Fuchur

Hi guys, just wanted to show you a little bit of my latest A:M work... I started to model a audio-interface based on my new Roland VS-100. Most of the work was to create the texture for it. Comments are of course welcome . See you *Fuchur* PS: I although attached an image with the wireframe overlayed. As you can see, the geometry is really quite simple.

I would recommend you to first render to image-sequences like TGA or EXR (depending on what you want to do with it afterwards). After that you can create an avi with it and will not loose your rendering if something goes wrong. After rendering the images you can use A:M or an external programm to produce a movie-file with it. So first of test if you can output images. If you have done that, try to create a movie-file from the images with A:M. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To create a movie-file from an image-sequence: - Right-click on the "Images"-folder and choose "Import as Image Sequence". - In the opening filebrowser, click on the first image of the sequence and make sure the little checkbox "import as imagesequence" is checked at the left bottom of the filebrowser-window. - Hit open. - Right-click on the newly imported image-sequence and choose "Save As". - Choose your outputformat, etc. - Hit save as. (this description is taken from my memory, so there may be some buttons etc. which may be named a little bit different, but you should see what I am talking about.) See you *Fuchur*

I think about the realtime-stuff you are totally right, so I don't think that a game-engine is the most easy way to create movies with it. A little too hard to create different motions which are not predefined with it... Steffen is currently working on OpenCL-integration (graphiccard based calculations, which can speed up some operations mainly connected to rendering) which is a very promising technology. It can speed up calculations in certain areas with a single graphiccard compared to a multi-core-computer (4x for example) for about 1000%. That would be a huge performanceboost and would make it easier to use even very advanced techniques like AO or Radiosity in a much faster way. And dont forget: We already gained much performance with the release of v16. Gameengines are very well suited for games and 3d-applications. Movies need a little more of preperation and while rendering and previewing your output will very likely become realtime, the creation-part will not be like that. It is one of the best things about 3d-animations: You can always go back again, move the hand a little closer to the body because it looks a little better etc. That is the stuff that game-engines can not do too easily. Playing predefined actions is their strength. Not altering them. See you *Fuchur*

Great looking texture... I think it is a little bright but other than that: Amazing . See you *Fuchur*

Long shot here... Make sure you aren't dragging and dropping the Action to somewhere later in the Choreography. You might not be seeing it because it's been appended to the end of another Action. The same holds true for dropping the new Action onto Sam. If not careful the Action may be present but not viewable because it's being overwritten. If Sam already has an Action applied to him you might need to change the Action's location or its setting to Blend or Add instead of Replace. And press a few times the space key just to be sure... maybe just an update problem...

Don't even get me started on computers. At the rate I wear them out I think I need to find a way to budget for a new computer every year. My current laptop/battery doesn't like to hold a charge for more than a few minutes when disconnected from the power cable... and that cable/port/connector is broken on the back of the laptop... (I'd blame my daughter for that for tripping on the power cord and breaking off the center of the power plug on the computer but... I'm sure I could have been a little more careful in my choice of where to sit and browse the internet on my computer. I suppose a second Rule of Computers might be... don't blame family members for the current state of your computer...) At any rate, I'm glad you got your issue sorted. Added: There is an interesting lesson for me to learn here as well. Sometimes I am a bit too ready to assume people will blame A:M for their misfortunes when that may not be the case. I assure you, the irony of that fact given my previous post is not lost on me. I cant see why people always buy laptops... most users dont need them, they are expensive, not very fast (compared to equally expensive desktop-pcs), get old very fast and will sooner or later give you trouble. Not to mention the display-size, which is very likely smaller too... For stuff that is highly based on CPU / graphics-power: Use a desktop, not a laptop or netbook. For surfing in the internet or driving with the train, use a netbook. You will get both for a price that will not be much higher than the one for a good laptop.

Here's an updated version of Squetchy Sam and an updated Action setup in a Project with your Action...I'll include these fixes in the next release. Sorry about the problems, Nik. You are the first person to test the Action Zign Track output with Sam...at least that has said anything. ----------------- EDIT ----------------- I'm not sure if the lower lip problem was because of the capture...let me know if there is still an issue. The lower lip is a tracking problem I opened the prj with updated Action setup , the action worked properly , i deleted this action(Tom2) and i imported a new action Tom3 , and dropped it onto Sam , but it didn't work What am i doing wrong ? Thanks Just to be sure: In the chor, did you attach the action to the character or did you change the blend-mode in the chor-window? See you *Fuchur*

First: This is intended to be like that. Going to "Tools > Customize > Toolbars > Grooming" lets you customize the toolbar. But it will still only be visible if there is something to groom and you are in grooming-mode. So create a hair-particle-material, attach it to a group in a model and go to Grooming-Mode (button next to Bones-Mode, etc.) in the modelling-window. (and action and chor, but that doesnt matter now). Now the grooming-toolbar will be visible and you can start styling. A:M only offers you tools and toolbars if you can use them... so that at any other time your interface is tidy... Second: Did you deactive particles by acicdent? Hit "Shift+8" or go to your rendering-properties at "Tools > Options" or the Draw-Toolbar to see if Hair is turned on. See you *Fuchur*

