robcat2075

And if you are determined to model it, here's how to do it in A:M... RaggedEdgeCones.mov Note: when I was using the Scale manipulator, i should have held down the SHIFT key to force it to scale uniformly. I also don't think I needed to scale the last ring to 0 on the Y axis, I really should have just moved it down low enough to hide it inside.

Mine? Yes, color map, it just adds some darkness to the recesses.

that looks very cool, Nancy!

Solution.... Displacement maps require that you render with multipass ON.

Ah ha!... I think that's it! You have to use Multi-pass with displacement!

redid the maps from scratch Needs conditioner.

Testing a bit further I can't get it to work in Final render mode. Stay tuned.

Could a few people try this displacement map test? Load DisplacementShadingTest.prj and compare a Progressive render with a Final render. DisplacementShadingTest.zip I don't recall this not working before but i can't get this displacement map to shade properly in Final render In progressive render I get an expected result.... But in Final render i don't get the shading...

I didn't get the proportions of the ragged edge right, but I think this approach would work... In photoshop i painted a black-to-white gradient, copied it to several layers and overlapped them. Then i cut a ragged edge off the top of each one with the selection tool. That made my basic displacement map. I put that through the "highpass" filter to get a fake AO shadow look for the crevices. I used "Curve Adjustment" to clip out the excess white that creates on the high spots. That map is used as a regular color map. I added "grain" noise to the displacement map to make the unragged surface look rougher. Those were cyl mapped to the shaft. HairShaft__2_.zip A:M history note.... a long time ago, maybe v5, there was a randomize CPs feature. I made some asteroids out of spheres with it once. It randomized in all directions however, you couldn't limit it to one axis.

Here's what I find when I look up "Hair shaft"... The first one I'd be tempted to try some "hair" solution rather than modeling it. The second and third ones are good candidates for a bump or displacement map treatment. Can you show the picture you are trying to reproduce?

you said "see attached". I was expecting a picture of something?

While looking for another long-lost feature I got out v8. Here is what "Interrupt Drawing" looked like in the year... 2000. InteruptDrawing.mov

yup there's a sample here... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=347067

Netrender must render to an image sequence. It assigns the next needed frame to the next available node. For animations that have sound A:M creates a .sinfo file that helps sync up existing audio files with the newly created image sequence when you import it back in to A:M.

attached?

A:M implements the most accurate compression schemes of OpenEXR, which i believe use 32-bit floating point numbers for each channel (except PXR24) A 32-bit floating point channel should make for a very, very long gray scale. A:M doesn't implement the "lossy" B44 and B44A, AFAIK. You can read about all OpenEXR's compression options in this PDF under "Data compression" I dont know of any format that uses a 48-bit integer for each channel, is there one?

By "48-bit" do you mean 16bits per RGB channel (3x16=48) or do you mean 48bits per each RGB channel?

Any reason not to use 32-bit v16 for that?

In a basic fashion, you can select, cut and paste portions from one QT player to another and resave the result. I do this on occasion to quickly trim or combine footage, but it's not like working in an NLE. I also like QT Pro's ability to extract the audio or video tracks from a file separately. But mostly I like QT Pro for being able to import and export many formats and having the most options for compressing things.

He's looking real good!

My favored way to do Quicktime with A:M is to render to to an uncompressed format (uncompressed AVI will work) and then recompress it in Quicktime Pro ($30). That gives you full video compression options and also audio compression options which A:M doesn't have even in the 32-bit version.

When i use a DBox in an action the splines are visible in all modes. Possibly a visibility icon such as bones have under "show more than drivers" would give more control.

in modeling mode distortion boxes are only temporary tools, once you leave distortion mode, they are gone. So, like HOlmes, I'm not sure what you are asking. Ask it again?

How about if you put that Text MDL out through a PLY export with maximum subdivision and reimported it to a new model?

I think those people are conveniently sidestepping the problem that most hand drawn web comics are pretty ghastly too. apropo, regarding the plight of comics in general...