HomeSlice

It's the copy protection. Instead of adding another $100 dollars to the cost of the program for a hardware dongle, you just have to place the CD in your drive. Once AM starts, you can take it out if you want. The easiest way is to cannibalize the CD drive from one of your old computers and install it in your current computer. That way, you can just leave the AM CD in the drive. Copy protection is needed. It isn't optional.

In addition to what Robcat said, I think you can also change the length of the action by dragging the *blue* "Action Bar" to whatever frame you want. But the best way to change the length of the action, as stated above, is to place a keyframe on the last frame you want and make sure there are no keyframes after that.

The easiest way would be to use a transparency map or cookie-cut decal. The next easiest way would be to use booleans. If you want to model the holes, then the only advise I can give is .... lots of practice

Thanks Gerry. If you have any questions installing it or troubleshooting issues, please ask! I'm working on some modifications but it's going kind of slow since I'm squeezing it in between other projects. One thing I noticed after rigging about a dozen models with it. The legs work better if the legs are straight and the feet are pointed straight ahead. If you want the character to have bow legs or you want the feet to be splayed outward or pidgen toed, do it in a pose after the character is rigged. Then set the pose to 100% in the Model's properties so you don't have to remember to turn the pose on every time you place the character in a chor.

Yeah ... like you really need another great model in your portfolio

I hope you are saving these chors in an organized fashion. When you are done with the strip, you will be WAY ahead if you ever want to animate them.

getting better Spleen!

You have to turn on the pose for it to work.

Until we get the units worked out ... You will need to use an Orthogonal camera rotated 90 degrees on the X axis (pointing straight down.) An orthogonal camera won't distort your grid because it doesn't use perspective.

I think Robcat may have better understood your question. since you are rendering for a game, you can probably go with 72dpi. in Photoshop, make a blank image with the dimensions you want ( in Inches at 72dpi). Photoshop will tell you how many pixels high and wide that is. In AM, render that many pixels high and wide.

unless you have a boatload of RAM, I think you'll probably have to render it in sections and piece it together in a paint program. What resolution are you printing to? (150dpi. 200dpi etc) That will determine how large your chunks are. Do you need full perspective, or will the flat perspective that an Orthogonal camera provides suit you?

Way to go kat! One more scene finished

There was once a bevel plugin called Zevel by Marcel Bricman, but that was a long time ago. I don't even know if it works with the current version. http://www.kci-group.com/z/plugins.htm

Great commercial!

Excellent Mark. It looks like you found the perfect place for it too.

nice shed! Your walls need a top plate. If you are not using metal brackets for the rough window sills, you will need a couple of extra cripple studs under each window. Usually, if the window spans more than one space between studs, you need to put a header over each window. Your rafters need a top beam running the length of the shed to maintain their spacing while you are climbing around up there tacking on sheeting. You should extend the rafters a foot or two past the outer walls to keep water from running off the roof, down your walls and rotting them. You cut the ends of the rafters perpendicular to the ground and then nail a fascia to them. (A shed roof is much easier and cheaper. You have a gabled roof there.) In my somewhat limited experience, all the studs in a wall are usually oriented the same way. In your image, the studs at the ends of each wall are rotated 90 degrees. Then you place three studs (instead of one) at the corners so you have a nailing surface inside the structure at the corners. There are some good tutorials on the web about framing a simple structure.

I don't use the dopesheet much either, but here is how to make the mouth move more smoothly if you do use it. It's a bit of a process. After you enter all your words and get the timing all set up, Click on each pose channel (for each phoneme pose ie. E, FV, MPB etc)) under the action in the PWS. Switch to "Channel View" in the PWS timeline. Delete any keyframes that are less than one frame apart. You want *at least* one frame between keyframes. Click in the channel window and hit [ctrl]-A to select all the keyframes. Right-click in the selection box and choose Interpolation > spline. There will be a bunch of splines that dip below 0%, and probably a few that raise above 100% Drag the keyframes where the splines dip below 0% up until the splines sit at 0% at their lowest point. Drag the keyframes where the splines raise above 100% down until the splines sit at 100% at their highest point. Do this for each Phoneme pose channel in the action.

Oooo. Nice tutorial! Please upload that to the Tutorials forum!

It doesn't seem like your patch count is the problem. You have more than enough ram for what you are doing. Your graphic card seems fine, but you can get MUCH better graphics for about $150.00 (USD) now days. I am guessing some process running in the background on your computer is hogging your CPU. Perhaps you can try turning off the Windows Indexing service ... sometimes that helps. When was the last time you ran a virus scan and a spyware scan?

I can't find it either. Hopefully Rodney will read this and point us to it.

In the tutorials section, there used to be one on making lightning. I haven't looked at it since the section got reorganized, but I'm sure it is still in there somewhere.

I like the second punch line best

It appears that you must use a tube instead of a simple spline. Though a spline would make things much easier... glow.zip

first ... you can change how many sections the lathe tool creates. The default is 8, but I have it set to 6 for most things. Go to Tools > Options > Modeling and look for the box labeled "Lathe cross sections". "Snap to Grid" is mis-named I think. I doesn't actually snap CPs to the grid. It snaps CPs a predefined distance when you move them. That distance is defined by your grid spacing (Tools > Options > Modeling > Grid Spacing). If your grid spacing is 5cm, the CP will jump in 5cm increments when you move it. If the CP happens to originate on a grid line, it looks like it is snapping to the grid, but it really isn't. If I understand the question correctly, this might help: Group-select the CPs. [sHIFT]-Click on the CP (within the group) for which you want to define coordinates. Click on the "Show Manipulator Properties" button in the toolbar. Enter your values for X, Y and Z. The [shift] selected CP will move to that location and the rest of the group will follow along.

In addition to everything everyone else has already said .... Please don't render to jpeg images. At the very least, render to png. (TGA is best). There will be times when you will have to do some work on the rendered image in a paint app. It helps tremendously if your original image is uncompressed or uses a lossless compression.