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Sometimes its just impossible to know.... I've been rendering a scene with one character against an alpha channel. The character has Hair and its eyes have transparency and index of refraction. The camera slowly moves closer to the character's face. Renders were zipping right along at ~5min per frame until the camera got a certain distance from the character's face, then all of a sudden it slowed waaaaaay down to several hours per frame. I'm still not exactly sure what is causing it, but it isn't crashing A:M, so I've just been letting it render.

Great pics

If that's all they need to do, you don't have to use Cloth Attach Groups. You just assign the "attached" CPs to one group and the rest of the cape to a "cloth" group.

REALLY nice stuff! The horns/trumpets/whatever look a little strange without reflections. Maybe add an environment map to them to fake some reflections?

That's a nice tut Robcat. Something that would be very useful to someone just starting out with A:M.

That's kind of strange that there would be such a difference. Its too bad, since that procedure is generally the most versatile in terms of allowing you to use any paint program to paint your textures exactly how you want them. Using procedurals isn't much more work, especially if you aren't too picky about where the different textures start and end, and you can usually get closer to the surface without seeing artifacts. Like Robcat said: Start with a gradient combiner. Make the two attribute colors different, like red and green. Apply the material to your mesh Adjust the gradient Start and End values until the transition between the two color is in the right place. If you want more transition than two, convert one or both Attributes to gradient combiners and repeat the process. When all the transitions are where you want them, start converting gradient attributes to turbulence combiners. And keep converting Attributes on the various combiners to different turbulences or gradients until you have the amount of detail you want. The only issue I have with baking procedural textures is that you cannot really edit them in a plain old paint app like Painter or Photoshop, you pretty much need 3d Paint. 3d Paint is a great program, I'm not knocking it. As a test, maybe try applying your image decal as a Bitmap Plus material? Who knows, that might end up looking just fine..

This just keeps getting better and better. Way to go Darkwing!

Another option is to make a large image in a paint app that is a black grid on a white background. Apply this to your entire mesh. A single stamp. Right-click on the stamp and choose Edit. Now you should have the Model window open and the UV window open for the stamp. Just the two windows. Hit [Alt-v] to tile the windows vertically or [Alt-h] to tile them horizontally. Move the CPs in the stamp's UV edit window and watch the grid in the model window. When all the parts of the grid decal look square in the Model window, you know your painted texture will not warp anywhere. Create a new image with the same proportions as the grid decal. It doesn't have to be the same size, but it must have the same width/height ratio. Paint your landscape texture and save the image as TGA. Import into A:M and replace the Grid image with the new painted image.

Happy Birthday Will.

Beautiful work as always photoman. You may need to turn down the reflections a bit on the column bases, or perhaps add a little bit of grunge at the bottom of the bases in order to define them more clearly against the floor. In some spots it is difficult to see where the floor ends and the column base begins. I'm guessing that the specks of light are artifacts from the photon mapping, but I think they look cool, especially in the Christmas context you are working in. Maybe you could add a fog image ( a bunch of tiny dots with alpha channel) to fill the space with specks of light? Not sure if it would look good or not, but perhaps worth a try?

Not sure abut Decals, but with animated materials applied to a model, you can set the animation on the material shortcut (on the model) to animate automatically without creating a looping action. For example, to translate a material along the Z axis for ever without stopping. Open up the properties for the material shortcut (applied to the model itself - not a model shortcut, though you can do it on a model shortcut too) Move the time marker to frame 0 and enter a value for the material's Z translation value to set a keyframe. Move the time marker to another frame and enter a different value for the Z translation. Change to Channel View and select the Z Translate property in the PWS to see the keyframes. Select the last keyframe, right-click and choose Curve > Post Extrapolation Method > Accumulate You can try the same thing with a decal's Frame property - (not sure if it works the same way) Say the image sequence has frames 0-12. Drill Down the the decal's Frame property on the Model. Move the time marker to frame 0 and enter "0" for the Frame property. Move the time marker to frame 12 and enter "12" for the frame property. Switch to Channel View and select the Frame property Select the last keyframe, right-click and choose Curve > Post Extrapolation Method > Repeat. You will probably also want to set the Interpolation Method to "Linear". Let us know if it works!

Way to go Mark. That's awesome.

Make a dome Under Surface Properties: Set Diffuse Color to a light blue color Set Specular Color to white Set Specular Size to something small, like 10% Set Specular Intensity to something large, like 100%-200% Set Transparency to something like 85%-90% Set Index of Refraction to something greater than 1, like 1.1 - 1.25 Adjust the values to suit your particular model.

Patch issues aside .... you certainly haven't lost your touch Another terrific model.