Smartskins will move the leg to extrem positions. This is intended because in most cases you will need to create a smartskin for such positions to interpolate anything between that. In general you do smartskins before you create poses, maybe even before you use constraints (depends on your character so). To make it short: It is intended to work like that. Just rotate the bone you want to smartskin in the extrem positions you intended to go and move the CPs and bias-handlers llike you want the model to look at that position. After that go to the next extrem and do the same again... dont create to many smartskinkeys so... you will get jumpy interpolations otherwise. See you *Fuchur*

Just to mention it: Sometimes a "Help > Reset Settings" helps in such cases when you can't see why something is happening and it is connected to a setting in A:M... Glad that you could figure it out so . See you *Fuchur*

Happy Birthday *Fuchur*

You should use Hair with an hair-image instead of Sprites. Should be more or less the same, but it will be more flexible and of course: Stay where it started at. Sprites should work too, if you set gravity 0%, initial velocity 0 and all the other stuff related to the motion to 0. I like the look of it Kepp on rocking! See you *Fuchur*

What do you think: Should he be a little bit wider around the shoulders and hips? He just looks a little too much like Peter Parker before he got bitten, dont you think? See you *Fuchur*

Very cool! Thanks for letting us know and offering them for non-commercial use! Seems to be a hell of a value there . See you *Fuchur*

Press "4" on the keys above the space-key (not sure how they are called... the non-keypad-keys). That should more or less do what you ask for... anyway it is not too useful... I recommend to you to use the stich-feature to stitch in a point where you want it to be. See you *Fuchur*

It should be Roger... please try again to find it. Go to your modeling-window, select something and rightclick on the selection and go to the wizards. See you *Fuchur*

Hi guys, as promised, here is the video-tutorial on the even easier pipeline from A:M to Unity using Ultimate Unwrap 3d (about 50-60 Dollars). I provided the project-data of my A:M project, the video-tutorial, links to the programms and a link to the tutorial I used to learn enough from Unity3d and scripting to produce the game you can see at the first post of this thread. A:M2Unity3d - Using Unwrap3d to export to FBX Have fun with it and let us know about your creations! See you *Fuchur*

Seams like A:M has not yet associated the action correctly to the model. -> You are asked before you create an action in A:M to which object it should belong. Maybe somewhere there is the problem, so in general there should be no problems with that... See you *Fuchur*

Actually it is JavaScript-based (Java is something totally different)... but you can code in different languages like JavaScript (a few difference are there, but they are small), C# and Pyton and possible some more. I will upload my tutorial this evening and you will get some infos on good tutorials for learning Unity and Beginnertutorials for Scripting in Unity too. See you *Fuchur*

As far as I understand it, you dont need to do that. The directx-exporter automatically exports the actions baked and does it when exporting without the help of the user. The free version of Unity doesnt support realtime shadows (so there is nothing that holds you back from faking some using models), if I am not wrong. Just the Pro version supports realtime shadows so. But lightening is already used. I just used a Sunlight to get the game going, but you can use all the basic light-types that are available in A:M too - just without shadows. @largento: No problem That is what they are there for See you *Fuchur*

Hi Robert, thanks for letting me know... I uploaded the file again with the data-folder. Unity is very new to me (started dealing with it just yesterday) so I was not sure what I had to pack into the zip. Please extract the files to your harddrive in one folder. See you *Fuchur*

Hi guys... I just created a small Test-Game using Unity and A:M. It is really nothing special - I just wanted to test the workflow. You can navigate a small character created with A:M with different animations applied through a terrain and shoot hammers (although created with A:M) on EnemyTowers (although created with A:M). They are all more or less just testobjects, but I think you will see the potential in this example. It has been created in about 3 days with learning to script in Unity. For this, I used another workflow, which is even a little easier and less expensive than the other one. > A:M with DirectX-Export > Ultimate Unwrap with FBX-Export > Unity. It worked very well and is very straight forward... I will create a video-tutorial on the workflow and very likely offer my working- and project-data to you, so you should be ready to go for yourself. See you *Fuchur* PS: Game is till now only available to windows-users... (*.exe) PPSS: Please extract the files to your harddisk in one folder. Now includes the data-folder as well. hitboy_01.zip

Happy Birthday Gerald, See you Gerald

Nevertheless: Thanks guys I'll keep on doing what I do . See you *Fuchur*

Hey, thank you all for our your congratulations... I had a nice day and hopefully it will stay that way See you and thanks again *Fuchur* PS: => called Falcor in englisch