someawfulbridge

I'm just an ignurnt new guy, but having tried the Collins tutorial, I have to say the one in the new David Rogers book is great. Rather than extruding a ring, reshaping in all three dimensions, and extruding again, and again, this one uses splines that roughly match the contour of the lips' or eyelids' profile, which are then lathed. So while, when you lathe it you get a vaguely drain- or sphincter-shaped result, you can rough it in pretty quickly from a front view as the depth geometry is already there. Working this way, in a more 2-d, painterly manner, has really helped me to start getting my head around spline geometry/manipulation. So, what I'm saying is, still wrapping my head around all of this, the David Rogers book is making a lot of sense. And David--if you're reading--keep in mind that I'm schilling left and right for you. Ahem. I'm also not yet posting works in progress so that my efforts don't negate any praise I heap upon the book. (What's the Abraham Lincoln quote about it being better to be thought an idiot than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt?) Cheers Mark

This is an OT aside, but I have to say that I have to do an identity-theft double-check everytime I see your name on the fora, given that Mark Reynolds is my name, too. I assume you're not just spyware? Mark

Fixed-- 1. I had misread (I tend to get ahead of myself) the process in the book. The holes were supposed to be 3-d tubes. I had deleted a ring to get 2-d holes. Don't know if that changed things, but it's working better. 2. I checked normals--I made sure the tube/hole normals were pointing inwards, towards the hole, rather than outwards, and flipped when necessary. I think this was the cause of the creasing. 3. After this, all the 5PPs fell right into place except for the last one, which I ended up having to do some serious spline surgery on a few times before it would work. AND hiding CPs did help for those hard-to-reach areas. Basically, all appears to be well. For now. Thanks for the help!

Hey, all-- I'm working through the David Rogers book and I'm making your standard remote control. It is laid out with circle-holes (lathed from a diagonal line, top circle deleted, resulting in a four-point hole) for buttons and a rectangular face around them, with the face comprising five-point patches connecting to the holes' cps. So, theoretically, especially since it will not be animated with any flexing/bending, having a 0-y-scale mesh, even chock full o' five-point meshes, should be crease and wrinkle-free, yes? But at every corner where two or four five-point meshes join, I'm getting a tiny crease. I've tried various combinations of how to lay out the grids and circles, covering every alternative method I can think of, to the same results. Also--and this may or may not be related to the above--I've noticed that when delegating five-point patches, some are easy--drag a box around the 5 cps and hit the 5PP button--but some will only get the 5PP button to appear if you select each cp one-at-a-time, and in a specific order. Is this just a quirk to which I should adapt, or does it indicate that I'm doing something wrong? Thanks!

I might be jumping the gun on this question and will find the answer soon-- I'm working through the tutorials in the David Rogers book (BEST BOOK EVER, based on the first 1/3, at least--the tutorials are very instructive and logically arranged) and I just modeled my first realistically-muscled appendage (a leg). To keep spline density low, the tut focuses on using spline bias manipulators to define the musculature. On the tut, however, the only cps whose bias is manipulated belong to the spline rings going around the leg. Is it standard/advisable, when modeling, to adjust bias on splines running lengthwise, as well? Is there a reason to stick with bias manipulation on only one type, directionally speaking, of spline? Bias manipulators, by the way, give me a funny tickle, so beautiful a thing are they-- Thanks! Mark

Thanks, gents!

I'm starting from scratch working through the David Rogers book. When it comes to making a torus without rotating the to-be-lathed circle, but instead moving the pivot point, I'm unable to get the pivot PRECISELY where I want it. I can move the x/y/z position in the manipulator properties window, but is there a precise way to rotate the pivot axes, to make SURE it ends up rotated 90 degrees (or otherwise) and not 89? Is there something I can hold down when rotating so that it automatically snaps in 5 (or other) degree increments, or somewhere in the PWS where it shows the rotation? Also, when translating the pivot, is there a way to restrict the translation to one axis, like holding 1, 2, or 3 down when moving CPs? I'm re-learning what I've already learned, so I'll have a bevy of new, stupid questions. Be prepared! Thanks, Mark

I got mine from Amazon and, excepting the slight publication delay, had no trouble. From a quick glance, it looks like everyone else did the same. Ends up being just south of $32.00. Check there. Cheers! Mark

My initial impression is also favorable--it's pretty much what I've been looking for at first glance. All the straight out technical stuff from the old fat A:M manual with tutorials that seem more illuminating than those in TAoAM o the Jeff Paries books. I might go back and revise this later, but so far, so very very good.

