John Bigboote

256 passes! (1 hour 13 min)

No, not at all! A:M does it at the very last moment- after the last pass. You COULD do it the way you mention, in a compositer by checking the box to save the fakeAO in it's own buffer(image sequence)

For hoots I'm gonna let it go overnight and render 256 passes... here is after 9 passes. Probably won't look too much different! See how I get stuck on this stuff?

MERRY CHRISTMAS... early. (the included matcap was used in the candle holder's properties.) image was 9 passes with DOF 3:29 in V 17.0A/64 candle.prj candle.mdl

Now, I want to add an animated flame using Rob's distortion box idea...

I've found it usually helps to add a light behind the object to 'coach' the SSS in cases where you really-really want to see the SSS effect.

Here's a test candle project: All in 17.0A 64 candle.mdl candle.prj

beautiful image, rekh!

Pretty danged cool, Rob. Did you try 'upping' your project FPS to some ridiculous amount, like 400 ?

YEAH---that...what does that allow for- making higher resolution maps?

With more people using exporters like the improved OBJ exporter, it is very convenient to bake all your surface attributes before you export... makes for a much simpler OBJ file. DON'T FORGET, once you have baked- you will need to SAVE the generated imagery where you want it- AND you will want to DELETE any decals, groups, patch-images or other 'superfluos' or 'redundant' elements.

Maybe something that fell-thru the cracks... good catch!

That is one stellarly-smooth face! Looks 'overly-porcelined'... I love it!

THANKS Nancy. THAT was what I was looking for... I suppose you would need to bake the action... and then delete all the keyframes except for the one frame you wanted... and then export the chor as a .mdl

Trying to remember how we used to take a specific frame of animation on a character and export it as a model... completely posed as it was on that frame. Anyone remember?

I see what you mean... the geometry disappears when it slips underneath the obj base that you are modelling over. Keep in mind, the retopology tool snaps the CPs to the surface, but it can't limit the connecting splines from penetrating... this would eventually work itself out once you add more geometry(CP's) that adhere to the surface, but at this early stage you would need to put-up with some of your geometry slipping under the base and disappearing like that.

Direct your inquiries to Jason at hash dot com for official answers. GREAT to see you still using A:M Elm... you and your group do amazing work!

I'm not understanding... it looks 70% transparent to me...

COOL! I like the drilling action... looks like the particles are set to additive making them all-white, whereas the material being cut is a sort of grey... maybe try turning the additive to OFF in the sprite's properties?

And 17.0/64bit. Do you report to A:M or Jenpy?

Yeah, me too. I didn't have my 32 bit FakeAO thingy installed... so I found it... installed it... tried it... and crashed. I even set the Focal Length to 70. I can verify your dilemma! Yup- deleted your post effect and made a new one of my own... still crash.

Hey Nancy- the SSE4 I got from the 'Help' and 'About Animation Master' splash... I am stumped with V17.0/32 and FakeAO. A:M does not recognize that I have it upon booting, and will not see it as an option under New/PostEffect. My Version 17/64 and 17/32 are both installed to the same directory so they both read from the same plug-in folders... I gotta figger this out- can't do a test for you right now... are you still crashing?

I have both, but used what you had it set at which was FastAO CPU version... my test was on the 64 bit version of the new A:M Version 17.0 SSE4 I remember when we were all new to FastAO, cranking-up the focal length was a 'trick' to get an enhanced effect (I think it was the trial version and we were trying to push it further.) This is not necessary anymore, you can increase the gamma setting higher than 1 (I like 1.3ish) and you can increase the SamplingLevel and # of Samples ever higher now. I did a movie with a simple camera move... and cranked up settings (but NOT the focal length) the ONLY thing I do not like is the way the AO texture travels with the scene... something unnatural about it... Nancy_000.mov

I'm DL'ing the new 17R... will try shortly. EDIT: Wull, it worked. (a peacock image is missing) The ONE thing I may have done differently, is I look to see if you had the buffers set right (depth, color) and you did... and then I always look to see if the FakeAO's camera's focal length setting is the same as the REAL camera's setting- and I saw you had it cranked-up to 250. So, I set it back to 70(your cameras focal length) and rendered. The WEIRD thing... is that after I had rendered, uploaded to this post- and then went to close the A:M render screen- I crashed. I'm looking in to see if that repeats. EDIT to EDIT: 2nd time around it did not crash... man alive- this new release is greased-lightning in the RENDER department!!! Whoooo!

I have not noticed these changes... but they are all worthwhile!