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Most CAD programs excel at drafting with precision. As such, if you know precise measurements you'd be well served to create your shapes in CAD and then export them to A:M. In A:M then simply import the Models as Props. This isn't to say that A:M can't create very precise mechanical shapes but only that CAD programs are designed with tools for such static shape precision in mind from the beginning. Most CAD programs do not do well at creating animatable characters and organic shapes. For those you'd want to create them in A:M and then export them to AutoCAD (or the CAD program of your choice. Whereas the most animation you are likely to get out of a CAD progam is a walkthrough A:M is designed for full articulation and animation. There are several new tools in A:M that increase precision such as the Snap to Surface, Snap to Group and Snap to Control Point methods. A tool you won't have in A:M and a lot of CAD programs is the tool that cuts, welds and overlays shapes. But you can create those shapes in any vector (besier) drawing program such as CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Both Corel and Adobe have created a slew of programs to augment and push that technology further. Taking your lego example, several impressive animations have been created with lego pieces and there are lego models available in the A:M Exchange forum. You can create those in approx. 5 seconds by dragging and dropping the models into A:M or (once added to your Library) from your Library panel into a workspace window. The biggest difference is probably price. With the exception of free CAD programs you'll pay considerably more for a CAD program because tolerances are much tighter in the precision modeling and manufacturing world. To achieve the best of both worlds use both A:M and the CAD program of your choice.

Somewhat related to my last post, this is a fascinating set of images. It uses Snap Group to Surface but that in and of itself is not what is of interest to me. What is interesting is how the surface of an object can be captured but not only the surface butthe outline/contour as well. This (very!) roughly equates to some of the things they've got going on over at Disney with 'Paperman'. This is way beyond the scope of Snap Group to Surface but I find it interesting never-the-less.

Yeah, to reiterate Fuchur, the tool is simply called Snap-to-Surface- probably a wise move by our Yoda. WE are the ones who have monickered it as Retopology... we should probably thus start referring to it in it's proper context. OR, how about this... wait....... wait for it........... S2S !!! I have to say that it was me who called it "Retopology-Tool" for the first time. Sorry about that. The feature-request for it initiated the "Snap to Surface"-button so. Anyway to let people know what it is about more or less it is easy to say "Retopology". In the end it is retopology + X so. I don't think that it is too bad to call it retopology-tool so... what does it harm? But okay, lets call it "Snap-To-Surface"-Tool from now on. See you *Fuchur*

Looking a bit further... when I look at just the cross section of the shape I see that the portion between the big ridges is only a single surface with no enclosed volume (see arrows). The 3D printer will need a model that is entirely enclosed. If you lathe an outline that is a continuous enclosed shape and use that as the basis for your model I think that would export and print successfully.

Hello, I had an idea about an animation I'd like to do which I'm trying (probably unsuccessfully, knowing me) to keep fairly simple. It involves basically one thing that I want to make sure is feasible before moving forward. If not, then I need a Plan B. I have a round hole in a flat surface. For part of the animation, I want the round hole to morph into a square hole, and then back to a round hole. Is that something that can be animated? Thanks

The latest addition to my railroad needs long sheets of diamond pattern steel plate. I wanted these plates to look well used, slightly rusty and to have varying amounts of dried dirt on them. I wasn't looking forward to building the material because while it's relatively easy to build show-room new surface finishes, I had never been happy with any of my attempts at old steel and procedural dirt looked too much like soft edged clouds. I thought the only way I could get hard edged dirt would be a decal. However after much experimentation I've got a material that's more than adequate. At this distance it's fairly convincing. The diamond pattern is a tiled normal decal. And it almost holds up at arm's length. The best part is that since it's procedural you can have a lot of dirt. Or just a few random patches. The materials (one for colours and one for textures) use a combination of native A:M and Enhance:AM combiners. If anyone's interested, I can post a schematic of the materials showing how they work.

