robcat2075

Hey, Stian, is it OK if I use one of your AO renders for a tut on A:M rendering? "Yes," you say? Great! Thanks!

One of our Mac users notes that A:M on the Mac works well, but you have to give each button press a moment to register. I recommend you go with an annual license so you can always be updated. The never-ending license does not include perpetual updates.

I believe Hash still has an educational license package that may be advantageous to you. Contact Hash directly for what the details are on that. Without knowing more about the crashes it's hard to say what the problem might be. Crashes are exceedingly rare for me, but I'm on a computer that only i use and that i know has the appropriate updates. A classroom computer that many people have an opportunity to modify (unawares even) is a trickier situation. Random crashes for no apparent reason tend to be a problem with graphics card drivers.

Looks like a section of the menu is hidden. "Remove Decals" is missing too. I've made an AMReport for it... http://www.hash.com/reports/view.php?id=6306

I think you really have to test it on a per scene basis and find what suits your taste. For example a Hanna-Barbera look might need very thick lines and no shading. Anime might have thin lines and some level of shadowing visible. Render time itself won't vary much because of different toon settings.

I'll note that the Next/Last Keyframe buttons will take you directly to exact keyframes.

I presume you are just talking about what the wrist has to do for those two poses? Since it's all about the the same bone rotating and about two extremes at opposite ends of the motion range, i would say put them in the same smartskin. Now you have two completely different answers! Multiple Smartskin keys work best when they are evenly spaced, for example at -90, 0, 90 or -80, -40, 0, 40, 80 The fewer keys you can get away with, the better.

I don't know the original use of the PLY format but I have used it when i wanted to get a denser version of a mesh. Saved in PLY with 16x subdivisions checked, then imported that back into a new model. I did that when making some pants for a cloth test.

Best wishes, Ed!

There was a time when some sort of virtual character interaction MMPRPG web-world was envisioned that would use A:M's data-light spline technology. I think that was what the "avatar" format was for. Possibly it also had something to do with that game studio in Utah?

I'll try to get a look at teh PRj later. W is one component of Quaternion rotation, normal for A:M. I have a brief video that probably doesn't answer all you need to know about it... You can change the default Quat interpolation to Euler or Vector by RMBing on the transform>rotation in the properties.

Someone said he was wandering the desert. I was never sure if that was metaphor or reality. Happy Birthday, Holmes, where 'er you wander!

Shining armor!

Even the big studio shorts like Pixar does tend to be very small scope things, like that birds-on-a-wire short. Great idea with just the bare minimum of set and character models to get it across.

Damn! Good to hear you're still on planet Earth, at least, Rich.

the poly and avatar are Hash formats so they wont' get you much in the outside world. 3DS is a standard format, although most 3ds models are poor candidates for import to A:M because they tend to be triangles, not quads in v17 we now have added .X .dxf .obj .lwo .stl

At a convention I heard this story from a guy who ran a VFX studio but also taught animation at a school in Los Angeles. His class had gotten to the point of starting their final projects and they had to run them by him for approval. One boy had a great idea that the teacher approved right away. A girl in the class had an idea that was borderline lame but it fulfilled the assignment so he approved that too. A week later the boy comes in with a better idea which is obviously superior so the teacher approves changing his project. The next week the boy comes back with an even more fabulous idea and the teacher approves it even though time was running out. In the end, the boy never got his project finished and had nothing to show for all his work but the girl who had been working all along got hers done and had a nice piece for her reel. The moral... "the worst animations are the ones that don't get finished"

the extrusion wizard would get you a shape along a path, right?

I'll note that NetRender doesn't have any fighting aliens, not even a progress bar, just percentages.

I just noticed that there are more real-time render increments now 1,4,16,32,64, adaptive

Two great examples among us of getting-it-done are Spleen and Largento. They set sane limits to their project scope based on what they can do and the time they have to do it in.

It's been so long since I've used any other 3D program I'm not sure what they even do to let you know they are still working. After Effects just has a progress bar and a frame counter which has fooled me on several occasions.

Immortalized on the "About" screen. Happy Birthday!

A thoughtful article about the complications of Kickstarter campaigns... http://www.thebaffler.com/past/whos_the_sh...ur_kickstarter/

The CPU overhead for flipping thru the frames of that animation will be microscopic. Consider that the A:M forum has multiple simultaneous animated GIFs scrolling across the top and that doesn't load my CPU even 1% of its capacity.