NancyGormezano

To crudely summarize (in no special order): basic "rules" of proper splining is to try to 1) have good "spline continuity" 2) to avoid internal edges, 3) have normals facing out, 4) have no more than 2 splines cross at a CP and 5) (and there are probably more rules). One can get away with bad splining, but problems can show up when combined with other A:M features In the ears in particular, you seem to have extruded the ears from existing patches on the head, rather than splining a "hole" in the area that you wanted the ears, which would create 5 point patches in head (which you would close using the "donut" ring button, and then extruding the new spline ring instead, up and away from the head. It also appears that once you extruded the patches, you then extruded again and created internal patches in the ears to give it thickness (outer and inner ears). If you had not extruded middle cps, you could have avoided the internal patches. EDIT: It also appears that you do not have spline continuity along the edges of the ears (joining the inner, outer) - so that is maybe also a reason for the blotchy toon lines?) In your bear, for the ears, you could get away with 1) deleting the current extra patches for the ears, and then 2)create separate groups, unattached to the head patches, (like you did for the eyes, eyelids) and then plunk them down. If you want to have the ears as part of the head, then it would be better to create the spline ring first in the head and extrude that That was a lotta words - do you need some pictures? EDIT: also rather than remodel ears - perhaps you might get away with increasing the bias of your toon lines to get less splotchy looking toon lines.

Ah ha! I relooked at your original model that you posted (bert003) AND there was a CP unattached in the white part of the left eye - so I attached it to head bone - and displacement seems to not penetrate left eye anymore - so that helps some. I did not remodel the pupil, nor move it in this version - all I did was assign the errant CP. See if this works better for you. However - Remodeling the ears (and obeying A:M "rules" - ie - internal patches are probably causing the blotchy lines) will help get cleaner toon lines Bert 003CPreattached.mdl

Have you tried hitting the "page down" (multiple times, till you hear the bell), to make it display faster in real-time ? (decreases the number of subdivisions, not sure if that is available in mac?). As for the modeling funnies - I eliminated the ears and the problem remains . I doubt fixing the arm/neck areas (5 splines coming together) would help. I am "convinced" it is a displacement issue. But since you aren't going to deal with this anymore, I won't waste my time trying to track it down further.

hmmm...very curious. I just tried to redo pupil. And was not successful in getting rid of problem - it seemed to move. In the process of redoing, I noticed that you have many modeling funnies, which may or may not be contributing to problem when using displacement. Not sure. The modeling funnies are all over (ears, neck/shoulder for example). It seems you tend to violate some A:M modeling rules (such as in extruding the ears from existing patches, and having 5 splines come together in neck/shoulder). However, without remodeling, I am noticing that the problem seems to be a result of using displacement. And the problem will change how it shows up based on how close to camera you are (and maybe angle?). If you change the displacement image to a bump type (made the cylidrical decal 10x10 seamless on, 30%, planar one 1x5 30%), the problem goes away. Unfortunately without remodeling, I can't really test hypothesis. So changing displacement to bump is all that I can suggest right now. I have never had to reinstall A:M. Never needed it. Would not think will clear anything up for you. At most, one might do help/reset settings. But that is also very rare for me. Doing that will not help this. heres the model with displacement changed to bump Sorry. EDIT: problem shows up in 16b/32 and 17g/64. Have not seen it in 18M - but like I said, it seems to be intermittent. Sometimes I can consistently get problem to occur in 16b, 17g EDIT2: nope - problem shows up in 18m with multipass render Bert 003ver17gneweyes30perBUMP.mdl

Any luck?

heres some screen caps. I repeat, just in case you missed above post

I notice a variety of things funny about the modeling of the eyes - 1) the left pupil has the normals pointing the wrong way, 2) it looks like there are internal edges in the pupil (you probably extruded the pupils), and 3) both pupils are intersecting the "white part" of the eye. If you look at the eyes only from a back view (in model window) - you can see that both render funny Try breaking the internal edges (or get rid of the back faces of pupil), fixing the normals to face front, and move the pupils out some from the white part so that they are not intersecting the white part?

Captain Crazy Pants might enter the Missus (TBD) into the CCC. Meet Mz. Swallow Tail Buttah-Very-Fly Pants (EDIT:changed image to have softer shadows, lighter background)

My first suspicion (without looking at your model) is using toon lines, toon rendering and displacement. There have always been "funnies" in rendering with toon. If you don't render with toon - does the anomaly still show up?

