Gerry

Hey Robert, I emailed you a download link back on the 11th and mentioned it here. I'll resend it if you need it.

Coming along nicely!

Mark, good looking on all counts! You've developed a very distinctive, fun style that should get you some attention. Broadcast spots = real exposure! "Wrinkle artists"! That's good, hadn't heard that one before.

Happy Birthday and may all your splines be continuous, and your patches legal!

Short answer to this is "Yes", Ralph. Robcat, correct me if I'm wrong here. I think this is Ralph's main concern. In the past I've recommended "Embed all" as a general, overall good practice, but I've been corrected on this advice, and I think saving each element into a separate, user-created directory makes better sense.

Also, not to be redundant, but when you use a model from the library be sure to do a "Save as..." and save a working copy of the model with your project files. Otherwise you're permanently altering the model that's in the library. I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but it's worth repeating.

Thanks for the comments! In three of the four animations, I had to show melted rubber material flowing down the thin "runners" and filling the mold. For the runners I used an animated material, then for the mold fill I used a Boolean cutter. for the cutaways I also used Booleans.

this is one of four final animations I did for this project. It goes a little fast because we did two versions, one that just plays through, and this one which is made to "step through" frame by frame with the arrow keys in a Flash presentation. But it's all modeled in A:M, with labeling in AfterEffects. Hey Mark, your little trick came in very handy in hiding and showing elements to render the various stages. 103203_Ric008IV_Step4_h264.mov

And if he's wanting to edit it using Notepad, he's on a PC. EDIT: HI Ralph, welcome to the forums! I hope you're encouraging your students to visit us here too. There's a ton of knowledge and information here.

Thank you?

Nice work!

Oh yeah, the library! Never thought of that!

I assume you're on a Mac with QTv.10? It's a nice app but still without a lot of the functionality of QTv.7.x, so loading up an image sequence of targa's won't work. there's a way of importing them right back into A:M that I've seen described but don't know exactly how it works. Someone else here may be able to say. EDIT: should have said QuickTime Pro. There is no Pro version of QTv.10 as far as I know. QTv.7 Pro would be the easiest way and I think it' still $29.

If by object you mean a model, here are two ways I do it. there maybe a better way. 1) copy the entire model in the modeling window, create a new model window and paste it in there. It will carry over all groups, materials and surface settings. 2) Save the model into a new directory outside your project file (Right-click model name, Save), then go to that folder, duplicate the model item, rename it, and in A:M right-click the Objects folder and Import the copy. This will save everything mentioned above and the bones as well.

Quick render of the mostly finished segment. I have til Dec. 1 so I'm thinking of some further refinements, like animating the different decals etc. test3_audio_h264.mov

Nancy. Nancynancynancy. Unbelievably gorgeous and nutzo. Thanks for this. Keeps me honest.

Okay, having it centered like that explains a lot. I'll try it again.

I'm trying to decal the entire surface of an eyeball using the "spherical" setting and I obviously don't know what I'm doing! I played around with the settings but didn't improve it. Can someone point me to a tutorial on this or explain it a little?

...and it can play funny tricks if you don't know it's on.

Yeah, I was going t suggest TurboSquid, though I don't know about their commission structure. But they do have an A:M section that could use some beefing up. We recently bought a pretty pricey human anatomy (polygon) model through them and when we discovered that it didn't have all the internal systems we needed, it became a real headache to get it straightened out...we had been to the creators' website, a company called Plastic Boy in S. Africa I think but for some reason that escapes me now, we opted to purchase through TurboSquid. But once problems arose, having TS acting as an intermediary really complicated things. We decided that in the future if we needed something similar we would go directly to Plastic Boy, who were helpful and accommodating in the extreme. And the guy we were dealing with there had a few unkind things to say about TS's cut of the selling price. So, not really comparable to your/our situation with A:M, but just a little "buyer/seller beware" story. I do think the TS storefront would be the place for what you're doing.

Hey Robert, I emailed you a link for my download. It's big, about 80mb. Let me know if you have any problems with it. I also put my entry on YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK2OwMiA11Q

...and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride!

Will the bus entry/exit have sound? Are other folks planning on having sound? Mine is just about done and it's really crying out for audio, but I don't know if I'll have time to add it, and it's tearing me up inside I tells ya!

Can't say enough about this one Stian. It's not only epic in its elaborateness but really an exemplar of what we all should strive for. Your turntable is great but a flyaround that zooms in on at least *some* of the detail could really take one's breath away.

I'll prabably upload my files to my ftp space and send you a link to download.