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A great training video. Very clear. Well done

Also PSPad and NotePad++ can do it, but to do anything more than simple copy/replace of known text, you have to have at least a little knowledge of regular expressions. PSPad http://www.pspad.com/ NotePad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ http://npp-community.tuxfamily.org/documen...ching/replacing

Oh yes. That's a nice looking phaser Darkwing!

That's looking good Gerry. The set might pop a little more if you paint some gradients and a few little details and apply them as decals to the building and sky. Perhaps even some hand painted lighting effects...

Alles ist kaput. Das ist da problem!

You're such a sucker for cute girls

I have never gotten a "Save" prompt immediately upon opening any of my models/chors/projects. I can't imagine what would be causing it..

It reminds me of Ye Olde Empty Driver issue. I can't remember what A:M versions it affected or when it was fixed. If your problem is related to that issue, then all the models, materials, actions, and possibly everything else but images that were in the project are also corrupted. If I remember correctly, the contagion can spread too. If you import an affected model into a clean project, all the other assets in the project will get corrupted. It was a rather nasty bug. The fix was to open every single asset in a text editor such as PSPad, Notepad++, or Textmate and remove all instances of DRIVER>. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Hopefully someone will correct any misinformation I'm giving. Even if it is not related to the empty driver issue, if you open the file in one of the above mentioned text editors, you will see a bunch of identical entries. Make a copy of your project/chor, then delete all those identical entries, then open it up in A:M and see if they are gone.

Very nice, but she looks a bit like a blow up doll at the moment ... kind of disturbing ... Can't wait to see her boned ... I mean ... rigged.

You mean ... at home ... on your own time? ... .

OK, I've been trying all evening to find something that can 1) read an animated .X file and 2) export it into some kind of other animated file format. But I have come up with nada. The only two Free programs I found that can read an animated .X file without problems are IrrEdit and the Microsoft DXViewer. IrrEdit is the superior viewer because you can adjust the fps of the animation. But its export options are limited. You can download it here: http://www.ambiera.com/irredit/index.html IrEdit is basically a demo version of the commercial Copper Cube editor. With this free version, you can view your animated .X files and export javascript for including in HTML 5 webGL web pages (you can use the free CopperLicht JS engine to create 3D games in Javascript with the assets exported from IrEdit), AND you can export static IrrLicht scenes (.irr). You can import .X and .irr files directly into the open source Irrlicht game engine. http://www.irrlicht3d.org/wiki/index.php?n...AQ#riggedmeshes However, I did find a post from some guy who wrote a "32-page step by step guide detailing how to import Microsoft DirectX format 3D models into Unity, including animated objects" http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/29008-Gui...dels-into-Unity Hope this helps. Please let us know how it goes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

Reading through the obj file specification from here: http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/3d/OBJ.spec I do not think obj supports bones. Not that this will halp you any, but .... Curiously, obj does appear to support curves and surfaces, though it would have to be included in whatever plugin was created. Our current plugin does not seem to include this feature, and I am not sure if any obj import/export plugins from any other program supports this either.

Has anyone experimented with A:M > OBJ/MDD > animated COLLADA file? What programs did you use for the conversions? Would be really nice to have a pipeline to embed A:M models in web pages via webGL.

As far as I am aware, after A:M has started, you can remove the CD and the program will continue to function. Of course, if you kill the program, you must put the CD back in the drive to start the program back up.

My Boxed CD version (v15), which I bought for $299, allows me to run the software as long as I want without paying a yearly subscription fee. When I bought the CD version, I also got a 1 year web subscription as well. It's nice to have the CD version, but it's more economical to just keep the web subscription up to date. If you want a screamin' great deal on a CD version, visit Hash at one of the conventions they are attending.

Happy Birthday Mark

However ... it does seem, purely from observation, that we are moving away from identifying versions according to year, and moving toward identifying them only by version number. V16 simply says "v16". There is no mention of a year anywhere. Referring to versions as BOTH a year and a version number has always been confusing. Personally, I don't care which system is used, as long as only ONE is used.

