robcat2075

I'm going to say you're doing something fundamentally wrong. I can't think of a time that weights have disappeared on me. Can you show a case of it happening?

I tell people A:M is not intended to provide every possible means of CG production, A:M is intended as an end-to-end pipeline for narrative animation, meaning you want to tell stories with characters. Do you want to pre-test the optics of a 17-element zoom lens you've designed? A:M is not for that. Do you want to study the efficiency of a coolant flowing through an internal combustion engine? A:M is not for that. But if you want to tell a story about a guy who sees something very odd with his zoom lens or a story about someone who gets stranded in a strange place when his engine overheats, that's what people do with A:M. My pitch would be... buy the $80 subscription, give it a fair shot and if you love it the extras will be there waiting for you.

I found my comparison thread... http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...80&hl=brand I guess A:M was more than a hair faster. Fine print: My knowledge of Maya is far less than that of A:M, it's possible I wasn't using Maya to its full advantage. But i was following the manual to set things up as similarly as possible. A sun light is a sun light and a cylinder is a cylinder, I figure. It's also possible that, like A:M, Maya has become more clever and faster since that 2007 version. I haven't bothered to upgrade Maya to find out; A:M already does everything I need.

Can you post one of the decals?

Regarding the speed of your CPU...anything you have in a computer today is way better than what we had a few years ago and still did lots of stuff with. There will always be something faster out there teasing us.

In the interest of full disclosure one should note that GPU in A:M is in the very earliest stages of development. There isn't a beta of it we can all test yet and we dont' know how much of A:M's functionality can be made to work with things like that. A:M renders about the same speed as other similar apps that do 3D. A while back I compared the speed of A:M vs. Maya on CPU intensive scenes and found that they were either the same or A:M was a hair faster. That was with v13, A:M has gotten about 50% faster since then.

Thanks Rodney! I just happen to be reading a book on storyboarding at this time.

I like that. I was thinking of "Rear-er-er Window" but I like Front better

Part B tests out the bones and CP weighting and adds the simple IK leg constraints. Penguin_Rigging_B_Testing_Bones_and_Constraints.mov the next part will look a special penguin problems

I'm not sure if they should or shouldn't be there. Just to try... delete the groups, save the cloth and deflector materials copy the mesh only to another blank model window, save the new model, restart, load the new model, load the two materials recreate the groups and drop the materials on them does it sim?

The concept is "Rear Window". It's entirely from the viewpoint of someone in a building across the street. Much like BUS STOP was entirely from one view point.

Looks like the same thing repeating over and over... have you tried pruning it?

Yes, I get error messages when it can't do a simulation. If you get a crash with your sample PRJ you should change your report's "severity to "crash"

Nice bus! I like the varied windows. Needs an identifying number so no one gets on the wrong bus.

Here's the first installment. This is just the stuff that has to happen before we get rigging... essential housekeeping. Penguin_Rigging_A_Housekeeping.mov

I like that!

Good lookin' set, Mark! of course, those are all "front" windows....

There's something odd about Invisusira23, when i try to select the "DeflectorBody" group A:M goes to "Not responding" for a while.

I get the same outcome. V15 works and v16 doesn't. I just reported it and it looks like you have too!

My opinion is... you don't need the library at all. Open and load files from the CD like you would open and load files from any hard drive location.

If you can show the exact same PRJ doing different in v16 than in v15 that's something to investigate. Best of all is if you can make a simple case that demonstrates it.

I suppose the two extremes would be the old brownstone like you have on the left with fairly small windows and a modern office building where the entire wall is the window. Anywhere along that continuum are trade offs on what can and can't be plausibly done in that setting. Do some more research and see what all the possibilities are.

Is this something you can post?

I don't think we want to skimp on the set. One reason BUS Stop works is that the set looks great,it makes the movie look like it might be something good from the very first frame and it gives even the most minor efforts a bit of pizzaz. We also don't get tired of looking at it. What does our rear window look like? Is it an old NYC apartment? Is it a modern condo with sliding glass doors and a balcony? An office building with a ledge?

Be prepared for opinions and revisions! Expect that you will have to change something. Show us a concept of what you're thinking of before you polish it off. I can think of ten different sorts of apartment windows ans some will be more useful than others