I'd say that we are just on the route to the implementation of that. If you consider that we haven't had Surface Baking for that long and the steady improvements we've seen in that, it makes sense to keep moving along the hierarchical chain to the actual images and colors of each patch. Of all of the surface attributes we can assign to a surface in A:M the attributes assigned to Named Groups are the most important throughout. Patch Images are extremely powerful and IMO they often better than materials and decals. But they aren't simply images on patches. They can be percentages of Color, Displacement, Bump, Transparent Ambiance (as well as others). And all of these can can be Layered on top of each other. Knowing a little of all the variables involved convinces me that there is a lot of work involved in keeping track of and programming enhancements to that. Add to that a changing world where we expect to be able to directly paint on surfaces and things get even more complex. I didn't post just to say all of the above but rather to suggest there is something of a mid-way method that can get some of my general nonsense accomplished. The following might work well for someone that just wants to reproduce each group in the image resulting from baking a surface. - Create a Material that is of a generic color or transparent. - Drop an instance of the material on each Group you want to show up in the Decal - Bake Surface - Save Decal - Adjust in Decal View / UV Editor and Associated Graphics Package Note: If you like what you see in the Surface Baked Decal you can then go in and further enhance the Material. This is imporant because Baked Surface Materials maintain their color, specular intensity, etc. (See image) Once satified just Bake Surface again with the new material changes. Disclaimer: This workflow is extremely experimental (for me).

Nancy is correct. Snap to Surface works much better in a Choreography. AND it works much better when you are working on top of an .obj prop. However, in this case, the mesh is so dense, you'd quickly lose track of the splines. A snap to cp feature the works similar to the "Snap to Grid" would be ideal.

I was not very successful with snap to surface (but I tried awhile back) - but: 1) I suspect the model that I was trying to snap to did not have a dense enough mesh, and 2) I believe I was a little bit more successful (it's been awhile) when I tried to snap patches (4 cps) rather than just one cp. And 3) perhaps it worked better in the chor (rather than modeling window, or pose?) - with the model being snapped to was imported as a prop, maybe? As I said - I can't remember, as I became impatient, and really didn't have a use for this, other than trying it out. At some point I thought I might want to model a rough 3D rotoscope model first in A:M (made of spheres, primitives), and then use that to guide my modeling for a more detailed model. I didn't/don't have any high density polygon models that I wanted to bring into A:M from any other program, as it seems that's what this feature is more suited. s2s did seem very touchy to me.

The voting is closed. Now we await the results video! While you are waiting, consider... A compelling collection of creative computer compositions commendably completed for... Finish the Unfinished! You may still peruse the contest entries below You may still click on any image to see it full screen. You may still see the entire collection as a slide show by clicking on the first image and using the arrow tool at the right side of the screen to advance through the images. (I'm not sure if this works on a phone but, of course, you're not looking at these wonderful images on a tiny phone anyway!) Wireframes are still included with each image for your splinesmanship edification! Competition Images Dream Weaver: Wireframe: Dragula in Peril: Wireframe: Evolutions: Wireframe: Awkward Moon: Wireframe: Super Pfleu: Wireframe: Titan Surface: Wireframe: Quest for the Cup: Wireframe: LIAM: Wireframe: Metamorphose: Wireframe: Cow at Rest: Wireframe: Exhibition Images These images are not in competition but are submitted for your enjoyment, none-the-less! Planes Trains Automobiles Medal: Wireframe: New Year: Wireframe: Goldfish: Wireframe: Salt & Pepper: Wireframe: Bosch!: Wireframe: Thanks to everyone for all the fine and creative entries!

During the last couple of weeks I have done some experiments with realistic Ocean Waves in Animation Master. For now there is only one image to watch, but I'm working on a short animation that I hope to be able to show in a day or two. (The image is rendered with the simplest possible environment. No sky sphere, one single sun light and a simple reflecting gradient material.) Click here, for more information on this (The page will be updateted as the "project" evolves.)

Welcome back, Al! Remember, that ease comes because it take many fewer CPs to make a shape in A:M than vertices in a polygon modeler. 1) Keyboard 4 will constrain a CP to the direction of the spline at the point it starts from. If the spline is curved you will change the shape of the curve as you drag it but I use this quite a bit to adust CPs in a mesh, none-the-less. Also... 5 will constrain the CP to motion perpendicular to the original spline. 6 will constrain it to motion perpendicular to the surface. 2) the CutPlane plugin can do this in simpler situations. It can insert a spline ring (or unsplined CPs) at the intersection of the cutting plane with a mesh. 3) I think so? 4) You may define any res you want, limited only by your RAM and patience. 5) The Snap To Surface tool allows you to draw new splines on the surface of another shape as a guide. Informally called "retopolgy" on the forum. 6) That should be fine. That's way more than I have. 7) Besides the goat?