How about black lace stockings? Another interesting idea. Coincidentally, I had a version of Madame Mothra with black fishnet stockings, then decided I preferred the pink tights.

Thanks Dan...Hmmm...interesting idea...will muddle/toy with it some. Spiders, however are not allowed in the contest (not insects)....HAH! like that would stop me. I had thought about making arms, legs of Wanna Bee black, but thought it funnier to leave them skin colored.

Okie-dokie Here's the beginning of my thread

Characters I've been working on for the Summer 2015 Image Contest: INSECT! Meet Madame Mothra, Beetle Zabub, Captain Wanna Bee and Mr. Money Bugs.

When you are in the modeling window, you should be able to "right click with mouse" on the model , choose plugins/export/ and any format that is listed - including X What export options do you see? (mine: screen capture from A:M 18M/64, windows 7 pro)

I'm in...AND I have it almost done...might do some more ...

Thanks Steffen! I like the "snap bone to cp" very much - I can see it being very useful when positioning bones, rather than having to eyeball it. Unfortunately any new feature - just makes one think that there are other mods that could be made - such as when snapping a parent bone to a cp, it would be nice to have an option (ie like when using ctrl and/or a manipulator currently in bones mode) such that the children of the parent move with the parent (but do not snap). Currently I only see the parent snapping, children stay in place. And similarly, to simplify rigging, it would be nice to have a snap bone to bone - to align control bones with geometry bones, which very commonly occurs. Currently one does this with constraints of course - but requires doing it in an action, and then exporting the model (which has other problems). It would be better to be able to do it as a bone mode option (in addition to the constraints available in skeletal mode)

I am going to guess that at some point when animating that you "slid" the keyframes for the model to the right, and that is one way that there would be no key frames at frame 0 for the rotation - see my simple example. If you want to cleanup the key frames for your chor - Set a rotation keyframe on frame 0 for your model NC0111 for 0, -90, 0, and then delete all the keyframes for translation and rotation past frame 0 - the animation seems to be holding up here on my computer. Ska 26keysatframe0.prj

I'm guessing this is the article translation by Google: An (almost) forgotten 3D world Dinosaurs software or the old masters? The island solution Animation: Master at a glance. (P.56)

wonderful!

More testing ..All previous above rendering tests were done in 16b/32, not using any post effects. This time trying out post effects available using opengl3 (Nvidia GPU effects?), in ver 18g/64. Testing inspired by Rodney's thread here Can't say I'm a fan of using any of these GPU post effects , would prefer to have more control via decals, materials, lighting....But here are my results of post effecting (original image seen here) in case anyone is curious Have just downloaded 18l to see what else might be new

Thanks Rodney! Unfortunately I've been using 16b/32 (because that's last version TSM2 works, and it's a pain to have to rig, then switch to newer A:M version with re-rigged model, (and take out fakeao, then use SSAO instead) - and have had real-time display problems (hair, shaded) with 18g opengl3 (A:M reports #6547) - Have to figure out efficient way to switch versions BUT I just went into 18g - to render (chor created in 16b), changed to opengl3, deleted fakeao (didn't yet substitute SSAO), and the GPU post effects shows up as rendering options. Will have to experiment! Especially with those effects I've never heard of!: "Dilate" "Erode" "Laplacian" "Prewitt" "Sobel"

hmmm...I do not have - what version A:M (last I have is 18g 64) -

Nice ! but what do you mean GPU post effects?

Thanks Simon, Steve, Stephane, Rodney, John And especially Stefff285 (welcome Stephane! - hope you stick around and ask many questions) - it was your recent (2 days ago) posting that started me investigating - after looking at your 2D works, and investigating the grease pencil feature in Blender (mentioned by Nemyax in your thread) . A:M doesn't have something quite like grease pencil - ie drawing 2D with pencil like strokes in real-time, but one might animate 2D flat facial features perhaps by a combo decaling/rendering method

Here are some variations. All with 1 klieg (sometimes white, or orange), zbuffered shadows 60% dark, 1% soft, and global Ambiance - either color or IBL. Ground is front projected, flatshaded.