robcat2075

That looks like... a frog that needs a shave!

BTW, i got a rotoscope to work on a light. You have to add it in the chor, not in the objects folder. However, it neither stopped the rim of the volumetric light nor shaped the volumetric effect at all. I think that's a bug also.

The green result is weird. This issue is now #6796. I've added your example in the comments.

That is a limitation of Z-buffered lights. The "bias" sets how far a light travels past a surface before a shadow is drawn. Bias can be made smaller to reduce that effect, but for some math reason it can never be zero. One solution is to model the box walls with thickness so the shadow calculation gets started on the inner surface and a shadow is already happening when the light reaches teh outside surface.

I'm not sure what you mean by "coordinates" If you can come to Live Answer Time I'd be curious to see this in action.

The Insect Image Contest Awards are done! These are the medals and certificates for the Insect Image Contest of 2015. For assorted reasons they are shipped unassembled so I have made a video that shows you what to do when yours arrives. How To Assemble Your A:M Forum Image Contest Award Fast Forward links: 00:00 Introduction! 00:21 6th-10th place certificate 02:55 4th & 5th place certificate 05:14 1st, 2nd, 3rd place medal 05:56 Medal package contents 06:21 "Shoulders" or "Shield"? 06:30 Tying ribbon for "Shoulders" 13:00 Tying ribbon for "Shield" 19:30 Attaching leg for shelf display 20:56 Attaching wire for wall display 22:31 A second ribbon? 22:48 Conclusion! Medal winners have the option of doing the ribbon attachment themselves or... choosing a "Shoulders" or "Shield" ribbon treatment and having me complete that portion that before I ship it. I apologize for taking so long to get these out! It has been a long-gestating and often-delayed project. But now that all the steps have been figured out we can perhaps do it again for future contests. I modeled the medal in Animation:Master and exported to OBJ. Our own Ken Citron (Pixelplucker) then 3D printed and cast it in solid pewter. Very high temperatures involved! These things are so classy, they have Latin on them. The face features Thom as the goddess of splines The reverse is laser etched with the winner's name The certificates are on genuine faux parchment with ribbon and custom wax seal. The stamp for the seal is also a 3D printed A:M model. Many thanks to Ken Citron for his advice, expertise and patience while we were working on this. The delays in this project are entirely due to me. Congratulations to the award winners! "It's in the mail!"

Not sure about the video but here's the short version in A:M -save your work as a Project -go to "Render to File Settings" like you normally do and make ALL the settings you want to make including file location. You must choose a still format (JPG, PNG or TGA) for file format. -on the right side of the "Render to File Settings" window, press "Save" (AKA "Save as Preset" in v19). name and save a .pre file (probably where you saved your PRJ) -close the "Render to File Settings" window -close A:M (optional) Run "AM Netrender Vxx.x" (found in the same folder as your A:M) in Render Server -Do File>New -Do Job>New -a Job Wizard pops up. -Use "Browse" for locate your previously saved PRJ -if the items shown in the chor and camera drop down lists are not what you want, choose the ones you do want. -Next -Choose "Load a preset" to find and load your previously waved .pre file. This saves you from having to recreate all your render settings. -Next -Finish The bottom pane shows your available render slaves The "online" ones (two by default) can be dragged up to "Drop slaves here" The offline ones can be made online by running "AM Render Messenger Vxx.x" (found in your A:M folder) once for each new one you want to start up to the number of cores on your machine. The slaves will each render a frame and then take the next waiting frame in sequence.

On the "Nosey" clip, I'm not sure of the meaning of him seeing himself in the binoculars. That is what is suggested by the image of himself in the lens? But he's supposed to be seeing someone else, right? The flashing in "NHF" is a tough effect to do. The hard edge of the light cones inside the car seems odd. Do you have a reference of the effect from a live action moviemaybe? Typically in shots where a light is shining in there will be lots of edge lighting effects on objects that are almost but not quite silhouetted. I painted some in on the man's face. There would be something like that on almost every light side edge. Perhaps UK emergency vehicles have different color lights but I would expect them to be more red and blue, than pink and cyan.

This should appear as an animated GIF notice... - basic quadruped walk cycle: left back, left front, right back, right front - only brief instants where two feet are both off the ground. - watch either the front pair or the back pair... the trailing foot stays on the ground to push the body forward even after the leading foot has been planted. - overlapping motion of the feet as they fall behind and curl under while they are being pulled forward. - front shoulder visibly sags when it's not supporting weight. - the classic walk up-down motion is more evident in the rear hips which have real ball and socket joints. Cat front legs are just held on with muscle. - cat maintains calm demeanor even while walking on burning sand.

idea for 3D pantograph contraption DIY 3D Sculpture Pantograph for under $50 This is a bit more mechanized but doesn't have as much 3D angling... Building the 3-D pantograph

The GPU box is for the few things that use the GPU, like SSAO which can also be done entirely by CPU (but slower) if the graphics card isn't up to it. Possibly one reason to have it OFF in Netrender would be to avoid multiple render slaves competing for the same GPU at once, or perhaps to avoid a slightly different result between different computers with different graphics cards. There isn't much in the A:M renderer that can use Open MP. You probably wouldn't use it with Net Render anyway since you have all your core power occupied with their single thread tasks.

