Roger

Wow. That must have taken a heck of a long time to film on the Oxberry.

If anyone out there wanted to get Painter for cheap, now is your chance: https://www.humblebundle.com/software/painter-create-with-confidence?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_2

Hmm, I could have sworn I moved my license from my old workstation to a new one, but I could be mistaken. It may have just been a new hard disk in the same workstation. I would go with Rob on this one, he is the more authoritative source. I'm not sure how the $299 version handles the node-locking, but unless you plan on hanging onto that system for ten years, you're better off with the annual subscription.

AM is indeed capable of doing photorealistic texturing and rendering (please see the links that Itsjustme posted). There isn't too much problem migrating the subscription version from one system to another, you just need to make sure to back up the license file and copy that over to your fresh install. But you can't use AM on multiple systems that way, you'd need multiple licenses for that. And yes, reselling of licenses is frowned on, and while there isn't much to stop you from buying a copy off Ebay, you will run into the bugs that Robert mentioned, due to the way modern versions of Windows handle the old CD key system. Besides, don't you want the cool new features that have been developed in the many years since the last CD version was sold? AM is $80 a year for a web subscription license. That's less than a Netflix subscription. You could use it for 30 years and still pay less than you'd pay for a 3DS Max license from Autodesk I will say that while you can do mechanical modeling with AM, please be advised it is not an engineering app like CATIA or Pro/E, there are no solid modeling features or polygon tools. While you could use it for prototyping (it will output .STL files and can be used with 3D printers) that is not its main use case.

Whatever happened to the parrot? Is it pining for the fjords?

ok I think I'm at least 6 weeks behind I need to get caught up this weekend.

Firstly, congratulations on finishing a short film, that's a big deal. It's a monumental amount of work. That's why we tend to see more stills and models of AM stuff than we do movies. I think you've got an interesting idea here, but I wasn't sure what was happening. At first, due to the lighting and the way the girl popped out of the trap door, I thought it was going to be horror. Then I thought, oh ok you're going for a buddy/friend adventure short. Then at the end I thought maybe we were back to some kind of horror? And then I thought maybe you were trying to say something about TV making puppets out of us? Like I said, I think you've got the basis of a really interesting idea here. But, I feel like I watched two different movies at the same time. I think it would benefit either from being reworked as full-blown horror, or to play up the buddy aspect of it and leave off the confusing ending about the child and people being puppets of the TV (why then would it need another puppet to put a battery in it?) I liked the design of the TV character, if you are going for scary it looks creepy. There is a little bit of an uncanny-valley thing going on with the little girl. I think maybe having a 2nd look at the lighting/texturing of her would benefit, especially if you're going for cute and not creepy. I 2nd Rob's comments on showing her pulling/dragging the table rather than pushing. If you're not sure on how to animate something, act it out. So to recap, stuff I liked: I think there is a more interesting story here, you need to decide on whether it is a horror story or a buddy picture and then go full bore with that idea. Number two: character design is cool (but maybe have another pass on the girl). Stuff that is not working currently: lighting needs some work, the pulling instead of pushing thing with the animation, again: figure out which story you're telling and commit to that fully. I was confused by the ending.

AMD has released drop-in 12 and 16 core socket 470 parts: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-9-3950x-zen-2,39615.html Price I've heard on the 16 core part is $750. The 12 core AMD part for $499 beats anything 12 core and under in Intel's current lineup. They have also released their new Navi graphics: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-navi-radeon_rx_5700_xt-rx_5700-details,39608.html

Since there are some people on here that have a casual or not-so casual interest in the nuts and bolts of CG, I thought I would post this Computer Graphics bundle from Humble Bundle. There are several good books in the bundle, easily worth the $15 price to get all of them: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/computer-graphics-crc-press-books?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_5

What sorcery is this? When was this implemented?

Robert --- thank you for conducting the contest and all your hard work putting the video together. Congratulations to the winners!

I've never touched Java but I have used Borland Turbo C++ ages ago in college.

I might be interested. It has been years since I've done any programming, but if it applies to computer graphics I'd be interested. I've actually been thinking about learning Python but C++ might be more relevant.

And one last word about the budget laptops using the low-end dual cores (generally at the sub $300 price point): they tend to be lower power than a dual core system from back in the day. An AMD E-120 was a popular chip to put in budget laptops, but it is a sub 2ghz dual core chip. Other things that they do with these lower end systems to save on costs is they use single channel instead of dual channel RAM, slower 5400rpm hard drives (unless they use flash, in which case they tend to use a lower emmc flash module) and other measures to keep the costs down. If budget is really tight you're better off getting a used higher end system with a discrete chip that won't cause problems with AM, or trying to get a more modern budget system that makes fewer compromises.

I have bad news: virtually every laptop, that isn't advertised as a gaming laptop or workstation/desktop replacement laptop, has Intel graphics. That is how they keep the prices so low. With that in mind, Mark might be best served getting a laptop with a Ryzen 2500u or Ryzen 2700u, those are mobile chips with Vega graphics. They should be quite suitable for mobile AM work, but unfortunately I have never tested these personally.