Eric2575

You're right Darkwing, it is for the Challenger NX class ship and the nacelle domes are more gaseous. It really shocked me to find that adding several navigation lights with three actions and adding the animated decal for the nacelles increased render times about 4 times. This is way off the charts. A short clip that took about 9 hours to render now takes days at 1024 678 resolution. I wanted to render for HD output but at those render lengths it seems ludicrous to do it just for fun. My God, what do they use to make digital movies like "Transformers", Cray (I know, that's old school) supercomputers? Anyone know what digital studios use nowadays? I can't wait for home computers to be powerful enough to render a short movie like this in a couple of minutes. I'll probably just do a vga clip with a still at wallpaper size to boot.

Yes you will be able to play the video in AM. This has been discussed many times in the forum and you should be able to find several posts dealing with video footage or TGA sequences in AM. Do a search with different keywords to narrow it down.

Stian: I seem to remember you said you were working on something "Big" and that we would see it soon? Did I hear wrong? When are you going to let us in on it? Btw, which book is the Bismark going to be in? When will it be published? Nice work on the clip! Cheers... Eric

Never mind, shutting down AM and restarting did the trick.

Gizmo: The method you described was exactly what I had been using up to this point. The results aren't bad at all, just a little too static for what I would like to accomplish. John: I love taking your stuff apart and learning from it. That last one is the best yet. Thank you for the files. Using everyone's input, I think I have come up with then end product for the effect. I hope to have the movie clip posted soon, but I still have a starfield effect and some more modeling/texturing to do. Thanks again Eric

Thanks for the replies. So, in fact, an action cannot be dropped on an action object, but the pose of an action object can be manipulated in the Chor? I will try and make it work that way. Thanks again. Eric

I don't have a link to what I am trying to achieve, but you are getting really close. I just remember the old Star trek episodes and the way they showed the Enterprise hovering in space. If the orbs in your demo weren't so defined, more like clouds, it would be perfect. The pic below isn't the best representation of what I'm trying to do, but the combination of your demo and that pic would about do it.

Hmm, I think the situation is a little different: I am trying to add an action to an action object in the chor. Take a look at the screencap - you'll notice AM does not allow the action to be dragged to the action object. There has to be a way though.

Animated decal? Animated material? It also needs to be render friendly.

That's the ticket! Thanks Martin.

John: I just posted on the WIP for a way to animate the warp core of a starship - this is close to the look I'm after. I'll experiment with it.m

What's the best way to animate those bulbs? I'd like to get an effect of a gaseous substance swirling in the bulb. John3D I need you!

You can use the scaling method, but exclude the smallest bunched up patches from the hair material. Another way would be to connect the splines per pic.

Is there a way to update an action in a chor without removing it and then re-applying it? Whenever I make a change to an action that has already been applied to a model in a chor, I have to remove the action and then re-apply the changed action for it to take effect. Hitting the spacebar or saving the project does not update the changes to the chor. Is there an easier way or is that it?

Nicely done Vern.

Nice.m

Fuchur and Caroline: You guys made me go back step by step and really look at what was happening. In the PWS - which was the place I concentrated on, there was no sign that more than one TGA was imported. But in the Properties section, just like you posted Caroline, the "start" and "end" values confirmed that all TGAs were imported. No wonder I ran out of memory when I tried to import all 300 TGAs as image sequences. That's 90,000 TGAs at 1920 x 1200 resolution!!!! Thanks guys for setting me straight. Sincerely Eric

I have to select all of them because when I only select one and check "import as sequence" it will only import the one I selected. But as I've mentioned, AM will not let me load all the files, I have to load them in chunks.

I rendered out a 10 second clip to TGA in HDTV-1080 format. This is for the Challenger flyby, so much of the scene is on a black background. The render went fine, but when I try to import the sequence back into AM I get into trouble. There are 300 TGAs. If I select them all at once to import, AM give me a message saying "too many files selected at once." If I select 50 at a time, I can get around 200 loaded and then I start getting blank TGAs imported or #011 errors, and sometimes the fatal #001 shutdown. I have a 2.66 GHz CPU with 1.5 GB of ram. Is this an AM issue or a memory related issue? Anyone else ever try an import of TGAs of that length in 1080 format?

Well, I just tried a different approach with no luck. I created an action with the OX object and controlled it's ambiance there. Then I tried to drag that action on top of the OX action object in the chor, but AM doesn't like that. Back to square one.

I have a main object that has an action that adds several other ojects to it in the chor. Now I want to control the ambient intensity in a pulsating fashion of one of the action objects (call it OX) being added. So I made a percentage pose with OX and adjusted the ambience from 0 to 100 with a pose slider. This is where I'm stuck - when I open the main object in the chor and click the OX action object, there is no pose slider to manipulate, even though I have the drivers icon unchecked. If I add the OX object to the chor by itself, the pose slider is there and works fine. When the OX object is added to the main object via the action, I can't find a way to access the pose I made for the OX object. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong and there is a different way to do this. Bottom line is that I need to add the OX object to the main object and then I need to be able to change the OX ambient intensity in the chor. Thanks in advance for any insight. Eric

Start with the wheelwell outline and extrude back. Very similar to the back wheelwell. You are doing great, just keep experimenting. Every shape is a new challenge.

Go to the tools menu and select units. In that section on the bottom right you will find "Paste/extrude offset". Enter the number of x offset units you want to move and uncheck "Use cp spacing for extrude".

Smoothing it out comes last. Finish all the rest of the panels and everything else. Patience, patience, patience. Besides, from that angle it looks pretty smooth. Once you are done with all the panels, put a high spec and med intensity value on all the panels and look at it from all sorts of different directions. The spec values will give a clearer indication of where the panels need to be straightened. Then smooth, then post final and wireframe render of trouble spots for us to examine.

Viper: I don't want to detract from what you are doing, so I am not going to model the NIXUS now. You are doing great and should keep this thread for yourself. If I can be of any help, I will. I will certainly keep checking back in here. Keep up the good work. Eric