detbear

Hey Madfox, Don't get discouraged. This is a common problem with importing triangles. The good new is, the retopology tools can be used to make the model within A:M. If you are working in a software that can export "Quads" rather than triangles, it will help. But honestly, there will still be issues. ALSO.......If this model is going to be a prop without any advanced animation, you can import the .obj(Not a model import) directly into a Choreography as a "Prop". Right click on "Objects" in the Project Work Space..........select "import" and then choose "Prop.".........then navigate to your .obj and select it. A:M will import the .obj. These imported "Props"(.obj's) look really good in A:M. It's not a Hash model though....so it cannot be manipulated or changed as a model can be. You can animate a props translation, rotation and scale, but you cannot rig it or manipulate its mesh. Hope that helps.

Hey Guys. Thank you for your kind comments. I have a bunch more in the works. Hopefully I can post more soon. Game development, lego spoofs, etc. As you guys know, animation, lighting, and all that goes into it .....is really hard and time-consuming. Hopefully I'll get some more up soon. I also hope to continue my Flash Gordon spoof series. But the audio will have to be both different and re-engineered. That will take some effort. 1,000 thanks to you guys for taking time to look at my video. IT means a bunch. I'm working to build my youTube audience and subscribers. That takes time.... Happy Animating everyone. It is such a fun medium. Animation Master helps makes it much easier.

In order to keep the props and sets as simple as possible, I did watch my designs. The "Perk" machine sequence is the most simple. I wanted to add some more detail/ props.....but ran low on time. The hardest part was the animation. The way things came together forced me to do "Non" cycled walk cycles. The opening shot where all four characters exit the teleporter platform were all done separately....step by step with no pre-fabricated cycles. Step for step was hand-crafted. I animated one character jumping off. I decided this could give it more variety while saving a bit of work. It took quite a bit of work to have four individuals exit the screen from off the platform.

Hey Guys, Ya'll are so cool and very kind. I appreciate you taking a peak at it. With the exception of my Post work in Photoshop & After Effects, it was all done and rendered with A:M.. Kevin

It's a Parody Animation based on the Call of Duties Zombies game. If you haven't ever played, it might not be clear what's going on. Anyway, It has a few short but comical things based on the game play.

Hey Guys..... I've got a bunch of things in the works. Sorry that I haven't been around as much as I would like. I completed a new Animated short project and it is up over at YouTube. If you have a few seconds and would like to check it out, here is the link: xwww.youtube.com/watch?v=1IWYZcI7egE Kevin

I have the art of animation. It's a fairly decent book. Has a bunch of keyframe sequences from Dragons Lair in it....As well as many others. I would like to have the "Storyboarding" title. That would be very good as well. I want to work on the project. Wonder if they're hiring

Has Anyone in the community modeled a Toy figure of the Playmobil line of toys. Seems like Lego gets most of the spotlight. But I was going to try an animation with the Playmobil sets and didn't want to model a base figure from scratch if one already exists. Thanks.. Kevin

Like the Cookie cutter map type. It allows what is beneath it to appear everywhere that there is no image via an alpha channel. I was thinking this could possibly be used in correlation with controlling what areas SSS could be seen.

I think Robert is correct that the main effect of a "Masking" map would hopefully be able to allow where the SSS actually shows through on a model. So that SSS would show up in the lighter places. And you could blur the greyscale map to feather the edges. I don't know if the SSS in A:M could be masked like this via a decal map though?

Hey Rodney, I was thinking at first that there might be a current map type that could be used in this manner. But on a quick try, I couldn't find one that worked. HOWEVER, I still think it may somehow be possible. By making changes in the image(Via photoshop, etc.) you could control the SSS strength and placement.

