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Not sure if this is the answer to your question, but I've read on the forum that you need to disable desktop composition for AM. That seems to have fixed many people's problems with Vista.

great looking characters Heiner.

You might get some ideas from the animated distortion box tutorial. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29730 Another thing you might try is to make a grid,then create a pose that distorts the grid into a funnel. Then apply an animated bump map of a swirling spiral (2-3 seconds in length - you can set the animation to repeat indefinitely using "post extrapolation". Make the grid partially transparent with some kind of refraction so items behind it will appear distorted. But in the end, you are going to have to blaze a trail. One of the beautiful things about AM is that it allows you to blaze trails. Good Lick. Can't wait to see what you come up with.

I spent many many hours experimenting with the strengths and limitations of using the various bias adjustments - both in static models and animated ones. My conclusion is that it is more trouble than it is worth. I use the Magnitude settings a bunch. They work very well in both static and animated models. But adjusting Gamma and Alpha settings just created more work for me, even with static models. The problem was that I would spend a lot of time tweaking bias handles, then later I would go back and move the splinage around (as I always do) and the CPs that had been adjusted would pop and move in ways that were not very pretty. So, I would readjust them. Then I would go back later and tweak the splinage again (as I always do - did I say that already?) and have to redo all the alpha and gamma settings again ... ad infinitum. So if you want to play with the bias handles, even with a static model, make sure you are absolutely done tweaking it before you start adjusting alpha and gamma values.

Here's the url for those who haven't watched any of the episodes yet. http://www.animace.biz/videoplyr.html If you haven't seen these, I highly recommend them

Try simulating spring systems from front view, instead of from camera view or from a side view. If that doesn't help, you make have to separate the dreadlocks more in the model window to give the collision detection time to figure everything out when in the chor. Here's another tut on dynamic constraints. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29914

These might answer your questions. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29729 http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29743

It sounds like you are asking two or three different questions. You can zoom in and out of the timeline by clicking in it and either using the mouse wheel or by pressing [Z] and dragging left or right. You can fit all keyframes in the window by clicking in the timeline and pressing [shift-Z] You can create keyframes where you need them by pressing the "Key Model" button at the bottom of the main program window, moving the time marker to the desired time, and hitting the "Make Keyframe" button. If you can afford a cheap second monitor, it is well worth it. My PWS fills up one monitor and I do my modeling and animating in another monitor.

Awesome. Love your characters. Great news about a book. That means you will have most of your script done. Will the book be like a graphic novel or comic book?

That looks really nice. Congratulations.

That is my backup plan... But since it is an animation it sure would be nice to have it all in one;) Since the second "alpha channel" render will only be used for the alpha channel, you can just render it in "Shaded" mode with "16 polys per patch" resolution (after you turn off the sky dome of course). That should go much quicker than the first pass.

You can't compress the sound in AM.

That is a cute character. Is he for an egg commercial?

Great Gerry. I think you are now ready for Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit". I think you will really enjoy it.

It is always a good idea to make all images which are in the same decal (color,bump,transparency etc) the same size.

Very nice Tunames. Too bad you ran out of time, Robcat's suggestions were really good.

Dude, you're out of control .... amazing model.

It's pretty much just as easy as JohnL said above. I believe the fonts have to be TrueType fonts in I m not mistaken.

There's also a cloth tutorial here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29731

Great models so far. Good luck on your project.

That's great Mark. You're outta control man!

Another wonderful episode! Lighting, direction, camera work, dialog, story and art direction are all really compelling. Animation is floaty and lip sync seems awkward, but I'm still buying it Great job so far.

Place the top-most and bottom-most points at .01cm before you lathe. That will prevent creases to the sphere. You should only need 6 or 8 cross sections on your lathed sphere, 10 is probably too much.

I haven't tried the 2008 rig yet, but I have installed a few other rigs and even rolled one or two of my own simple rigs in the past. In the realm of rigging, "Easy to Install" is a very relative term. Rigging is a complex and difficult discipline. To really understand the term "Easy to Install", you must first try to create your own animation rig from scratch. This goes well beyond simply adding some bones and assigning CPs to them. You must understand: proper spline placement, proper bone placement, which CPs go with what bones, CP weighting, Smart skinning, All types of constraints, Simple and multidimensional relationships, Cogs and other types of fan bones, Using one set of bones to control another set of bones ... among many other things. After you have spent several months creating your first rig, you most likely don't want to go through the expierence again, unless you are an exceptional person like Mark or David. But you realize your new rig is not flexible enough for all the things you want to do with it, so you ... basically ... rebuild it. However, you really, really, really want to get on with your next big movie, so at some point you just quit dinking with your rig and you start animating with a rig that has all kinds of problems. Now, someone like Mark or David comes along and spends a ton of time figuring all this crap out and makes a rig that is both flexible and easy to animate with. You still have to understand the basics of proper bone placements, CP assignments, weighting, multidimensional relationships, and smartskins. BUT - they have just saved you 100's of hours of tinkering with mind-bending arcane technical mumbo jumbo. So the new rig is considered "Easy" to install. Anyway, that's my take on it.

I'm afraid I have no idea what you are asking. Please rephrase your question.