robcat2075

If you've been doing polygon modeling before, i'd recommend doing all the modeling tuts in TAoA:M (#8-11) to get that out of your system.

Have you done the giraffe tutorial in TAoA:M? part of that is attaching and splicing two parts together. you could use the y key to add a CP on each side and then draw new splines to connect them across the square

the y key will add a point on a spline next to a selected point. the p key will "peak" a spline for sharp corners patches and splines are infinitely thin. for thickness you need to model an inner and outer surface.

ok, i looked again and another thing hit me.... there seems to be no direction to the light, it sees to be coming from the direction of the camera which makes for a very flat appearance. move the light more to the side so the asteroids have a shadowed part.

I think the asteroids have too much detail and too much contrast. They look a bit more like small rocks close-up rather than large asteroids far-off. That makes the apparent scale of the scene ambiguous. The ships, on the other hand, are very low contrast seem to not be in the same light that the asteroids are.

that looks better. I think you got a lot of polish done on that. The facial expressions work well, although the one in the middle may stay around too long. I just noticed the corner of the chair is vibrating. I wonder what did that?

if saving, quitting and restarting doesn't fix it, try Help>Reset Settings

Was this the one that brought up the gamma discussion? It does seem very dark. Is that Thom adjusting a light?

just to try... swtich your Tools>Options>Global>OpenGL/Direct3D pref and reboot.

That means the anecdote is even more unlike anything being proposed for the US. But no one running for office is proposing socialized medicine in the US. That term means the government runs all health care. "Socialized" is scare word that has no relation to the our situation. The UK does have a "socialized" health service, the NHS. (and yet, even with all it's awfulness, it still gets a better overall result for less money than the US system). The only proposals on the table in the US are to make sure everyone has health insurance. It's entirely possible that could be implemented badly but it doesn't have to be. obvious hyperbole that doesn't add any information to the discussion. BTW, almost nobody in the US has "free" healthcare. Almost all plans have a co-payment requirement that put a percentage of the burden on the patient. I think Indians on reservations may have "free" healthcare. Medicaid is "free" but you have to be completely broke first and stay broke. You're a doctor and were able to diagnose their problem by sitting across the waiting room from them? That's very Bill Frist. Many people with chronic conditions are told by their doctor to go to the ER immediately if something comes up. Me too. Or is it some other condition that resembles drunkeness? Again, you can diagnose this from afar? An ER desk person makes an initial assessment about who needs to be seen and what priority to assign them. If you had to wait for the loud person to be seen first, that was a judgement call the the ER staff and wouldn't have been any different if we had universal heath insurance. He wouldn't be any more or less loud and your ticker wouldn't be any more or less "iffy" just because the mode of paying for the ER visits changed. The anecdote is presented to build up some sort of emotional support for your position but it really has no bearing on the universal coverage debate. If we had universal coverage, it wouldn't put the loud guy any more in front of you in line than he already is. You said that you're elderly and have chronic heart trouble. Such a patient might well run up more than someone with a minor injury would. Where I am a "walk-in" ER visit starts at $250. That's not cheap but it's not $10,000. Implying that $10,000 would be the bill for a head cold is hyperbole. If it isn't hyperbole then I'd say that's a clear sign something is wrong with the US healthcare system you're intent on not changing. Your insurance sounds unlike most in the US. When I had health insurance, via my employer, their standard reccomendation was to go to the ER if I had a reason and couldn't get an immediate visit to my doctor. Once I had something caught in my eye. Go to the ER they said. They're the ones with the special equipment to handle odd things. My GP won't. And like most health insurance plans inthe US it was group insurance so my rates couldn't be raised just because I went to the ER X number of times. Sounds like you have a bad plan and would benefit from some sort of national coverage standards that made sense. But instead you argue to maintain the bad situation. I predict you will win. I dont' think universal coverage will ever happen here no matter who wins an election. There are too many for-profit health companies fighting against it. And if we do get universal coverage, i bet it still doesn't include dental care.

No, because the bones have different names. In actual practice this won't be much less work. But on a rig like TSM2 you can control/curl a whole finger with one bone anyway so a separate pose slider sounds unnecessary.

That's very impressive. It looks like every edge is indeed beveled.

TAoA:M #16 "Smoke Wind and Fire (Particle Sprites)" shows how.

