rwilkens

I haven't used animation:master in a while, a long while, in fact I can't find my CDs so I soon plan to repurchase (or subscribe or whatever the deal is now), what might have me interested in playing again is this: For about a year now I've been playing more and more with my NVidia 3d vision display. I now own 3 pairs of 3D glasses, so I can use it to watch or show what is on the screen to others. I know for a fact (from memory) that Hash A:M supported 3d *rendering*, that is when I used it a few years ago it supported I think it was the red/cyan 3d rendering so if you used the glasses that came with it, it would display the 3d image though a little discolored. Has anyone had success with getting the 3d rendering to display properly with maybe the I think it is still called "NVidia 3d Vision Photo Viewer" or "NVidia 3d vision video player"? I'm not going to ask "how" right now, because I have yet to redownload the software. Only if people have had success with it or not. I think it is as simple as rendering the images so ones on the left and ones in the right and the display software "fixes" it for the 3d display (might be wrong). -Robert p.s. I was last here when work was beginning on TWO and I just went ahead and ordered a DVD, I'd love to see what was done especially if it was done mostly or entirely with this software, always good to see what the available tools are capable of doing. p.p.s. ignore my websites below - had to edit this when I saw at least some of them no longer exist

The dual cores are currently only used for rendering - the A:M interface itself still just runs on a single core. Hopefully as work into V14 continues, we might see more multi-threaded code appearing in A:M. There is also a setting on the Global tab of the options window in A:M that sets the number of threads that you want to use. If "Threads" are set to 1 and Auto is off, then A:M V14 will only use one core at all times. By the way, there is nothing "pseudo" about the current multi-core processors - they physically have two CPU cores and if both are running, the speed does double. The old Pentium 4 processors with Hyperthreading - now that was a genuine pseudo-dual core processor. Richard Harrowell. Hi Richard, Perhaps I'm a little slow this a.m. -- "A:M interface runs on a single core" -- ok, I sort of understand that -- in other words things like rotating something in a choreography or modeling are single core. But "dual cores are currently only used for rendering" - I thought I was rendering a 2 second animation in that clip I showed in my original message. Do you mean to say that rendering from the _interface_ doesn't use dual core, while rendering externally somehow does. FYI I checked (by accident) before and "Auto" was checked and "Threads" was set to 2 automatically. I tried raising it to 4 and there was no additional CPU usage. I suppose I should mention that I'm running windows Vista and i'm now wondering if there's some sort of 'bias' setting in Vista which targets an application at one particular CPU or another. Thanks for info on dual core vs. hyperthreading. I have 2 dual core systems (AMD Athlon 64 x2 - 3600 or 3800 - not sure, and 4200) and 1 hyperthreading system (P4 HT 3 GHz) -- All systems have 1 GB of ram, though I know now that I'm running Vista I should upgrade eventuallly. One of my dual-cores is running XP instead of Vista (I haven't upgraded it yet). Might it be worth my time to try it out there to see if there's a difference. I'm not sure if I have a good cpu usage monitor there like I have in Vista. Thanks! Rob

Odd, I have my TinWoodsman cd in the drive, and I downloaded and installed the latest AM2007 upgrade, I believe (unless I downloaded the wrong thing, which is entirely possible). I believe when I ran it it even shows (after I downloaded the previous upgrade) the tin woodsman when i run the program by the a:m logo. However, thanks to KenH for posting the link to v14.0alpha5, I'm installing it now. Ok, It's installed, it's still not using both pseudo-processors fully like I hoped it would be able to, I have an AMD Athlon 64 x2. I might be getting a one second improvement in performance (from 11 seconds to 10 seconds with "LOW" resolution rendering on the can-can animation). 14.0 alpha seems to properly detect that I have 2 thread capability -- it just doesn't seem to be using them to the max. http://robwilkens.com/tao/stillnotdual.jpg Screenshot above shows the same computer with AM 14.0 alpha 5 rendering the same animation. Note: Core 1 occasionally will shoot "up" to 100%, but then it drops down real quickly. I understand if this is under development, I just want to try to make sure I'm utilizing what I have to the fullest. -Rob

The advertisement for A:M 2007 said it has dual-core support, can someone tell me how to enable it? See: http://robwilkens.com/tao/notdual.jpg On the left-hand of the attached image, you'll see exercise 2 rendering, on the right side of the screen, you see "Core 1: " and "Core 2: " usage. Core 2 is clearly doing the bulk of the rendering, as it's near 100% usage.. Core 1 is almost sitting idle, so clearly it doesn't appear to be being used. There's got to be some magic trick to enable dual-core support. Do I need to switch to a beta version to get this? -Rob

If It's not too late, I'd like to be included in this. I just upgraded to 2007 and will probably be a newbie for life. i'm not an artist, though I love the idea that I can have this kind of software on my home computer and I SOOOO want to learn it,but I've never made the time (I've been on board since around 2004). I tried about 6 months ago, and got stuck around Tao:AM Exercise 6 or 7 (the comprehensive project). Everything up to that point "seemed" easy, but putting it all together for me was difficult. I'm going to start again from exercise 1 and see if I can get any better this time around. I know I can use a new SIGGRAPH training DVD, as I've seen some pretty neat tricks done that I've learned from in some of the past DVDs. -Rob

I bought it tonight, and it came with: Two Materials: (1) Nice Tan Skin (2) Elephantesque Bumps And the SKIN.SHD file which you have to place in the Shaders directory of animation master, then restart it. As you mentioned though, the sample project that is included "don't work" (and it would have been nice to see it work), and that's because (as I learned earlier today) before you distribute a project you have to right click on the project in properties and select "Embed All".. -rob