SirSpectre

I had the same problem. Only way I could figure out how to fix it is to reinstall

Unfortunately, A:M doesnt have dual CPU capabilities. I would love to have it, seeing I also have dual CPU. They way i bypass this, is by opening 2 instances of A:M and setting affinity of each instance to a seperate core/cpu. After this is done render as a targa and render opposite frames or render certain ranges on each core/cpu. Now, you ahve to have both Instances minimized in the taskbar other wise your computer may lock up. ( Ive had this happen a few times) Also seems to render a tad faster when its minimized anyway. Hope that helps!! PS: Watch your CPU temperature!!! if it gets to hot, get more fans or only render with normal affinity set.

Hey all, I just upgraded to v13 the other day. Now my old HDD crashed, luckily i was able to back up all my materials and other important stuff, so I loaded in v13, worked good. Finally decided that I should continue to work on my project i have going. I made all my materials before the models. I just finished a model and wanted to import the material in to A:M and apply it. I go to load the material, and it gives me a "Missing IO plug in" error. I didnt have any plug ins like that when i made them, so there couldnt be anything wrong with the materials themselves. Heres the kicker, After I say "fine I'll remake them", I close down the import window and now my materials bar in the project work space is bugged. I try to expand the tree and the materials listed in the tree become "post effect" bars and act like such. I have to close down A:M to fix it. Is there something that Im doing wrong? I do not want to make all my materials again when i have them sitting right there. EDIT: i just started a new project and all that doesnt happen So it must be just that particular project. I guess lesson learned, alway imbed materials

Theres a really cool plug-in called "sweeper." Make a circle profile of two and make a extrude path for the sweep. Do that repeatedly until you have a shape you like. Then just add the materials you like! Heres a nice tutorial http://www.hash.com/sweeper/ Have fun!!

Running 32-bit applications in a 64-bit environment is a tricky thing. Windows developers created a built in Emulator, which turns out is accually more efficient that normal windows because it is 64 bit. Because of this, 32-bit apps are being crunched as 64-bit apps but are being displayed at 32-bit. I wont say that performance increases are with all applications, but it has been my experiance that many programs have the tendancy to run much faster. I have been doing benchmarking of some of my programs over the past few weeks and 32-bit applications in a 64 bit environment have seen anywhere from a 3%- 15% increase in performance.

My personal recomendation is Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard AMD FX-57 or AMD64 4800+ Dual core (FX-60 if you really want a Ultra amazing computer and if you can afford it) Nvidia 7800 PCIe (two of them in SLI if you can afford it) 2 GB of Corsair Low latency RAM (2-3-3-6 Timings) [Motherboard can Support 4 GB] 2x 250 GB SATA2 HDDs (RAID if you want but, meh) Windows 64 bit edition <--I just upgraded to that, and with out changing any hardware, I gained significant performance on renders. On the AMD CPUs, always remember to overclock them up a 100 Megahertz, they love it. Now this setup is pretty pricy (prices based of Newegg.com) Motherboard $210 FX-60 $850 Video card(s) $290 each RAM $200 HDDs $80 each Not including fans, case, Power supply (at least 550w) CD-drives, Monitors, other bling... But I Guarantee that this sucker will crank out render times lightning quick. Rob~

Hello again, I have extracted some models and textures out of one of my favorite video games. They were in .tri format. I converted them to .3ds, .lwa or .obj. The textures to them when theyre converted dont stick as they are supposed to (my fault on programming). So they end up as .dds (direct draw image) All the UV map coordinates are in that dds file and should just lay right on but some how they dont in 3ds max. Now for .obj When i attach textures to the model then convert it to .obj, it leaves a .mtl file with it. It contains all the texture information and material stuff and jazz like that. Now for my question, is .dds or .obj supported in A:M. If not oh well, i just i have to bite the bullet and convert the dds to tga and decal the model by hand. I hope i was clear enough Rob~

Awesome, Worked like a charm

Hello again, Im still new to the Targa rendering method. I cant seem to bring the targa sequence back in A:M to save it as something else. It either brings in one frame, or it tries to open Adobe Photoshop to show the frame. Could someone share the Targa secret?

ahh Ha! Awesome. Just to let you all know, with a 64bit dual core processor my rendering time was cut by more than half From 1 minute per frame, to 25 seconds per frame, 1024 x 768 full particles. Im quite impressed.

Ok Targa got it. Did a small rendering trying that out, man thats nice I couldnt quite figure out how to reload that sequence back into A:M. Perhaps you could share that secret?

Well I dont think memory is going to be a problem. But after I have rendered both the even and odd frames, how do i put them together? Ive been rendering strait to divx codec .avi. Is there something better I should be using?

Hey all, I just recently built an amazingly overpriced computer ( Asus A8N-SLI Premium, AMD64 4400 dual core, and 2x Nvidia 7800gt in sli) specifically for rendering and animating and stuff. I know other programs out there support dual core/multi cpu setups, but Im wondering if A:M has high support with it, or am I better off turning of affinity to one core and using hyper transport? I havent really noticed a difference in rendering either way, just curious if theres a patch or a newer version that would support it.