Thank you, Rob T, Pixelplucker, and John Bigboote. Regarding Rob's suggestion, as well as Pixelplucker's, I had already thought of that; as you see in the 3rd illustration, the viewpoint was carefully oriented so that it was square on to the patch surface -- I show the image just before the last tweak where I tilt the patch surface back a little in the view before applying the decal. In addition, I tried rotating the entire model so that the patch surface was parallel to a grid axis. Doing this made one of the standard views (in this case the Left view) normal to the patch surface. I also tried rotating the model so that the patch surface was square on (normal) to the Front view before applying the decal. None of these attempts worked. Rebooting the computer didn't help, either. Regarding John's comment, unless I misunderstand you, I think that is already the way I am doing it. The surface (target patch) is identified as a group, and when I select the group, this enables me to isolate the surface by hiding everything else. Then I reorient the viewpoint (if necessary) and try to position and plunk the decal in place. The group selection and isolation ("h" key) is what I did for all the illustrations after number 1. What I'm doing is very simple -- it just distorts on this patch surface. As you can see from the rendered images, the patch surface is perfectly flat with no wrinkles or other patch artifacts. It's as though there were some undocumented surface characteristic that is throwing off the decal's horizontal linearity when the "apply" button is hit. I can't find any difference between the patch surface that works and the one that distorts. They both were originally created from the same vertical extrusion. I'm really baffled! I am grateful for your inputs, but still no cigar! Cordially, Oliver Dean

Absolutely. As with most things in A:M how you model depends on things like; 1) What's your personal tolerance to patch creases 2) How is the model to be used; a standalone "prop" or something whose shape is going to be animated - a billiard ball versus Mike Wazowski 3) Does the camera get close enough to the model to see any patch creases Speaking as someone who mostly models inorganic hardware from the middle of the last century (i.e. things that are assembled using many, many rivets) I want a rivet head (essentially a demi-sphere) that uses as few patches as possible but still looks good at arms length. Here's a screen render of four medium grey (33% reflective) demi-spheres using the same 3cp cross-section spline, lathed 3X, 4X, 8X and 12X. The surface creases in the 3X and 4X are especially obvious in the top views. In my opinion 8X is the acceptable minimum while 12X is a waste of patches. Here are the same models rendered "outside". Once again the 3X and 4X would be fine if they were in the background of the scene. Not so much if a main character uses them to gaze at their reflection. However there are more tools at your disposal; manually adjusting spline magnitudes and the groups "normal weight" which is a material property you can apply to control how patch normals are averaged. Here's four demi-spheres again but the third model now has only four, 3pt patches. All its' magnitudes have been tweaked for circularity and a material has been applied to it whose only attribute is a normal weight of 67%. Here are the same models "outside". If you import this image and the previous, similar one into an image viewer and switch back and forth between them, it's clear the 16 patch model is more accurate. But for use as a rivet head, being able to replace a 16 patch model with a more than adequate 4 patch model really reduces patch counts.

hello, this is the image generated with AM or your creative template ?? Modeling this with patches seems very complex to me. Especially to maintain a regular curvature of the surface of the back! A bump map or a normal map should do just fine. Would a displacement card work? Perhaps that would perhaps lengthen the computation times !? salutations

I saw 4k raw video being edited on a surface pro. Now would I want to try to edit video that way, no. But it shows the power. As a user of both the ipad and surface both are very useful. but I have a very heavy laptop and the new surface appeals to me . One thing I am thinking about is sound editing. Surface has the windows software audio editing. It would be nice to use the surface and record the voice overs and edit them as they are recorded by something other than the big laptop I have. Plus for larger screen sizes the surface has an HDMI out adapter for large screen and USB for keyboard and mouse that could be used in the office environment. Steve

Something you'll love in v17 is the Spline to Surface tool. With it you can model on top of an existing construct and even change/replace that underlying construct too. It's also great for modeling extra (unconnected) details right on top of a model. Note to those using Spline to Surface in a Modeling Window: I find it best to lock down the template after drawing a small 2 CP spline using the Lock key/icon. Then delete that spline and model over the locked geometry. Of course... make sure you select the Spline to Surface icon before splining or else you'll model a lot of geometry that isn't on the intended surface. Doh! I hate it when I do that. Snap to Surface, not Spline to Surface Rodney, but other than that: Yes, good suggestions. See you *Fuchur*

