". 4.) In the right part you should now see an entry "Server TimeOut" of the type "REG_SZ". Double-click on it. 5.) Insert the value 1 (make sure to only insert numeric values) and click on OK. 6.) Restart your PC and test again. See you *Fuchur*

CTRL+D does that. See you *Fuchur* PS: (I tend to open a new toolbar called "Draw" which will indicate that for you). Go to an empty toolbar section, rightclick and choose "View > Draw".)

Best wishes and have a very happy birthday! See you *Fuchur*

Did you activate Ambient Occlusion in the rendersettings? See you *Fuchur*