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I understand now what you are wanting to do. I wrote a tutorial about how to do just that: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=31992

For things like rope and chains, read this tutorial. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29914

Set the decal "Type" to "Cookie Cut". If the image has an alpha channel, the black area of the alpha channel will turn transparent in AM once you set the decal type to "cookie cut".

Cool tank tread! For something like this, it is much easier to apply a Patch Image. First, model the tread so every patch is the same size. Select all the CPs in the tread (just the tread, not the other mechanical bits) and name the group something like ... "tread". Right-click on the "tread" group and choose "Add Image". The image you choose will be applied to each patch in the group. If your tread image is a seamless texture and your patches are the same size, the image will repeat ... seamlessly ... around the tread. Some of the patch images will probably be rotated the wrong way. Select the "Patch Group Mode" button, select a patch, and press Ctrl-R on the keyboard to rotate the image in 90 degree increments.

That's awesome. Too bad that engine and suspension are going to be hidden. Really impressive.

If you have your model constrained to a path in the Chor, you have to set "Has Stride Length" to ON in the Action. If you don't have the model constrained to a path, make sure the action shortcut property "Chor Range" is set correctly in the chor. If you have a chor that is 200 frames long, and you want your walk cycle to be active for the whole chor length, set Chor Range -> Start to "0" and Chor Range -> End to "200".

Also, you can often get better results on any type of Cloth Sim by animating the cloth at half the speed you want. Or, if it's already animated, make the action or chor action twice as long as it is supposed to be. The run the cloth sim. Then delete every other keyframe from the sim. Then shrink the action or chor action back down to its proper length.

I can't answer if SLI or Crossfire give better realtime performance in AM, but HASH once said AM uses the CPU more than the video card even for realtime display. I still have an old ATI X800XL video card with a new AMD X2 6400 (3.2GHz) and 4GB RAM and AM handles fine for me.

Here's another (updated) cloth tutorial. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29731 Cloth is not for the faint of heart. It is difficult and time consuming no matter how much experience you have with it.

In addition, AM seems to play better with ATI cards than with NVidia. I was using AM on someone else's machine a couple weeks ago and they had an NVidia card and the "Black CPs" problem was really irritating.

That's really nice! It has great depth and a cool "once upon a time" feel to it that begs to be made into a story.

Woah, Caroline. You are becoming quite adept at this. Yay Caroline!!! I remember not long ago you were the one asking all the questions. Doesn't it feel good to have an answer every once in awhile?

You may need to have "Show Advanced Properties" checked in Tools->Options->Global.

I'm not exactly an expert with Newton, but I've done a couple of tests with it that worked out OK. If you can give specific problems or questions, maybe I or someone else can answer them. Otherwise it's kind of hard to help.

I saw a picture of an Italian police car that was this same model (real car). I can only imagine what an Italian car chase looks like!

You guys are awesome. .... just awesome.

Should you be in a compromising mood, it would be really helpful if the FACE interface switch was left at least. Do you mean the pose slider that turns the interface on and off? I would say that is a lot more than simply helpful. I would say it is really necessary to have that because without a switch to turn it off, the face interface shows up in the final renders.

I would really like to chime in. Really! But I didn't catch this conversation when it was first starting out and now I'm not even sure I know what you're talking about. I trust you guys will make the wisest and most benevolent decision.

Or decal it in another program before you import it into AM.

I had about 30 choreographies once that used the same lighting setup, but different light colors. I made an empty model and placed all my lights in that model (about 20 of them). Then I made a percentage pose for each light that changed the light's color from red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple-indigo. This saved me time in a couple of ways. When I needed to fix something in the light rig, I just changed it in the model and all the chors that included my "light rig" model were automatically updated. All my light colors were on a series of pose sliders. It was quicker to have the pose slider window open and drag sliders back and forth, than to crack open the Properties panel for each light I had to change the color on.

Probably not if it's a graphics driver problem. Especially since you are the first person I have ever heard of that has had that particular problem. I am assuming you have an NVidia graphics card. They seem to give the most trouble. The only thing I can think of is to update your graphics drivers ... or revert to older drivers ... to try and find one that plays nice with AM.

Thanks!!! The rig is awesome. The tutorial is going to be crucial, for me at least. I still don't have a clue about how to install it, but I might have to learn real fast in order to get some of the characters in Scarecrow of OZ rigged. Thanks David and Mark (and everyone else who contributed). Really amazing work.

Have you read this tutorial on Sprites? It leads you through something very similar to what you are wanting to produce.. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29739

Wow, beautiful as always Stian.

I'm assuming you are trying to type into the Properties window. The Properties window tends to eschew editing anything but what is in the active, open window at the moment. To get around this, drill down to the emitter's property's in the PWS and edit properties from there.