Fuchur

Are we talking about Vista or Windows 7? See you *Fuchur*

Hi Manta, he is talking about reduced rendertimes per core. (v16 with Netrenderer can use more than one core which will result in even faster rendertimes for animation-output). There are many other operations which have been optimized too of course, but we can't compare these as easy as rendertimes since they are most often very fast anyway. Finding patches is optimized and using multiple cores and so on... You will find a huge amount of new features and you will find A:M to be more stable than before. The interface has not changed (much) and you will be back in action in no time . Welcome back and let us know what you are doing! *Fuchur*

A reflectivitymap is only driving reflectivity value of a surface (so at which point the surface should reflect how strong) through a greyscale-texture. An environmentmap fakes something that is reflecting with a color-map. A:M is not creating an environmentmap on the fly when you bake the material. It will create a map, which drives the reflectivity (defined in other decals or surface properties of groups / models) See you *Fuchur*

Sounds cool! Thanks for the test... I will have a look at octane.... See you *Fuchur*

... or if you need to, delete the "User Property"-folder under the pose in the PWS to get rid of that data afterwards. See you *Fuchur*

Don't worry, it only takes 15 years to get up to speed. Eleven is enough too to know that ... Seriously it is gettung easier and easier once you know the possible spots in A:M. *Fuchur*

Could that be a filterproblem? Like selecting all x channels in the chor? Etc. ? All the channels are different right? *Fuchur*

Use an Aim At for the camera, keep the view more or less static with just a small slide to the left or the right. This will create a nice effect with small affords... this is a technique used for 2d-animations for years. Years ago I wrote a small tutorial on this with an hamster and some kind of santa-slider. See you *Fuchur*

If you cant find the blackies, just move the model in an action using the bones you assigned. After that you can easily see in which region the problem is. Than go to that area in the modelwindow, click into an empty space in your modelingwindow and you should see what is happening. Still no luck? Go to bones mode, hit "CTRL" and move the bone that is near to the problem-area. That will although move the coressponding CPS (and change the model!). Make sure that you know how far you moved it to be able to bring it back to its original position! That should give you the possibility to assign the bone. After that you can move the bone holding "CTRL" and you are done. See you *Fuchur*

Very cool geckos Gerry! *Fuchur*

You know that you can use tabs for poses and combine several poses in one new poses, etc, right? But hey, just do it the way you want to do it... I see why it can be fast to use onscreen-controls, but normally my screen is that crowded already, that I am happy to not having more stuff on it. Posesliders are always easy to access for me, easy to move and with the right setup (which is heavy eighter way) they are very powerful and be brought down to only a small list of pose-sliders needed. See you *Fuchur*

Yes .... but why would anyone want to? .... The more I look at other programs, the more convinced I am that A:M has a vastly superior constraint and animation system ... for those who know how to use it ... I'm with you! I don't see much there that we're not already doing and I don't see anything that we can't do. I never understood why people want to have such a thing like a "on screen" face control. Why not use pose-sliders? They are an really elegant way which is easier to handle because they are not somewhere in the 3d-space... But if someone wants to do such a thing, why not just do it? See you *Fuchur*

Exactly... that (and some other reasons) is why germans have much less trouble learning English than for example french people. *Fuchur*

Hi jake... A good one! Some closeups from a different angle would be good but it looks professional and well done anyway. What about a gradient in the background? See you *Fuchur*

Go to Render Options, select Shaded for Quality and then "Show backfacing polys" will appear as an option. Thanks for the replies guys. I've turned it off now. I maybe should have said I'm on a Mac using A:M 15j+. I mention this because under "Render Options" there is no option labeled "Shaded" (See attached screen shots). So I just went through double clicking on all the options. It turns out the prize was behind the "Real-Time" KeeKat! Hope this helps others who might go looking for this particular Off switch. You need to click on "Advanced" to get full control... I highly suggest to use Advanced-Mode instead of Preset-Mode. It is just more adjustable. See you *Fuchur*

Just found this thread and I like HomeSlice's idea to have "show back facing ploys/normals" turned to off when modeling but where do you find this option? I'v looked in Tools/Customise and then had a look in the TechRef manual but I'm still non the wiser. Go to tools - options - rendering. Switch from "final" to "shaded" mode. The setinng will appear in the list below. See you *Fuchur*

I think you did very well! (one of the best native english speaking german videos I have ever seen ) Some pronouciation-problems (where German and English words are the same) but all in all VERY well done! So the problem is, that Animation:Master creates channels for you which werent there before (sometimes I would like that to happen for the filters selected). Did you test to unselect the translate-filter-key (first blue button at the toolbar under the timeline)? See you *Fuchur*

