Godfrey

That's a great character. You probably already know this, but just in case... his right arm passes through the doorjamb in frames 105-126.

The next panel in this cartoon?

That's not showing up here either. genocell, you can upload a copy of your images directly to the Hash board, by using the "File attachments" box directly above the post/preview buttons. It's really handy when you're using a host that forbids linking from other sites. The downside is that you can only attach one image per post.

Look at the left (viewer's right) outer upper incisor to see what I'm talking about. The tooth looks like it's extruded straight down, and (from this angle, at least) it looks like all the curvature in the front plane is at the extreme edges. Teeth aren't normally that flat; they're a bit more rounded. The antihelix looks very angular up at the top (between the scapha and the fossa triangularis).

Very nice! Are you using a porcelain material, or is the model really that smooth? The only areas I could see to improve would be the teeth (which look a little flat) and the ear.

Well... dang. That's amazing. You ought to post this in the main forum, so those people who only read the mailing list can see it too. Does this work in non-multipass mode as well? (I'm currently rendering an animation, or I'd try it myself.) Maybe these effects should be added to the default choreography setup, so that even the greenest newbie benefits from the technique right out of the box...

It's available here. Along with sample projects, too.

Was that 2 minutes and 32 seconds or 2 hours and 32 minutes? Whoops, sorry! Two minutes, thirty-two seconds.

Thanks! This is an attempt at giving her long hair with a side part. It's a little "big" for my tastes; I'm having a hard time getting it to do exactly what I want. (Is there a video tutorial available on how to groom hair, like there was for hair locks in v10?)

Thanks! It's just a single emitter. Hair System: Preroll: 00:00:20 Cast Shadows: ON Control Points: 4 Dynamics: ON Stiffness: 57% Density: 100% Length: 10cm Thickness: 100% Kinkiness: 100% Kink Scale: 100% Hair Emitter: Image: None Cap Ends: OFF Density: 75 Length: 100% (Variation: 10%) Position Variation: 100% Direction Variation: 10% Surface: Diffuse Color: (94,52,9) Specular Color: (201,177,132) Specular Size: 25% Specular Intensity: 50% Brightness: 100% Variation: 10% Thickness: 0.05cm (Variation: 10%) Bow: 75% (Variation: 0%) Kinkiness: 100% (Variation: 10%) Kink Scale: 500% (Variation: 10%) Face Camera: 100% (Variation: 0%) Now here's the tricky part. Click on "Kinkiness". Switch to the channels view in the timeline, and add a point somewhere around 25% (horizontal). Drag the point at 0% (horizontal) down to 0% (vertical). Change the interpolation method of the 25% point to zero slope, then drag the bias handle of the 0% point up so it makes a nice curve: (After doing this, your Kinkiness property will read 0%, even though the majority of the hair has got 100% kinkiness.) Now click on "Thickness". Go to 100% (horizontal) in the timeline, and drag the point downwards to 0% (vertical). That gives it a nice taper from root to tip, and makes it look less shaggy. For darker roots in the hair, click on the "Diffuse Color" entry in the surface properties (not the color chip, just the name). Add points in the channels timeline for the red, green and blue channels at around 10%. Then move the points at 0% downwards. I used RGB (58,28,4). It actually didn't take too long to create, though I wasn't really looking at the clock. If I'd known what I was doing, it probably only would have taken a few minutes; at any rate, it couldn't have been more than half an hour for all the tweaking and re-rendering. Final render took 02:32 on my system (non-multipass at, 800x600 resolution).

Holy crap, the hair in v11 is fantastic. Now to learn something about hairstyles, so I can give her a more flattering cut...

Hey, I can hear the ocean in this thing! It's pretty simple to activate/deactivate a number of objects in the choreography at once: If they're contiguous in the PWS, click on the first object, then scroll down and shift-click on the last object, keeping the shift key held down until the screen has finished repainting. Or, if you've got the objects in a subfolder in the choreography, simply right-click on the folder (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) and click on "Select Children". You can then toggle the Active property in the Properties panel, and all of the selected objects will follow suit. You can also use this method for many other properties, and the little icons next to the object's name (pickable/unpickable, wireframe/shaded/hidden). Bonus tip: If you need to use your computer for something while A:M is rendering and you don't want to abort, but your system is too sluggish because A:M's hogging the CPU, if you're using Windows XP (or, I presume, an NT flavor), hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and find Master.exe in the process list (second tab). Right-click on Master.exe and change the process priority to "Lower". Do what you need to do and then set A:M's priority back to normal by the same method. Windows may warn about affecting system stability, but in my experience that only comes into play when you set a process to higher than normal priority.

Pat, Thanks for your comment. The textures actually do blend, but I kept the blended area relatively small (it's been a while since I've eaten lobster, but I seem to recall that the edges of the exoskeleton were fairly abrupt at the joints).

Yes. Well, MIDI-triggered drumstick samples, at any rate. Eventually I'm going to have to find something that sounds more like chitin and record it (as well as squidging my hand around in something like tapioca pudding for a sound effect to accompany the walk cycle).

Here's a model I've been working on for the past week, nearly finished. It's a member of the "Great Race", from The Shadow Out of Time by HP Lovecraft (my wife has ceremoniously named it "Lemon Head"). Click here for a short animation test (1.45 MB MPEG-1 with sound). The walk cycle (slither cycle?) needs a little work, and the head neads a little more detail, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. During the process of rigging this model, I have arrived at the conclusion that tentacles are a pain in the ass, but dynamic constraints kick ass.

If you'd like higher res than the 1024x768 pics the thumbnails are linked to, let me know; I can put up the 2048x1536 images.

Yeah, once I've got all the props finished I'll be doing higher-quality renders (soft shadows, maybe some radiosity, possibly even some focal blur), but I had to crank them out overnight so I could print them up this morning, which meant just basic single-ray lights (given 45-120 minutes per frame at 2048x1536 resolution, depending on how much glass was in view).

Thanks, Dragonranja and DarkLimit... The lights were all spots, except for one fill light underneath (oops, which I just noticed I forgot to change the tint to match the new carpet color; oh well) and a sun which was supposed to come in through the windows, but once I actually stuck in the glass it did so much less noticeably. No global illumination or ambiance.

My office is going to be relocating soon, and my boss asked if I could help draft some preliminary plans to give to the architects. I used A:M to lay it out, rendering out a slice of the walls in wireframe mode for the paper plans, then modeled like a monkey on crack over the weekend to put in some "set dressing": Click the thumbnails for larger versions. Sadly, I ran out of time and only got about a third of the way through making the props for the office area, so I won't be posting those until I've finished them. (At which point I'll render with soft shadows, as well...) Still, I was happy enough with them, and they did highlight some problems with the specifications (some of the existing lights in the space will have to be moved to avoid the new wall placement, for example).