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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

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I'm behind on a lot of stuff but I'm going to try to get on top of email, PM's and a few other things tomorrow.

The heat here in Portland is insane and we have been working a lot because of it(mostly AC units leaking on Smoke Detectors)

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Decal exporting

A new menu entry for single stamps / a opened stamp view is added. "Render Stamp to File"

I'm curious as to what problem this new feature solves.

Quote

5 point patches render with gaps

This is well timed as I had just generated a render that had this very problem in v19o.

station_test_v19o.jpg

v19p eliminates the really black patches. Thank you Steffen.

station_test_v19p.jpg

But still remaining are the subtle light grey patches on either side of the arches on the right that were there in v19o.

Both images were rendered using the attached project.

Penn_station_black_patches_embed.prj

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The problem that is solved is the limited resolution of the image file used by the decal.

A way to paint a texture using a 2d software is to unwrap / flatten the model, make a decal and save that decal out using a screen shot or use take snap shot in A:M.
Both is great, but it has limitation that the resolution of the taken snap shot is limited by the resolution of the display you are working on.
This feature can now create "the same" result / something similar but with a more or less unlimited resolution.

Best regards
*Fuchur*
 

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On 6/29/2021 at 1:38 PM, R Reynolds said:

But still remaining are the subtle light grey patches on either side of the arches on the right that were there in v19o.

Rodger, I notice that if i turn the "Shortcut to sun" OFF or set its Bias to 5cm the white patches become unnoticeable.

So it is something to do with that light.

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NIce catch! Under BIAS the tech ref says "scenes using very large sizes may experience math precision errors during rendering". So your observation sounds right.

It also says "Visible: Sometimes" and in my case I can't see it. I assumed it would be under Cast Shadows but all I get are Type, Rays Cast, Distribute in Passes and Darkness. I'm not sure where else to look.

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4 minutes ago, R Reynolds said:

It also says "Visible: Sometimes" and in my case I can't see it. I assumed it would be under Cast Shadows but all I get are Type, Rays Cast, Distribute in Passes and Darkness. I'm not sure where else to look.

In Tools>Options>Global make sure "Show advanced properties" is checked.

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OK Robert while I have the tech ref open I can't find any reference to "Distribute in Passes". I assume it has something to do with how rays are cast from the area of the klieg?

i.e. For every render pass, the rays come from different locations within the klieg area.

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if you RMB on "Distribute in passes" and choose "Display help for current Property" this blurb will appear

Quote

"Distribute in passes" will distribute rays among passes when rendering with multipass so there is no need to adjust the number of rays cast when rendering with different number of passes. Also, when rays are distributed, the renderer will always try to produce soft shadows even when "Rays cast" is set to "1".

So, if you have 15 rays and 3 passes, each pass will do 5 rays.
If you have 15 rays and 5 passes, each pass will do 3 rays.

I don't know what happens when the math isn't exact.

Soft shadows that are proportional to the width of the light happen with Distribute either ON or OFF but ON seems to do it with a noisier process. (I may be wrong about this)

 

BTW, I'll also note that I can get rid of the white patches in your model if I reduce "Shortcut to sun" Fall-Off to 100,000cm. That is still a kilometer which ought to be enough.

 

 

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"Distribute to passes" :
Passes render an image a couple of times and combine them after that to one for different reasons like better anti-aliasing, etc.

If there is a process (like for instance reflection levels or ambient occlussion or radiosity) that has in itself several iterations A:M will normally re-render each of those iterations for each pass, resulting in a much longer rendertime. Passes are combined at the end anyway and then that will not result in a better image quality but much longer rendertimes.

By distributing those iterations to the passes, which will be blend at the end anyway, the rendertimes go down (a lot) and the image quality (at the resulting end image) will be the same. If you look at one of the passes seperated however, the pass will look pretty noisy. (because it really is only "one" iterations (or the amount so it can be distributed evenly to the passes).

Best regards
*Fuchur*

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  • 1 month later...
6 hours ago, pixelplucker said:

Думал, что опубликовал ошибку сохранения, но не отображается.

У меня есть работа на диске NAS, и я не могу сохранить на него прямо из AM. Если я все же попробую, AM просто завершит работу без каких-либо сообщений об ошибках. Возможная ошибка с разрешениями? Есть предложения по исправлению?

