robcat2075

Can you show a case where selecting more than one group or where copy/paste causes pivots to be lost? I can't make that happen.

There is a problem with displacement maps. Only one will be recognized on any patch. Any others will be rendered as bump maps. this patch has the same map applied four times but only the first is actually being rendered as displacement.

I don't know much about flocking, but Steffen Gross has two multiple model placing plugins you might want to try "MMOP" and "Multiply" After you run the plugin you could delete any that happened to fall in bad places. I think they also offer options to randomly rotate the model.

Wow! looks impressive!

Welcome to A:M! Sounds like you have a great start!

the flakes are by the "cellTurb" combiner. The clearcoat is the "Glossy"specular shader plugin .

looks great! The axle looks too thin.

an attempt at "Cars"-style clear coat, metal flake paint. (you have to full-size it to see the flakes) It doesn't "glitter" yet when the object turns so that will need some more R&D.

Sky color is in the camera properties, but I believe it always renders as black when Alpha channels are enabled.

select the ground, in the properties window turn "active" OFF. And do it on the first frame. All objects have this "Active" property.

scale % wont' help him, he needs explicit dimensions.

You'd have to eyeball physical dimensions with the rulers, or build the model using things like snap to grid and the CP properties for exact plaement. I recall Martin saying that CAD/CAM wasn't something A:M tried to do. A little experimenting reminded me that spline models are a bit harder to keep tabs on for things like exact dimensions

You can turn on the rulers. Also, the "pivot" property of any CP will give you a physical placement in your current units.

Very cool! that's a first class character.

Great treez guys. Looking at the way the leaves get distributed, it occurs to me that you could use this to make pretty good clouds. Use a foggier bitmap for the leaves and then hide the trunk. Anyone try that?

I'd suggest doing a small test each way and see if there is a difference

targas. Choose targas for your output file format. Do that first. Before you go looking for the alpha buffer. you absolutely have to do this. Have I mentioned you have to do this first?

It's in the "Render to File Settings" OUtput tab. Buffers>Alpha>ON You have to have selected an output format that supports alphas or it will not appear. Targas do. Quicktime with "Animation" codec does also. the ground is brown because a brown light is shining on it. the sky color is a camera property. But don't do this red thing. Use an alpha channel. not sure on that.

It is best to convert your video to a numbered image sequence of targas. Most NLEs can do that. Quicktime Pro can do that. If A:M can import your video file into the images folder you can on it and choose "Save Animation As" and choose .tga as the save format. Remember to pad your filename with a few zeros so the image numbers are all the same length.

I like the look of your toon renders. Does that dragons' wing have a tree sticking thru it? Ouch.

If you want a to try the absolute minimum leg rig see "The simplest IK leg" tutorial in the tutorial link in my signature. But I recommend a more thought out rig for general use.

How do you get that so smooth without a lot of bias adjusting? Or do you do a lot of bias adjusting?

Smartskin isn't for attaching CPs to bones. You do that in the model window. that guy is messed up. Smartskin was never for attaching CPs to bones. Have you done the tutorials in TaoA:M? You'd be ahead if you had. You'd know that smartskin is not for attaching CPs to bones. You're trying to create a rig from scratch your first time out. This is asking for an unhappy result. Use one of the rigs that has directions on how to install it like TSM2 or Mark's 2008 rig. TAoA:M shows how to install the 2001 rig although that's not one of the better rigs. You can find these in the "rigging" sub forum.

"slider up and down in time line" I dont' know what you mean. This doesn't sound like smart skin. smart relates the motion of one thing (usually mesh) to something else (perhaps a bone) but it doesn't limit the bone. Oh, oh! this doesn't sound right. Tell us how you rigged your character. I'm thinking some essentials have been missed. And PC or Mac? That "set" word sound like you may have a mis-notion about this. However, you smartskin the joints that need to bend smoothly. There are other solutions besides smartskin. Dont know if I being clear enough. I am so close to being able to create my toon walking and acting in the world. You know how I feel! I can almost see my ideas in real life. Please help!!!!! It WILL be cool once you get this going. But we need a few more details.

yes, more pages could be rigged like that. Remaining to be solved, however is the problem of showing something different on opposite sides of a patch. Fortunately for the shot I'm working on we don't' see the book at an angle where that's important.