robcat2075

Next... in the properties for that sun light again... Set Width to 0cm A Width greater than zero makes shadows fade out as they get longer, to appear less severe, but you don't need that with AO. Set Options>Cast Shadows>Darkness to 100% A Darkness of less than 100% adds some light to shadows to make them less severe, but you don't need that when AO is adding light. You can rotate your Sun light to any angle to get shadows in any direction. Since it casts infinitely parallel rays, its placement doesn't matter, only its angle.

Make a mental note to look into the dual-boot option so you can preserve an OS that runs all the apps you need.

It's good that you can revert, at least for now.

There should be some visible cast shadows and I don't see any. Are you sure that in the properties of that light you have Options>Cast Shadows>ON?

That must be a different picture, now it has some shadows! Try the Key light instead. If you look up in the Objects folder and look in the properties for the light that is named "Key" you will see that it is set to Type "Sun". That is why i call it a Sun light.; Sun lights cast parallel rays like the Sun does and light the entire scene, like the Sun does. Make sure to turn on its Options>Cast Shadows property. It is not on by default. You can vary the ratio of intensity between your Ambient Intensity and the Sun Intensity for different looks. For now try to have the two of them add up to about 100.

Are you sure you have the sun on and shadows on? We should be seeing clear shadows from the sun light.

Also, notice how good that looks with just 10% sampling. For a lot of cases it doesn't need to be any higher.

It looks more grounded! Maybe one end of the bridge is still in the air.

For a daylight effect you could turn your sun light back on, with a slightly yellow color and with about 40% intensity. Then reduce the Global Ambience Intensity to about 70% intensity and set the Global Ambiance Color to slightly blue.

that looks good!

For now, turn fog OFF and see what you get.

There will not be a patch for v18 since Hash is on v19 now. Steffen noted in the v19 release notes a while ago... That said, I don't know for certain that your menu problem is due to the OS update. I'm afraid we are nearing the end for A:M on the Mac since Apple will be dropping support for 32-bit programs next year. 🙁 That is what the warning you got refers to. Making your Mac dual boot and keeping the OS that A:M can run on is your likely only solution for continuing to run A:M other than moving to a PC.

To make your first AO render.. In the Chor properties, set Global Ambiance Type to "Global Color", Set Ambiance Intensity to 100%, Set Ambiance Occlusion to 100% In your Chor, set all your lights to Active OFF When you go to Render set Ambiance Occlusion to ON, Set Occlusion Sampling to 10% It is not required to use Multi-pass for AO, but for simple tests it will be faster. Set Multipass ON, set Passes to 4 "Fog" is very optional. Set Fog ON Set the Start distance to whatever the distance between your camera and the front edge of your set is Set the End distance to whatever the distance from your camera to some point just past the back edge of your set is. The color of your fog will be whatever the camera background color is. For now, leave that at the default. Fog makes this effect, where distant objects are dimmed and colored by the air... There are many possible variations of these settings, including mixing in regular lights, but this will get you started.

I bet it would look very impressive with an AO render and some fog.

Wow! that is elaborate!

Welcome to the forum! Yes. Each computer that runs A:M needs its own license.

I have productive days and i have unproductive days.

But with the rod + hands as just a model by itself you could orient it for whatever position was the most advantageous for printing, no?

Less than a year?

I know I'm way late with this suggestion but perhaps a practical solution would be to model him with the pole in his hand with fingers clasped on it, then split the model at the wrists. One model is the bear up to the spline where the hands start. The other is the pole with the hands on it, then you could glue two parts back together after printing them. No one would be the wiser!

Stop! You're tempting me to buy a 3D printer! That looks very cool, Paul!

The weird thing is that it mattered at all. A:M should be able to find a file even if it isn't assigned as the default app for it.

Here's a crazy idea... model a character and print in a flexible material so you could put a stop motion armature in it.

Hooray! So there must be some other thing that got installed or updated that caused those to be unassigned from A:M.

There are numerous YouTubes about smoothing out 3D prints but they all seem to involve chemicals that will either give you cancer or blow your house up.