robcat2075

Another option would be to have two knives, with one being Active OFF before and the other one being Active OFF after. But I think the decal percentage tactic is a good bet.

However, I've almost never used a keyboard shortcut for Make Keyframe. A:M auto keys anything you change yourself and the Make Keyframe button seemed to be conveniently located. None-the-less, you can detach any toolbar and drag it to sit anywhere on your screen if it's not conveniently located for your workflow.

CTRL+I is unassigned on my A:M. You could assign Make Keyframe to that. I recommend using a combination like that so you don't accidentally make keyframes by hitting a single key.

In Tools>Customize>Toolbars make sure you have "Show Tooltips" on When I hover over the Force Keyframe Button the tooltip that appears says "Force Keyframe (Insert)" edit: I see you've already done the above. The tooltip for every button should show if there is a shortcut assigned already. Pressing the "Insert" Button (above the Delete) button will do the same as the Force Keyframe button. On my keyboard the Insert button is above the Delete Key which is above the cursor keys. If you have a short keyboard it may be elsewhere. in Tools>Customize>Keyboard you can look up any button to see if it has a keyboard shortcut assigned and change or create a keyboard shortcut it you wish. There are still lots of possibilities to assign shortcut keys with ALT or CTRL or SHIFT

I have the 5-button Microsoft Intellimouse with an extra button on each side. I realized the two things I did most when I was animating was Rotate and Play so I put Rotate on the left and Play on the right. I love that and I like how the Intellimouse has the two extra buttons positioned. Using the center roller for Zoom and Move works by default and those are great also. For some reason, since v18 came in, I've noticed that the mouse buttons don't do anything until after I've used the keyboard shortcuts for Rotate and Play for the first time in a session, then they work again. I also am not sure of your question. Could you clarify?

It was cleverly hidden in the first post.

I haven't found a way for users to do "macros" in A:M. Plugins can be written to consolidate several steps into one but you have to be a programmer to make them. What is it you want to do? May be there is a way for that particular thing.

And you'll need to do that for each file type.

You have four weeks from midnight tonight to get your Sci Fi image contest entry in. Remember, in addition to the top three prizes from Hash, the top ten entrants will get Mark Largent's new A:M production, "The Wobbling Dead" on DVD!

Welcome back to the forum DZ, whoever you are! I believe you can go to "My Controls" and edit your profile to not show a name if you so desire.

Very cool! When would you have done that?

You have 31 days after today to get your entry in.

That looks like "video feedback" ... that was cool in the 70's You've also tried the 32-bit version with your new settings and both OpenGl choices I presume.

Not being able to use polygon models, I understand that problem, but that's long before you even get to a render. But the render... what is that lacking that some else can't work with it? Once they are rendered image files are image files.

If I had a good idea for a game I'd investigate the game engine stuff but I'm not much on that front.

The ideal would be that a 3rd party renderer appears like a choice in the options panel. You pick it and A:M uses it for final renders and on-screen renders and you don't need to export anything anymore than you do now to do a final render. It would faithfully interpret all the native A:M materials and lights and whatever when those are what you wanted anyway and somehow there would be additional interface elements in A:M so you could set and control and keyframe the other things the renderer offers when you want those. It would be a hell of a lot of work though.

Like Rodney, I don't see a lot of advantage in Renderman. Someone could devise a way to seamlessly export A:M models and materials and lights to Renderman but the rendered result would look exactly like it does in A:M because the mathematical shaders available in A:M wont' look any different if they are computed in Renderman. For example, "Lambert" shading is available in A:M. It's one of many particular ways of calculating the brightness of a surface as it turns away from a light source. Just about every Renderer supports it. It's math and math doesn't change (it shouldn't) because someone else did it. Now if the goal is to get access to shading methods that are not in A:M now... that's a valid goal, but how would the A:M user use them? How many of them could once it is available? In A:M? Possibly as a new set of materials that one uses in A:M and are recognized only by going to Renderman. I can imagine someone getting that to work but that would be A LOT of new stuff to program and debug. A material to control RM's version of subsurface scattering would be just one example. I suspect most of these additional things RM does would be too many parameters for most A:M users to become good at. I don't believe that anyone's A:M project will look better by being rendered in Renderman without a very serious reworking to use the additional stuff that RM offers and most A:M users are just scratching the surface of what A:M does already. Using RM well is something that very devoted lighting and shading professionals make careers out of. By design, A:M is built to be not as demanding to get a result out of. If the A:M rendering environment is too hard for a user, Renderman is not the answer for them. If RM is somehow dramatically faster at the same tasks as A:M is, that would also be a reason to investigate it even if it were just to directly transfer A:M projects to have their math done in RM. But I don't think there is any claim that it is a dramatically fast renderer. All of the stuff I've said above applies to other 3rd party renderers: How do you get it to work with A:M without requiring the user to redo all the lights and cameras and textures and materials in that other rendering environment?

Let's see.... Copenhagen to Goeppingen... a mere 918 km. That's less than the distance from Dallas to El Paso. And no wild Indians to contend with on the way!

what is that getting that you can't get from rendering in A:M?

Or... it's possible the problem would be solved without side effects. AMD makes fine cards that are widely used by many people. I think it's unlikely that AMD would be a general problem with other software. I think it is more likely this is a specific NVidia-with-A:M problem that you are having. If you ever do break down and try it, make a snapshot of your system before you put the AMD card in, just so it is simple to revert back to your Nvidia state. Denmark is right next to Germany... maybe if you dropped by Steffen's place one day he'd be able to diagnose the situation. Say you just happened to be in the neighborhood hunting butterflies.

I remember my super-8 camera was my first bit of serious dissonance with my dad. $50 for... a movie camera? Oh dear, oh dear oh dear! The problem wasn't that it was a movie camera, it was that I spent money at all. Even my own money that I made on my paper route. And there was more hand wringing every time I spent $3.50 to get some film developed at the Fotomat. Remember the Fotomat? You'd take your film to a girl sitting in a tiny shed in the middle of a parking lot. It sounds crazy to say that. It didn't even appear to have a door on it. I just figured she must be crawling in thru the window every morning.

Cool! That is somewhat more advanced than my first attempt, also with a super 8 camera.

Perhaps he is saying that the CD versions stop with the insert-correct-CD message but he has also bought and installed the license version which runs but very spottily. Integrated graphics are slow and pokey. Game people hate them but most A:M user with laptops get by with them. So we have two different problems. With v15 or earlier it's the CD, with v16 or later it's some sort of graphics problem. Being sure the graphics driver is up to date would be my first gambit. Hostler... to try...If v16 at least starts running, run it and got to Tool>Options>Global and switch the "Real-time Driver" setting to whatever choice it is not set to currently and restart. See if this changes anything. EDIT: I just saw that your license has expired. Ouch. I do certainly wish you had brought this up before that year ran out.

I think that's a fair conclusion. The mystery is why it affects your computer and not other people with similar equipment. What is the particular thing that is different? I still think getting a cheap AMD card and slapping it in there would be a worthwhile experiment.

I've done that when I didn't see the glass door.