Roger

I am probably one of the last people to own a VHS player. 🤣

Here are my results: Best time was 2:13 on a Ryzen 3500U mobile processor. I will test with my Threadripper 1950x system a bit later and post those results.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Clever Merry Christmas, Rob.

If I wanted to add a font to AM, is there a fonts directory? Or does it just use the Windows fonts? I did not see a font folder in the AM parent folder.

I know DarkTree textures were rolled into AM at some point and the plugin is available...but how do you go about making new textures to use with the plugin? Are they still selling the software? Or did it go the abandonware route? It looks like their website hasn't been updated since 2010.

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?

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!

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.

That was my main concern with the laptop Mark posted, that is a lower-end chip I'm pretty sure. If he doesn't mind going used, he can get an X220 with a 1 year warranty for right around $200, I think this one might even have a tablet mode. Throw in an AM license and he is still under $300. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-X230-12-5-INTEL-CORE-I5-3230M-2-60GHZ-8GB-128Gb-WINDOWS-10-PRO/222499822453?hash=item33ce05db75:rk:24:pf:0

Yeah but Win 2k is much lighter on system resources than what Win 10 is. Win 2k I think will work with a minimum of 128 to 256mb RAM where Win 10 has a minimum requirement of 2GB. So Win 2k with 2GB is using much less of the total system RAM than a Win 10 system with 2 or 4GB. 2 cores is probably just fine for AM on the go but I'd try for sure to get a minimum of 4gb RAM and either an i3 or i5 dual core. Ideally you would want whatever cpu you get to have a fairly high base clock speed.

The Costco laptop would probably be adequate but just barely. You really wouldn't be able to put much of anything but AM on it, for sure. I would try to get at least 8gb RAM, a quad core Intel or AMD cpu, and a 1080p display panel. If you don't have a full keyboard with numpad, you will want a plug in USB numpad for AM use. I don't know that I would want to try and use a dual core with 4gb, you might be ok with it at first but I think you'd become frustrated over time.

This one has a number pad: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-e-series/ThinkPad-E585/p/20KVCTO1WWENUS0/customize? I'd recommend the Ryzen 2500U, 1080p screen and 8GB RAM as a bare minimum. That config comes in at just a hair over $500, at $529. It has a 65W power adapter which is much smaller and lighter than a desktop replacement laptop power brick would be.

This question came up in Live Answer Time today and I thought I would post the official word from Hash (link is to store page): Can A:M use multiple cores? A:M is currently not fully multi-core-optimized. However A:M is able through Netrender (included for free in v16.0 and up) to use multiple cores for rendering.  OpenMP is used to utilize multiple cores for several operations. More operations are altered to use multiple cores in each update.  Since A:M is a rendering application, it is recommended to use a CPU as fast as possible to decrease rendering time. So if you have an 8 core system, base AM may not make full use of all 8 cores however if you pick up an additional 4 or 10 netrender nodes for the nominal cost of $10 or $15, you can utilize the other cores as background render nodes. So those of you contemplating Threadripper/Ryzen/Ryzen 3000 updates may find this useful info. *EDIT: I should add, most programs are not fully massively-threaded aware yet. I expect that to change over time, but for right now Netrender is the best way to make use of those extra cores.

That's a different look, to be sure.

For AM use you're probably better off not spending on the Titan, it just wouldn't make use of it. Other apps that use CUDA might, but unless you use a lot of CUDA enabled apps and it's not just a hobby but something you use to pay your rent, it probably doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money.