Fuchur

If you got a CD you got the "full" version. (the websubscription is although a full version but only for a year). You have to have the CD in the drive when you start A:M. After that you can take the CD out and insert anything you want. *Fuchur*

Two options: - Buy the Web Subscription (79 Dollars) and get the latest version of A:M. - Get an USB-CD/DVD-Drive (very likely an equal price but with the old version of A:M. -> I would recommend to buy the Web Subscription. *Fuchur*

The models are great, but the SSS and the good lightening really does make it a potential materspiece! *Fuchur*

*grin* yup, nice one *Fuchur*

spot on, I do this all the time. The real question is: Do he need the chors to merge "behind eachother" so that the animations of chor1 are going on after the animations of chor two, or do you want to merge two which have things happening at the same time? The second one can be archieved by eighter using the steps the others mentioned or by opening both chors and drag and dropping the models / lights /cameras you need into the other one via PWS. The first approach is more difficult... you would have to shift the animations of one chor and after that merge them... SHifting can be done by selecting all the keyframes and moving them in the timeline-window. *Fuchur*

Very nice looking character I like him! *Fuchur*

The easiest way would be a screencaputre-tool like camstudio. So you could just get a webpage and take a screen-capture-video of the process. Another one would be to use for eample AfterEffects or Flash to generate something like that. (more complex) See you *Fuchur*

Do you only want to show that on a 3d-model in a 3d-film or do you need the functionality? If the second you need a Webtechnology (at least) like Javascript, PHP or Flash. *Fuchur*

You modelling-skills have sure envolved And the story is funnny too *Fuchur*

This will be gorgeous! Already looks like a winner! *Fuchur*

Thanks for your feedback... I finally descided to go the 3-point-road, which will work out okay, even so not as great as radiosity... I'll post a picture of it soon. It looks good enough. Thanks for your affords... *Fuchur*

Have a look in the toolbar below the "Add"-Button (on the right). You will find the same functionallity with a button there... Peaked CPs will (at first) use straight lines. (you can change the bias after that too to get another look. Differenz is, that you can set yeah bias-handler on every side of the cp independently). *Fuchur*

That one is nice too yes... but it is not only the caustics... it is just very smooth looking... I think I like the photon-look... a bit dirty but very lifelike... cant really say what it is... it just looks quite realistically... *Fuchur*

I think it is hard to get an authentic look of glass without a very well lightening... I tried AO and some other things but I could get the lightening... Radiosity is just more authentic, including the light coming from the surroundin areas, near by geometry, the brighter parts where a geometry is near another one and the photons are reflecting several times and getting caught there... it just looks smoother and more diffuse than other stuff... AO didnt work out well... even with AO transparency activated it was much less bright. I tried to increase the ambiance-value of the paper behind the glass which was better, but still not what I was looking for... especially the thin edges of the glass (beveled) are not very pronounces by AO which makes the glass less visible... I tried setting up the specularity with additional lights but I couldnt get it to look right... I even think that the edges have to be less bright but darker to look right. I tried to scale the chor down and I get more possibilities with that, but I think the high Index of Refraction (Acryl has something like 1.5) is causing the problems behind the glass... Any idea what to do against that? the next thing I would try would be to render the paper flatshaded and the rest with radiosity... that may look okay. *Fuchur*

I have a problem with lightening an acryl-block with an image behind it in A:M. The best result I could archieve till now is a Radiosity-rendering, which looks great except the dark parts behind the acryl-block. Anyone can give me a hint to what to do next? I cant increase the sample-area or the amount of photons (A:M seems to have a limit here). I attached the consolidated projekt (had to replace the image with a dummy-image... but that doesnt matter... The rendering here is a progressiv-one, but it although looks like that in final-rendering. I am talking about the chor "Radiosity_Acryl" here. There I am combining Arealight-Shadows with Radiosity. Thank you very much in advance! See you *Fuchur* acryl_block_forum.zip

