John Bigboote

oh yeah---AMFilms chopped my blurb off. Looks funny- live and learn.

I'm looking in my description for where I may have said that...

That's great! Made my day! How fun! When do we get a Youtube link?

It might be one of those features that is prohibitive to animations because of high render time, only used for stills- but I could be wrong. Have you used the forum's Search feature to find previous discussions on Radiosity?

I saw that too but didn't know it was necessary... apparently must be...

Perhaps you need to reinstall the TSM2 hxt files... I'll see if i can zip and upload the ones I am using... TRY THESE. TSM2_HXT.zip

I've had a different experience altogether... I actually rigged 4 or 5 characters just last week rather swiftly in RC1 on a PC in the 32 bit version. I'm trying to think what the snag could be on your end... try copying your characters modeled geometry into a new model afresh and try again maybe...?

Y'know--- I've heard that in the middle ages it was quite common for someone to be buried alive. Frequently, people who were merely unconscious or had low vital signs were pronounced dead and buried- only to revive later in a underground coffin. It was so common an occurrence that they would place a bell in the coffin with the deceased, to ring if needed. Ghastly.

Be very proud of that! Just having seen it thru to finished shows incredible resolve, and it is very very good! I hope it gets plenty of views.

We could do a 'bus stop' type thing... where we upload a project complete with a rigged character(s), setting and sound file. It would be up to the individual participant to download, animate, direct camera angles, lights and render to file.

Yeah- I may have gotten another 2-3 votes if I left the 'Bile Flavor' off... me and my 'in-jokes'... a guy I knew would always burp really loud and then use an announcers voice to say 'Mmm- Now available in new BILE flavor!" Cracked me up, not everyone. The legs were sort of a 'The Graduate' poster takeoff... in the original version MotorMouth was looking up at the girl like Dustin Hoffman looking at the leg.

Congratulations to Will Sutton for stealing the show on the mascot contest. Here are/were my two additions. 1)Motormouth... this is the alternate version I debated over entering. An old character I repurposed for the contest. Used a MatCap ambient shader on the car paint which I think works pretty well. 2) Kitty Kat- this was done very quickly, and was a test using A:M Paint to control the color and length of the fur. I hope to finish her up and do some animation with it. Kitty Kat cartoon on label by Shane Glines. Both did very very poorly in the voting- but I wasn't in it to win... just happy to participate. I'd like to thank the one other person who gave me a vote.

I done the 11 Second Club quite a few times and always finish in the 75% range (or 150ish out of 200 entries) Even though the judging is quite harsh and some of the comments can be brutal, I recommend it. What would be fun would be to have a topic here in the forum where a bunch of us discuss our ideas for the months audio clip... show WIPs and give constructive criticisms and finally enter the clips to see how we fare... I would 'in' for that!

Yeah- bus stop... it may not be too late! just switch-out the background! It reminds me of a cartoon I saw once that is the story of my life... an old man and woman sitting in a mall on a bench. The woman is reading a book, the man is idley people-watching... a pair of young boys walk by- he watches them... an old woman in a walker... he watches her... a mother pushing a stroller. All the while his wife is just reading. Then- a hot store clerk in a mini dress and heels struts by... he watches her- but the old lady looks up- sees him looking and SLUGS him angrily.

Wow- a nice tip of the hat from Stian! The two of you are our Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Great work Rodger, awe-inspiring- how did I miss this thread back in January??? AND- I always wondered... who was this 'Phillips' guy... what exactly was wrong with his head... and why did they name a screwdriver after him??? (From my comedy routine that will never happen)

Great! I really like the AO-SSS look... altho some of your images thus far have either been over or under exposed... or maybe its this monitor. I really like the 'Angelina' look she has, altho the eye makeup may be a bit dark (looks like she has shiners) BUT- I am mostly unfamiliar with the Tomb Raider thang... so maybe that's the way it is. AND- I've learned that to REALLY get your SSS to do it's full effect... you can make a new light and assign it (via a light list) only to the character with the SSS... a little behind her and off to one side... gives a nice rim light AND kicks the SSS into gear(light penetrating thru thinner parts of skin, like earlobes).

