robcat2075

www.hash.com/reports zip up prj with needed decals. Include screen shots to show differences. Explain situation. Explain/show the circumstances in which decals show and the circumstances in which they do not. draw on screen cap to show exact example of screen cap I submitted, to show exact area of a problem:

I can't identify any specific text on the renders since they are resized down, but if you have a case where two renders of the same thing are getting different results, make an AMReport of it. Include the project and the steps to repeat. As I look at the model, I imagine quite a few of the decals could be combined, but I don't know how they are apportioned now, so it's difficult to make definite suggestions. Any difference if you don't run Photoshop at the same time?

You seem to be using the same image over numerous times, stamping the whole thing onto parts that are much smaller than the image. In a case where the blue line doesn't appear, is it possible that you've stamped the blue line on and then later inadvertently stamped a gray portion of the decal over it in a later pass?

How/where are you applying them? Can you show a screen cap of them not appearing?

How about a kleig light? it's directional, it shouldn't make any hot spot at all on the wall behind it

That was cute! but so small!

If you just want to test it out to see how things are moving, choose "shaded" instead of "Final" You can set "Final" to Multi-pass ON at 1 pass for quicker previews. You can choose a smaller render size than VGA. Turn particles off unless you actually need to see some you have put in your scene. Are there lights in those street lights? DO you need them? A ten second aniamtion is 240 frames. If all those lights are on, if they're invoking ray tracing, or if many of the above parameters are used... yeah you could get to 45 minutes per frame. 45mins x 240frames = more than a week

Congratulations! Fine looking stuff. And you're a chef too... hope these fish don't show up on the menu!

You needn't be cautious about using TSM rigs. If animating is your goal, you want to start that journey now, it's a long one. You don't want to delay with any more of a side trip to rigging than necessary. TSM rigs don't make the skin around joints deform automatically when you move a bone. But no other rig does either. That's what "fanbones" and "smartskin" are all about. Those are relatively easy tasks compared to designing and executing a whole character rig that controls the body well and doesn't stand in the way of the poses you want to make. You may learn much making your own rigs, but that knowledge does little to inform the task of character animation. And you'll still have to learn to fanbone and smartskin anyway.

I recently visited Mike Sanderson, one of our forum members at his job at DNA where he's working on the feature Ant Bully. Based on what I saw, the animators there work in completely default shaded gray, no texturing is done until after the shot is finaled. But that's big-time production pipeline stuff. For an independent animator it may make sense to have the character as finished as possible. You can see if your animation is weirdly distorting a decal, for instance. Coloring and decaling is pretty flexible in A:M, you can do it anytime in process and it won't physically alter your animation.

A real LED has a tiny little spot inside the glass that glows. try making the bulb transparent and refractive and put a tiny 100%ambient spot inside it.

Congratulations, that looked good! Link so people can get to it easier: http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=1083

Wow, fabulous look!

The odd part for me is the sudden reorientation of his torso in mid-air right before the kick. It happens without any apparent force to make it happen. Up thru that point it works well.

That looks great! when you get a job at ILM... try to get them to switch to A:M.

If i understand you, no mod is necessary, swing the heel bone side to side and the foot will rotate onthe ball of the foot. Or did you want to actually rotate around the tip of the toe? you can alway constrain the foot to a null anywhere and swing the null.

Great looking map, Zaryin! It would be neat to have a map in TWO that rolls up like paper but when it's unrolled, it has 3D topography on it.

720x480 is for pixels that are about 0.9 the width of square pixels. (and this presumes you've rendered 0.9 aspect ratio pixels in A:M, otherwise your image is wider than 4:3) That's normal for TV but if the DVD authoring software can't recognize that then you'd have to compress it to 640x480. There's probably a setting in your software.

Hey, that looks so good I hit the T key while I was viewing the jpg to try and spin it around. Looking forward to animated adventures of your mascot.

Hooray! I'm glad you're having a good time. Nice lookin model!

Hey Rodney! I just want to thank you for your never-ending efforts to cheer on the new users who come to A:M. Thank you for using your powers for good and not for evil. Continue cheering for truth, justice and the A:Merican way! If only a certain former cheerleader were more like you...

How does the rendertime of the map as a displacement compare to the same map as a bump map?

Ha! That's quite amusing. And a nice looking render too! For some reason that sylized reality looks very "pixar" to me. You should add some aburdly huge landing gear to it. I'm thinking the decal on the wing might look "better" if it were aligned with the edge, but you're the expert.

Hard to know without seeing...you don't mention that you've set the starting pose. MAke sure that every bone you are setting at 18 has been been keyed at 0. Nudge them with the cursor keys. Try that

Every detail "costs" some render time. It'a matter of deciding wht you don't need. ray traced shadows and reflections, numerous ray traced lights, complex combiner materials, "roughness" on a surface... those are things that increase render time. Mapped shadows, simple lights, simple materials, smooth surfaces... they are quicker. If you just want to check the motion of an animation, test render it in shaded mode. That is very quick.