A:M v16 (and up) utilizes multi-cores using OpenML for Finding Normals and a few other functions (where it makes sense). Like that today you can handle more patches in a single model than before. It highly depends on your core-amount and the power of your system and yes you will still run into the problem somewhere. Best is to avoid that by assembling together multiple models in the chor. The new Snap-To-Surface-Feature in v17 maybe helpful there too. There are many changes from v13 on. I am not totally sure what was in v13, but these are the bigger and "newer" features in A:M (not in chronological order): - Speedimprovements (especially from v15 to v16 but also for v17) for both Windows and Mac. (windows-computers seem to perform a little better so). - Netrenderer now included with 4 cores for free and addtional cores that can be bought seperatly for a very reasonable price). - IBL, Ambient Occlusion (with Transparency-Support) and FastAO (> Plugin, actually called "FakeAO" which is very fast, the newest one even can use the GPU-power, but even the CPU-version takes only a few seconds to render with) - Fluid-Particles - Hair-Shaders (additional to the standard-hair-system) - HDRI-Rendering with Buffer-Output - STL-Export (for example used by 3d-printers) - MDD-Animation-Data-Export (to export vertexed-based animation). > for example to get animation-data to Modo) - RenderPresets to share render-settings in an easy way. - Selection-Filters for easier selection. - SubSurfaceDisplacement (I am not sure if this is really new for v13 or if it was included there already). - Bake Surface (> bake Surface-attributes to decals so they may render faster. Includes an AutoUnwrap-Algorithm which is best to be used with 3d-Painter) - Newton Physics (I am not sure if this is really new for v13 or if it was included there already, but they have been improved in v15 if I am not wrong). - 2008 rig, face rig, lightrig - Snap-to-Surface (in A:M v17) - A:M Answers (in A:M v17) - UV-Editor-Improvements (in A:M v17) ... endless smaller and possible bigger improvements I can't remember right now. See you *Fuchur*

Are you baking your particles? As far as my approach to geometry based hair there are quite a few tutorials on cloth so it might be best to point you to those. In the meantime I'll offer this: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cloth Simulation ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The basic approach is: Create two materials: 1 - Cloth 2 - Cloth Deflector 3 - Apply those to meshes and then simulate Rename these materials as Cloth and ClothDeflector or something easier to find later. (A:M doesn't automatically name them anything particularly useful so we have to do that) Create the mesh that you will use as hair, fire, smoke or whatever you will be attempting to create via the cloth simulation. Considerations: When dealing with cloth simulation there are several 'tricks' to getting it to perform with maximum control. Here are a few: - Use Named Groups! By naming Groups we can not only better understand and organize we can layer in effects. For instance, having a group of objects that will serve to deflect the cloth (i.e. it has the Deflector Material applied to it) that is invisible (turn its surface property to Transparent=100%). In this way you can channel and direct the simulation in interesting ways. - Consider leaving dangling splines outside of the area to be simulated. These will ground the cloth to something stable that will not be directly effected by the simulation. In the case of hair these might be below the surface of the 'skin' that the hair will appear from. I try to select these dangling splines and name them something like 'base' so that they can be modified later. - Consider the distance from each object you've created. Overlapping meshes will cause the cloth simulation to error out because it can't properly calculate the interactions and directions. (i.e. it doesn't know which way is up because we've confused it by having interpenetrating meshes) - Consider saving out/exporting a frame of the animated simulation as a separate model. In this way you could generate thousands of resources simply by launching one simulation. We then can animate those separately or... simulate them again in other ways. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forces ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adding forces (via Right Click/Add/Force) in an Action or Choreography allows us to push and pull geometry around in a dynamic way. This is especially useful for cloth simulation. We can hide or lock objects or add invisible objects in between the force and their location to 'protect' them from being effected in the same way as those areas that are fully effected. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Render As Lines (RAL) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Render As Lines is considerably more basic than cloth simulation and is not as versatile because there are no patches. It is important to note however that RAL can and generally should be augmented by the use of patches. For example you might have a cool looking robot and just add some detailed lines over the top of the robot's mesh to add the appearance of additional details. With v17s new 'Snap to Surface' features adding splines to the surface of a model is easy whereas before we had to painstakingly turn our models around or view them from multiple angles simultaneously to make sure the lines were on the surface. In my estimation the secret to RAL is using Named Groups to layer in of additional properties on the same splines/shapes. Using a little roughness and then adjusting the scale of that roughness can create some very interesting effects. Because RAL does generate some rendering artifacts on occasion it's often best to take this one step further and convert the splines to geometrical (patch rendering) shapes. This is trivial and easy to do with use of the Sweeper plugin. Just draw a little spline shape (say three CPs connected) and name it as a Named Group (because I will delete it later I often name mine, "Use Me". Then I can easily find it in the Sweeper dialogue. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sweeper plugin ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Basic Steps to use Sweeper: Create the splines you wish to sweep (It's best to Name this as a Group although technically it isn't necessary) Create the shape or object you wish to sweep (name this Group) Select the splines you wish to sweep Right Click and go to Plugins/Sweeper Select the shape you wish to sweep from the list of Named Groups in the drop down menu Adjust other parameters as necessary Launch the sweep The swept shape will automatically be named so it will be easy to move away from the splines used to create it. That original spline can then be adjusted or used for additional sweeping or discarded. If the swept object isn't to your liking simply delete it and sweep again with different settings. Move them to the side if you wish to compare multiple sweeps with different settings. That is a basic primer for the areas under consideration. As I mentioned before, I haven't actually pressed into the classic use of decalled hair that is then cloth simulated. This is especially powerful because we can use Patch Images (with all of their various Image Types) to layer in the hair. That hair can then be further animated/simulated. It should also be noted that once we've got the geobased system in place we can further augment that with particles based effects (to include but not necessarily requiring particle hair). For instance, geobased hair might be further enhanced through the use of sprites or blobby effects. The general premise being to accomplish what we can with simple geometry and use particles to achieve what cannot be easily achieved complex geometry and interactions which is what particles attempt to simulate.

