robcat2075

If I had to summarize the purpose of A:M in one sentence: "The goal of A:M is not to include every possible means of creating computer graphics, the goal of A:M is to provide a set of genuinely useful tools for people who want to model and animate characters." Of course that leaves a lot unsaid but I would say that's the basic mission statement. Most questions about why A:M has or hasn't some feature resolve with what that main purpose of A:M is. If A:M doesn't have it... you don't need it.

A good screencam tutorial project for someone would be to take a model as David has done and talk about how one decides where to put the splines. Someone do that.

Happy birthday and may all your pixels be pluckable!

I hope some of our members who are talented at graphic design are looking at this oe.

Charles Babbage (DrPhibes) works at a shop that fabricates many large display items for various clients. Charles designed this giant mechanical dragon in A:M for the Disney World theme park. He modeled it in A:M, then exported to a large milling machine. "It is milled out in polystyrene foam, than we use that as a pattern to layup fiberglass. The finished parts are fiberglass with a fabricated steel frame. The head is carbon fiber," Charles told me on Facebook earlier this year.

Fine work!

Here are some notes: clip3367SimonsPatches.mov

Simon, if could you post or send me that model and I'll take a look at it.

Something has knocked the Styrofoam insulation off our spaceship!

Good example!

We should try to track him down.

If you have a solid object like a car that you want to use and no sub-part of it needs to be animated, then importing the object as a "prop" and using it that way is easier and faster than converting it to a model. If you need some solid part, like a door, to also animate then one would break the car model into two parts, the car and the door and import them as separate props and use them that way in your chor. That would save remodeling... IF you have the program the original model was made in and can break the polygon model there.

Retopology Here's the link in his signature... http://www.patchwork3d.de/html/page.php?page_id=24

Skip ahead to 12:35 This is the first time I've ever seen him on film. 9JpfUK53lug

I'm sure he found managing SO very wearing.

The advantage of the Patch Mode tool is that you can easily select a patch without having to loop around all its CPs.

Now, looking at that, you can use the "Patch Group Mode" tool to click on any patch to select it and then >Rotate Images to turn it 90° until it faces the way you want. But first... how did you do the image substitution?

If the original map is not obvious in it's orientation you can temporarily substitute a map with an arrow or something on it.

I have found that when using patch images on a whole model that some do indeed get inverted somehow in their appearance even if the normals on the patches are not inverted themselves. Test your image on simple case of a cylinder to start.

Original v18 with no "a" (for real) was released back in December so this Jan 10 version is very likely v18a

I think what I've found is that multi-pass motion blur doesn't always slice time exactly right. For example, 256-passes slices time in the increments that one would expect for 225 passes and then the last 31 passes are all on top of each other. This is almost never noticeable for motion blur purposes but when swinging a light around it is detectable.

There will be a slight delay for Episode 6. I'm pondering my way around a few exotic bugs I've encountered.

May all your Cans be Tin!

There is no shortcut key to initiate a constraint. If you are needing to create quite a few in a repetitive manner I'll note that my current "It Can't Be Done!" tutorial series teaches the process of text-editing A:M files to create elaborate structures of that sort.

If anyone does do this I'll reiterate Rodney's advice... be prepared to put substantial time into it. It's not something you can do adequately in a few hours on the weekend or an hour or two each night. The mentor comments are what you are paying for and if they are commenting on stuff you knew was still not finished about it you're paying for something you already knew.