With that bottle of jack

I just leave "Show Backfacing Normals" off permanently. That way, I know where all my normals are facing all the time. Sometimes I will turn it on in a chor camera, but for modelling, it is always off. You never know when you are going to want to use a model you made months ago for some new dynamics/particle/cloth test. It's nice when you open an old model and all the normals are already facing the right way.

I'm not really sure .... I think it was a runtime environment which allows php/ruby/python to run, as well as hooks to allow access to your computer (which normal web stuff cannot do because of security concerns). Consequently, I started this project as pure javasacript, but you cannot read the contents of a file on a user's computer with javascript, so I had to use a very new api from Mozilla FF just to read the darn Chor file (and it didn't work in any other web browser). Then, I couldn't save the Action file to the users computer without including a java applet ... ugh. So I just used php to open, read and save the files, but then I realized that this would limit the number of people who could use it, since not a lot of people have php installed, or know how to run it. So then I hunted around and found Titanium developer, which seems to work. There is much more documentation on developing mobile apps that there is for the desktop api. In fact, the desktop api documentation is terribly limited. Here are some desktop programming guides, as well as an api reference: http://developer.appcelerator.com/doc/desktop/guides Here is some stuff on the Titanium javascript environment. http://developer.appcelerator.com/guides/e...nvironment.html Here are some very good tutorials on accessing the file system. http://www.smokycogs.com/blog/tag/titanium/

Here is the test project I used. If you are having trouble, first try converting the chor in this project. Just open the chor with the Chor2Action converter and save an Action file and see if the Action file matches the original chor. For "Default Model", choose "Ground". Also, all the source files are included in the "Resources" directory. So if you know a little Javascript and want to improve it, please do! But would appreciate it if you share your improvements with the rest of us chor_to_action_test_v16.zip

Feliz Cumpleaños, Compadre!

I've been playing around with something called Titanium Developer, which allows you to write an application using web developer skillz ( HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ruby and Python ) and then package it as a desktop application. So I wrote a very simple program to convert a Choreography file to an Action file. When I installed it on WindowsXP, the installer threw an error half way through the installation process, but it installed OK and worked just fine. I can't test it in Win7 or Mac, so you're on your own there... Windows and Mac (OSX 10.5 Intel based) versions are available here: http://api.appcelerator.net/p/pages/app_page?token=R4qf9KX0 ------------------------------------------------------ This utility is intended to convert static Choreographies into Actions. This is most useful when building sets and you have a project in which several Choreographies share the same set. Using it for other types of Choreographies, such as those with rigged characters and/or animation, is not supported though it sometimes works. Build your set in a Choreography, where it is much easier. Then convert that Choreography into an Action file. In each Choreography, you can add the base model (or Default Model) to the Choreography, then simply drag the Action onto the base model in the Choreography to automatically construct the rest of the set. If you need to change the set, all you need to do is change the Action file and all the sets in all the Choreographies will be updated automatically, without you having to make the same changes in every Choreography. Step 1: Click on the button labeled "Open a Choreography File" and browse to the location of the Choreography file you want to convert. Step 2: Once you select a .cho file, a select menu will appear. Select the model you intend to use as the "Default Model" for the Action. This is usually the floor of a room or the base terrain mesh (if it's an outdoor set). This is the model you will drag into a new Choreography and onto which you will drag the new Action file you are about to create. Step 3: Once you select a Default Model, a button labeled "Save Action File" will appear. Click on the button and navigate to the location to which you want to save the new Action file. Requirements for Preparing the Choreography you wish to Convert to an Action: *Only models and lights will be converted. *Lights must be embedded in the project. *The Choreography must not have any Action Shortcuts in it. Only Choreography Actions are allowed. *There can be only ONE instance in the Choreography of the model you intend to use as the Default Model for the new Action.

The legs will probably be easier to rig if they are not as widely spread. All that is necessary is that no part of the legs touch, which isn't even a requirement, it just makes it easier to select the right CPs when assigning bones and weighting. I have never modeled the hands facing forward like that. I have always modeled them with the palms facing down, but I guess the way you modeled them would be fine.