robcat2075

Hi Simon(?) You can get old installers on the Hash ftp site... ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/windows/ I'm not sure which versions apply to your disk, but I'm sure it's there. You may have trouble running them on Windows 7 or later however.

Rusty, I think the AE smoke is about as good as you'll get without some higher end particle engine. The fire isn't what I would have guessed you were looking for from your description. That' looks more like a laser beam. Surely that must have a preset that looks more like fire.

Myron, do you have a little sketch or anything of what your scene is like?

Pose sliders are an awkward way to do animation. Nearly impossible. It is better to do your animation in the Chor, "pose-to-pose" (not the same as an A:M Pose) and then each new pose of your character wont' interfere with the others. When I say lowercase "pose," I just mean the way you have positioned your character at a moment in time, not a "Pose slider" or "ON/OFF Pose".

You get an activation code in an email after you buy a subscription from the Hash store. You can also look up your activation code in your account at the Hash Store. When you run the installation program there is an option to "Install the VC++ 2017 runtime" Check that box, before you do "Next". That should install the dll if you don't have it already. When the installer is done and you run the actual program, have your Activation code ready to input when ti asks for it.

OK. Try the tut in TAoA:M first. You can get a PDF of it on this page... https://www.hash.com/manuals-24-en Then when you have questions after that, ask here.

Here is a revision with different settings for more characteristic folding and crunching of the cloth. But you can't read the shirt anymore.

That's what doesn't work. It needs to be tailored for the scene. Show me what the scene looks like.

Much depends on the scale of the scene. Do you have a sketch of what your scene will look like?

You've done the one in TAoA:M already, right? Can you tell us more about what you are specifically trying to do?

Here are some experiments with different skin shading These are all from my Ground Hog Day scene. They are all rendered with a slightly blue AO light and an orange-ish Sun light. This is a simple pink color for the Skin group... Same as above but with white Specular color. Width 500%, Intensity 60%... Same as before but with Specular Intensity down to 40% This next one uses the Pharr Skin diffuse plugin shader (Just "Skin" in A:M). The Pharr Skin Shader tries to reproduce some of the nuance of Sub Surface Scattering without the huge rendering time. Short version: instead of merely darkening a color as the illumination on it decreases, it increases the saturation of its color. I have it set for a very slight effect here but it helps reduce the gray-ishness of default CG shading. You'll detect a bit more red in the areas that transition from highlight to almost-in-shadow. Specular is 0% This adds back in A:M Specular highlighting... This is the same but I have added slight Roughness. The change is barely visible at this res... There is also a Pharr Specular plugin shader meant to be used with the Diffuse shader. When I put that on it did not work well with the orange sun light. This adds the Pharr Specular shader, with the sun light only slightly tinted orange The above had no Roughness. This adds it back in. The Pharr Specular shader is producing over bright highlights on small features, but perhaps that could be controlled with a Specular intensity map that reduces the level on places like the fingers and arms. But I find the Pharr Skin shader to be quite promising.

QuickTime has gone away, sort of. It should be disabled in all your browsers and you should not play any .mov from an untrusted source. I think the 32-bit version of A:M still supports it however. QuickTime Pro is an extra cost version of Quicktime that could also resave video with new compression settings and into new codec. i use it to compress my image sequences into movies. I don't know if they still sell it. Do you mean you key-framed the character into a particular stance in the choreogaphy, or do you mean that you made an actual Pose slider for it and are turning that in the choreography?

Thanks, Gerald. I'll keep an eye out for those. Anyone... How do i stop Windows 10 from launching a program because I have SHIFT or CTRL clicked on one of its files? For example, if I CTRL-select an A:M PRJ and a folder of decals that go with it to send them all to one ZIP file, A:M gets launched. It must be some "Accessibility" setting but I can't find a relevant one.

Top post unpdated with new PRJ per John

That's beautiful, Myron! It's hard to give you advice for format because I don't know what you have to work with. Here's what I do for format. I render to an image sequence. Then I use QuickTime Pro to "Export" that to a QuickTime movie (.mov) with H.264 compression with these settings... The kbits/sec setting will vary depending on many factors. When it's done, I change the ".mov" at the end of the file name to .mp4 and I have a file that will play in the A:M forum. Note that this workflow is not the same as choosing MPEG-4 or MP4 when choosing compression. But you don't have Quicktime Pro, I presume. But you have something that you edit video in, and it probably takes in numbered image sequences and can render out compressed versions of projects that you edit in that app and when you render out your compressed version you choose settings like what I have shown. What are you using to put your videos together?

I would VERY much like to see a screencap of the render settings. It absolutely is possible to pick up in the middle of a render. Something is just mis set.

Can you show a screen cap of your settings?

Having a project like this that raises questions is a good way to learn!

Have a great holiday, Jason!

Reminder to Prehistoric! artists... the fans love to hear your commentaries... send me your commentaries! 10-25 seconds.

So what are the nice features in Windows 10 that I can't live without? I haven't found one yet.

I guess "tiles" are for people who don't have a mouse but i prefer the old Windows 7 Start menu. This article recommends "Classic Shell" How to Make Windows 10 Look and Act More Like Windows 7

It just finished. I'm back on it now. I'm going to keep one computer on Windows 7.

My Windows 7 computer has been on "Do not turn off your computer" for about two hours now because of this... Microsoft forced to create a free Windows 7 update just days after updates ended