Try to save all the elements of the project separately. Including the chor.

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Hm... I am using a Qnap NAS and save everything on it. It works with v19p without a problem.

Do you use a different user for your NAS than the one of your computer (meaning different name and password)? Did you try to first open the explorer and "activate" the NAS network drive and than save with A:M on it?

Best regards
*Fuchur*

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Nas stays on if that is what you mean. I don't know why AM 19.p is the only program I have that poops out when saving to it.

Benefit of the NAS is I can access files over my network from different computers, ie create a cad file on one, pick up the stl on another to upload to 3d printer etc. An external hd has to be mounted and unmounted and moved computer to computer.

Is there a log created if AM just quits out without an error message? If so maybe I can post that.

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When it crashes, A:M will usually write a  .dmp  file to the directory your project is saved to.

It won't have any human readable information but you can include them with a bug report to Steffen.

But I'm not sure how we describe this problem for Steffen such that he can investigate it. IT sound like something very specific to your system.

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Well copied all my files over to local c drive. I can open some of the mdl files but some crash AM. I cannot open any of the prj files without it crashing.

Files created in the new version seem to open and save fine locally.

Here is the error from the event viewer:

Faulting application name: Master_64.exe, version: 19.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x6085510c
Faulting module name: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.19041.789, time stamp: 0x2bd748bf
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0000000000071208
Faulting process id: 0x1b70
Faulting application start time: 0x01d78ec7bc4479ef
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V19.0\Master_64.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\ucrtbase.dll
Report Id: 492b889d-88e0-443b-97e4-6935c1611945
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

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19 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

What is the advantage of an nas over any other drive?

There are two main advantages:
- Data safety (a NAS is especially useful if you have one with 2 or more bays. Like that you can put them in a raid easily and let them mirror the data. So if one of the drives fails, you can just replace it and the NAS will re-mirror it from the other drive automatically (or depending on the RAID version you are using different other things)
- access over the network with different devices. This means having your data available on your laptop, you desktop and the tablet of your wife at one central place. This is even possible over the internet, if you are willing to make it available via internet (but you do not have too. It is of cause more secure to just keep it in the LAN)
- pretty good automatic backup solutions are available, the NAS will keep track of your disc health and tell you if you need to think about changing the drives, etc.
- you can handle access rights very easily... so for instance one user is allowed to open one folder, the other one isn't and so on.
 

The result is:
- your computer can die and you still will have the files available.
- (at least) one of the drives can die if you have a 2- or more bay-system
- think of rendering with A:M... just put your project on the NAS and open A:M on each of your computers to render from it.
 

The disadvantages:
- it is a little less fast than a drive in your computer (at least as a SSD if you are "only" using 1 Gigabit-LAN / ethernet... if you have more like 10 or 50 and a fast raid configuration it will not make a big difference anymore). Anyhow it is still pretty fast and for most things you won't notice a difference. 4k video editing or something like that might be one of the things you might not want to do with a normal NAS, but other stuff isn't going to be noticeable slower.
- you need two drives (or for instance 3) and will loose 1/2 or about 1/3 (raid 0/1 vs. raid 5) of the capacity of your drives.

I am using a 4-Bay Qnap-NAS for all my data here for years now and I really love it and just recently have gone from about 5 TB of drive space to about 9TB of drive space because of video footage I am done with which is saved there. While working I might copy it to one of my SSDs and later the stuff goes to my NAS. 1080p material can even be edited on my NAS pretty nicely.

Best regards
*Fuchur*

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 months later...

Hey all. I just bought a subscription not too long ago and really love the experience I'm having.  This software truly is a gem and I hope to grow my abilities in it's vast tools. I'm also excited to know if there's any future developments to look forward to. Any way to know if there's something cooking in the kitchen? Haha 😁

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39 minutes ago, ivanbryan82 said:

Hey all. I just bought a subscription not too long ago and really love the experience I'm having.  This software truly is a gem and I hope to grow my abilities in it's vast tools. I'm also excited to know if there's any future developments to look forward to. Any way to know if there's something cooking in the kitchen? Haha 😁

v19.5 is being beta tested now and should come out soon but it is mostly about internal code changes rather than new features.

However, I presume Steffen would not be doing these if he did not intend to make use of them so perhaps in some possible future v20 there will be things to herald.

