John Bigboote

'Oh how I hate-Ohio State'---Not me, Michigan bumper sticker. I have a thing called a 'Frapper' in my signature (below) that is like a map where all/any Hasher's can stick a pin into to show from where they hail. I got a job offer last week from a place in Warren, OH...it was tempting, I've been thru there and it's nice.

I'm sorry... I just checked...'Volumetric' is not what you want. HERE is what I just did REAL quick to make a bulb's lens flare work: -Open A:M. -Make a new chor. -Right clik...new light. -Now, go UP in the PWS to the new light under the 'objects' heading and turn on Lens Flare (under 'options'). -Try a test render(shift-Q) in the chor...you 'should' see a lens flare from the bulb.

Under the bulbs properties, have you turned on 'Volumetric'?

GOOD question. I hate to say it...but this is one of M*y*'s strengths. I would speculate that you could 'possibly' accomplish this... by- rendering to .exr file format and then playing with these values in an A:M Composite scenario...(is this still a feature?) However, I fear that by diminishing the transparency of your model you will also diminish the transparency of the reflections and specularity...? Maybe Yves can elaborate. My 'other' suggestion would be...if you use a compositing app like AE (Adobe After Effects) those nuances could be 'contained' and manipulated separately. THIS way, all the OTHER features of AE would be available to you to manipulate with. (IE: blurs, levels, chokers, keys, color correctors... you name it!) I'll follow this thread. Good question!

ARE YOU KIDDING? What beautiful imagery...it could benefit from MT's advice... I LOVE IT!

No- not a plug. I made the 5X5(25) 2-sided square patches and then carefully put a bone at the axis of each. I then made an action and animated the 1st bone with the spin just the way I wanted...and then gave all the others an 'Orient Like' constraint with offsetting lag values- so the 2nd row was 3 frames late...the 3rd row 6 frames late...etc I then put the action where it needed to be in the chor and animated the decal transparency values between 1-100% to get the decal I needed to show when it needed to show.

THATS the million dollar question! 1 week. (5 eight hour days) approximately.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y29l0h-1yAE Just finished a VERY RETAIL TV spot for my recurring client, Art Van Furniture. The imagery was generated by decalling furniture photos to A:M geometry. Of note: I used the BensLens Fisheye to get the 'barrel-roll' effect (I love) and you can really see it in the middle on the words 'FUNCTION-STYLE-FASHION' Also used the AI Wizard for titles and Field Render for video smoothness... client LOVED it!

AM2SWF...me neither, bless 'zpiders' heart tho- We sure got excited about IT back in the day... You could count me in as an 'enthusiast'...I am still unsure of what it even IS that I am looking at... a swf file that is 'rendering' A:M content on the fly, huh? Would bone-driven animation work in this thing? There would need to be some sort of way to use the resulting files in a Flash authoring environment, no? OR are you just imagineering a quick A:M file-veiwer...? Curious!

Thats good info...I didn't know---in that process, is there any user specified tweekings, or is it a one-size-fits-all and see-it-when-it's-done sort of thing? ALSO did not know about doing it in QTPro...

HERE's what I've had success with: Make a new material...fluid...under it's properties/Droplet physics window, lower those values to 1-20...or 5 and 5. (Pressure Force=5, Surface Tension Force=5) Then, raise the viscosity to 125-150%. If you want a 'spray' or lots of droplets-lower the viscosity to 50-. You will also want to play around with the SIZE...and here's the BIG thing about A:M Fluids: The smaller the SIZE, the more the fluid looks and acts 'fluid'...the TRADEOFF being that you will need to have LOTS and LOTS more particles, and THIS is where the computational concerns will arise. More particles equals longer renders. Use the 'Shaded' render quality for your tests to keep them quick, and plan to render overnight/over weekend. There's really not much more to it, A:M Fluids are NOTHING to be intimidated by...HAVE FUN and be sure to show us what you are making!

Yeah, just contact Hash and they'll get you back-n-runnin whenst the time comes for it.

That looks like a great anime character! I agree with Robcat, where her assets lie are in her EYES and in the flow of the dress, and I'll look forward to your implementation of SimCloth for the dress. The eyes need be shiney and expressive...so far so good!

Oh- I thought that was a frame counter...it goes so fast...around 25-30fps I guess...standard PC...Sony Vaio P4 2.8ghz, 512 mbRam. So this thing is rendering right within the swf, huh? Pretty Darned Cool... I could think of some uses! So long as people don't have to download a utility to play it back... heck Flash is a hell of a game engine, the only thing missing was this sort of imagery...

How do I tell FPS... may I ask...how big (k-mb) is that animation?

That looks great! How long did it take to render? Could you give us a replay of how you setup the lighting/render/AO...???

How did kids EVER build snowmen without a kit? COOL stuff!

Oh? Are you dropping a hint? How cool would THAT be...are we all going to need to paint a room in our house black? If so, I already have one.

Yeah---your gonna need to 'fess-up' on how you got that line quality and glow....me-likey!!! Did you set the ambiance for the flame/img-seq to a high value?

I'm afraid... I don't get it. Is the ape being rendered via Flash? How can Flash be used as a renderer? If so, I'll stand in line, impressed! But still confused.

If you 'hover' over the buttons they explain themselves...it's the 11th button from the ledt typicly...a little green plus-sign...keyboard shortcut shift-Q. Then you can either click in the screen, or what I have grown accustomed to do is right-clik and drag a preview box, smaller=quicker...

This keeps coming up. There is a drop-dead easy solution, but on the surface it appears difficult, so nobody ever wants to try it. When a bone rotates on it's 'roll handle' axis, or ANY rotation in 3D animation for that matter- there are different ways of approaching the math of the spin. By default, a bone is set to be rotated by 'QUATERNIAN' mathematics... it 'sounds' like a deep term, but the root is 'QUARTER'... and a quarter of a spin is 90degrees...right? this works great for most simple bone rotations, but for something that goes 'round-n-round...like a FAN BLADE or a WHEEL... you need to approach the 'math' of the spin a little differently. SIMPLE: Adjust the roll-handle of the bone a little bit...just enough so that AM knows you are referring to that aspect of it. NOW, go to your PROPERTIES window and right-click on the ROTATE header and you will see some menus pop up...there should be one that says. "CHANGE DRIVER TO" and you simply change over from 'quaternion' mathematics to 'EULER' mathematics. Was that hard? No. Now, you will be able to spin that bone OVER-N-OVER-N-OVERAGAIN until the cows come home and the program knows what you are askin for... REPETITION. All these solutions with poses and actions and what-nots are very clever, but I guarantee if you look closely at your spin you will see a 'hitch' eventually, and oh, want to do an ease-in or out... good luck. SWITCH TO EULER. There's more about this in the manual.

We've been asking for a 'Kingdom of Riches' button, or slider... Nice test, John!

Gatherin dust, INDEED! That's the BEST sample I've seen yet!

What-the-heck-is-a 'hybrid cat lady'??? I think there might have been one of those down the street from me...when she moved out the humane society was there with nets for a week- then they had to raize the house.