I'm not up on the AM2001 rig, but is is possible those two cyan-colored bones between his legs (and maybe some others) are not placed properly? in the action on the right his legs seem to be trying to take the position of those two bones.

if you use a material you can keyframe its position on an object over time. Enable "show more than drivers" for the object and then you can set X Y and Z values in the transform properties of the material. if you use a decal you will need to make an animated decal. I don't think you can keyframe decal placement. I know your next question will be "how do I do that" but I'll let someone else do the details.

presuming you really mean "satin" and not "satan" you could try the material in this PRJ satincloth_solver0.01.zip a lot depends on how the object is lit. There's a "satin" on the CD but it looks a bit bumpy. I think there is also a satin in one of the Darksim collections

For all the purported horror stories told about canadian healthcare, their life expectancy is still longer than in the US, their infant mortality is lower than in the US and their general health is better than in the US. And this happens even though they spend about half as much per person on health care than in the US. They must be doing something that is getting them a better result. What is it? Canada doesn't really have "national" or "socialized" health care. Those are scare words that the US healthcare industry promotes to preserve its own financial interests. Each province in canada has it's own insurance system which pays the mostly private doctors and hospitals for their services, much as the various private insurance companies in the US pay for the mostly private doctor and hospital services. In both cases the governement doesn't employ or manage the doctors and hospitals. There may be some government run health care facilities in Canada but we have many of those in the US also. Each province has slightly different standards on what is and isn't covered by their insurance just as each US insurance company has different standards on what is and isn't covered. Canada doesn't force doctors to serve certain areas anymore than the US does so I imagine some remote areas of Canada are underserved just as remote areas of the US are underserved. I couldn't find a reference to the man waiting three years in canada to see a dentist, but i can tell you an equivalent story here. I was at a surplus store about a year ago and an old woman was wandering around holding her jaw and crying "I need something for my tooth! I need something for my tooth!" Everyone was ignoring her and I was too but then she actually comes right up to me and says "I need something for my tooth!" I tell her, "You really need to see a dentist if you have a toothache. THere's nothing in this store that will cure a toothache." "But i dont' have money for a dentist" she says and wanders off again. For her, the wait for a dentist will be infinite because she will never have the $150 it takes to just see a dentist in this city never mind the ~$600 for a tooth extraction. There are some free dental services available in the US at dental schools but they will only take patients who present the sort of cases they are interested in practicing on. I also doubt the old woman would have been able to negoitate the enormous amount of paperwork involved in applying for such care. The wait times for that free care are extensive. I know this because my boyfriend tried to apply for such dental care. It took months to fulfill all their requests for documentation. Then nearly a year wait for a first appointment. Then 8 more months to be seen by someone who could actually decide what might be done for him (he was a kidney transplant patient and the transplant drugs were ruining his teeth) and then 3 more months wait to find out that, no, they wouldn't do anything for him, his case was too unusual, he would have to go to a private dentist. I know someone will say that my stories are just anecdotal cases, but so is the guy in canada, right? It's not indicative of the general situation since Canada is getting an overall better result for less money.

I felt that way too. I kinda think he was dissuaded by the idea of having to out-fundraise Hillary, who seemed to be the 600 lb gorilla two years ago. On the other hand, there's still a lot of anti-Gore hysteria out there. It's common to paint him as a fringe electric-car nut. I think it's real tough to sell "smart" to the masses. They're suspicious of that. The Oscar and Nobel prize were probably not helping either. I think Obama benefitted greatly in the Dem race by being the main "not Hillary" candidate. The "not Hillary" people wanted someone who was publicly against the war from the start and that narrowed it down to Gore, Obama or Kucinich... and Gore didn't want to run. Novelty, history, genuine campaign skill and Obama girl combined to make the perfect wave and so far he's managed to stay on top of it.

They left MaryAnne out!

have you been using the "video" codec in FCP? Don't use that. choose "animation" or "Mpeg4" or "Sorenson3" or "photo JPEG" when you render from Final Cut. Try Photo JPEG first. that makes relatively small files but doesn't require too much CPU power to view.

no, you can't change the bias of a hook.

Eisenhower's farewell seems to be on the mark also

This must be embarassing, she actually liked the idea of Obama winning Alaska... Palin on Obama And someone in the Alaska GOP didn't get the talking points e-mail...

Some people are saying it's Elaine from Seinfeld, others are saying it's Tina Fey from SNL... I'm thinking it may be Mary Anne from Gilligan's Island.

She's in the pocket of Big Fur