Gerry

that's odd, it plays fine for me. Hey Nan, that "hitting the period" may have been Stian's trick. I only recall that it was vastly simplified from the way I've been doing it. In fact I believe I posted to that thread saying "now there's a trick I'll remember!" or something equally untrue.

Hi Jeba- First of all welcome to the forums and to Animation Master! The five-point patch button is a little tricky. As David's vid shows, you select the five points either with the lasso, or, if the mesh is too dense and you can't isolate the points, you shift-select them, and the button *should* highlight, indicating that the five points are actually selected. However, sometimes the button won't highlight. I've found that it sometimes depends on the order you select them in. Awhile back there was a thread on this topic and someone (I think Stian) had a really handy trick to select them properly, but I can't for the life of me remember, and I'm too lazy to go poking through pages of old threads to find it. So here's my equally lazy workaround. If you select the five points and the button doesn't highlight, deselect them and re-select in a different order. Keep trying this until the button highlights and click it, and you're done. If anyone remembers Stian's trick, post it!

Here goes. I hope this makes sense! First of all, in the Applications folder will be the AM app folder, called Animation Master 15.0. Inside that is a folder called Data. (There is also a folder called "Libraries" at the top level of the app folder. You can ignore that one.) Inside the Data folder are a number of folder called Actions, Choreographies, Examples, Images, Libraries, Materials, Models, Post Effects, Projects, Sound Effects and Tutorials. Inside that Libraries folder should be one file called Hash CD Library.lbr. Check inside all the other folders and make sure the appropriate content is in each of them. If this stuff is missing I think you should be able to drag the files directly from the cd. Now, open Animation:Master. Under the Tools menu, click Options. Go to the Folders tab. there's a pull down menu. Go to Libraries. There may be more than one entry there, but make sure there is one that points to the Data folder, i.e., /Applications/Animation Master 15.0/Data/Libraries. If not, click on the New button, next to the button with the red X on it. Navigate to the Data folder where your libraries are. You could probably also click the "Up" arrow to move it up in the list, but that doesn't seem to make a difference in my case. Now click OK and restart A:M, and see if the libraries are present in the Libraries panel. One last caveat, the Libraries file can get corrupted. If this doesn't work for you let us know here, and just remember, "Learning curve" is a euphemism!

I was about to make a similar comment about final, multi-pass render vs. a quick screen render. Lots of times the artifacts go away in a full render. EDIT: Can you run those splines up the neck and have the hooks under the jawline?

First, welcome to the forums and to Animation Master! There are some quirks regarding the libraries on the Mac. If no one else steps up with a reply before I get home from work I'll help you out. I'm on a pc at the office and a Mac at home and I have A:M installed on both, so I can't help you til later.

The hair looks fine and is in keeping with the character design. What is it that you don't like?

It's always updated automatically for me. Just make the changes to the image and save in Photoshop, and do a quick render in the modeling window and the updated decal is present.

it's been awhile since I worked with this but don't you select the decal's key color which will then knock out that color?

I just now looked at the photos of the cathedral. Even with "simplifying" the statuary this is way more than just mechanical modeling. I would guess that more than half your work will be organic modeling. Do you plan to utilize displacement or bump maps as shortcuts? It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

nice wireframe. Can't wait to see this textured!

Wait a minute, aren't you the guy that beveled every ladder step on that aircraft carrier? "Cutting corners" to you probably means leaving the eyelashes off the statues! This is looking beautiful, I'll be checking back.

This is really great fun! Can't wait to see more progress.

Do you have "Draw particles/hair" turned on in the render settings?

Hey Mike, it's nice to see you active on the forums again!

Sure, right-click on "Groups" in the pws and select New>Folder. That option's available for pretty much all the categories in the pws.

Mark, is that true even if the number of plugins is limited to 6?

I thought that was still an issue. I'll have to try it when I get home.

Hm, I haven't seen those ghost folders myself. Does this seem to be a common problem? Oh, Nice character!!

I like the second one myself. the subtlety of the mustache seems to go well with the character design.

Nancy, you have such a distinctive style it's always a pleasure! Nice test, great color and movement. this bird dances like no one's watching!

You can also have two models, one complete sphere and one segmented, and swap them out with the "active/inactive" switch. I did something a little more elaborate in my 2006 Christmas animation. But Robert's solution looks a lot easier than mine!

Hey this is a great tip! One more tool for the ol' toolbox.

Xtaz, that's great lipsynch. I do see the tongue come through the bottom teeth at one point, but I know this is just a first draft. Very nice!

Wow, really nice. I just recently worked on a similar problem but I'm not as mechanical minded as you. Looks like it will articulate just fine.

Fun and silly!