Looking for the best Trex ever made. Eusing Lee

[MAYAman]

He was an AM user way back in the 90s. I believe now he works for ILM but looking for his Trex project. I had it on my old PC but it crashed a long time ago. There were videos, ortho files, textures. All done in AM 96 I believe but can't remember. Does anyone still have this or a link to it?

 

thanks

[detbear]

Hey MAYAman.

 

I remember that file if I'm thinking of the same one. It should be floating around somewhere.

[NancyGormezano]

here might be the model you are looking for

 

and

 

here is another T-rex

[MAYAman]

Just like back in 08, the model will not load. Can anyone help? Its been years and I still can't load this model. Says "invalid mdl"

[blixien]

Try this zip file I think its the T rex your looking for, I think there is a walk cycle with it.T-REX folder.zip

[Rodney]

I'm curious what version of A:M you are using to try to load the model with because all three resources (which are more or less the same model) open fine.

 

 

And thanks Steve for posting the Actions that go along with the Trexl! Awesomely awesome.

TrexWalk.mp4

[MAYAman]

I'm using version 12. I just opened a Rex I built way back in 2000 and it loads fine. The Trex file says "Edited by Steve Sappington"

 

It just won't open, still says invalid model file. So weird, I can open every model except the one I really want lol

 

edit: Weirdly enough, I can't open the petradon model either, same error. So it has to be something with the way these models were saved, version or maybe it made it incompatible with the older versions of AM.

[Fuchur]

Hm... I am not sure when it was created... v13 had a file format change, so anything from there will be hard or not useable for v12 or before.

Opening a file from an old version should however be possible even with v18.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[MAYAman]

OK well, now my version 12 won't open even after a reinstall after I installed version 18. Not happy but nothing I can do I guess.

[Fuchur]

I am just guessing here, but please make sure that you have installed this file too:

ftp://ftp.hash.com/pub/updates/windows/Am2005/v12stuff-full.exe

 

For older versions the stuff-file needs to be installed additionally to the software itself.

 

See you
*Fuchur*

[MAYAman]

Thanks I'll try that. I bought version 18 anyway. But always like to run my older versions.

[blixien]

The zip has a T rex saved as v14c which may not load in v12. It lost the paths to the decals so I re-linked the decal path's and saved in v14c long ago. The original T rex mdl is in there as well but when I've opened it in the past there's always been problems and a crash if I messed with it to much. The 14c version opens for me fine in windows7 Am v18.0p last night with the walk cycle no problems. the other files are random mdl's

[blixien]

No probs Rodney you should put these in the library for everyone, Amazing this model is so old but it still run's in v18.0p

[Rodney]

I assume by 'library' you don't mean the forum's A:M Exchange area.

That is the closest thing to an active library we have currently.

The library we access in A:M is a bit more static except where personalized by each user (i.e. they download and add the resources to their local library)

I agree that we should put these in the library for everyone.

The 'official' libraries haven't been updated in awhile and perhaps they are due for an update.

There are several issues with such an endeavor. Here are a few:

 

1. Use of A:M Libraries is not always in vogue. There are a number of reasons for this but I won't belabor the point.

I've toyed with the idea of having a SVN repository (or Github or whatever) that A:M Users could sync to get 'the whole enchilada' where it comes to libraries of community resources. It's not difficult to set up such a thing but considerably more difficult to set it up to where access... and the associated experience... is optimal . This type of thing is getting easier to do/code/maintain... so we'll get there eventually. Where there is interest there is generally movement. By updating their Library (repository) users would automagically have access to the most current community data via A:M's Library... and because the data can be rolled back because of versioning... where a later update isn't seen as optimal an older version of the file could be retrieved instead of the current one. In this way well intended fixes that unintentionally break resources could be avoided. Perhaps better yet, improvements to old models could be made without destroying the historical accuracy of the original. So entirely new assets can be built upon the framework of earlier works without concern to 'overwriting' the original source. The 'Save often and incrementally' mantra that has served us so well could then be more succinctly stated, 'Save to your Library' and away you'd go.

 

A secondary consideration here is for sharing/backups. By sharing resources data is automatically backed up and available.

This is another reason why Github-style submissions would be useful. Not all submits should be committed to the 'official' library but there's nothing that would prevent a branch to be built to other libraries.

And on and on and on...

 

2. Updating and maintaining resources is a lot of work. Most of what is in the current library was updated when the Extra CD project was launched. This was a team of volunteers that worked their magic on not just the Extra CD but revamped the primary A:M CD by moving non essential assets over to the Extra CD. In the process rigs were updated and tested, models fixed (normals flipped, etc.) and things that were broke... fixed. A lot of work was done behind the scenes that few ever see much praise for... the model might have been donated to the community years ago but perhaps it wasn't rigged, or the rig didn't work or needed adjustment to get it up to v13 standards.

 

3. Other reasons

 

All of this to say, yes, I agree! We need to add that TRex data to the library!

 

Thanks for updating/re-collecting the data!

[MAYAman]

I'm glad my bitching and moaning contributed to this lol

 

I still find it amazing that years and years later, some of AMs best work is still recognized for its amazing quality. Vic, Euisung, and so many others have the dream jobs we all wish we had and working with some of their original work is kind of an honor.

[blixien]

"I assume by 'library' you don't mean the forum's A:M Exchange area."

 

Rodney yes I did mean for you to put the Data in the AM Exchange, it's not my work, just mdl's I have found over the years. New users should get a taste of what is possible with this software,The T rex is a good example of this always loved watching the walk cycle in bone's mode, seeing how it was put together.

