robcat2075

Getting the settings correct on radiosity is tricky and they will vary quite a bit from scene to scene. I'm not a radiosity expert but I suggest you try Yve's Cornell Box tutorial first to get a look at what the steps are... Cornell box tutorial

Three things: 1) The rigging features in A:M work well because spline models need very few CPs and it is practical to manually attach and weight individual CPs to bones. Polygon models need so many vertices (CPs) to simulate smoothness that it is no longer feasible for a human to weight them between bones for smooth deformations. You would also have to add all the "deformers" that try to automate that process in polygon programs and those things are not simple. There is a reason that most people who buy a polygon program never get any character rigged and end up just downloading characters some expert-users have donated on the web. 2) Not using polygons is not just an arbitrary decision like deciding whether to make something red or blue. Staying with splines from beginning to end of the pipeline is what makes everything in A:M work well. About 9 years ago I was talking with Martin about this and he told me how he had hired a consultant who was an expert in programming for polygons to look at A:M's code and find a way to make polygons work alongside splines throughout the pipeline and the answer was like "well, it won't be easy... maybe for a million dollars of programmer time..." 3) Willi, if you can recruit a programmer who wants to put in the time and effort to make it work, go for it! Find that person who is expert in both splines and polygons and can make it all work together.

I like Nemyax's AT-AT idea. It would be cool to have the kids fighting an AT-AT that was stomping around your neighborhood.

Running A:M with an emulator in Linux is never going to work well. There are too many incompatibilities. You need real Windows.

Those look very amusing! The knee looks like it needs more room to bend.

Is the problem solved now?

Insects on ice!

INSECT! We are going to have a Summer image contest! The exact details will be firmed up in the near future but here are three things to get you going... 1) Topic: Insect! Your all-A:M-modeled and all-A:M-rendered image should be an insect. It can be realistic or stylized, scary or funny, authentic or fantasy but... it has to be an insect! No spiders, no crustaceans, no myriapods! We want to compare insects to insects. Your image may contain other models. For example, your insect might be sitting on a leaf. However, the insect should be the primary object of attention in your image. Insects are the most numerous and varied life form on earth so you should not be lacking for possibilities. 2) Due date: July 31 August 9 You have most of the summer to work on your summer image contest image! We will have a vote to choose a winner. 3) Prizes: Prizes are TBD but there will be something awarded to the top ten entries. Don't sit this one out! Get splining and knock us out with your most neat-o, insect-o work!

The 3D view should be visible if you have a Model or Choreography open. If you double -click on Objects or Choreographies that will start a new one of those. If you double-click on an itme in one of those folders it should open the window on that item. Does that work?

Perhaps these could be given a prominent and very visible mention on the tutorials page of Hash.com?

I think it's time for at least a one-off contest and when there's another one later... it won't be a one-off anymore!

Rodney, how about if I just go ahead declare a contest, provide some prizes and set the rules. Then we'll have a contest. Would that be do?

Do it, since you already have a sample PRJ ready to go.

I tried it. If you set the "Spot" light to have Q ray-traced shadows, both spheres will show appropriate shadows. It may be a bug that the patch-image version doesn't work with z-buffer lights?

I gave this a quick test and, indeed, A:M behaves inconsistently when there is a key color used.

How about "insect" ? Realistic, cartoony, stylized... anything as long as it's an insect.

microbes!

Wow! That hair got better!

Fine work, Matt! We're proud of you!

Hey, Matt, what ever happened in the fight over who would get that character?

I also get a bit of visible edge when I use that decal, but only at certain zoom distances and only in Progressive Render. I haven't gotten it to happen with a Regular Render yet.

can you post the image you are using?

Q for standard, Shift-Q for Render lock I find that when there is some significant render item (like hair) it can take a while for the first pass to start and the UI will appear frozen while does its thinking and frequently during the remaining render until it reaches 100%. You can Escape out of a long render, but it may take a while for that keystroke to get processed also. When I know a complex render is likely I will test as small a portion of the screen as I can, with right-drag.

Maker it do that again, Rodney, and send it in as a bug report!

Now with both short and tall Rabbit...