Stuart Rogers

Those troopers look like they're hovering. There are shadows on the ground directly under their feet. Or are these from different lights?

For finished works, try AM:Stills for still images, and AM:Films for movies (although I've never managed to successfully upload to AM:Films).

You will need to use "Translate To" constraints as well as light lists. A light list is simply a way of excluding things from being illuminated by particular lights - it doesn't physically attach the light to an object.

It's a natural result of the relationship between knee angle and body/foot-target distance. A small change in foot-target gives a small change in knee angle when the body/foot-target distance is much less than its maximum, but it gives a relatively big change when the body/foot-target distance is near maximum. The trick is to keep that body/foot-target distance less than at full stretch - in your case not letting the body get so high before taking the feet off the ground (or taking the feet off the ground a little bit earlier). I find this quite a tricky feat. In my own (incomplete) rig I have separate IK and FK legs, so that for extended periods with the feet off the ground I can constrain the true legs to the FK legs (so the legs ride with the body), while constraining them to the IK legs for normal use.

No. A klieg is, in effect, a spotlight (as opposed to a bulb or sun). A key light is the light you use to illuminate the key part of your subject (for want of a better description), usually placed to illuminate the part of your subject that's facing the camera. Key lights are usually kliegs, but they don't have to be. Your light was previously a klieg, and you almost certainly had the volumetrics setting switched on. Not a bad plan. Adding lights can increase render times and, in this case could have unpleasant side effects - if your trooper gets to close to a wall then the face light will illuminate the wall too. Not to worry - when you get to that point, ask us about "light lists".

Even though it's spline heavy, I'm not entirely convinced it's the culprit (but I'll happily be proved wrong). An easier way to check is to simply uncheck it's 'Active' channel on frame 0 and rerendering, rather than replacing it. If those streetlights have lights in them, they certainly won't be helping. Try rerendering with those reflections turned off (it won't make any difference if none of your models use reflections, though). If it's not your final render, try something smaller than VGA. For example, 320x240 will only have to render one quarter the number of pixels than VGA (640x480). On a side note, Robert - if you're rendering to a TGA sequence (as your screenshot suggests) then give your filename with zero-padded trailing digits. For example, if your movie is 300 frames long, use "MyMovie000.tga". Your rendered TGAs will then have sequential numbers, and the zero-padding will help whatever program you use to glue the sequence together into a movie file.

This is not unheard of, depending on what you're asking A:M to do. The following is a non-exhaustive list of things that can escalate render times: Transparency Reflections Lots of lights Multipass with several passes Particles (hair, streaks, blobbies) Displacement maps Materials If your iMac is a current model then your system is not likely to be a cause of long render times. How about decribing what features your project uses - what settings do you use that vary from default settings?

None of my purchases from the USA (all CDs from either Hash or Anzovin) have ever had import duty imposed upon them.

I'll have to consult my diary. Unfortunately my diary is at home, where I'm not. I'm in Niamey - I'll leave you to find out how inconvenient that is for a quick hop over to London.

You need a gradient combiner material. You'll want to have the gradient vary the transparency rather than colour (which the help files use as an example) - one node should be 0% transparent, the other 100%. You'll also need to play with the Edge Threshold setting to control how near the edge the transparency starts. I'll leave it to others to help you merge your main cloud material into this - I'm away from A:M at the moment so I'm working from memory, and I'll be away for the next few weeks, so I can't help further.

Ooh, I *do* like that. It has a very definite water-colour look to it. Some slight translucency on the edge of the clouds would help sell it better - a gradient material would help out there. Stuart, who's seen too many clouds from the inside.

If you're using a PC, try changing the graphics driver in the Options panel. If you're using DirectX, try selecting OpenGL; if you're using OpenGL, try selecting DirectX. Failing that... Many years ago I sometimes found that rotoscope images that were bigger (in pixels) than the A:M window in which they were showing, would appear as white rectangles. So if the driver solution doesn't work, try using a smaller image.

This is an interesting question, to which I won't be giving a solid answer (I don't much keep up with graphics cards). If screen updates were particularly sluggish, and the graphics card was an old one, I would get a better card. However, my personal choice would be to increase system memory so that I could run both A:M and, say, Photoshop without causing the PC to start swapping to disc. Of course it does depend very much on such things as decal sizes, etc. I wonder if the guys at Hash have any figures on memory usage that could help determine the break-even point for system memory. For example, the 'standard' measure of A:M/system speed is to render frames 98 & 99 (?) of the Toys project (from the CD) to disc and note how long the second frame took to render. Maybe the Hash guys could take a measure of peak memory usage for the same test project.

