robcat2075

I agree it is needed. Whatever is done needs to work as much as possible with the new online help implemented in v17. I think that is the future rather than a book, although if it were possible to compile that into a coherent book as an option that would be useful too.

That is only 290 bytes so something must be missing. To use a post effect, "Apply Camera's Post effects" needs to be ON in the "Buffers" settings.

Simon, are you on V17? the current move is to put all the techref available interactively. You on a parameter and the text from the tech ref will come up. I think future efforts should go into making that interactive resource contain better information. The Maya Help appears voluminous to me, but after observing numerous Maya users at 11 sec Club I don't think it is a complete solution either. Consider this quick random check... I look up "Save As" the Maya Help takes me to: huh? buried in the text is a use of something similar to "Save As" but not an explanation. But Maya's Help is not a bad one, but who would write all the extra explanatory information? Who actually knows enough about A:M to do that correctly and and can write well enough that no one will complain in the future that the techref is inadequate?

It only happens with shaded renders?

Is there a good example of a complete tech ref that we might model a revised A:M tech ref on? I think what people really want is more context and examples for each feature. That would be a very huge endeavor.

This only happens on this Phoneme project?

It's like putting a bell on the cat. Everyone thinks it's a good idea but... who will do it?

I'm lost... why the displacement when you want a transparent effect?

Do an AMReport for that request. Steffen has changed the baking code several times so he probably knows about it.

The are supposed to be saved where the PRJ has been saved. Save a PRJ first, even if you are normally only saving chors.

The picture is a bit small to see what's right or wrong, however...Displacement needs to be rendered with multipass or it will not shadow properly.

Would "Merge and Purge Groups" fix the group problem?

Doing FakeAO in "post" in an A:M composite project lets you quickly experiment with settings in real time, which is good because it has many more settings to get right than regular AO does. But it can also be used for final finished renders (in v16, at least)

inthe model window>plugins>wizard>Fontwizard is the path I thing. ON the help... I'm not sure if it worked the same on macs. On pc there was a .CHM file that A:M reads. The TechRef is the source of what was in the CHM file get a PDF here... ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/docs/ you will also see a masterchm.zip file there. Try unzipping that to your AM directory.

Here's a sample PRJ that shows the core concept working. The vase "Shell" fades away to reveal the "brain". For me it works in real-time shaded mode, progressive renders and final renders. See if it works in V14 for you. FadingAway.prj

Whenever someone would bring me a task that they thought would be great for "animation" I would typically try to suggest some non-CG way to accomplish the goal and deport the task to someone else. I found that if i did not constantly try to push stuff over the fence into someone else's yard I would end up with too many things on my plate that should never have been brought to me. "Wouldn't it be easier to have our photographer shoot that phone instead of me making a 3D model? I'm sure you haven't sent that prototype phone back to the lab IN CANADA before you were sure you didn't need it anymore."

I like the color scheme too.

Blocking situations where there are not occasions to hold a pose go like this: Simple IK Leg Walk (Post #20) It is similar in that you are nailing down the essential landmark poses of your performance, but since there are no poses held it is a succession of unique Keyframes rather than pairs. Then you go back to refine the transistions.

I'll add "The number of tasks will expand to exceed the available time"

(MOD NOTE: This post has been moved to align topics. Apologies for any confusion) Progressive render is a shorthand, quick onscreen approximation of what a final render will look like but it can't do everything a final render does. For example, Toonlines will NOT appear in Progressive renders. That said, when i re-ordered the groups in your head model the transparency effect was fading in and out as expected in onscreen progressive render. There's some conflict in your groups and decals, I don't think A:M is the core problem, but i also don't have v14 to test with.

When you create a new Action there is a dialog that asks you to select a model to work with. If you first created a Model that had a camera or light in it, that might facilitate using Actions to control a light or camera.

The way a ray-traced light (Sun lights are always ray-traced) shadow fades out at the top is a special case when "rays cast" is set to 1 and the "width" is set to a non-zero value. For an absolutely sharp shadow with no fade set width to 0 For fuzzy shadows with no fade set "rays cast" to greater than 1 and "Width" to some suitable large number.

I've never used the phoneme thing for dialog so i'm not clear on how it works but... I believe it drives settings of the pose sliders that make the phoneme shapes. I would look at the curves associated with those pose sliders. (the better way to do speech is to keyframe the face controls directly in the timeline.)

make sure that the "whole flesh head" group is the last one in the model's list or it's transparency settings may not override previous groups'.

If it's rendering normally then no problem. real-time view is just an approximation and it can't do everything that Final renders do.. I thought you were having trouble with the final render.