zandoriastudios

Brilliant!

Check-out these Smartskin tutorial videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/zandoria#g/c/0BF44797CD8BC2A3 I think it will help

they are locked... look for the padlock icon on the toolbar to unlock

great tip!

Why replace the decal? All you have to do is replace the blank image with the new image (Add Image, then delete blank). I think you might be making it overly complicated...

It sounds like you might be better off using multiple stamps, or even multiple decals.

The image on the left looks pretty clean--why isn't that what you are using as a template for painting? if you are bringing it into A:M to try to align it (image on the right?), then I think you might be going about it wrong... You should use a blank image and use that as your decal, then take the screen capture of the UV editor and use that as a template for painting. See this tutorial

temporarily change your desktop resolution before taking the screen capture.

I was having lunch yesterday at CiCi's Pizza, and on a big screen in the rear of the dining area was playing some old Hannah Barbera cartoons.... I couldn't hear the sound, only watch the images. I was noticing a lot of reused drawings, loops, and stuff--which is a great time saver for things drawn by hand. Then I started thinking about how you could just render reusable clips with an alpha channel, and composite all the different elements in AfterEffects, rather than re-rendering the same reusable action in different scenes. Of course, it would not have the same freedom as staging every shot uniquely, but over time you would have a pretty big library of clips to pull from if you were making an animated series... I notice that I tend to favor a certain lighting when I setup my renderings, so different elements rendered separately should work together pretty well... Do any of you already work this way? Please discuss!

Don't be intimidated of smartskin--it is easy to do, and really the best way to shape a joint . You are essentially reshaping the joint at the extremes, it acts like a keyframe, blending towards that shape the nearer it gets to that position. I always weight the mesh first, but in my opinion that only takes you halfway, except for very simple tube-shaped limbs, or torso, neck... Shoulders and hips almost always need a little smartskin (frankly it is often quicker that tweaking the weighting over and over...) There is a link in my signature to some tutorial videos that will help.

Awesome work, Mark!!!

Jim Talbot made this "Golden Shlitzy" for a trophy--could be used as a Forum graphic, for "contests won", instead of ****

Nice! I recently read Goethe's "Theory of Colors", and even bought a glass prism--but I never thought of trying to do it with a rendering!

You may just be able to make it with notepad. It is just a text file with .mtl as the extension and it has the same name as the .obj...the structure looks like this: # Rhino newmtl material1 Ka 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 Kd 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 Ks 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 Tf 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 d 1.0000 Ns 0 map_Kd sculpristexture01.jpg I don't know what any of it means, except map_Kd should have the name of the texture the d might be for diffuse color? Ka might be alpha? Ks might be specular? possibly you could edit it to load the other map channels after researching the format online

When you exported it, was a file created with the extension .mtl? That file is where the path to the texture file is stored If not, you may have to take another step...I have had to bring an .obj into Rhino, add the texture, and re-export (luckily the UVs seemed to stay intact, even though the .mtl file hadn't been created) then I had an .obj and a .mtl

Mark. Read these two books: http://www.amazon.com/Ignore-Everybody-Oth...y/dp/159184259X http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Plans-Having-Wo...pd_bxgy_b_img_b

I don't know if the original was made in A:M or not...It could just be some default colored glass in a different program. I'm at work, so I just made a quick version in Rhino and rendered it in Vray:

Robert, I think you need a Black background and an index of refraction in your surfaces to get closer to the reference picture

Do what YOU like!!!! actually...I think you really are into pirates--you have created a 'brand', and intellectual property, and that is an accomplishment to be proud of--Don't abandon it! You could pitch it and sell it off!!!

Here was something I did in 2003, playing with caustics: http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?pos=-697

How about a channel surfing collection of clips (from our own individual projects) that serves as a 'commercial' for A:M.

AWESOME!!!!

More stuff! A couple of safe-for-work designs Mug Another Mug And for true fans, an AWESOME poster! This shameless commercialism is my entire source of funding--since TAR is going to be distributed on YouTube!

Hey--If you want to show support for TAR, wear one of these awesome T-shirts, or drink your coffee in one of these awesome mugs!

That is something that I am going to play with in a shot that I'm working on now--emitting some sprite dust to drift-off in the wind.