Which was my fastest time too. That was just a fluke, though, as I typically did it in about 53 seconds. I was still at school then, so that would have been about 25 years ago. The 4x4x4 cube was a much more complex beastie - that would take me several minutes to do. My 4-cube was a great aid to stress relief - it had so much more potential than the 3-cube for making pretty patterns - so I was really disappointed when it broke a year or two back. I still have all the bits, so maybe I'll get the glue out and fix it.

If you're using the version that came on the CD, there's almost certainly a newer update you can use - we're up to version 12.0q now.. 3D animation *is* a challenge. It can be quite daunting at first, but eventually things start falling in to place. At that point it's still a challenge, but really, really satisfying.

I do hate criticizing your work... Can I suggest giving the plug hole a bit of grime? A few feint scratches, just enough for specular highlights to reveal. Also, a specularity map dulling the metalwork will allow you to show where the cleaners haven't been quite so thorough.

On the Render To File settings panel you should see a 'Format' setting. That should let you choose between a movie file (AVI, MOV) or still frame sequence (BMP, TGA, etc). If you just want one frame to render, set the Start and End values of the 'Range' setting both equal to the number of the frame you want (which will be zero if you want the very first frame). (Exact text might vary - I'm working from memory here.)

The tutorial is incorrect, or you mis-read it. To override basic attributes, simply click on the attribute value you want changing and change it to whatever you want it to be. It's that simple.

320GHz? Wow, that *is* a fast PC! <grin!> How long it takes to render very much depends upon what you're trying to render. I've had 20-second animations that have taken over three days to render - admittedly on a far slower PC than yours. There are many things that can cause long render times, such as reflectivity, transparency, materials, hair, multipass rendering, etc, etc.

I've used surface constraints a couple of times, most recently as part of a mechanism for keeping the top surface of a bottle of water touching the sides of the bottle regardless of the bottle's orientation. One of my early experiments with surface constraints was a gin-and-tonic's view of ice cubes and a slice of lemon (QT7 285kB). I don't recall the details, but the surface of the gin used cloth (and a mirror finish to avoid having to throw in a background) which was then distorted as ice cubes dropped in. Once the cloth simulation was set, the ice cubes were replaced with other ice cubes which, after the initial drop, had a surface constraint to allow them to bob up and down with the surface.

Offhand, no, but I'm sure the question has been asked (with answers) some time in the last couple of years. Just a moment ... [<SFX: Frantic typing as Stuart does a quick search>] ... this thread might help. I'm still using the ones that came in the box with A:M V8.0.

Hmm. Do you mean the whole animation, or just a still?The whole animation. Of course, rendering just one frame should show whether or not it's worth rerendering the entire animation. I rerendered my Mood Shot in stereo (2Mb QT) and was pleased with the results. Compression artefacts do detract from the 3D effect, though. If you decide to give it a go, I suggest you leave it until such times as you you don't need your computer - it'll almost take twice as long to render as the original. Edit: I forgot to add - the 3D stereo effect isn't so good for low resolutions, but 480x270 should be good enough.

Have you ever considered rendering this in stereo? Given the depth of the room, I reckon it would work really well, especially with that shaft of light.

I do hope you're not making extra work for yourself. You do realise you only need to model one engine, and that you can attach the four copies you need as action objects within an action...? Create an action using the main plane, and then drag in the engine model four times, position them as you wish, and voila! - a fully engined C-130! Even if each engine needs to be slightly different to the others, you can create those differences in poses, which you tweak for each instance you bring into the action. So, to see the full plane, you simply drag the main part of the plane into your choreography, and then drag and drop the action on to that.

I like the lighting, although I'm pretty sure the shadows of candle the flames wouldn't look quite like that. The walls and floors look very flat, so a bump (or normal) map to accentuate the stones would help. I would also consider slightly distorting the walls (and to a lesser extent the foor) so that they aren't completely flat. With the exception of very expensive buildings (Egyptian pyramids, palaces, etc), stone walls tend to be built cheaply, and so rigid alignment falls by the wayside. (Maybe the telescope room would gain from this too?) The door handle looks a bit grand for a rough, stone built room. Maybe I'm not understanding what look you're going for, but I would make it look like worn, blackened iron - along with a couple of matching sturdy hinges.