ddustin

Here is an image of our last A:M project. The vehicles were modeled by Rodger Reynolds and Matt Campbell, great job guys.

Yes that program has a good reputation. The shortest way though is to create a new model from scratch in A:M. You'll spend a boat load of hours trying to get it to import, and you'll find it still isn't right. A:M isn't intended to to work with other programs, in the sense of model interchangability.

I think Stian should create a car tutorial for sale. He has some apprehension about how to do it, but I think it would be a big seller. Just my opinion. (I need to be careful, don't want to have the guys I buy vehicle models from, thinking I am trying to influence the market) David

Yes it was 2 neons in the accident, pretty strange huh? And yes I am gathering quite a collection of vehicles. And yes they do get smashed pretty good (Neons). David

They are going to work fine for our purposes. Stian is a great talent, and a joy to work with. We communicated/chatted almost every day. Both these cars are going to get messed up pretty bad though.... David

Absolutely fantastic work! David

Thanks for the comments. It is not rigged right now. It's usage is open at this point. David

Here is a project we are working on. The model was created by Xtaz. Texturing by us. David spine_Dustinproductions.mov

Animusic did some stuff for Kansas (rock band, not the state), that was awesome. David

Colin, We live right between Cartersville and Calhoun on Interstate 75 (exit 306). It is about 40 miles from your house I think. David

It has been a long time since the Atlanta group got together. With Colin out of the hospital now, we needs to get one scheduled. We have met in Atlanta the times I have attended. We have talked about possibly meeting in Chattanooga. Martin has hinted he may be interested in providing shirts etc.... Just let me know your preferences. As an alternative, we could meet at my home. We live in between Atlanta and Chattanooga, right off the interstate. Depending on the weather, we could have a volleyball game afterwards. Families are welcome. We will have wireless access setup and refreshments. Please let others in the Atlanta, Chattanooga area know,,,, Thanks, David

Mark, I am having a bit of a hard time getting the rig to work. I followed the instructions to the best of my ability (which would be a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10) and can't get it to work. Any revisions to your rig? Thanks, David

Robert, To have them do it without having to add constraints to each and every one requires you to code the mdl file by hand. If you only have a few trees it isn't too bad. We have 100's David

Robert can you be a little more specific as to your goal? First priority is trees. I figure I can use the Hair function for grass of most any height. I saw, and bookmarked, the Zpider tutorial for trees, but the design-type that you get from that isn't what I need. At the moment I'm thinking about using the Hair function on a series of distorted spheres with short, flat hairs, and maybe, just maybe I can stack them to make a convincing tree. I'm using v.11 at the moment so the v.13 plug-in isn't possible until I upgrade, which probably wan't be far off. I'm building a frontier garrison post, patterened after the mud-brick construction in Timbuktu and Mali. I'd like to add some trees between the buildings. Mostly only the upper part of the trees will be seen. The HERO DUDE is just for scale, so steps and doors look reasonable [attachmentid=20930] The best way to create trees is make them from patch panels. You create a simple rectangle made from 2 patches and use a image targa image as a cookie cutter. The panel can be constrained to aim at the camera or a better solution is to add a bone to the panel and have the aim roll handle, aim roll at a master null. This master null can be constrained to any camera in the scene, effectively giving you most of the benefits of hair without all the slowdown and other inherent issues with hair (look out for hair jitter). If you can find an image of the tree you want, hopefully it comes with an alpha channel, otherwise you will need to create one. We are building our library (I keep saying I'm going to sell it but.....) and have over 13 trees that are hard coded to automatically aim at a master null, as well as having a 2nd constraint for making the top of the tree move, In unison, like the wind. You can use the MMOP plugin (multiple models on Path) from Stephen Gross to drop hundreds of auto constrained trees at a time. You would need to create the same thing for V11 trees, as V13 models will not sork with V11. Hope this helps

Robert can you be a little more specific as to your goal? Trees? Grass? Plants? David

Actually I meant how to sepparate the images/textures in either Accutrans of som other app. There are sooooo many 3ds props out there, and we haven't been able to get over this hurdle. David

http://www.micromouse.ca/ I haven't figured out a way to remove the textures from a 3ds model. Anyone else know how (even if it was from within another program). We have a bunch of 3ds props that we would want to do this too.... David

Great job Dennis!

Marcos, 1. You are an excellent vehicle modeler 2. You are an excellent vehicle modeler 3. If there was a way to have your models not have the rubber skin look they would be perfect. What I mean is the surfaces kind of look (a very small amount) like a diver's wet suit. It is enough for the critical eye to catch. If the vehicle was in motion, you would never see it. 4. You are an excellent vehicle modeler Keep those vehicles coming! David

Very nice work Julian! David

No there is not a clean way to do it. The only way you can save it as an A:M model is import it, then save it. David

losrem, Thanks for the compliments. I wish we could show more of what we do. Textures don't come in well. What I do is use a product called accutrans to set the group properties to a decent color. We also sepparate the wheels from the model (creating one wheel prop) and add the wheel (4 of them into the chor so we can animate them. I don't have an AM peugeot model. Let me know if you need more help with this, I can have my son look at it tonight if you don't want to get the softeware (It's only like $20). If you need an AM model of the car, you could have it contracted. There are some excellent vehicle modelers here. Hope this helps... David

Are you importing it as a prop or as a model? You want to right click in the chor window and select import prop. What vehicle is it (make, model etc). David

Jody, Both my lights are kliegs and have been added in the chor instead of bones added to the model. As far as I know it doesn't matter if they are added in the chor. The volumetric light has the intensity turned way down so you can just see it. Making sure they were the same size helped a little but the banding is still there. The co-joined lights are positions right in front of the glass lens of the headlights. Any other thoughts? David Quality fixed it THANKS. Quality was at 200%, increased it to 500% and it's good. David

Jody, Thanks for the response. 1. No they were not the same size, but that has been rectified. 2. They are constrained together. I'll check out the model. David