John Bigboote

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.

How does Octanes accept A:M's materials? Do they need to be baked first, or reworked in Octane using Octane's proprietary materials...? Too bad about the MDD's... looks like Octane is primarily a 'still frame' renderer that is being made into an animation renderer as an afterthought. Things like field rendering and motion blur will fall thru the cracks, but what a great DOF it has!

SLOW DOWN! Seriously though, looking good(although kinda dark)... is that real AO or FastAO? Can't wait to see what tricks you have in store with that rope...!

Wow Elm--- cool tests! Would love to see Alan Wood in motion. SO- Octane Render ($135- currently still in beta) accepts animation:Master's exported MDD and OBJ files? This could be a catalyst to bring back many former A:M users who loved the modeling tools but left for other reasons. I'd like to try the demo of Octane Render but apparently my graphics card is not CUDA compliant. Would love it if you could keep us up on your findings. Was the 'Shlitten' modeled in A:M?

Yup. the sky represents 'nothing' or 'forever' and will be matted away upon render...that's why it turns to black when you render. You can change the color of the sky under the cameras property box to whatever color you might want. Once you get your bearings of whats going on here, and in AE... you will be up and running!

Wow. Awesome- David... so cut-n-dry! I need to learn this stuff- this is a huge help, I can see possible uses for it in everyday rigging. I will need to watch it about a dozen times 1st so it sinks in. VERY professional.

THILLY! I was a little nervous... I've heard people use that as an expression for something else... burbing clam... nevermind. I liked it.

Thanks for the nice replies. The BEST part of this A:M test... is having the Maya people say 'No Way' and not even attempting to do a test at all. But when/if I show it to them... I can expect them to point-out things and say 'Oh Maya does a better job with that...'. F*ckers.

Rob's A:M knowledge IS encyclopedic...A thru Z! we all appreciate it regularly. It's his choice of sample images that he uses as decals that is unfortunate.

You should really consider the Russian woman bit... but take a good look at her dowry first. The Skype of today is entirely different from the Skype of say...2-4 years ago. I tried it back then too and was not happy... had my doubts about it but with a new webcam... it's the shizz.

I got a chance to do a test to try to win some 3D work, I had 1 day to show I can do a pre-designed Female groundhog for the national 'Miss Dig' campaign. A:M got me from spline1 to finished render in about 7 hours... modeling, texturing, rigging (TSM2) animating and rendering(with FastAO). Sure- there's room for improvement, but I think a test like this in 1 day is 'spankin' !!! MissDig_1_Day_TEST.mov

Looking really good Shawn... I'm posting an A:M testiment right now too... A:M rocks!

VERY GOOD!

Good fix...since this is an excercise... how about bevelling the one last chamfer that needs to be smoothed...? (aint I a pain in the arse?)

Sorry, could'nt resist.

Top-notch splineing, I must say! That would look good on a T-Shirt... for it's 'innuendo'...

That reminds me... I need to shop for lower auto insurance...

Lookin good! Quicktime is fine, we all use it all the time- plays great- quick load. There are several different ways to get DOF, within A:M and outside- using an app like After Effects. Are you thinking of showing any wind action? That foreground tree would be a great 'blowing' action, then figure out a way to get the vortex of dust after the fly by.