Eric2575

For a scene that does not have a bunch of lights, I prefer to bind the light to the model in the chor. You can do this by adding a couple of constraints to the light - "orient like" and "translate to" (if I remember correctly). If you add a light to the model in bones mode, the default light in the modeling window will turn off and your model will be quite dark. So, if you plan to change the model later, you will either have to turn off the light in the bones mode, or work in the dark

Caroline, blobbies and water are out due to the increase in render times - my computer pretty much hangs up with the number of instances I need when using blobbies. It's sprites or nothing. Fuchur's idea of an overlay geometry may hold promise, I'll experiment with that and post my results.

Thank you for the link. You have done a fantastic job on a complex body shape like that. Time to change your user name

Wow, I was hoping there was something basic I was overlooking. I've got the look of the scene pretty much how I want except for the shadowed areas. It took a lot of time to get to this point. I hope I don't have to redo everything with something different. When opening the sprite material, I don't see any setting for ambiance for the sprite. There is tint, color, and opacity. Even if there was an ambiance setting, this would not work right, since it would be impossible to control the ambiance as the sprite goes from sunshine to shadow. If the sprites themselves are not affected by shadow, as John pointed out, I'm going to either have to use something other than a sprite, or change the direction of the sunlight. I'll see what water blobbies do. Are streaks also not affected by shadows? Edit: As expected, a test confirms that streaks are also impervious to shadows. Since I can't do a search with "3d" sprites in the title, maybe someone has a link to a tutorial on them? Edit: The new water feature will not do what I need it to do, besides, it takes way too long to render even with only one emitter - I have about 20 plus emitters in my scene.

I don't know much about these types of cars, could you post a reference pic please?

Been playing around with this problem with still no progress. John3D? Caroline? Anyone?

I'm working on an outdoor scene that has direct sunlight and some shaded areas. Sprites are flowing from the lighted area into the shaded area, yet the sprites brightness does not diminish as it goes from sunlight to shade? The sprite particle is basically a white blob that stays bright no matter what the lighting conditions are. Can this be changed in the sprites properties? I want the sprites surface to be darker as it moves into the shaded area of the scene.

Tell us more about your project and the story. Maybe you'll get some ideas and further help.

You drew one lurker out - Very nice progress so far. Keep posting.

Fantastic work! Is Stian also modeling the second ship? If not, I would take a shot at it, so to speak. I've been wanting to model a Pirate ship for some time, and will do so, but it will not be cartooney. When I first looked at Cutthroat, I thought he looked a bit too clean, more like an office manager you never wanted to meet, but not like a fierce, dirty pirate. Perhaps a beard, or at least 6 o'clock shadow?

You're getting better and better. Keep up the good work.

I don't have AM on this computer and I'm actually in the middle of the Mojave desert, so I can't send you any pics. It's easy though. When you open up Animation Master, it should open up the last project you worked on. If that's the project you want to import the Jesus model to, then you're good to go. If you want to add it to a brand new project, then click on "project", then click on "New". In either case, you should now look for the "objects" folder in the Project Work Space. This is the folder that has all the current models of the project in it. If it's a new project, then you should only have a few objects, such as three lights, a ground model, and a camera. Once you find the "objects" folder, hover your mouse over it, right click, and a context menu should pop up. In that menu you should see an option to "import' a model. Click "import" and then you need to navigate to wherever the Jesus model is. I hope you know what I mean by "navigate?" Basically you need to tell AM where your model is located. Did you download it from a website or do you have it on a cd? Anyways, you need to have the model on your computer in order for AM to find it. If you saw it on the forum and it's free to download, download it to your document folder and then follow the above steps to have AM import it into the new project. Once it is in your "objects" folder, you can double click it and it will open up in AM. Hope that helps.

You can import models from a project. Right click on the object folder and pick "import", then direct AM to the model location just like you would in Explorer.

