robcat2075

I'd think that a material effector is part of the solution

Multiplane! That works well. William, did you do that original shot of the castle? How did you do the grass in that?

Another classic!

what line?

Fun ideas, Paul. You can get you tube to show your own 3D stuff in any format by uploading a crosseye version and adding a yt3d:enable=true tag. Then you don't have to worry about if the viewers have the right glasses. youtube details

no clue here. you're gonna have to show a pic of something similar.

What is stopping you?

Here's the non-action method: After You got your light constrained to a path: then set the ease to 0% at 0 seconds 100% at 1 second 100% at 5 seconds grab it and squish it all down to 1 frame. Use CP settings to make the last one exactly at frame 1. Then select it all again and >Curve>PostExtrap Method>repeat render with multipass and motion blur set to 20% the guide spline has been set to render as line to make it visible. 5 passes shows obvious stepping but gives a quick approximation 36 passes looks smooth 81 passes is only slightly different than 36

you path constrain a light to a spline you set its ease to traverse that spline in less than one frame and repeat that every frame multipass renders the light at all the different points of the spline creating the effect of a non-point light. The same technique is used for spinning light rigs and works fine for animation. This is really a light "Array" but with the great convenience of not having to create numerous separate lights and the option to do quick tests with fewer passes. Here's a page from a book in which they discuss true area lights and their downside even in a vastly more expensive app.

agep's solution is the way A:M supports that need. "Any spline can be a light" True area lights are time consuming to render and probably wouldn't be any faster than the multipass solution.

newly pressed sheet metal! Does that "perpendicular normals" button make any difference or is that a false lead?

looks good. It would be interesting to go thru it surface by surface and light by light and figure out what it would take to make it look like the photos.

I tried your PRJ and I get a odd result also. Wait a few days for v15h to come out. I put in an AMReport on Paste Mirror a while ago and I believe Steffen has addressed it in the next release. Steffen explained to me that in rigs like TSM2 and 2008 apparently, the CPM algorithm can get confused by hidden rig bones that are in nearly same positions as control bones. Notice that bones like Chest Controller Parent are getting keyed by CPM even though those weren't keyed to begin with and shouldn't be getting a mirror treatment. Wait a few days for v15h to come out. Sorry for the frustration. to the left of those. hover over them and they have names. BTW, have you watched my keyframing options vid inthetuts link in my sig? It covers that stuff.

I just uploaded a zip and it worked. embed the model , embed the action, save the PRJ and zip that.

odd results can happen if bones are not exactly mirrored in the model. Try increasing the paste mirror tolerance, the default is quite small at .01 That said, some fixes are coming in the next A:M release.

I got a corrupted zip file when I tried to download it. You could note this at AMReports at www.hash.com/reports.

Is that not "Mirror Smartskin"?

That looks very successful! One controller? One!?

Looking at those screen shots, it occurs to me now that after Dave snuck back into the ship via that air-lock that HAL could have finally opened the pod bay door and sucked him back out again. But I suppose HAL had a lot on his mind.

Your method is probably the most accurate, but you can use distortion boxes to bend things. Because of the way fonts get splined some may work better than others. Another possibility is to create the letters in a a vector program like AI, use the better tools in that program to bend them, and import the result via the AI wizard.

The Simbiont plugin is already included in A:M, but you do need to get the shaders.

here's the brief mention I could find in the A:M docs. i don't fully understand the difference between the two except the interpolation of the splines between CPs appears a bit different.

There are two custom buttons available in the Tools>Customize>Commands>Tools tab... One for "biased normals" and one for "Perpendicular normals" you can drag those to a tool bar and use those to set the style for a selected group. I THINK this is what rodger is referring to, the "perpendicular" is the old style, and "biased " is the new default.

Looks great Rodger! I wonder why they call it a gear when it looks like a lever?

Stitching in all those little button holes on cameras is a bitch! But don't be afraid to post the wireframe WIPs, people find those instructive to see.