lordarka

Thanks guys!

Hi Everyone, I am selling the computer on which A:M is installed (PowerMac G5), and I want to deactivate the application before wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS. How does one do that? Thanks! Arka C.

I found AM 8.5 to be extremely unstable; so unstable in fact that I moved over to LW9; I also tinkered with Maya, and will probably pick up v.8.5 just so I and my fiancé can learn it. That said, both Maya and Lightwave are FAR behind Hash with respect to interface, and implementation of features. Maya in particular is very feature rich, but the interface is a dog; Hash is SO much better in this regard. As for Lightwave.. ugh; a memory hog, and it requires two applications, and you can only render in one. I am hugely impressed with the stability of v13. I crash every now and then, and I would say that PS CS2 or CS3 Beta are definitely more stable (these are, of course, 2D apps), but Hash 13 is among the most stable I've seen for a 3D app. I still save frequently, but I worry less about the random crash or hangup. If you want to start modelling and right away, I can't say enough good things about Hash. The interface really facilitates modeling. I still haven't figured out how to unlock some of its power, and there are features in Maya and ZBrush that I like, and miss, in Hash, but both those programs have lousy interfaces. In the end, despite having fewer features, I get a lot more work done in Hash than in any other program. A returning user's perspective. Arka C.

Thanks. I am unable to access the FTP site, but I'll keep on trying. Maybe I'll give Hash a call tomorrow to see what's up. Thanks so much for your help! Arka C.

Infini-D... man, I haven't seen that since high school (I tinkered with a pirated copy of that on the school's Quadra 950... it had a whopping 16MB, and would take upwards of a day to render a single scene in Raydiosity with a 40MHz 68040) Thanks again for your help! Arka C.

Thanks for the crit. I actually figured out how to get the flatten to work properly, and am modding the flattened figure at the moment. I realize that the model probably has a few too many splines, but I wanted to reserve the possibility of doing some detail work (this will be a relatively ugly creature by the time I am done, and if I can avoid using displacement maps everywhere, I will.) That said, I will definitely check out the tutorial you mentioned... do you know where I can find a good pre-made model of a human skull? Thanks again for you kind assistance and constructive critique. I very much appreciate it, and look forward to showing you the finished illustration. Arka C. P.S: Is there some way of doing sublevel detail modeling in AM? I am just getting back into 3D after a very long hiatus (I can only do it on and off, as I'm a full time professional student), but I am trying to compare this approach to Maya and Lightwave. So far, I love the program, but there are some interesting Maya features that I'm wondering are mirrored here; sublevel polygon modeling is one of them; precludes the use of tons of fractal and displacement mapping.

Wow.. thanks for the quick reply. I am still confused about one thing though... my face doesn't flatten quite as nicely as that in the tutorial (as you may have noticed). Any idea why that is? Thanks! Arka C.

I have a face model that I am trying to decal, and I am a little confused about how AM implements this feature. It's not quite like UV mapping in LW or Maya, and it's also quite different from the prior version of AM I was using in the past. I built a head model that I am trying to get a reference for texturing. (1) Can I only flatten a model in a choreography window, and in muscle mode? (2) When I flatten the model, how do I apply a decal to it? I can't seem to do this in the choreography mode. (this after I spent almost an hour figuring out how to get the axial orientation correct. (3) Assuming you tell me how to apply a decal to a flattened model, how do I 'unflatten' it? Or, am I stuck applying the decal that I generate upon the un-flattened model, using a screen capture of the flattened map as a reference for generating the texture? Attached is the model itself, in perspective view, and the flattened version, in front view within Choreography. I'm on AM 13 (Late 2006 Universal Binary) Thanks so much! Arka C.