Libraries are always a tough job keeping them in some sort of order, I am guilty of having issues with loosing things lol

Hope the file helps MAYAman perseverance pays off in the end

[Rodney]

Thanks for the clarification Steve.
I've linked your file into the topic in the A:M Exchange posting for the TRex, so consider it done.
(The data/attachment is actually still in this topic... just linked to in the TRex post... so don't remove your TRex.zip attachment!)

Libraries are always a tough job keeping them in some sort of order, I am guilty of having issues with loosing things lol

Guilty here too.

A:M's internal library is primarily a means of organization but automating that organization is a key part that is currently missing.
On the PC side there is that LIbrary Manager utility that Glenn Anthofer put together for Rusty Williams. That comes really close to being what I'd call a solution.
A 'perfect' solution would likely be as follows:

1. A:M Library mirrors directory structure at shortcut (folders on harddrive).
This is currently the case but is not internally automated.
The psuedocode would basically be:
(note that this is roughly how I use to create library files via the command line)

dir /s /b *,prj > projects.tmp

 

Added: I added the /b pipe that trims the extra information out of the search which leaves only the filename and directory info.

This tells windows to run a directory search through all subdirectories for filenames with the .prj extension and pipe the results to a textfile named projects.tmp

Do this again for each of the other filetypes that can be stored in a library.

dir /s /b *,mat > materials.tmp
dir /s /b *.mdl > models.tmp
dir /s /b *.act > actions.tmp
etc.

A search and replace is then run on each of those temp files to format each line item properly so that A:M will see it as a library item
Care must be taken to allow for the folders and types of files.
All temp files are then combined/appended into one library file and the file is placed in a location where A:M will see that file and show it as an internal library.

2. A 'perfect' Library should allow for url targets (but it's generally considered bad netiquette to have live links to other peoples sites on a webpage. This is why it's probably best to move toward a replica-table repository structure because then files would be local. Another adjustment to A:M that this might suggest is an option to open files/projects directly from a url. I've seen this in only a few programs and for some reason it hasn't caught on. Again this might be a netiquet thing where it's not considered nice to grab someone's data directly live from their site. There are also security issues involved... nefarious folks might try to automate the launching of A:M and have it automatically open internet files. I do think it'd be pretty cool if I posted some A:M resource somewhere online and A:M users could access it via a simple File/Open via URL. I'm not sure if that feature made it out of beta but Corel's PDFfusion had that functionality when I was beta testing for them. They mothballed the project due to feedback and (I'd like to think) I set them on the road to some good ideas given that Adobe was right in the middle of releasing Adobe Acrobat Reader X which ushered in a bevy of new features such as annotations etc. My gut feel is that much of that made Corel's beta obsolete before it even got started. Bottomline here... opening files directly in a program via url is definitely possible. I'm not sure why we don't see that as a file open option in programs other than as I say it might be considered inappropriate to directly access other peoples online data. My thought is that people put that data online for that very reason so... why not?

3. Preview imagery in Libraries is controlled by the inline image data (base16 or somesuch) and would need to be parsed into the program/browser. At present I believe A:M is the only program that is coded to access/display that embedded data. This is a shame as the data is available to any and all programs and would help folks get a good idea of the contents of data. There are a variety of ways to move forward... one might be to examine how operating systems use embedded data to display their icons. Here it might be possible to create a shell extension that would allow Windows/Macs to display A:M file preview data. Then there'd be less of a need for internal library because the operating system would be that library. There is also the matter of of displaying preview imagery of the files via a browser (i.e. on a webpage). The way this was intended to be handled on the A:M CD was to have the image that was used as the preview icon also be in the same folder as the asset. The webpage would then access that data. Nowadays with javascript, CSS and such it seems to me that a site/pages could be created that would parse the A:M file and display that preview icon. Would this require the preview image to be updated to Base64? Very likely.

The example of this would be that of PHP and this forum which could be made to post the preview image of A:M files in the posts where they were attached.
Of course, I won't pretend that I know how to code that! Heck I can't even get the youtube embedding in the forum to work right.

Okay, I'd better stop there before I hurt myself.

The primary reason that I'm interested in A:M LIbraries is that they open up some very interesting possibilities. A:M itself is not far from being able to resolve it's own Project Management issues but folks don't see that far into their future. I suppose they see libraries full of data they don't want. But we know better don't we. We know that we don't really know what we want.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I needed to get that out of my system so I can move on.


Edit: I believe that perhaps the preview image formatting is UTF-8? This isn't the first time I've forgotten what format it is! But, I believe that is right.

[Rodney]

Definitely off topic but I can't seem to let this one go quite yet.

Attached is a screenshot of a look at an html file (info.html) that references three different images. Two images are in Base64 (data is the same but one is driven by external CSS while the other is inline data. The other image is an externally linked jpeg.

All images are (supposedly) 64x64 pixels.

 

The trick would be to parse a text file (A:M Resource) and locate the image data.

And of course... A:M preview data isn't in Base64 so that would also have to be accounted for.

I have a vague recollection of shoehorning the (current) preview data into another program just to see if it worked and after some trial and error it did. I think I wanted to just see if I could view and edit the preview data outside of A:M. As I recall my conclusion was that A:M was the best way to create the data for external use. And I even learned what hexidecimal codes stood for what colors. There's nothing like creating an A:M preview icon in a text editor!