Roger

V16 does not run, I get "license expired". (or at least I did when it was still on my system) V17 attempts to activate but will not activate. I'm trying it now without my AV active.

Ok, thanks for the tips. I ended up uninstalling everything and then reinstalling v17 but still couldn't activate. I'll try disabling the AV temporarily and see if that works.

Well I removed the master0.lic file from my AM v16 directory, but I still can't get v17 to activate. Do I need to completely uninstall v16?

Guess I should have searched the forum first. I'll remove/rename my master.lic file, that should hopefully do it.

Anyone?

Just bought the AM v17 web subscription. Tried activating it, got the following error:

I've got a Quadro 2000 and I've also noticed some funkiness with my display in AM. A lot of times what will happen is it appears to freeze on one image, doesn't update when I'm trying to tumble or zoom in and out on a model in Birdseye view. It is pretty frustrating because I have to restart the app to get it working again. I haven't tried switching to Intel integrated graphics to see if I experience the same problem with the HD 3000.

It certainly can't hurt to get a card with CUDA or Open CL support, it just doesn't make any sense to spend $500 on a graphics card (to me) when it isn't going to accelerate your main program. If you do a lot of Photoshop and or Premiere, by all means spend $200 or so and get a geforce 660, that looks to be the current sweet spot for the Nvidia cards.

Another thing in AMDs favor is the tend to stick with a given socket for a while, where Intel will switch sockets for no good reason. I think there are 2 or 3 different core iWhatever sockets.

If you don't want to go AMD, though, a core i7 will probably render significantly faster. You may not be able to get the total system price as low w/ an Intel chip, though.

Ok, a little more than $500. shopping_list.pdf

I will 2nd that a graphics card is almost irrelevant as far as AM is concerned. A budget $100 card from AMD/ATI or Nvidia will work. Either a Radeon 6570 or Nvidia Geforce 640/650 would be good. I would go with 8GB of RAM, more than that is probably a waste unless you are running virtual machines or scads of programs or plan on doing really high-res photoshop work or HD editing. If you are on a super budget, you may want to consider an AMD A10 APU-based system, you get a quad-core cpu (although not as fast as Intel's lastest offerings) and discrete-level graphics performance (on the CPU die). You can get a 128GB SSD for around $75 now. Kingston brand. You may want to consider that for your OS/programs, and get a cheap standard drive for media files. You could probably put an AMD-based system together for around $500, OS and all. I would definitely recommend Win 7 64 bit, professional copy. Don't screw around with win 8.

So, let me see if I can wrap my head round this: you can make a silhouette of a shape in Illustrator like that and import it into AM and have it auto-extrude and cap it? If so, that is a pretty neat trick. Which makes me wonder why you can't just do that with an outline in AM. Guess I need to look for an Illustrator clone now.

What is a matcap map? Is that something new in v17?

If at all possible, try to create only 4 point patches. 3 point patches, while valid, will do nothing but cause creases in your model. 5 point patches are useful but can be tricky.

This is more or less what I am looking to duplicate:

Robcat, are you having issues with your email? I've tried sending you an email and gotten a bounceback twice.

Well, I was modifying an existing material to see if I could get the look of ceramic, just in black. So I didn't mess with the combiners. I guess I will have to experiment some more.

What about slate shingles? That might give you better durability than asphalt but still give you the traditional look. Although I think a slate roof might be even worse than metal, cost-wise, and probably as hard or harder to install.

I guess what I am going for is a shiny black porcelain or ceramic material, kind of like a billiard ball. And now that I think about, white specular highlight might have produced the look I was going for.

Here is a screen-grab of the materials editor:

I'll grab a screencap. I don't think I do. There are two fractal combiners, I'm not all that hot with the materials editor but I don't think these affect the color.

Here is the 2nd version. I think I need to decrease the thickness of the lid. I'm having a hard time getting it to have that nice domed look I had with the other lid, though.

Does that cover have an inside and an outside or is just an outside? I thought I made it with both, but I think it just has one spline that I revolved to make it.

I am trying to modify an existing material, "ceramic cup" to have a black color instead of white or off-white. I set both the diffuse and specular colors to black, but it is not black, just has more of a gray tint. Did I forget something, or is there another attribute I have to set the color for?