Heck no! Back in 2003 that $300 was temporarily put into a bank account. Well... except for $45 of it that was spent to pay an unexpectedly high electricity bill at Hash Inc. James applied $10 of it toward gas for a road trip to California. Heath used $5 for a sandwich at the convention. (James and Jason also split a bottle of water for $2... I think) When the van broke down on the return trip $129 was used to replace a leaking hose that couldn't be patched with tape (the hose only cost $2 but the mechanic works on hourly scale) $125 was used to pay the speeding tickets. Jason bought a (used) book on PHP programming for $1 online (shipping was $14.95) $7 was used to pay the intern programmer (Stevie) who couldn't afford a bus ticket back home after he finished developed fluids for A:M in 2008. The remaining funds ($2 and change?) is being used to develop a slew of really cool new features. Martin swears he never saw a single penny of it. Personally I'd go for the $79 websubscription. Then you won't need to have the CD in the drive when you start up A:M. That was cruel Rodney... Lets compare this with other software Talanquel... Ever saw an upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 7? I haven't. In your special case you would not get an update for most software (including most other 3d-software, not to mention that the upgrade there would cost more than the whole programm of A:M). Lets say any year between the versions would cost you 50 Dollars more to upgrade (1/6th of the full price which is quite low if you ask me... this is only imaginative and not available for A:M): 2005 > 2011 = 300 Dollar. So if that would be the case your upgrade would cost more than the programm itself today. Any way I see it: For you any pricetag available (Subscription for 79.99 Dollar or 299 Dollar for the CD-version) is much less expensive for you than an upgrade. See you *Fuchur*

Oh a little embarrising, sorry... Welcome to the community See you *Fuchur*

As far as I am aware, after A:M has started, you can remove the CD and the program will continue to function. Of course, if you kill the program, you must put the CD back in the drive to start the program back up. I think he asks if he can buy the subscription first and "update" that to a CD-version by only paying the difference afterwards... I am not sure if this is possible. Jason can say something about that. *Fuchur*

And just to mention it: Steffen is looking over the OBJ-plugin so that it can export textures too. See you *Fuchur*

I think you created only a model-file and didnt attach an action to it, right? DirectX-Exporter containts of two modules. 1.) Export the model with the rig, textures etc. 2.) Attach an action to the exported model. Since many people seem to have problems with that, I did a video-tutorial for directX-export from A:M to DirectX > Quest3d: Video-Tutorial for A:M to Quest3d (Click on HD to get a better quality) Attached to this post you can find a directx-export with Projectfile. The model containts of a simple worm-model with a very simple bone-rig with a a few weighted CPs (at the base of the model where bone1 and bone2 connect to eachother) and a texture on the worm-model at the head which is a simple smiley-face. The worm itself is part of a group with a red based-color and a white specularity color at Intensity of 100 and size of 100 (in A:M). In the ZIP you will find two versions of the same model with animation as directx-file and the Project used to export it from A:M. The first one is right- and the other left-handed. That means the axis of the cordinate system is different. Maya for examples uses another cordinate system than A:M and depending on your software you have to use one or the other export-option. The texture is an PNG. Hopefully your 3d-system can handle that, if not let me know which formats are supported. The texture has to be in the same directory like the models (for quest3d and some other) or maybe in the same relative path to the project-file. (I don't know exactly what you got there.) See you *Fuchur* PS: It is possible that the animation is very fast or very slow. When exporting from A:M there is an option to set a mutliplicator. For Quest3d I had to set that one really low, that means the animation itself was VERY fast (one frame in Quest3d and like that would not be visible... that is a factor that has to be determined once and can than be used for any export and depends on your 3d-engine / system. For this export-model the multiplicator was set to 1 (default-setting) worm_direct_x_export.zip

Happy birthday! Have a nice day Mark! *Fuchur*

When you render it you choose a "save to" location. Are you sure you're looking at the right spot? Try saving it to the desktop. Just to try. Cinepak Codec by Radius is an old codec-format used by Micrsoft. It should work with WMP. Are you sure you are writing to a director you have full access to? -> Try the desktop-folder to be sure that it is not a problem with that. See you *Fuchur*

Not a bad idea so... maybe it would be possible to write a plugin which uses a light and a radiosity-like cacluation to set all normals facing out... 1.) Put a light into the model. 2.) Let photons (a small amount) bounce around and where it hits a surface the normal should point to the inverted vector of the photon. It would only work with closed or nearly closed parts, but with only using a selection of points it could work out anyway. I'll do a featurerequest on that. Sounds like a nice idea. See you *Fuchur*