robcat2075

I'm not trying to rush this before it's ready, just wondering what the state of the state is or if I've missed anything.

Not a mac guy here, but... I recall Steffen creating a script that would let you run multiple instances on a Mac. That's around here somewhere. Before that people were actually making another copy of the whole installation on their hard drive and running the physically separate instance. Try duplicating the whole folder.

Someone said "It's like open source software now, but without the open and without the source"

An intermediate exercise between the basic bounce and the obstacle course might the "light ball, heavy ball" test. That's really a terrible name, since light balls do not necessarily bounce more than heavy balls. It would be better called "bouncy and not-very-bouncy balls". The object is to correctly show balls of different qualities. Something else to try is a ball that takes more than one frame to squash and stretch itself off the ground back off the ground. I'd envision this as a ball larger and more massive than a soccer ball.

This happens only when you used the rotate manipulator? It's a known problem with no known cause yet other than it's something to do with the video card.

The best way is the way that gets the job done for you. If you know your goal and know how to get it with pose sliders, that is a good solution. The soulcage guys just showed us a spot they did with a pose slider rigged face and they got it done great.

Node cloner was an easy way to duplicate parts of Materials. Material "Combiners" have branched structures. Node cloner doesn't work with current A:M although it is easy to duplicate /move branches of a material in a text editor. the original set up machine does not work with current A:M files (V13 orlater) TSM2 ( a plugin, not an external program anymore) does still work in 32-bit PC versions of A:M. It does not work in current Mac version of A:M.

Yes, I only recommend this to make the model, not for rigging it.

i always wondered how that brush on the top of the helmets came to be.

There are still spring tools in the interface I dont' know if they still work, but there's a "Dynamics Mode" button sitting between the Chor and Skel buttons. I never used it for anything but cloth and never got far with that. Current cloth is WAY more useful.

Thinking out loud here... I bet there are a few vertebra that are like "keyframes" with pretty much straight morphing inbetween them. You could make one master vertebra, with a pose slider to transition it through the key forms. Use Multiple Models On Path to distribute a bunch of copies along a spine path then step through them to tweak the pose setting on each copy of the model. Quick example...

I think smaller bevels on the planks.

Fearsome! I bet AO or FakeAO would do as well and faster than radiosity.

It's OK to ask questions as long as it's OK that we may not have useful answers I'm nearly completely "Game" oblivious. I'm not drawn to play them. They are graphically interesting but the actual game always seems tedious to me so that's why i don't follow that universe much and dont' have much advice to offer on it. The one bit of game commentary I'm aware of is the Penny Arcade webcomic. That seems to have a huge following but I haven't looked at it in a year.

I haven't followed the entire conversation but as far as the good idea/bad idea question... it seems like anything involving animation or games or animation and games is stepping into a brutally competitive and crowded environment.

Is that when Animation:Apprentice came out? Could be...

I thought we established several times here that the current licenses aren't transportable. You have a physical v16 CD? I didn't know that even existed.

The master lic isn't transferable to a different machine, is that what you are trying to do?

that looks nice! What do the white marks on the struts signify? The wings look a bit flattish. Are they really that thin?

I was looking Treasure chest images... the classic chests seem to have a metal corner piece that holds the boards together, and I guess the nails or screws go through that. I wonder why wooden chests don't rot and decay when they are buried in the ground?

But this still needs that plug int that we dont' have any more?

The alpha channel will make the image transparent (to a compositing program) where ever the camera background color shows. If you want alpha channel in a Quicktime .mov file, that is one of the rare times you will want to choose "Animation" as your quicktime codec.

Alpha channels are good when you want to put a computer graphic over some other image such as live action. Basically it makes the background of the computer graphic transparent and lets you use any colors you want without worrying about using a screen color. Color keying is for when you need to place some live action element over another image such as a computer graphic background.

Those look effective! How about some antenna or something on the space ship? I'll note that you can avoid the greenscreening complication by rendering with an alpha channel and using your video editor to composite that way. Presuming your editor understands alpha channels and it probably does. If your video editor has other codec choices you can probably get a much smaller file-size too.

On older versions of A:M the import would appear to freeze A:M but it was really still working, most models would finish if you gave them enough time, perhaps many hours. Resave it as an MDL for normal loading later. Import is faster in V16 but you still have to wait it out a bit for large models.