robcat2075

I think lighting is the hardest part of getting pleasing 3D results. I'll note that even in live movies where they have the advantage of instant AO all the time, and walls that will bounce the illumination from the lights that exist in the world of the movie, they still usually have to cheat a bit with extra fill lights that are unseen and off-camera. example In A:M we have an advantage that our light bulbs can be anywhere and we don't have to try to hide them from the camera.

Hi Simon, For AO you need to have the Choreography>Properties>Global Ambiance Type not set to "None". -"Global Color" is the simplest choice. -This basically enables an all-around environmental light. The more that a surface is blocked from that all-around light the darker it will be. -You can adjust the environmental strength with "Ambiance intensity". When other lights are in the scene it is often necessary to set the Ambiance intensity to less than 100% -"Ambiance Occlusion" controls how dark the occlusion shadowing effect is. You also need Render to File Settings>Options>Ambiance Occlusion>ON -Occlusion Sampling is a quality vs. time choice. Higher means less speckling but longer render time. I often set it to 10% for test renders just to see the AO effect more quickly. -Transparent AO (Slow!) allows the all-around rays to pass through patches that have some Transparency set. I figure an institutional hallway like yours is probably lit with wide fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Putting holes in the ceiling approximates that. I also put holes in the opposing wall to simulate the light from the ceiling that would normally bounce off that wall onto the characters. I just added a few CPs in the middle of splines to disable patches in key areas. Here is your edited PRJ so you can see the altered model and settings. New Happy Families 001B_RCH 01 AO.prj And the preset CorridorWith AO.pre There are other ways to get this effect without actual AO that might render faster but this is easy to set up and more predictable.

In my own case, since I do more modeling and animating than rendering and since most of what A:M does is single threaded, I'd favor a faster CPU with fewer cores over a slower one with more cores. The CPUs that can throttle up one core when the others are unused sound like an interesting solution but I haven't had one yet.

When I'm looking at published benchmarks of CPUs, I think that the "single threaded" version of "Cinebench" is likely the closest to mimicking what A:M does.

I built my PC about 8 years ago so most of it is pretty ancient stuff that isn't made anymore. Core 2 Quad 6600 2.4 MHz 8GB RAM Nvidia GeForce GT610 graphics card with 1GB RAM - it was ~$75 when i got it, much less now -This is definitely lower than mid-level for gaming but it's fine for A:M -Previously I had an even punier AMD card that was fine until its fan died. -I like that it has two video outputs so i can run two monitors. I put the Project Workspace on its own monitor. -My monitors are just 1280x1024 and 1920x1080. If you were going to run two larger monitors maybe 1GB RAM would not be enough. NVidia has started making graphics chips for laptops ("M" in the chip name for mobile) and many laptops are available that use them. the down side is that they probably still take more power than Intel graphics so your battery time will be less. I prefer a 4 core to a 2 core CPU but it's hard for a laptop to scream with all four cores for very long because of the heat. They are built to slow down or idle cores if the heat is getting too high. Desktops can have giant fans so it isn't such a problem. Personally i need several USB ports. Printer, Mouse, Keyboard, cameras that I plug in to download files. My Cintiq monitor needs a USB port too. Does this answer any of your questions?

This takes 3:48 with your settings. I see that you have AO on in the render settings but there is no Global Ambience selected in the Chor and no Ambience Occlusion % set. You won't get any AO effect without those. However, there will be almost no AO in a scene like this that is not exposed to outside light. There are several settings that seem very odd to me, like the spot lights set to 180° wide and set to only 30% darkness. Do you really want this very flat, no-shadows result? Just to experiment, I removed unseen parts of the ceiling and walls so the Global Ambience could shine in to create something a bit more like broad "waiting room" light. I turned off the three spot lights. (I set the surface color of the glass to black so the reflection wouldn't be brighter than what is reflected.) I think this gets better illumination on the down-turned faces and a more realistic presence to the room lighting overall. This took 35 minutes to render.

By "number pad" I mean a numeric keypad like this on the end of the keyboard. I like your idea of a quad core so you can make use of Netrender. 8GB RAM is probably a safe amount. Laptops tend to use only low-power Intel graphics which are troublesome for A:M, but laptops that have dedicated Nvidia or AMD graphics tend to be quite expensive. That is why I just have a desktop. If you do get a laptop that doesn't have the numeric keypad you could still get a full size USB keyboard for $10 or so and plug that in when you are at home. make sure you have enough USB ports so plug in both a mouse and the keyboard. You'll probably also want to have a monitor port so you can plug in a larger monitor.

Here's a 1080HD 9-pass render with the corridor ON that takes 2 minutes 28 seconds, but i don't know your render settings.

I downloaded your PRJ. Could you save and post a preset file of the render setting you are using?

If you haven't bought the computer yet, consider something with a real number pad on it. The number pad is huge time saver for navigating the views.

What size are you rendering at? I think you could render at half your typical size and not lose any details.

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.