robcat2075

On the question of whether the OBJ exporter understands the bias settings of the A:M splines when it subdivides them... It seems to be pretty darn close in its interpretation. Here is an A:M spline model of a half torus with splines peaked, with bias at 167% and with bias at 300%. Below it is that model exported to OBJ at 64 subdivisions and then imported as a Prop: Here they are dropped on top of each other. The spline model is red and the Prop is Green. The surfaces seem to be very close to each other but not identical...

Manuel, My legal opinion is a bit different than Rodney's. I ascribe to the principle first asserted in the 1908 Supreme Court ruling in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Strauss that allows someone to resell a copyrighted work if they are truly giving it up and not just making a new copy. If you have a version that runs only with a CD in the drive and you have that CD in your drive, you may run it. The person who sold it to you doesn't have the CD anymore so they can't run it anymore. Those CD versions are kind of old and, yes, the current $79 annual subscription has many improvements, but if you use that version you've got and have questions about A:M, we'll try to answer your questions (if it's at least v11 or later )

The Neverhood is about the only PC game I ever bought. Looked great. I got lost in some cave and never figured it out.

If you use A:M to decal, that should work yes. (I described above how it should be done) At least it worked with 3d Coat for me. See you *Fuchur* So... ToreB can have a good result with painting on A:M models, but he will need to decal first in A:M. That one change to the workflow is all that's needed, right?

Is this workflow possible?... I see hints of it above but I'm not sure... -export an OBJ that is highly subdivided so that the curves of the shapes between the original CPs are preserved. -paint on OBJ that in the poly paint program -fit the map that results back onto the original, lo-density spine model. Is that already possible?

For that price you need to really, really, really want to paint in 3D.

Hipster Squirrel? I've never seen Hipster Squirrel before. From "Porky Chops" (1947)

This sounds interresting... How do you change the pose values when rotating a bone? A "Smartskin" can associate any keyable parameter with a bone rotation. Are you already familiar with creating smartskins and pose sliders? -

As far as I know there is no provision to include in an OBJ the spline biases and magnitudes and directions that are in an A:M mesh. All exporting to OBJ can do is preserve the spatial location of the CPs and connect them with straight edges; it can't preserve the shape of the splines that connect them, it can only presume they were straight edges. If you paint on the OBJ in another program and then import that back to A:M I don't see any way you can get back exactly what you started with, nor can taking the new paint maps and putting them on the original model work exactly right because the OBJ that was painted on and the original A:M model are not really the same shape. They might be close enough to work sometimes but it can't work 100% of the time. Am I missing something?

I'm afraid i don't understand that diagram.

Congratulations on the new arrival!

OK, who makes Troer? Could we just get them the right MDL code?

I'm not sure I understand you... is the importer in v17 working properly or not? If it is working properly, then the importer is not Tore's problem. I don't know if that is going to happen or not.

It's an interesting look but it looks like the reflection images aren't smoothly scaled as the direct images are.

Have you made a bug report for this?

Nice sprite! I'd suggest reporting that as a bug, unless that is something that happens only in 1 pass ?

Hold down the shift-key and you get the option for other resolutions

One could lobby the 3DCoat people to modify their product to properly import and export meshes made in A:M MDL format.

It's not hard to make a pose that corrects overlapping splines, then do the cylinder map. That's how I did my Al Capone head which has many overlapping parts. Because I didn't want to devote a lot of map to the top and back of the head, I made one pose for the face and sides of the head and another for top and back of the head. I hid the top/back and stamped most of the cyl wrap on the face pose, then I hid the face/sides and stamped a little part of the map on the top/back pose. That got me this UV layout on the model which i can paint in 3Dpaint or in Photoshop and never have to convert to an OBJ. (the map shown is the hair density map) It's not "automatic" or instant, but in the time you spend trying to make 3Dcoat work you could do this and be done already.

Maybe you need a language police like the French have. They would probably say they were using "Yiddish" although that seems to be pretty much slightly misspelled German. It's hard to think of many German words that have made it straight, unaltered into standard non-comedy English even though most of English originates as German. dachshund Kindergarten gesundheit I'm sure there are a few more.

Here's what I don't understand... why is this fragmented layout preferable to having one continuous map that covers the whole surface? With a cylindrical wrap you can have coverage in one unbroken map and not have to convert to a non-A:M format either.

I would ascribe the difference to the fact that 3DCoat is a polygon tool that doesn't understand the smooth spline interpolation between CPs in A:M models. It presumes the edges of the patches were straight lines but they really weren't.

voted last night

I always find it unsettling to hear modern English words in foreign movies.

Congrats on the gig! Is "gig" common parlance in German?