Fuchur

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*

As far as I know nothing... it is not a notice or something. Just the standardicon for Actionobjects. *Fuchur*

The thing is: You first have to draw a spline, press right mouse button to finish it and THEN you have to drag and drop it to the right position and press left and right mousebutton together. *Fuchur*

Did you try to deactive the sphere and rerender it? The difference is, that the light will vary in its color at different positions. *Fuchur*

79.99 Dollars... christmas-present, birthday-present isnt an option? In the end: It is a 3d-programm and it is a good one. Anything else would cost you 10 times more (except opensource-software of course, but A:M is just better thought through and much more fun to use). So I would say: Start saving a little bit of money or renew at your birthday. *Fuchur*

Happy Birthday! *Fuchur*

Well done... some gestures are a bit fast for my taste, but the motion is very fluid and quite believeable... nice job! *Fuchur*

Did you turn on all the filters in the left_down_corner? *Fuchur*

I think John is right here... before with the old method to handledisplacement-mapsthese artifacts were not really effecting the appeareance, because they were very small and only the pixels counted which where at the underlying CP-positions... today all the pixels are used to create these sub-pixel / sub-patch-displacements. So like John told you... a blur should clean these artifacts up. There may although be a possibility to turn the old displacement-version on again. Normally the older features can be accessed by pushing the shift-key while creating, but I dont know it this is the case for displacementmaps too... I dont know when you should push the shift-key here... another hint is the legacy-bump-entry. The old Bump-maps can be accessed like that, but the old displacementmaps? The old behaviour is still there for the Terrain-Wizard, but I dont think it can handle animated decals. So I am a little bit stuck what to do to get the old displacement-map-behaviour... anyone else has a idea? Thanks Paul Good to hear that it worked out We wanted exactly that clean and learning-style. It should be strictly informational... Most of the stuff we visualized isn't very pleasant to watch in reality (and most often cant be watched in reality) and for most stuff we didn't have very well suited images to see how it should look. But we asked the payer about it, had a look at some reallife-stuff (you dont want to know it in more detail, trust me ). We showed the animations to the payer and they gave as good feedback on the parts that needed some work. In the end we got to the final result with very few adjustments. I separated the renderings in such a way, that even with the changes I only had to render some parts 2 times, very few things 3 times. The payer was very pleased with the animations and I am quite too. I although liked the variety of features I used from A:M v15. The new Fluids-particles were used for some of the fluid-animations (for example matter had to be visualized), I used Bird-Flocks for bakteria which would cause illnesses, displacementmaps to create several effects and for the blood and the other stuff in there I used a particlesystem with animations of the 3d-objects of the blood-cells, bakteria and ketons (toxins produced by the bakteria), which were rendered before from real 3d-objects in A:M. It was much fun! *Fuchur*

I know... I think some of the thinks you said about some of the features A:M has anyway... The big improvement over Skype / ICQ and similar programms however is: You get only A:M user talking to you and you dont have to know the identification-number, email-address, etc of the guys/girls you are chatting with. They are using A:M and they're logged in. -> They are in your contact-list. But yes I think too, that there are more important features, if these features are much trouble to put in... I just know that from time to time someone asks me a question about how something works and I allways struggle to describe him how it does. With a share desktop / videocapture / image-transfer-tool or anything like that it could be so much easier... You can argue: "Get his ICQ-Nr. than and do it there..." -> Does he / she have ICQ? Do I want them to know my ICQ-Nr? Do I have to have another programm running? etc. But as I said before: There are more important things... *Fuchur*

Hm, if you reinstall the OS you wont need that (as long as you format your drive), but if you really want to be sure: Assuming you are using a Websubscription, edit the "master0.lic" with notepad. You will find some identification-numbers etc. there. to deactive A:M just change some of the numbers. (be sure to use the same string-spaces, so it is not too easy to see which numbers have been changed. But in the end, formating your drive and reinstalling an OS on it should be enough. Most people cant recreate data anyway and if the OS overrides the space that was taken by the master0.lic-file on the harddrive, the problem is solved anyway. Recreating files is only possible if the space on the harddrive isn't taken by other data. Some programms will write dummy-data on the drive and make it full and after that delete the dummy-data again to assure that it is not recreatable, but as said before: This is most often not needed, especially if we are talking about a private pc. *Fuchur*

