robcat2075

The Chor Properties>Dynamics>Display While Simulating ON/OFF switch doesn't seem to turn off the computing of dynamics wait time.

update: solved. See post #4 Is there a switch that stops A:M from "Computing Dynamics" when I'm scrubbing through the timeline? Something besides turning off every dynamic constraint in the models.

Definitely looks like a Normals problem

How is that horse rigged? Does it not have IK feet? Or is this a walk cycle and you are moving the model while it cycles?

As far as I know, splitpatch is just a simple geometric subdivision. They are usually not very visible after the simulation and they typically end up in places that would be a crease in the cloth anyway. Probably, but i don't have a program to do that. The most significant problem with SplitPatch is that it will sometimes create what looks like a single continuous spline but it is really two or more separate splines that share endpoints.

Looks like I had "Allow Embedding" off even though the embedding seemed to work when I tested the page.

A:M itself is single core for most things including rendering. There is a multi-core setting in the Options panel but multi-core is only used on internal house keeping things like like spline and patch management, and not renders. NetRender lets you make use of all your cores, of course, when you have more than one frame to render. But inside A:M, one core is doing the rendering for what you see on screen. Keekat has a complicated Material on him with lots of nested gradients that makes him Final Render tediously slowly. If you want to see a fast result onscreen, do Shift-Q and right drag a bounding box around any part of the screen to get quick feedback on a lighting change or anything else that doesn't show in real-time renders. Or, if the KeeKat material is not crucial you can delete it and replace it with something simpler. Here is an alternate KeeKat material that has a similar look but is faster rendering... KeeKatSimpleFur.mat

Welcome back to A:M! If you ever have questions, this is the place to bring them! Oddly enough, the cat in my name is not about cats, although I am a cat (and dog) person.

Here's another old toon project from 2004. I was trying to make model that would toon-render to look like the giant bird Taarna rides in "Heavy Metal"

The workflow has been the same since v11, which is good. You should find no surprises there. That is a rather old item. It's not like modern terrain generators that grow trees and everything.

I recommend the annual subscription. It's inexpensive and keeps you up to date.

For me, it's stability and speed. In the bad old days I remember feeling like I needed to save every 2 minutes or risk losing something important. I don't have to do that now but if you're still worried, there's an automatic backup feature that will save your work every X minutes if you want that. And A:M is much faster now. It's not as fast as the competing GPU renderers out there but I'm not going to go relearn everything I do in 3D in Blender or Maya just to render faster when "rendering" is not the thing that consumes the most of my brain time anyway. NetRender is included now and works on multi-core CPUs so you don't actually need a "net" to use net render. Your 4-core CPU is now a render farm and if you want more, the cost a license for additional nodes is really cheap. Steffen Gross has done a lot of work on improving render A:M times...

For a heavy walk the feet need to solidly plant on the ground with no sliding. There will also be a span where both feet are on the ground not moving. Watch this guy's rear legs from about 1:14 on... the leading foot is always fully planted and stuck on the ground before the trailing foot is lifted up to move it forward. Same with the front pair of legs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwWBxQ74i6E Here's another good one... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMDtBmgFD8 Very smooth motion as each leg is lifted, moved forward, then pushed into the ground before the trailing leg is pulled up to do the same thing.

The character isn't rigged yet so I did some movement with a distortion box to test the cloth more... direct YouTube link Here is what the distortion box looks like... direct YouTube link

None, really, except that it was fast. Originally that character was going to have a modeled-on long-sleeve shirt, no simcloth, so what you are seeing is the old shirt sleeves turned to skin color to pretend to be bare arms. We haven't rigged the character yet and all the splines are still up for debate so I didn't bother to attach the hands for this cloth test.

Here you go...

Yup, that's pretty much a must-do for putting clothes on. He has lots of inflating to do. (click to animate)

Steve Shelton created this character for a project he and Chris Dailey and I are working on. This is an initial experiment with fitting a simcloth shirt on him.

Baking it will be a suitable workaround, for now.

Yup, I've seen people using it and it being fine. Mine is on cloth. It mostly works but I'm wondering why it doesn't all work.

Yeah, I tried it both way but I get a weird, not staying in place problem.

Is it possible to use BitMapPlus textures on objects that animate like characters do rather than just objects that retain a rigid form? Is it possible to make the texture stick to the surface as materials and decals do as the object changes shape?

Here's a toon test from waaaayyyy back in 2004 (click to animate) I tried to copy this walk cycle from an old Walter Foster animation book.

Among the things we'll be looking at over the next few weeks at LAT is rigging. Steve Shelton has made this wonderful dragon and we'll try to figure out the best way to bring this non-typical, non-biped creature to life. Live Answer Time is Saturday at Noon CDT!

Mmmm... looks like ginger bread.