robcat2075

We'll figure something out!

Good looking shot two ideas... -I think they would look more "there" if they cast a visible shadow on the ground -The copper parts would benefit from a much wider and somewhat weaker specular highlight.

In the "Heat Distortion" Thread I posted a sample project that uses a Material effector to change the refraction value of a small portion of a lumpy transparent tube. HeatDistortion.zip The idea is that where the refraction is greater than 1.0 the lumps will bend the light and distort the background seen through the object, creating something like the wavy distortion you seen in the air above a very hot object. You may also recall a similar tactic used by Jeff Lew in "Killer Bean 2" to make the "trail" of a bullet in the air visible. However the effect only appears properly in Progressive render, not Final renders. Steffen Gross has looked at the problem and found that it will be difficult to fix (many potential side effects) but also found a simple work around: Set the "Density" of the lumpy object to some small value like 0.0001 (anything smaller than 0.01 will display as 0). That will force the refraction of the lumpy object to render where the Material Effector intends it to render. ("Density" is like Transparency but varies the transparency based on the thickness of the object. A tiny Density value will have no visible effect in most cases.) heat.mov I post this for posterity in case anyone in the future is stumped by this small render bug that may not be immediately fixed.

If there isn't a mascot contest around year's end, we ought to have some themed contest for around that time.

They said it couldn't be done! , but I haven't got a hat!

Rule of re-usable actions... Your model needs to use the same rig as whatever the Action was animated with. The head may move in your test because your head bone and the one in the Action have the exact same name. Bone names are what A:M uses to match things up.

The plugins (one for 32 and one for 64-bit) haven't been recompiled. I guess it's just crazy C++ stuff that keeps the 64-bit version working in spite of the change.

looking good. one suggestion would be to make the middle spline in the eyelids more in the middle, at the peak of the curve, and more evenly space the others. This would make the eyelids better suited for eyelid shaping.

Someone turn on the jenpy-light!

So it's something about the specific OBJ that causes the problem? I know it's time consuming, but if you imported the OBJ as a model rather than as a Prop, would the transparency work correctly then?

That is correct. The license is not transportable. Fuchur isn't an employee of Hash, he's just misinformed. I'm not an employee of Hash either, but if you could link me the page that says "hardware dongle" or implies it ( I couldn't find one) I'll encourage them to fix it.

In V17 I get the same effect Pixelplucker does at anything besides 100% transparency. I can't test it much in v15 or v16 because the OBJ comes in in a completely different size and location, not matching the mdl portion.

So the problem is not really "transparency", it's OBJs with transparency. Can you post a sample OBJ? Direct3D is a subset of DirectX, one of many DirectX things like DirectDraw. There's even a DirectMusic.

Yes,i just tried it. set the time to any frame and then export.

I'm pretty sure you can just set the time to any frame you want before you Export as model.

What does it look like when you load my test PRJ?

I dunno... I get the choice in 32-bit A:M v17 still... Is it possible your card doesn't' support Direct 3D and A:M just skips it then?

I had to watch it several times to figure out what I was seeing. It wasn't immediately obvious that he was looking out a window. I'd suggest having some visible, dark but visible, scenery on the outside to see get lit up when the lightning flares and then i'd reduce the reflection level on the window so that his image in the glass is perceptible but not the brightest thing in the scene. The reflection of the back wall in the room is too strong also.

I like the "art" look of that lightning. It's not realistic lightning, it's like what you might see in a stop-mo film.

Per the viideo, You leave those 2 seconds unused ( and unrendered, for now) so that a camera transition from the last segment to yours may be fashioned. We dnt' know what that will be untila ll the segments are in and an order has been chosen. It may be necessary to drag each object timeline separately, let me know if that works.

For Pixelplucker, the answer is "no", it looks the same in every possible view and zoom, right? This is why I'm not sure what we're talking about. V15 doesn't have retopology. Are we talking about transparency while retopology is being used or just transparency in general?

Here's a test of an object with transparent materials at 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 0% It seems to be all correct in shaded realtime mode TransparencyTest01.prj transp.mov

It's a strange mental frame-of-mind. I understand it but can't really explain it in words. I think a lot of it has to do with "What the cool kids are doing." I've noticed a big thing in Maya circles is the "How to Cheat with Maya" books, as if there's some super-secret thing that's being revealed. I feel like saying "You don't have to 'cheat' in A:M, the right way is also the easy way", but that's not as much fun as a "secret".

32-bit is just a download away!