robcat2075

One trick I read in Jeremy Birn's book is to not use ray traced lights on hair. Are you using ray-traced lights?

Describe the situation that needs this a bit more.

Slight further refinement. After a bit of research I've found that tank treads usually have some sort of tooth on the inside so they can be engaged by the drive wheel. And you can see this animated (with no flickering) at my A:M tests gallery

Yes, the animation is a bit surrealistic, but... you're making a movie! I think about making a movie; you're actually doing it. I agree with Largento, the ghost stuff worked real well. I'll look forward to seeing the whole film when it's done. Hope I haven't seen any spoilers!

I don't recall the settings but here's the thread http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=304884 The settings will be quite particular for each situation. You'll have to play with it a bit.

yes it is possible...it is called dual hosting. I used to do it on a web server i had set up (many many moons ago). It can be a real pain to get it up and running, but it is possible. However, I don't see how you could get each network adapter to be assigned to an individual cpu within a multi cpu machine. Sounds like a hassle. I was just brainstorming and thinking that since you can get a USB network adapter for $4 now maybe that would get you that extra IP address or some other avenue of access. But it sounds impractical. That's interesting. I didn't' even know what a blade server was. But it seems like all the economical, high performance CPUs are multi core now ( or are they?) so you still have that apparent problem of not being able to use them all. Wouldn't you also have to have a Windows license for each "blade"?

Is it possible for a computer to have more than one IP address? If it had more than one network adapter?

I believe Net Render also lets you queue jobs, something A:M doesn't do even on one CPU. NetRender was created back when a 30MHz mac was "fast". There was an obvious need for it. I had NetRender at work circa 1997 and occasionally rendered stuff on our office of Macs. But now my one core Athlon 3200 has more CPU power than all those macs put together. So in a certain sense the need for it has dissipated. The price may not be attractive, but it's not like they're pushing it or even mentioning it very much. I still think with a little scripting wizardry someone could get multi-core net rendering going, but I'll leave that to the scripting wizards.

I'm not familiar with elephant dreams but he looks like a serious work. Gonna be tough to rig but you're up to it.

If you click in the background, the hidden black model bone will become visible. That is what all points are assigned to before you assign them to other bones. When the black bone is flashing you can assign points to it, making them not assigned to other bones.

He needs some sunscreen! The nose seems not quite Indian-like. Is it based on a reference?

Why? Because some one has a Mac, doesn't run windows on it and wants to use A:M. As far as translation... Martin has said in the past that A:M is developed in a codebase crafted so that it can be compiled for PC and compiled for Mac. It's not written for PC then translated to Mac or translated by the mac. The Mac version is "mac code". There was a window feature in V11 that went away in V11.1 because there was no way to do it in the Mac OS. That's an example of the codebase being conformed for both of them. I'm sure the code is "written" on a PC but that's a just working in a text editor. A lot of things are different in the two compiler results and obviously the Mac version isn't as fast. Why? That would probably take some serious technical diagnosis from Apple (or Microsoft, which wrote the libraries that make mac compilation possible). Microsoft no longer supports its Mac libraries, and Apple obviously wont support them either. If you're developing apps for Mac and PC these days you're on your own. So says Martin. Apple is currently screwing one of their oldest developers, Adobe, over Flash. They could probably get together and fix whatever is supposedly wrong with it, but the real problem is it's not Apple's. So i imagine the prospect of a small company like Hash getting help from Apple is dim.

I can tell you that with all the displacement material tests I've done the 127-128 neighborhood gave me no displacement. In those black background tests, the depression for the black spot is gone. that tells me that ,for displacement purposes, the balck alpha area is being interpreted as 0,0,0 gray resulting in full depression.

Is there any value you can put in the gray and not have the edge of the alpha make a visible ridge?

Gray 127 made a slight displacement when I cranked the level up high. 128 seems to be true middle. Here's a test with gray=128 and displacement set to 10000% There's no displacement created where the gray decal meets the undecaled portion of the model.

I'm not sure a transparent PNG is a reliable tool here. A displacement map is a grayscale map. Once you start adding transparency to gray...

Here's my EXR depth map EXRGrayZip.zip Open EXR plugin for Photoshop Open it and see if the gray is indeed 127?

When I set my gray to 127 and paint that on a map, as I did above, I get a map that does what middle gray is supposed to do. Zero displacement. Someone's got a gamma setting somewhere not set to neutral OR maybe they have Photoshop's "Color Management" turned on. Turn that off so that numerical color values retain their numerical color values. I have yet to read a cogent explanation of of how get Color Management to not mess things up for CG work.

If your middle grays aren't coming out middle gray, something is set wrong in Photoshop. When I make a map in Photoshop my middle gray comes out middle gray and creates flat displacement like it ought to.. This 16 bit map was saved in EXR format. My Photoshop doesn't do 16 bit PNG

soften discussed: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=165102 I find the effect of Soften to be minute and unnecessary for any purpose I've had. Perhaps someone can demonstrate a useful scenario. You can see the difference by rendering (multipass must be >4) a frame ON and a frame OFF, then dropping both as rotoscopes into a new A:M chor. Zoom WAAAAYYYY in to a sharp edge, then flick the lower rotoscope visibility on and off to quickly compare the two.

But I already have one. That makes it my cheapest path to 64-bit Windows7, which is what i need to get to.

I just tested it. It works the same either way. Make sure "Apply camera post effects" is ON. And make sure you're really rendering from a camera that has that post effect applied.

We got into soft reflection a while ago posts 18-24: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=322831 Also TechRef p.234

Thanks for that report. I'm probably going a different way now. I remembered i have an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and a mother board for it sitting on the shelf from the last time I was itching to build a new computer but never got around buying the rest of the parts. So I guess I'll do that. It's like finding a $100 dollar bill in the couch. I'm trying to shave my remaining parts purchases down to $300 The Q6600 is a supposedly very overclock-able version so I'll be curious to see how that does.

They had an external app called a "node cloner", but that only works on files from before V13. Is that what you mean? I'm trying actual dragging in A:M and I'm just getting a no-go symbol so far...