Here is the link to that demo. The SSS/ translucency map section starts at 16:00. So just run it up to that point to see him working on that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKWWA4tv6yY

Hey Everyone. I was watching a demonstration on Marmoset Toolbag where game professionals drive SSS in their characters using a Translucency Map. Basically the "Greyscale" map controls how much or how little SSS effects specific areas. That way, you can have more SSS in areas like ear lobes, etc. I wonder if A:M could do this via one of the Map types in the decal selections. OR if a new Map type could be created to control this in A:M. Kevin

Rodney, Very Cool. I think I like that style even better than the original Tin Man Version. Nothing against the old version of course.

Even if you don't follow the games world much, these new "next gen" titles are visually stunning. Rendering at 60 fps real time(or something like that.) The real time render world and games show the value of GPU and physically based texturing/ lighting. Light years ahead of CPU. You can catch a look at these all over YouTube in HD. What do you guys think?

She probably just rendered an AO pass only to show you just the AO in the example. The SBAO has a setting that forces a render of only the AO.

Matt, I use them all the time in V18.... They look incredible and the render much faster than materials. Just get the 64 bit plugin and place it in with the folder with your existing HTX's. You can only see the MAT CAP results at render time though. MAKE sure you have the "Plugin Shaders" set to ON in your render settings. I also like the fact that you can add additional reflection, ambience, specularity, etc. The only thing I think that conflicts with Mat Caps are decals....For some reason, I think decals don't function properly when the share the same patch with a mat cap.

Wow .... Thats all great info. Thanks everyone. Matt....the normal AO still lags way behind the Jenpy and SBAO methods in render time. I like the Normal AO best, but the time per frame was wayyyyy too long on my current project. 20 seconds per frame versus like 7 minutes per frame. And the difference was not extreme. In fact, the SBAO had the same visual result. It just wasn't working well with the DOF effect. What I decided was to render in layers and composite in AE. That way I could just blur the layers as needed to give things a depth of field look. Turned out OK although the steps are a pain in the neck.

I seem to have run into son banding when mixing the Screen Based Ambient Occlusion and Depth Of Field. Is this a biproduct of the two being used or is there a setting in the SBAO that will decrease the dark "halo" like banding on things. Thanks for any suggestions, Kevin

I was always a big fan of the first(original) game. Remember my Sculptris to Hash project where I modeled Dirk? : https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45294&hl=dirk I think there will always be an audience for Dragon's Lair. Hopefully they will be able to get the project done.

The Alembic file format was developed by Sony and ILM as a pipeline tool to carry their models and data from one stage to the next. It was open source at one time. Not sure if that is so now. It is very powerful exporter and has been adopted by many rendering apps in order to allow numerous 3D apps to export into them. Whereas EXR is a texture format that separated channels..........Alembic is an advanced model transfer with separated elements. Octane allows for its own PBT(Physically based textures)......So in applying those....it is optimal to use a format such as alembic. I think Alembic also has the ability to tranfer motion like mdd....... XTAZ....am I wrong about that??

:) Yes....I'm definately familiar with The Exodus Narrative. I Love that story. I doubt the industry is going to "come to it's senses and stop sinning" though Hee Hee They're having too much fun parting the red sea with there tools. Making Blockbuster Feature films like Star Wars and AAA Next Gen games like Black Ops. That doesn't mean I don't like A:M though. I'm still getting my yearly subscription

It's really very nice for artists like Colcord to mention A:M. Unfortunately its now much easier for other softwares to surpass A:M than it is for A:M to catch up with other softwares. Although we all wish that was not true. I like A:M's workflow.

Hey Everyone... Thanks so much. We are very well and things seem to be settling down. OVNI1....Hee Hee....Yes, an Ark seemed to be a good place to be when the water began to get noticably high.. My location was never flooded, but the town and county right down the street was under some serious water. Flood water rushing over and under roads can erode them really quickly. That busted out big sections of highways and roads. You guys are all great!!! Thanks so much. Kevin

Hey... We are OK. Right in the middle of it. But incredibly we are on a high elevation in the town where power/ water remained operational. Over 20 inches of rain can do some serious flooding. The roads eroded in many areas cutting towns off. We are OK. And the waters have now receded a bunch. Kevin