This depends highly on your scene... so I cant say much about that... resolution is just what you need and what you are willing to render... I wouldnt go under 640 x 480 so... I usually render to pal or if needed to 720p (smaller HD-standard-resolution). For multipass... for some scenes, especially if you are after some features you need to turn on multipass (for example EXR-Rendering, real motion blur, etc.) For rendering just a preview or just to determine what you need it is very likely overkill... I would suggest to first turn of multipass and see if this is enough for your scene... if it is not, use it something different. Without multipass it will render much faster, most things will look mor or less the same but some dont... you should just try it out. *Fuchur*

Render to Imagesequences and start A:M two times... Then split the rendering and render for example 0-99 with the first Instance of A:M and the second 100-200 by the second instance. After rendering has finished you can combine the imagesequences together using A:M (or a editingprogramm if you prefer to). This has several advantages: - If something goes wrong you can rerender from any time A:M stopped or something isnt like you wanted it to be without haveing to rerender the whole movie. (mov or any other moviefileformat will be corrupt if that happens and doesnt work) - If you want to use several instances of A:M it can speed up rendertimes for up to about n * 90% (in an n-core-system) for rendering imagesequences. *Fuchur*

Where did you assign the bone to the null? It is very likely that you have to turn on for example the on/off-pose you may have done it in, or whatever. *Fuchur*

Delete a pose by going to the Model -> User Properties and delete the pose there. That will erase it. If you already have your model in the chor-window, you will need to press refresh (standard: space) while having the model selected. If it doesnt work, close the chor-window and if that doesnt work, close and reopen your project. *Fuchur*

It's been said that William Sutton has a book in the making about A:M, but I dont know if this is just rumours. Anyway: 200x / Complete Guide is very well written and at this moment the most recent. You will find many useful informations in there. I am a longtime-A:M user but I always find something new or something I forgot in my Complete-Guids-Books. (got 2000, 2002 and 200x). The technical reference was printed out and available too (dont know if you can still get it) but this is more suited for people who know what they are looking for. It is not a tutorial-book. *Fuchur*

Yes it's just 1/4 of a century Thank you very much friends. I'll have a nice day... Promise I'll raise my glass to you *Fuchur* PS; Some may wonder about my nick-name... Have a look at this article on wiki and after reading the first sentence you'll understand

The booklet is also available here in electronical form: TAO - AM Technical Reference *Fuchur*

I assume here you are talking about a 1 GHz dual core (didnt know there was one that low) and 2 GB of RAM. On the other hand you got a 1 GB videocard... (1 GB V-RAM isnt around for as long as the 1 GHz PCs, if you ask me...) Anyway: Lets say you get a 3,2 GHz Phenom II 955, 4 GB of RAM and all the additional stuff needed for that. I would say the renderingtimes would at least 1/4. (maybe even 1/6 or more, but this is all just a guess) A:M is highly using the CPU and the RAM for the renderingprocess. The Phenom II 955 is a Quadcore-CPU with a core-speed (without overclocking) of about 3.2 GHz a core. I am running mine at 3.5 GHz. You would have to start different instances of A:M to get the whole out, but with that you could gain much time (especially for animation-renderings, so several frames in a row). Your current PC (assuming you are on a pc) has about 1GHz * 2 = 2 GHz of power (which isnt much, but depending on you CPU it can be more than it sounds), The PII would have about 3,2GHz * 4 = 12,8 GHz of power. But be aware: This is only theoretically. In practise, these n-core systems are much slower but still it should make a huge difference. And the PII isnt the fastes processor out there... it is only one of the once with the best price-ratio. If you like better informations, please give us a few other infos: What CPU do you have precisly (1.000 MHz = 1 GHz, which brand, name of the CPU, etc.), etc. *Fuchur*

Actually rendering to imagesequences and after that saving them as a movie is the best way to do it... h264 is one of the best codecs avaiable. Small filesizes, great quality. *Fuchur*

You may want to redownload it... sounds like a not finished or broken download. *Fuchur*