Cool, thanks. Since I'm rendering a still model, and not an animation, I've found a not-too-inconvenient workaround by rendering the toon lines pass for shape, a sharply lit normally-rendered one for decals, and then combining the two in Photoshop, lifting the details from the normal and slapping them on the toon line image. In the meantime I'll hang tight until said bug is ironed out.

Hey, guys-- I'm trying out A:M for a logo design that has decaled typewriter keys followed by 2-D panels with type set up to be cookie-cutter panels. It all renders fine as a standard rendering, but I was hoping to get a toon line version as well. The problem is, when I render it as toon lines, the "panels" holding the cookie-cutter type render only as rhomboid panels, and the decaling and cookie cutting render not at all. Furthermore, the decals don't render. I figger I could get around this by recoloring everything white (the bg color) and rendering it with flat shading, so the labels show up, but I was wondering if there is a way to get toon line rendering to show decals without having to recolor everything. Yes, yes? Thanks! Mark

Hey, all-- I'm wondering if there is a (glaringly obvious, which I missed?) function in A:M that allows you to subdivide a model's mesh to increase patch density--automatically generate splines halfway between existing splines, so that if you need more control points down the line you can add them, so that it doesn't have to be done by hand? Cheers-- Mark

Hey, all-- I'm doing my first (really tiny) animation, involving a B17 flying from the horizon, over and past the camera. The backdrop/cityscape is a simple rotoscope. (This is going to be used as part of a Flash site, so the rotoscope will actually be incorporated later as a layer in the Flash file.) The problem is, no matter how far away I drag the plane model, it never quite "disappears" into the horizon--it will only get so small. Is this something that has to be cheated (scaling down the model in the distance, for instance) or is there some camera or rendering option I need to be checking?

I'm trying--struggling, really--to get my head around poses. As I try and fail to create new poses, the pose count attributed to the model keeps growing, so by the time I get one set, it's "Pose 8," and there seems to be no way to delete the other 7 so I don't have them cluttering up my project. This is especially true of the first 5, which seem to be default poses, but I can't find a way to edit them. How do I delete those I don't want and edit those I do once they're set? Thanks. I'm none too pleased with the pose tutorials I've seen--or, haven't--so I'm fighting my way through this, and losing!

7.0.4 Also, just to make sure, I didn't do an update but a new install of the latest version.

Actually--and this may be the problem, since so many of the animations posted appear to be DivX--I have nothing installed except for what comes "out of the box." No additional codecs atall. Sometimes having to many codecs might cause the problem.

Yeah, when the problem first arose I made sure everything was up to date. Also, this problem really only occurs with the files posted to these forums. And since I can download them, and often the sound will play, wouldn't that rule out firewall settings? I'm guessing there's some codec I need to get, but I know not which or where, if that is the case.

Surely this is a stupid question, but what am I missing? About 2/3 of the posted animations--if not more--won't play properly on my computer using Quicktime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player. They'll play sound, but the picture is nonexistent--just a white field. I've even tried downloading the linked files and playing them off my desktop, to no avail. What obvious step am I skipping? Thanks for your patience!

Hey, all-- I'm working on tutorial #15 (volumetrics) in tAoAM, and when I apply the "Resolute Walk" action to the Knight model, his knees bend backwards in about 3/4 of the frames. I've rotated them frame by frame for some barely passable results, but I figger there's some "balance" setting somewhere that I just need to turn off. Yes? No? Anyone else have this problem? Thanks-- Mark www.someawfulbridge.com

Hi-- I just upgraded to v12 and am trying to weather a model. The online help says to right-click the model and a weathering dialog box will appear, but I'm seeing no such thing. What am I missing? Thanks for any help. I'm sure more stupid questions will follow!