robcat2075

Welcome to A:M! Ideal? faster and more is always better. I had 1 G Ram and an Athlon 3200XP and was pleased, but that was with Win2000. I understand WinXP and Vista use more RAM so I think 2Gigs might be a better minimum today. Expensive video cards do not greatly affect performance in A:M. If you buy the CD version ($299) you can take that CD to as many computers as you want to install and run. A:M needs the CD to be in the drive every time you start it. After it is started you can take the CD out. The download version ($79) is locked to one computer. Also, it expires in one year; the CD doesn't. Sounds like you'd be more comfortable with the CD version which doesn't involve online registration. The online download version does use online registration.

I like Thom's guitar playing. Don't know how he does that without fingers!

I watched all three, those are wonderful spots. Too bad about the snail, bosses are lame.

in your render options choose a render format that supports alpha channels (targa sequence, or "Animation" codec in Quicktime) and turn Alpha ON under Buffers

Earthquake! You could also render her with an alpha channel for a cleaner composite (than greenscreen) if your editing software supports such things.

try this... Tools>Options>Rendering tab> Quality Shaded Show back facing polys ON Every patch has a direction ("normal") and if it's facing away from the camera it won't show up in shaded mode if "Show back facing polys" is OFF. You can also flip a patch(es) by selecting it, right clicking and choosing "Flip normals" normal direction is important for particle effects, porcelain material and five-pointers, which must match the patches around them.

I noticed that the character pauses at each step but the object is moving continuously. You can still translate constrain the object to the character's hips (or torso) even if you have IK hands constrained to the object. Then the object will move like the character is moving.

Adding new animation after an action takes some special attention: This vid covers the workflow in the context of "The Door is Stuck" exercise... Shaggy walk cycles up to the door, then has to do something different: shaggyanddoormp4b.mov Here's a link to a post with a sample chor that does something similar: sample action to chor Stuff about keyframing you really want to know: Keyframing Options

Very mysterious. If you "translate to" constrain that object to the character (to his hips, probably) it will follow him a bit better.

Thanks Roger! Interesting that the mapped versions of the rosette anti-aliased better than the spline version.

yay... lens flare!

Looks real good! Where do I buy all-white tires like tire man?

I'm eager to see how this production turns out.

"advanced" won't take any longer, it just lets you see more of your settings. The grainy wall reminds me of some radiosity renders, which take a long time. Make sure that isn't on.

That's for anti-aliasing. For other effects you may have to do MP. the lighting and the flickering textures do look seriously weird, but that's another battle.

load it into your objects folder. It's just a light with lens flare on and tweaked a bit.

interesting. Eugene is a very old model from before 5-pointer and hooks and has many splines that wouldn't be necessary today. Some judicious thinning before export might improve the results. The anatomically correct teeth are probably a lot of that.

The Sun wouldn't have any part of it shaded or in shadow. The sun is light and nothing else. You'd have to set that sphere to 100% ambient intensity. But why are you not using a lens flare? lightWithFlare.zip

lights themselves are not visible by the camera. You need to add a lensflare, which is really just a trick that adds the flash around the light location. Any sort of light should work. a sphere with glow may do fine also with out a light at all.

a "lens flare" can make that fuzzy brightness around the sun. Do a search in the help for specifics.

Judging from the Crazybump video, bumps made with normalmaps seem to do better at showing a raised surface occluding a lowered surface when you tilt the texture to see it at an angle, while bump maps fail at that. Do Normal maps rendered in A:M do this? Edit: I take that back, the Crazybump people are also extracting displacement maps, so I guess that is what is responsible for the good tilting effect? A:M does take lighting into account when rendering bump maps, otherwise you wouldn't see the bumps since they are suggested by shading shanges on the surface of the object.

Those are all good comments, particularly about how the ball moves. It immediately leaves the ground when he pulls on it then stops instantly underneath him as if the momentum of it moving backwards suddenly disappeared. You couldn't even do that with a weightless ball because your arms would at least have some momentum themselves to be accounted for. The arms could be pulled straight to show the weight they are carrying, but they never really change from the slight bend they have when he addresses the ball at the start. He does have some anticipations at the right places but the motion of the ball is undoing the appearance of effort. The basic posing is usable, but I think a more convincing heavy lift would have him squatting his butt much farther down, grasping the ball and then carrying it with him as he stood back up. (I always heard the phrase was "lift with your legs, not with your back") But the back lift could be improved with some bending of the back to show the weight of the ball pulling the shoulders down. Also he only grasps the ball on the sides as if it were a cube, which would require a lot of squeezing force from the arms and hands (not exhibited here). Better to slide the hands as far under the ball as possible to cradle it, a more natural way to control a heavy object. A heavy box presents a problem in this regard since you can't get your fingers under it initially. To do it right you'd need to tilt it to get one hand under it, then the other or quickly jerk it up and reposition the hands underneath it. Basic rule of Body Mechanics... bodies try to do things in a a manner that requires the least effort. This will look different than what is the least effort for the animator. You have to be careful that the solution you found for a motion wasn't what was easiest for you to keyframe but was what most likely for the character to do. And... the weightless foot sliding at the beginning isn't helping. This one is not nearly as weak as some other heavy lifts you can find on Youtube but it's not "heavy" yet.

You got your key in the email, right? email them back, explain the situation, ask if a new key would solve it, maybe it's something else entirely?

an example of three characters stepping and turning and anticipating and dipping their hips while they do it. post #26

Because it is abrupt. the motion takes off with no anticipation or even a slight easing into it. It's like a machine part that has been activated. Then it stops the same way. Suddenly. Like it hit an invisible backstop. It's also very linear. It moves directly from point A to point B. My first gambit in any hip move is to dip it in the middle. That usually works well. If it doesn't I try something else. But it usually works. and then, his other body parts are moving in lock step with the hips. For example his right arm moves rigidly with the torso which moves rigidly with the hips. Typically these things would lag a bit then catch up. This whole step-and-turn move is an advanced topic involving many "fundamentals" working in concert at once. So don't feel bad that it isn't perfect the first time out. That you recognize it isn't perfect is good.