Fuchur

the decal was simply applied..no plugins..but I'm wondering if perhaps a material would be better suited? Is there a quick and "easy" way to use an image as a material, and if so how. I've gone thru the forum and found no tuts, and materials are so far still a black art for me. BitMapPlus or ProjectionMap. One is from Hash, one is from Marcel Brickman -> KCI-group. See you *Fuchur*

Could you show that from the PWS rather than the Timeline? How about a vid and the project file instead? It's just a quick recording Robert of whats happening so you can see what I'm actually doing. I'v also attached a test project file too. I cant see the PWS fully, but it seems that you are trying to animate at the material itself. That is the wrong place to do it. You need to animate the Shortcut of the Material in the chor. For that you have to go to the chor in the PWS, go to the model with the emitter-material and click on "Show more than drivers". Then navigate to the group with the emitter-material. See the attached image for more infos. See you *Fuchur* PS: Had to use another sprite-image to simulate it, so dont be confused by that. Images cant be embedded into project-files.

hhhmmmmmm I still have 3 days I've send in two entries of myself. Hope you guys could make it too! See you *Fuchur*

A:M v16 (and up) utilizes multi-cores using OpenML for Finding Normals and a few other functions (where it makes sense). Like that today you can handle more patches in a single model than before. It highly depends on your core-amount and the power of your system and yes you will still run into the problem somewhere. Best is to avoid that by assembling together multiple models in the chor. The new Snap-To-Surface-Feature in v17 maybe helpful there too. There are many changes from v13 on. I am not totally sure what was in v13, but these are the bigger and "newer" features in A:M (not in chronological order): - Speedimprovements (especially from v15 to v16 but also for v17) for both Windows and Mac. (windows-computers seem to perform a little better so). - Netrenderer now included with 4 cores for free and addtional cores that can be bought seperatly for a very reasonable price). - IBL, Ambient Occlusion (with Transparency-Support) and FastAO (> Plugin, actually called "FakeAO" which is very fast, the newest one even can use the GPU-power, but even the CPU-version takes only a few seconds to render with) - Fluid-Particles - Hair-Shaders (additional to the standard-hair-system) - HDRI-Rendering with Buffer-Output - STL-Export (for example used by 3d-printers) - MDD-Animation-Data-Export (to export vertexed-based animation). > for example to get animation-data to Modo) - RenderPresets to share render-settings in an easy way. - Selection-Filters for easier selection. - SubSurfaceDisplacement (I am not sure if this is really new for v13 or if it was included there already). - Bake Surface (> bake Surface-attributes to decals so they may render faster. Includes an AutoUnwrap-Algorithm which is best to be used with 3d-Painter) - Newton Physics (I am not sure if this is really new for v13 or if it was included there already, but they have been improved in v15 if I am not wrong). - 2008 rig, face rig, lightrig - Snap-to-Surface (in A:M v17) - A:M Answers (in A:M v17) - UV-Editor-Improvements (in A:M v17) ... endless smaller and possible bigger improvements I can't remember right now. See you *Fuchur*

For T-Shirts you may want to have a look at this: SpreadShirt I only have experience with the German shop of them, but they did a good job and have reasonable pricing if you ask me. See you *Fuchur*

It is useful, so try it! You have two possibiliities... first: you can just create a new login or you talk to Jason. -> support@hash.com See you *Fuchur*

Jason told me, that it was a power outage, which lasted too long for the server's backup battery. After that it did not boot up again properly and Jason had to restart it manually. See you *Fuchur*

Should be back online. See you *Fuchur*

I have included some new informations (links to video-tutorials and tutorials about the Snapt to surface-tool) and a small video-presentation of one of the new features in my first post. Hope you like it. See you *Fuchur*

More likely that the service is down today... just wait a little and I am quite sure it will be there again. See you *Fuchur*