Hey welcome back Manta! What was your name before? Maybe some of us remember you. Win7 and A:MV 15-16 is a slam dunk. I would recommend using version 16 beta even though you will buy V15... it's that much better, and incredibly stable. (PLUS- you can take advantage of your 64 bit OS) Poly importers DO take long times... the bigger/more polys... the longer- let it go overnite. AND--- some of our members are experimenting with exporting OBJ models AND animations via MDD file format for external render in Modo or Octane Render... these are exciting times! Meanwhile- the A:M native render keeps getting better and better while faster and faster... all this making A:M an attractive package to 'switch back to'. Hope your transition is smooth and rapid.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR. From Michigan!

Really nice. Are you employing SSS on the skin? I tell you... between SSS and Fast AO... I am really happy with the skin quality and nice fast renders.

NICE. I've found weighting is an art unto itself. Best done in an action or chor where you can move the bones about, see issues, and rewieght via muscle mode. You get the weights just right for a certain pose... put the model in another action or pose- and see that the weights do not work as well now. It's really about finding a happy medium and trading off between smartskin and manual CP smoothing. When you get deep into weighting you will appreciate it if you used minimal splineage when you were modeling. It would be great if you could make a pose that changed a CP or group of CPs weight assignments... FEATURE REQUEST! Maybe you can using relationships or something else way over my head. ALSO: Has anyone else noticed that the weight editor is acting quite differently in V16 from the way it did in the past? Say, if you have some CPs and they are weighted 50% to bone 1 and 50% to bone 2, and you want to throw in a 3rd bone at only 20% but keep bone 1 at 50%... so it would be B1-50%, B2 30%, B3 20%... it used to be that all you needed to do was (in the editor) click a bone, enter a value one by one, and 'apply'. NOW- if I put the 3rd bone in there and give it a value of 20... the editor will automatically 'do the math' on the other two and give them 40-40%... but I want bone 1 at 50%... so I click bone 1 and enter 50... but the editor again 'does the math' on the other two and splits the difference equally... but thats not what I wanted... so I go round and round this way until I get 'near' to what I want. I prefer the old way... I can 'do the math' quite well myself. BEFORE I make a report... anyone else in agreement? Maybe I should make this its own topic...

Where is this again? On my work PC I have video card issues new to V16 that will amaze you... I've been chasing drivers and fiddling with settings and 'living with it' for months now... usually a save-restart gets me going again, but for how long...? That is on my WinXP64 Nividea Quadro FX 3500.I've updated the driver, updated OpenGL even. A:M 64 is much worse- but the 32 is bad too. I'll take any lead I can get. Maybe I'll do a screen capture for the forums entertainment.

I have never seen that option... I have a Nvidia and an ATI on 2 different computers, Win XP64, Win 7... never seen Tools/Options/Global/Don't disable aero checkbox.

Very good. Can't wait to see her move.

Works for me. Wonder why the reflectivity aspect missed the 'bake-boat'.

V-16: Once you have your materials and decals all set, you would on the model in the PWS and select 'Bake Surface'... A:M will work for a minute or so (it hasn't crashed)... and then you will notice a new decal in your decals folder, and new 'bs' images in your images folder (bs_color, bs_specular intensity, bs_specular size, bs_ambience intensity, bs_bump and bs_transparency) You should then delete all your materials and other decals (for they are now double represented) and SAVE AS and test for render similarity and speed increase. GLAD TO HELP YOU, I feel we owe you, Elm! EDIT: Actually... you should be able to delete most all of your groups at this point. I would'nt delete groups that have hair, SSS, and I'm wondering how an environment or matcaps work...prolly save those groups too. AND- Baking is a powerful feature (I suppose) when used in conjunction with AMPainter.