There are no "3D" textures per say, since all textures and materials are really "2D". The 3D aspect is brought about by the model the textures or decals are applied to and the displacement and/or bump mapping applied to the model. Bump mapping gives the illusion of depth, whereas displacement mapping actually distorts the physical mesh. Traditionally game applications use decals with bump or normal mapps applied to get that 3d effect. As machines get faster, displacement mapping my become more prevalent. Why don't you post a pic of a model you are trying to emulate? Jpg format works best.

A critical aspect of achieving a realistic render is uniformity of scale. The less the human mind has to sort out when looking at a scene in regards to deviations from the "percieved norm", the closer you will get to achieving a very realistic render. I can't tell if your models are supposed to be life size, or on some order of toy scale. For that matter, it's difficult to tell if your models are supposed to represent "real" cannons and ships, or toy items. This confusion alone detracts from the scene. What ever the case may be, your decal scales are all over the charts. Some of the decals look like they are pretty sharp, some look like they are less crisp due to a larger scale. Weather toys or not, the scale of the decals on the main models should all be uniform in regards to the scale of the models themselves. If the models are toy size, then the scale of the ground and wall decals should reflect that. The smaller the scale of the main models, the smaller the sale of their decals in relation to the scale of the background decals. If the main models are supposed to be life size, then the overall scale of all the decals should pretty much blend. Modeling, decaling, composition, and lighting - all need a considerable amount of attention in order to achieve a pleasing balance. Skimp on any or all and your final masterpiece will suffer. Now if I could just follow my own advice ;-)

Geez, I too am German. Am I offended by Nancy's German comments - No. Am I offended by any/all caricatures that portray caucasians in an unflattering way? No. Get a grip people. Maybe Sebastian should turn his charcters into bunnies, but then the animal rights groups would get offended.

Post apocalyptic? Not much to comment on. Slightly reminiscent of Fallout.

Sebastian: Really nice work you've got going there. Love the style and layout. Keep it going and keep us posted. If you're as good at animating as you are at modeling these characters, then we're in for a treat. Eric

I seem to remember something about a constraint to terrain? Anyone?

One of these days you'll come out with a book or a tutorial cd, right? Put me on the top of the list. As usual, nothing less than expected, usually a bit better though. Cheers Eric

There are a couple of obvious areas that you can fix. That 5 point patch on his neck can be eliminated by using a hook - instead of having the spline stop in the middle of the perpendicular spline, hook it into that spline. Look up hooks in the help section of AM. Also, the horizontal crease in the rear leg of the model should not be there. It might be that you have some peaked cps there or discontinuity. The first problem is easy to fix - since there really should not be any peaked cps on that body, you could select the whole body and then hit the "o" key. That will get rid of any peaked splines. If there is still a crease, then you have discontinuous splines - splines that stop at the creased point and then a new spline was added to the old spline to continue where the old left off. Kind of a lame explanation, but you'll see what I mean if you run into that problem. The remedy is to unhook the two splines and then reattach them. To test for discontinuity, select a cp on a spline by clicking to the left or right of the cp and then hit the "," key. This will cause all cps on that spline to be selected. If the selection stops right in the middle of a run, then you know that's where the discontinuity is and that's where you need to fix things. In the example below is the fix. I hope it's understandable.

Ok now, no updates for a while? Don't give up now.

Al: like I said before, you're modeling is really nice, not really benefitting from the porcellan as far as the small render goes. Do remember to remove the porcellan as you keep working on the model because laying down splines should always be done without the help of the material. I am willing to bet you are not using multipass as you show us your progress? Would you do a 9 or 16 x multipass in a litle bit bigger resolution? I am really enjoying the progress on your model. Race you for pinks when you're done Eric

For a simple puddle, why would you use a material? Just set the attributes for the water puddle surface and you're done. Simbionts are nice but take a hit on rendering times. You can also make your own materials or do a search on materials in the tutorial section of the forum.

Photoshop. I'm bored right now... Send me your sand pic and I'll make it seamless. Here is one...