HomeSlice

fastest way is to render particles only in a separate pass with Alpha ON, then composite in editing. If you like the way the particles look in a quick shaded render, then render in shaded mode - MUCH faster.

Very funny! Can't wait to see the next episode.

cool. It looks like it's good to go then

Hi quaiguai, nice to have you here!

This part might give you problems when you final render. Having two hooks in that configuration is sometimes iffy.

A common technique to make your model appear more clay-like is to use Ambient Occlusion. You have to turn this on in two different places. In the Choreography properties, under Global Ambiance Type, set "Ambiance Occlusion" to something (try 100% for starters). In the Camera Properties, under Render Options, set Ambiance Occlusion to ON Also in the Camera Properties, under Render Options, set Multi-Pass to ON. You can get a decent Multipass render with 5 passes, but if the shadows look too grainy, you can increase the number of passes. AO (Ambiance Occlusion) only works if there is "open sky" above the model. You can't use a sky dome or put the model in an enclosed space when using AO. As far as your modeling questions, could you please describe more clearly what you are trying to do? Maybe post a screenshot of your model in Shaded/Wireframe view so we can see what your splines are doing?

yeah, like you could have decided to stop producing Wannabe Pirates!

beautiful model. Way to go

When you begin animating her, the cheeks (as well as everything else) are going to move in all sorts of directions anyway, so the cheeks seem fine to me. It seems like you will be able to get a wide variety of facial expressions with that mesh. Rigging and weighting are still going to take a significant amount of time though.

The buttons are working really well. How did you fix them?

I haven't had this problem in several years, but it used to occur when I imported rotoscopes into a model to help with the modeling, then forgot to delete them from the model when I was finished with them. As far as I remember, you have to open each Model,Choreography and Action which the Project loads (as well as the project file itself) in a text editor and delete the tags in EVERY file. You have to do this for every file the project loads, and you have to do it in a text editor.

Don't model each wire, use bump and transparency maps ... unless you're a masochist.

Thank you for sharing this information Malo.

oops. Yup, you are correct sir. As soon as I open an Action or Chor window, the Modeling Toolbar goes away .... as it should.

Maybe something like this might work? http://www.toonpool.com/user/739/thumbs/or...welles_7280.jpg

Nice card!

That's so cool Luuk. Hope you succeed. I think that is the first time I have seen someone prototyping a real world object in AM. Once you get the idea worked out, do you move to a CAD package?

If you are doing this in a Model window, you need to select a bone that is associated with the CPs you want to move. Once the bone is selected, hit the Translate Mode, or Rotate Mode manipulators. Then hold down the [Ctrl] key while using the manipulator to translate or rotate the bone. As long as the [Ctrl] key is held down, the CPs will move with the bone. If you just want to reposition a bone after you move some CPs around. Just grab the bone and drag it wherever you want. Once you get the hang of moving bones around, you will kick yourself for thinking it was difficult once.

I just fired up A:M. Didn't have any windows open. Added Modeling, Drawing and Views toolbars to the interface from the Customize > Toolbars menu , hit OK and they are still there. So for whatever reason, I can't reproduce the issue. It works just fine on my system. WinXP SP3 AMD 6400+ X2 3.2GHz dual core 4Gb Ram Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H mobo ATI Radeon 4850 graphics

You could ask support@hash.com about that. The best way to get a useful response from Hash is to be nice to them

I always just make the visible part of the alpha channel (the white part) about two pixels smaller than the edge of the object in the image I am masking. Also, give your image a black or dark gray background before you save it to tga. Any white areas that are still around the fringe of the alpha channel will then be something dark instead of white.

In that case, you should download the LitRig project from the first post in this thread.

Could you just use simcloth on the part of the cloth that hangs down off the arm? I wonder if a dynamic constraint would be better for that ...

It's in the container in the PWS

You could also constrain the buttons to the hand after the animation is complete and the cloth has been simulated. You could use a decal of the buttons while animating to see where they are.