It is absolutely not redundant... it is a life-chat. So totally different to the forum... like ICQ in A:M. In my opinion it only misses two features to make it more than powerful for teaching and helping: - Live-Screencapture - Data-Transfer With that it would be mindblowing and the only app I know that could do that internally. *Fuchur*

Was it really rendered with 49 passes? For 7x7 Passes it has a bit much of aliasing at the outsides... Other than that: Very well done! Looks great! *Fuchur*

Dont use only -20 or something as value... use -200 or so and have a look again... that should be noticeable. *Fuchur*

We already have a feature which gives us a good startingpoint: Lightbuffers. It is quite easy to use them... you just have to drag and drop lights into lightbuffer-folders. The same done with any object (so lights, models, etc.) and the interface itself is done. Of course there will be some stuff that we cant see yet, but shouting down any feature with "can be done by hand" or "not everybody will be happy with the inital release" will not help neigther. I wrote a featurerequest on it and if Steffen want to implement it sometime in the future, he may. If not I understand that too... I just write the report to give some notions what could be implemented. He is the one who chooses which he likes to implement. Of course that will take some time, but if we get the feature in 4 years or something I am still happy. Till than, do it like Rodney suggested. Good startingpoint. I do it this way till now. Use a starting-chor and than just delete the stuff that wouldnt be in the same "level / layer". Embed and rename it and import the chor again. Do the next layer in the same way. Here is another one: If you separate the shadow from the objects by rendering it in an alpha-channel, you dont need to use any soft-shadows. You can easily apply a blur-filter on it later in you Postprogramm or in A:M and gain a very equal effect (not totally equal, but most will not notice that the shadow is blured the same in any distance for most situations. *Fuchur*

Its been quite awhile since I saw that message but as I recall I use to get that occassionally when I attempted a wireframe or shaded wireframe render. What was odd about this is that if I changed my video driver in A:M's Options Panel (from Direct3D to OpenGL or vice versa) the problem would go away. I've been told that A:M's renderer doesn't use the graphics card but I cannot escape what my experience tells me. Perhaps when rendering wireframe/shaded wireframe A:M borrows from the realtime render driver? I dunno. At any rate... try changing your driver in TOOLS/OPTIONS on the Global tab. I am quite sure that it does and I think all who told you that meant it this way: "Final"-Renderingmode is not using the graphiccard, but all the realtime-once do. "Realtime"-Rendermodes are: Wireframe, Shaded, Shaded Wireframe... "Final" in the renderingoptions is not using the graphiccard. *Fuchur*

No there isnt... but you could make screenshots of what you got there. In the end, I would recommend to save your project in different versions and if you want to use Steffen's AutoSave-Plugin which will additional to that backup your work in intervals you can specify by yourself. (You have to activate this plugin for each project you are working on by hand!). If you want to save the settings, etc. -> Have a look at your prj-file with a texteditor (for example Notepad). Everything is written there in plain-text and it is near to an XML-syntax. *Fuchur*

Yep it will... I am quite sure that this is one of the features which wouldn't be too difficult to implement but which would have been against the notion of rendering all in one program. (which isn't true because you could first render it and than compose everything together in A:M with Layers, etc. In the end you can do it by yourself, and many are doing it like that. I recommend this method too, because it can really save you rendertime as Vern pointed out. *Fuchur*

You can use the DirectX or the OBJ-format to export. 3ds should be able to import X-files. *Fuchur*

Normally they want it to look very well and cool... and that is the factor that makes it expensive to film it. Productshots are often not made with the acutal product but with a real-life-model made from wax or plastic to make it more controlable and look better. These models are very expensive to create. (more expensive than 3d-renderings). These techniques are often used when they have to shoot pictures from strawberries for icecream or yoghurt-commercials/advertisments, etc. So if you take that in account, 3d-models can be less expensive. In the end: It is most often equal or more expensive to create the stuff in 3d but as Nancy said: Often it can be reused for other stuff too, which is not that possible with pictures or real-life-movies. You would have to set up your studio in the exact same way with same lightening, etc. which is not very easy to do to get the same look. In 3d-programms you just reload the project and voila. Anyway both methodes have their advantages and disadvantages. *Fuchur*

For PNG -> Use InternetExplorer v7 or up or even better FireFox or Opera. *Fuchur*

Thanks We had fun producing it. Just to mention it: You may consider a texture for the apple-internals... it looks a bit unfinished there. *Fuchur*