I guess it all depends on how many class sessions you have with each group of students, and how many groups of students you have each day. It is probably reasonable to assume that at least one curious student in each group will eventually (given enough time) make some kind of unsupervised change to a model in the library (not a shortcut) and then save his/her project file, thus changing the original model. This might make it difficult to troubleshoot difficulties a student in the same class is having with the assignment. For example: Say the class opens the rabbit from the library and you direct them to pose the rabbit in a new choreography. One student, Bob, is really curious about all the buttons in the UI (or he is just bored), so he clicks on the Bones Mode button (or accidentally presses F6), which allows you to edit the bones in the Original Model (not the model shortcut). He moves some of the bones in the Choreography window and then saves his project, thus changing the original model. As long as no one in the class reloads the model, they are fine, but Mary accidentally closes her project and must re-load the rabbit from the library. Since Bob changed the original, when Mary re-loads the rabbit, it is all funky now. Since Bob didn't tell anyone that he changed the original model you will have a difficult time trying to figure out why Mary's rabbit is all messed up and none of the other student's are having a problem. Bob's rabbit is probably messed up too, but he is isn't saying anything because he doesn't want to get in trouble So then, to save yourself some grief, you start telling the students to embed all their models and materials in the project file. This is a very easy thing to do - right-click the project name in the PWS and choose "Embed All". However, it is probably reasonable to assume that some students, especially Bob, will forget to do this at some point. One method to avert these two scenarios would be to: Make the original models and materials "Read-Only" via the file properties in the Windows file explorer, so they cannot be overwritten. AND tell your students to "Embed All". When they have trouble saving their projects, you will know that they forgot to "embed all". Images, however, are never embedded, nomatter what you do, but it is far less likely that a student will alter an image file. They would have to load the image in an image editor, such as Photoshop.

Happy Birthday Darkwing!

This is a serious matter Nancy. You should fill out the proper request forms right away! The proper guilds to petition are the OMG (Oz modelers guild), ORG (Oz riggers guild) and OTG (Oz texturers guild) For OMG, please fill out form 123#-4947-omg-3455723. You MUST include written permission from ORG and OTG along with this form. Failure to include written permission will result in a disqualification of your petition. For ORG, please fill out form 530#-9745-org-54356. You MUST include written permission from OMG and OTG along with this form. Failure to include written permission will result in a disqualification of your petition. For OTG, please fill out form ~54!#794-otg. You MUST include written permission from ORG and OMG along with this form. Failure to include written permission will result in a disqualification of your petition. Once you have obtained written permission from all of the above, you must submit these to the Oz Commission, along with a 500 word essay about why the Land of Oz should even consider such a brazen request. You will notified within 1 year of the status of your request.

I don't know for certain, but it is possible that A:M (and other programs) create and store separate registry settings for different accounts, so different accounts can use the same programs but one user's preferences don't override another user's preferences. Maybe you can try deleting the old student account and creating a new one?

If you are on a Wondows box, that info is stored in the Registry under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hash, Inc.\Folders v16.0 In there is an entry named Library Folders. Double click on that and you will see a semicolon-seperated list of the paths to all the libraries that are being referenced. EDIT: Awww Robcat beat me to it.

Are you on WindowsXP, Windows7 or Mac?

To import a series of images into A:M. Make sure your images are named in sequential order. (img_01.tga, img_02.tga, img_03.tga etc) Right-click on the Images folder and choose Import > Animation or Image Sequence. Make sure the box at the bottom of the file chooser labeled "Import as an animation or a sequence of images" is checked. Select only the first image in the sequence. Hit the "Open" button. To save an image sequence as a movie. Right-click on the image sequence you just imported and choose "Save Animation As". Click on the box with three dots to open a "Save Animation As" window. navigate to the folder in which you want to save your movie. In the File Type box at the bottom of the window, type the name of your movie, followed by ".mov" or ".avi" - depending on if you want a Quicktime or avi movie. It is important to type the ".mov" or ".avi" after the file name because A:M will not add that bit automatically, even if you choose the file type from the "Save as Type" menu. Hit the "OK" button. Back in the "Save Animation" window, hit the "Compression" button to choose the compression type and amount.

That's twisted

a rim light and a headlight are two different things. To add a permanent rim light to your model that is always there, make a Gradient material, set it's Edge Threshold to something between 25% and 50% and increase the Ambiance Intensity on the second attribute of the material. To add a permanent Headlight, in the Model window, go into Bones Mode, right-click in the window and choose New > Light. Then position the light bone where you want. You will probably want to change the light type to "klieg".

Also, a spherical map needs to be twice as wide as it is tall. Other ratios will work, but not as well in my experience.

Nice looking bike Spleen! For a quick and dirty chrome like effect, try applying an environment map. That will give you fake reflections even though your choreography doesn't have much to reflect.