1.) See attachment. There is a button for that. (be aware, that it is only available in chors or at least is the only thing where it will make a difference if I am not wrong) 2.) Press 1, 2 or 3 and move the object around. Each stands for one axis. 3.) Real radiosity? That is extremly time consuming but you do not need that for reflections. Radiosity will create very convincing lightening if used correctly, but it really takes a lot of rendertime. For a small overview about rendering have a look here: https://www.patchwork3d.de/rendering-45-en I think you are talking about Raytracing, which is something A:M does most of the time anyway ;). Just activate Reflections in the rendering dialog (at least to level 2), put in reflectivity in a group or surface settings or material settings and give it something to be reflected.

I'm not sure what you mean. Yes. In most environments the 1, 2 and 3 keys (not the ones on the number pad) will constrain motion to x, y or z. They can be used in combinationn to move on a plane. If you have the World Space button (the Earth icon on your toolbar) ON those motions will be in world space. If it is OFF the motion will be in Object space. I've never had to do that. Do you have "Radiosity" ON in the Chor Properties? Turn if OFF. To get reflections you should only need to have a reflective surface and "Reflections" ON in the Render settings.

This is getting hard... okay so what I can remember is: Version 15 (2008) Liquids, Baked Surface (bake materials and decals to decals), Hash Animation:Master Realtime (HA:MR) integration (no longer available in newer versions) Version 16 (2011) 64-bit Version, Netrenderer-integration with Multicore-support, 3d connexion device support, OBJ-MDD-Animation-Export, overall performance-boost Version 17 (2012) Snap to Surface (Retopology-Tool), Animation:Master Answers, SSE4 instruction support, Create your own "Support"-page, Animate-Mode indicator, Improved Cloth-Simulation with Hi-res Simulation, STL-Export (with resolutionlevels up to 64 instead of formerly 16 polygones per patch) You can find tutorials for Snap To Surface on my website. (see below) There is very likely much much more that I am not aware of now... See you *Fuchur*

No. But I am not using the cylindrical mapping method of Robert in most of the cases. If you want to get rid of the problem, do a Bake Surface before export. That should get rid of it... otherwise, Robert would you like to file a bug report for it? Best regards *Fuchur*

Yes it's between the show rulers and snap bias to grid buttons on the toolbar at the top towards the right end.

I think the only thing you possibly did "wrong" as it were was to not start by opening a new On/Off pose to set things up in first. But the rest I think has shown up two possible bugs; 1: A bone set to be a Boolean Cutter won't track a surface when it is then constrained to a surface by a Surface Constraint. 2: If the Aiming bone in a Surface Constraint has an additional Aim At constraint applied to it, so that it follows/is controlled by a target null. The bone that was constrained to the surface in this Surface Constraint setup stops moving. I can submit this as a bug report, unless any one else here thinks I have miss evaluated some aspect of this.