[Exercise 1: You're the Director]

Name: Jim Pappas

 

Exercise Completed: Exercise 1

 

Date Completed: Aug. 10

 

Instructor: AM forums, tutorials

 

Remarks/Suggestions for Improvement: It was fun trying to think of different ways to show KeeKat's pose.

 

-Jim

taoam1_c.mov

[Welcome New Users]

Hi, my name is Jim, and I've been Poser free for over a year now.

 

I purchased AM last year and haven't looked back. At that time a year ago I was actually on the verge of buying Carrara when I found someone's posting on Renderosity's AM forum of all things, where someone was raving about AM, and this started me on the AM path. It's ironic considering there's barely just a handful of posts in Renderosity's AM forum -- but even so, just that one person's post did much to convince me (and I wonder how many other new users too).

 

In these forums, I've posted here and there, but I thought I should re-introduce myself because I'm about to go through TAOAM -- because I want that certificate! Well, and also because the journey is the reward, and all that stuff... I did finally model and render an object for my avatar so there's hope for me yet.

 

I'm a software engineer going on 10 years, starting at Lotus Software which later was bought by IBM. I approach things like an engineer so I want to let loose that right brain hemisphere from time to time.

 

OK, on to TAOAM, and then Bootcamp!

 

-Jim

[Solar Scale]

Matt, Dan,

 

Awesome renders! It amazes me that Jupiter's red spot is the size of the earth.

 

-Jim

[Multi pass "sub frame" render...]

Here's the animation:

 

 

 

and the Cookie Cut decal, in a zip file:

blue_display2.mov

grid.zip

[Multi pass "sub frame" render...]

I know this may be the "old school" method, but it renders fast and is a simple decal, so I thought it may be worth remembering. Just create a small Decal that's a solid color with an alpha channel that is solid on the outside few pixels then fades to transparent going to the center. Then apply to every patch using Add Image and make it the cookie cutter type. For more control, separate the model into groups and then you can control the repeat amount for each section. I added some Glow too.

 

Here's an example of it applied to a model of a lamp, which is rotating as part of an animation. Each frame renders in about 24 seconds.

[How do I get the top menu bar back in 12.0]

I'm not sure how to help, but you could try these keyboard shortcuts and see if it gets you to the menus:

 

Alt+f = File menu

Alt+p = Project menu

Alt+v = View menu

Alt+t = Tools menu

ALt+h = Help menu

 

If you can get to the Tools menu in particular then you could choose Customize... and try hitting the Reset button for the Toolbars. The only other thing I notice is that the main menu bar is movable, is it possible it was moved somehow and is now on the left, bottom, or right, or hidden behind another sub-window?

 

-Jim

[project workspace]

Hi,

 

Under the main Options menu, then the Global tab, make sure Show Advanced Properties is checked and they should show up in the Workspace giving you an easier way to get to them.

 

-Jim

[Oz Map -- Another v13 Displacement Fun Thread]

Hope no one minds another example! After reading these threads I had to give it a try myself. In this example I have one patch on the ground with the displacement map. I didn't notice any major increase in render time at all - zipped right along!

test.mov

[Bike chain problems...]

Korken,

 

I also tried my hand at making the chain and noticed it was a bit unclear in the original example as to how the bone went completely around -- but I think the trick is that path is actually wrapped around the shape of the path twice, so the part of the path that goes the second time around is laid at the same spot as the first part. This makes it appear as one path but gives you the extra 50% you need to move the bone back to the start position. This isn't easy to describe and a bit tricky to do but if you need more help I have some notes on it, or perhaps someone with more know-how might step in and describe it some more.

 

On the other hand, I also noticed another thread here in the forum recently talking about pulleys/chains, etc., that simply took a circlular model and used a distortion modifier in an Action to make it into the shape of an ellipse to make it look like a chain. Rotating the original bone worked fine on the new shape. It seemed a heck of alot easier to implement.

 

-Jim

[Little water test]

Shaun,

 

I've watched the clip three times now and it's so well done it actually looks like a rendered sphere composited over real footage of ocean water, and I couldn't express any better compliment about how good it looks than that! Very nice job on the bright sunlight dancing on the water, it really helps make it realistic.

 

If you planned on sharing a tutorial (hint, hint) I'm sure it would become the go-to AM water tutorial for a long time to come.

 

-Jim

[The New Terrain Wizard]

Anders,

 

I've been looking at the Terragen homepage and wow, the landscapes do look incredible! But it doesn't look like the easiest program to learn and I'm starting to lean towards hoping for a better all in one solution in AM.

 

What concerns me about compositing the two programs together is I can imagine wanting to do an AM animation using a character surrounded by some terrain, and wanting to do all sorts of camera moves, panning, rotating, maybe different camera angle cuts, or having an AM camera track a character, etc... But Terragen's camera control seems to be script based, controlled by a dialog -- so we would be giving up alot of AM's useful camera control. I've heard SynthEyes is good at tracking camera moves but that would be a one way solution, from Terragen as input to AM as output. Again, it would be the same problem.

 

Does this seem like an obstacle or did you envision the two programs working together another way?

 

 

-Jim

[The New Terrain Wizard]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to add a friendly reply and a question after reading your recap.

 

It looks like there are 8 people so far including myself who would love a wizard that makes realistically texturing a terrain easier. Suggestions include allowing variations of textures based on slope, height, among other things. So texturing seems to be a common request.

 

But there are also alot of people that want a new AM terrain wizard that can model terrains while providing realtime visual feedback, has easy buttons for quickly creating rocks (rock generator), quickly creating mountains, hills, lakes, etc... Your recap seems to suggest Terragen can handle these things and the only problem AM users run into is how to easily import the terrains. I've never used Terragen before so perhaps someone can answer if it really does have all these requested features?

 

-Jim

[The New Terrain Wizard]

I think an updated terrain wizard is a great idea, I'm definately interested!

 

How about an option where the wizard creates a user defined number of preset groups on the generated terrain model solely based on altitude?

 

That would allow us to simply select a group representing an altitude and assign appropriate materials/decals. I'm thinking this would make it much easier to create snow capped mountain peaks on the highest altitudes for example, or give the lowest altitude group a water material for ponds, etc...