If you haven't seen the list of things added in recent versions check that out. If you've been away for a while there is quite a bit there...
https://forums.hash.com/topic/50199-v19-v18-v17-new-features-and-enhancements/

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
16 minutes ago, pixelplucker said:

Will opening files over network be fixed? In particular files that reside in a long file path. Causes crash here when I access them to my network drive.

@pixelplucker Has an AM report been made of that?

https://reports.hash.com/login_page.php

 

I don't have much of a network to test such a thing but I recall being able to open PRJs over my LAN at some time in the past.

To write that up I think you'd need a test case and a very clear depiction of the network... what's getting loaded and from where.

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  • 7 months later...

I have a 2014 Apple Macbook Pro running the 32-bit Mac version of A:M v.19.0k.  I’m buying a new 64-bit Windows computer with Windows 11 installed.  If I run the latest version of A:M v19.0p on the Windows computer will I be able to exchange files between the two computers and versions, or do I need to purchase v.19.0k for the Windows machine in order to exchange files with no compatibility issues?

Thanks, Chris

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1 hour ago, cribbidaj said:

... will I be able to exchange files between the two computers and versions, or do I need to purchase v.19.0k for the Windows machine in order to exchange files with no compatibility issues?

There should be no problem going from k to p. There should be no differences between Mac and PC files. The are all text files.

 

The only rare problem in going from p to k is some feature like this that was added between k and p...

Quote

Particlesystem Streak and Blobbie there is a new Boolproperty "Color change over lifetime" , this controls how the color is changed as default the color is changed over the lifetime from each particle, if it set to "Off" the color change is done for all particles equal

If you used that property in p and took the file to k it might have an unpredictable result. But that's the only instance of such a case I can find after scanning the update logs.

It's unlikely you have used it.

 

Quote

...or do I need to purchase v.19.0k for the Windows machine in order to exchange files with no compatibility issues?

If you have already bought and installed v19.0p on your Windows machine you can also install and run v19.0k for no extra charge. You could have both installed at the same time if you really needed it. But I doubt you will need to.

 

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I purchased a subscription of A:M from the Hash website (payment sent via PayPal from citykids3@aol.com) on March 7, 2023.  I still have yet to receive an activation code for my purchase. I’ve been messaging on this Forum with Jason Simonds but still haven’t received an activation code.  Please advise.

 
Thank you,
Christopher Walters
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694BB281-86BE-4552-91F2-ED6340B46846.pngive logged with my aol account succesfully but there are no orders on that account since 2018.  my gmail account, which the site says is already a registered user and may be the email i used to purchase the new subscription is not sending me a “reset password” email (I don’t know the password for that account).  this is really a confusing situation for me. I just like to use the software that I purchased two days ago and, as we all are, I’m extremely busy and don’t have time to hunt all this down.

694BB281-86BE-4552-91F2-ED6340B46846.png

21089455-6638-477A-8237-F3CC66F24F99.jpeg

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OMG!  Please make this easier.  I just now received an email link to reset my password and the link is expired.  I’m logged into my gmail account with which I made this purchase and ther’s no recent orders in my history.  This is really much more difficult than it should be

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I'm always baffled by this question. Every time I've bought a sub the email with the key shows up immediately.

Last time someone said they hadn't gotten a key I went to the store and bought a new sub just to see if the store was working and... the key arrived immediately.

I'm baffled!

 

However...After I log into the store there is a list on the right like this...

image.png

Does that not even appear?

It leads to a page that has "Serial Keys" at the bottom (you have to scroll down)



 

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Is there not someone associated with the store that can look up and verify my purchase on March 7 and send me an activation code?  My PayPal account shows the payment (see screenshot in previous post), so Hash Inc. should have received my payment and sent an email verifying my purchase, but I’ve not received anything.  I’ve been using the software on a Mac since 2004.  I just purchased a Windows PC and thought purchasing the software for that computer would be easy and I’d be able to use immediately.  The software successfully downloaded, but I have not received an email or an activation code.

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On 3/9/2023 at 3:49 PM, cribbidaj said:

Is there not someone associated with the store that can look up and verify my purchase on March 7 and send me an activation code?

That's Jason. Has he answered your PM yet?

Update: I am informed that Jason has resolved this problem. Thanks, Jason!

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