Hi Bruce, welcome to A:M! My first advice is ... start small. It's very easy to overwhelmed by an initial goal that is too big. My second bit is... if you have the option of running Windows on that Mac, the Windows version of A:M is snappier and more reliable with fewer graphics card problems.

Spring has sprung! Those both look interesting.

You should be able to take files from v13 to v19. A:M is supposed to be able to import every thing from v5 onward. If you found one that didn't work that would be worthy of a bug report. You may be able to take files from v19 back to v13, but as A:M has added new features and fixed bug in each successive version, it is possible that something you save in v19 may contain things that v13 doesn't know how to handle. The more plain vanilla your file is, the more likely it can travel back to older versions. You definitely can't bring v13 or later files back to v12 or earlier. V12 and earlier don't understand the XML file format that was adopted in v13.

SSE4 is a set of instructions that were added to the standard PC "Intel" CPU in 2006 SSE4.2 is the above with some additional instructions added. Adam, do know exactly what CPU you have in your Mac?

That's a good looking chimp, David! And it's great to see some animation around here. Here's a more clinical reference vid of the chimp walk that also compares it to human walk: https://youtu.be/S-0kiU25baM After I look at that I see that even though the chimp walk posture is not nearly as upright as a human, many of the animation walk "rules" that I'm noting here still apply... (I've only looked at the side view so far) - Typically in walks, the cycle of the arms is slightly behind the legs. Here they seem to be synched and that gives a mechanical look. - the angle of the foot to the calf around frame 20 is just about impossible. (Doubly so with a space suit on ) - the foot will rotate to much closer to vertical as the toe pushes off the ground and in the passing pose. (Avoids previous problem) In general, feet have a lot more rotation to them than we typically imagine. - in real walks (chimp even more than human) the back foot remains in contact with the ground for a time after the front heel has contacted the ground. It stays there to push the body forward. Even though the back heel has begun to peel off before the front heel makes contact, the front of the foot remains in place to push with for quite a bit after that and the toe doesn't leave the ground until the front foot has completely flattened out. The chimp vid surprised me on that since the don't seem to be able to swing their thigh bone back very much, but somehow with their crouched posture they compensate and are able to keep the rear leg on the ground to push. Your chimp is bringing the rear foot forward at the instant of front heel contact. Too soon. (One of the Animation Mentors once noted that whenever he needs to make a walk look weightier, his first gambit is to increase the time that both feet are on the ground) -somewhat related.. watch the smooth arc the ankle of both the human and Chimp make as it is lifted and pulled forward. Yours has a 90° corner in its path as it transitions from up to forward. - Straight front leg at heel contact is a major walk rule. Compare the human and chimp. Notice how the vid chimp manages to swing the front leg to nearly straight to make the next heel contact. That surprised me also. I thought it would be more like what you have animated, but no... he's still getting the most distance out of his stride that he can, much like we do. - I like your arc of the arms as they swing and the overlapping motion of the forearm vs the upper arm. last minute observation... the chimp is not doing the heel contact exactly like we do. I's almost like the outer edge of the foot is the "heel" that contacts the ground and then the inside of the foot flops down after that. More study needed to digest that.

I haven't tried the model but my first guess is that this is a Group ordering problem. You probably have some Groups that have some common patches between them. This is not necessarily fatal. Try dragging a Group whose properties seem to be getting ignored to the bottom of the Groups list. When two groups have common patches, the lower Group in the list is the one that is obeyed for the common patches.

So you want part of a model to be toon and part regular render, right? You can do that in one pass with groups. In the surface properties for the model set Toon Lines>Thickness to be zero and the Toon Shading Method to be "Standard" Then make a Group for the parts you want to be toon lined and shaded and and set your desired toon settings for those. When you render, set Toon Render ON, but leave its sub switches OFF Let me know if that doesn't work. If you want to come to Live Answer Time I can walk you though that.

Explain this some more... I think you are doing something that doesn't need to be done manually. Show a picture.

Suggestion: You can do the "toasting" gesture more clearly and more gracefully by including anticipation and arc. You can build that all into one move by going slightly back, then down and forward ( the green path). In this diagram the starting pose is blue , the ending pose is purple and the path of the hand is in green.

We're approaching "Real Soon Now"

What does "Intel Mac V18" mean v18?

Those look great, Mark. Thanks!

Hooray for v19! "Thanks" to Steffen for all his hard work!

See this thread. The OS has been updated to not allow CD keys.