Hi guys, just a short info on the new features of A:M v17: Snap to Surface (see more informations here) This is a new feature, which gives you the abillity to model around other models. This can be used with polygon-models / props and with patch-models. It is very useful in several ways (these are only the once I can think of right now): "Import" even complex polygon-models into A:M: You can import props with many many polygones and remodel them very easily with patches. For other 3d programs this is called "Retopology", so in other programs remodelling is done with polygones too. So we can call it "Retopology+" Create cloth for your characters: You can model for example a t-shirt very easily on top of your character. If you are done, use the PushCP-Plugin to enlarge the t-shirt a little and you are ready to go. Use it as a modeling-tool Use primitive objects (spheres, cubes, etc.) to define a basic shape. After that use Resurface to model "around" those primitive objects. It is a little bit like metaballs done by hand > "Manual MetaBalls". Animation:Master Answers A:M Answers is a feature, which will help you to access informations about certain features in a very easy way. To activate it, right-click on any property in the PWS and choose "Display help informations". A new window will be opened with informations about this property. Now you can just click on other properties to get the corresponding informations in the help-window. These informations can easily be altered, a link to for example a tutorial or a video can be given and it can be shared with others by using the built-in A:M-Answers Editor. SSE4 For newer processors, which are compatible with SSE4, A:Ms rendering will be up to 15% faster. Create your own "Support"-page Now A:M lets you create a html-file which will be shown in the community-window. It is editable by the user and you can place any content there you want. One example for that can be found as an attachment to this post. Copy this file into your A:M installation-folder, (re)start A:M and open your community-window. What you can do with it? For example: Have a place to store all the most needed tutorials in A:M to be accessable from A:M with only one click or to use it for inspiration or whatever you want. Share your creations with us here on the forums! Of course there are many bug-fixes and smaller advantages. (for example: There is now an indication-border if you have the Animate-Mode deactivated, etc.) Have fun testing these new features! Hopefully you find them as helpful as I do! See you and happy splining! *Fuchur* Support.html ama_userguide.mp4

There are more possibilities, but in this case it would be used as a normal-map, which is another type of height-map like Bump- or Displacementmaps. You can use it to create normal maps of very detailed parts of your model and can get rid of many patches afterwards. I am not totally sure when it really will lower rendertimes, but we will see. See you *Fuchur*

Just the best wishes! Happy happy hap... you know what. Very good to have you around Robert! See you *Fuchur*

Exactly as you said. Yearly licence (Web Subscription) is allowed to access v17 when it is released. And v17 is not far away... (public beta already on the way) See you *Fuchur*

Love it... very nice lightening and nice model! See you *Fuchur*

Is TSM2 available for 64bit? Maybe you are using 64 bit and for the plugins to run you need to go with 32bit-version of A:M? See you *Fuchur*

Just a small question on the set: Did you include Occlusion to the texture-map? It this some sort of Shadow-Map or something? If so, did you do it manually or is there a possibility in A:M to do it automatically? See you *Fuchur*

Which version are you using? Maybe you need A:M stuff to run it on your notebook. See the FTP-server for that. I remember such a problem but it is quite long gone. See you *Fuchur*

This option is available from v16 on without EXR. You just have to set your format to TGA. After that, set "LightBuffers" to on and any additional buffer you want to and there will appear two new options called "Save Buffers" and "Save Lightbuffers" which should be set to "on". When you render now, A:M will save these buffers out as seperate files with a name like "xyz_ShadowBuffer", etc. You need to use Multipass to get these buffers out. In v17 there is a bug in this... I dont know if it has been around for longer so. I will create a bug report on it. See you *Fuchur*

Wow, now that is a creepy little fello... ah... you know what I mean. *backing up slowly* See you *Fuchur*

Good that someone remembered it . See you *Fuchur*

Go to "Tools > Options" and activate at the gLobal-Tab "Resizeable filedialogs" and click ok. Now you should be able to resize the file dialog to be big enough to reveal the filename-field. I dont know why some have problems with the window being too small... most of us dont have to do that. See you *Fuchur*

Happy Birthday and best wishes! Have a nice day, celebrate and have fun! See you *Fuchur*

See the Alpha-forum for that. The links are pinned. See you *Fuchur*

I did know about premultiplied alphas (had to struggle with that when composing particles in AfterEffects) but I neve knew there was an option in Photoshop to get rid of that! Thanks Robert... very helpful! See you *Fuchur*