robcat2075

Is that thing being drilled sitting on the surface below it or floating above it?

Displacement maps can have trouble in animation. I've found that rendering larger and scaling the image down can help a lot. Is doing it as a bump map much less effective?

That looks quite fetching. The grass might scintillate less if you had jitter on.

Possibly you have another group that is overriding the transparency?

AO working Props with is a recently fixed bug. Cool nodular landscape Will!

Occasionally that will happen with a Windows browser too. Usually the save dialog tells you what file type it intends to save a file as and that is an opportunity to correct it from ".txt" to "all file types" which will save whatever the original file name had.

Good looking parts. I'd suggest some ease as the first few parts fly in instead of having them hit a wall. Lighting is rather flat for my taste.

If that's a highly reflective or clear surface you wouldn't see shadows anyway.

I just tried it in v17 64-bit and it does work. Mention that too.

I get a crash also in 32-bit A:M. AMReport it and note that it works OK in v16.

Are other Mac users having this trouble? AMReport it with a screen capture and then go back to a previous beta until it's resolved.

Does this happen on all projects, even a new one? Try a Reset all Settings?

on "Materials" in the PWS and choose "Import Material". That is standard for loading any material. Navigate to where the material you want is stored and select it. A search for a file that you know the name of ("porcelain.mat") is always a worthy gambit for locating where a file is stored. I believe porcelain.mat is installed with the standard dataset In the case of my V17 the location is: C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V17.0\Data\Materials\Geometry Don't expect A LOT from porcelain; it is able to somewhat smooth the appearance of a surface, but good splining will get you more.

In V17 you may notice some very slight changes in the default Choreography that is created if you do New>Chor - The old "Rim" light is now named "Spot". This light, shining from the front, is in the wrong place to be a true "rim" light in proper photography/lighting terminology. "Spot" will be a correct name for its function and placement in this chor. -"Spot" light's color is now white instead of orange because orange was ugly. -"Ground" is now a 5x5 grid instead of one patch. This puts some visible spline lines in shaded wireframe view, to better show the perspective of the ground plane. This also renders the placement of kleig lighting slightly better in shaded mode than the single patch Ground did. - "Ground" now has Cast Shadows set to ON. Cast Shadows OFF was causing single patch thickness models to not cast shadows on the ground, which was confusing to new users. Long ago, Martin once explained that setting Ground Cast Shadows OFF saved render time but I haven't been able to detect any savings with the current A:M. -Camera>TV Safe is now OFF. The "TV Safe" area is no longer a serious issue with modern digital video where the entire frame of video is always fully shown. You may still turn it on in your camera properties if you need it. These changes will happen only to new chors that are created, they won't affect any work you have saved and I'm not aware of any tutorials that depended upon the old chor settings. A:M creates new chors by loading the "Default Chor.cho" from the main A:M program folder. If you wish to revert to the old chor style you can rename this file to "Default Chor.cho" and copying it over the one currently in place: Default_Chor_original.cho Save a copy of it elsewhere, future A:M installers will always overwrite these standard-named files.

I screen captured some frames from progressive render. There would still be tweaking to do but this is the essential concept. HeatWave.mov The more typical CG solution is to render a pass that just has suitable gray scale particles being emitted from the jet and use that in a compositing program to drive a blur or distortion filter over the regular render.

Here's my AMReport PRJ. It works in Prgressive render! HeatDistortion.zip

I just see the barest hint of smoke there. This doesn't look like a jet engine. But you do want a heat effect? I just tried a distortion glass with a material effector added to make only part of it use refraction but i just found that material effects dont' work in final render, so that will become an AMReport

Hey, She's looking alive!

Did you check the Recycle bin? I never save any data to the C drive where the OS and programs are installed. I partition the drive so that there is someplace absolutely separate from the OS to keep my data. Then if I have to restore the OS, there's no data involved and it goes fast. When I want to back up data, I'm not backing up OS stuff.

Hooray! informal list: substantial speed improvements More robust Sub Surface Scattering usable in Groups and Materials A:M Answers ( on any property for Tech Ref entry. Not fully populated with "answers" yet but the mechanism is there) "A" button OFF warning! many bug fixes

I think he was speaking more generally about controls, Simon, can you tell more about the trouble you are having?

My own preference is not to do that, since that locks you into a particular arrangement of motion for the whole finger. I do like to make draggable poses for whole hand poses that I need frequently (for example: default open, relaxed fingers, vulcan salute, index finger point, hyper extended fingers, peace sign...). Dragging the pose onto the character quickly keys all the necessary bones and if I need something slightly different it's easy to adjust the few bones that need to be different. Video in this post

in case you haven't seen it already... a video about the ever important concept of Spline Continuity http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=365435

I will make more. Just today I was sketching out a planned sequence of lessons. But thinking it through and doing all the footage to explain it in the best way possible is a challenging task. The orphan CP I'd have to spend time trying to recreate. It's a rarity. If it happens more, eventually you'll connect it with something you have done, and tell us what it was. Trial>error>learn.

You're right, A:M is great for mechanical models too. I wouldn't model with anything else. But if you were ONLY making mechanical models then your life might go faster with an app that can, for example, automatically bevel an edge. You can make great bevels in A:M but it's not as easy as a with a strong polygon modeler. For me, it's not a deal killer, I prefer A:M when I consider all the things that are easier. I think you were really close with what you had, there were just a couple bumps to diagnose. After you have made some more models you will start to see the bumps before you hit them.