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*

I have been following the UV discussions, as I try to integrate C4D and Element 3D more into my A:M workflow I realize that I know diddly about UV mapping. This 3DCoat application keeps coming up, and I went and took a good look at it- thinking about grabbing it. How many A:M users are using 3D Coat, and the texturing method that Malo has laid out here? Also, the voxel modeller looks powerful... can models made that way be brought in to A:M for retopo? Seems like these two programs ping-ponging back and forth might be a powerful combo... why have I waited so long? Other than the $349 sale price...Any downsides? Yes, Voxels will be converted to polys in 3dCoat and these can be imported to A:M for retopology. See you *Fuchur*

Yes. v18 has new subdivision-levels up to 4096 subdivisions. (1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, 4096 is possible with v18 right now) > 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46. 47 See you *Fuchur*

Thanks for testing Robert. For all who are wondering: The first image is realtime the other is rendered. It is much closer and you can see that the exporter does handle bias-changes well. (Otherwise realtimeview would have the same problem and at least I have never noticed that. I would say, that it is really likely the same algorithm working for the exporter and the realtimeview, since in v18 you are able to set the realtimeview subdivision to 2048 too (which will kill your graphiccard for semi-complex models )) The rendered one looks more offset, but I would say, that the renderer just has to decide which color he should show the closer together the surfaces are. It is very likely that the differences are really small there, right Robert?

Please do you try again with 256 subdivision level. Of course it will always be a approximation and will differ a bit from the original but it should get closer and closer and be unnoticeable at a high level and the distortion should get smaller and smoller. And since software like zbrush should handle millions of polys (at least the advertisings tell that) it should not be a problem. See u *Fuchur* PS: Anyway if there is a bug with the obj exporter please tell steffen in mantis/a:m reports about it.

Yes it should work... at least it worked with 3dCoat for me. Dont use any micro-modelling-tools (like in ZBrush) / Voxels (or you need to use the retropology-tools of A:M) but only paint on the decal / texture whatever you like to do there and it should work. A slight distortion can occure with v17 since the subdivision-level of 16 can be not enough, but with v18 (up to 2048) this problem is gone too. And since he is using an 3d Painter-programm decaling can be done by using BakeSurface so this should not be a bigger problem neighter. See you *Fuchur*

If you use A:M to decal, that should work yes. (I described above how it should be done) At least it worked with 3d Coat for me. See you *Fuchur*