AM Materials

[raillard]

Originally posted by Yardie
... I have not yet found a use for the Function "weight control points" an example would be use full.

Hello.

Weighted Control Points are relatively new to Animation Master. It's a method of telling a Control Point that it should be moved by two (or more) separate bones. For simple cases this can help smooth out joints, without fussing with a lot of smartskinning or fan bones.

Let's say you make a tube with several spline rings running up it. Add a chain of bones up the center of the tube; each bone should end at a spline ring, and its child bone should begin at that point, too. Next, attach the CP's to the appropriate bones (Or do this instead: right-click on the model's name in the Project Workspace and select Auto Assign Bones). Next, make sure you have "Show property triangle" and "Show advanced properties" turned on (Tools/Options/Global Tab).
Examine your model in Bones mode. Select a bone and expand its disclosure triangle in the Project Workspace. See the setting called Falloff? Increase the size of that setting. What you want to do is increase this setting until the yellow falloff circles overlap the CP's of the next bone's CPs. Repeat this step with the other bones in the chains. Finally right-click on your model's name in the PWS again, and select "Compute All CP Weights"

Now open your cylinder model in an Action file and play with the bones. Hopefully you'll notice that the tube bends in an attractive fashion (more smoothly) for each CP now has sympathy with more than one bone. This procedure is sort of like a quick way of inserting a fan-bone system into your rig. It's handy for things like tentacles and tails.

I hope this answers one of your questions! :cool:

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

PS: I'm pretty pleased with AMv10.5q. I plan to get r soon.

[Yardie]

Thanks for the bone tut Carl.
Are you telling me that AMv10.5q will let me load materials without messing up the dispaly in the projet workspace. I am rather confused by all the AM Upgrage as The Updates for V9.5 are also labled "V10.5" . I have the Upgrade disc to 10.5.
I real dont like 10.5 cause when you hit play AM comes up with a bagraph that tells you that AM is calculating Dynamics. The only way I have found to stop this is not to use AM V10.5 LOL and stick to v10n. The Upgrade disk comes with some post effects that dont load when you call them. Upgrade means some of the features your used to are taken away and replaced with some new feature that will take one months to figure out cause the origional feature had a bug in it that AM couldnt fix.

[itsjustme]

Have you downloaded the latest version of 10.5 that goes with the disk you have? Here's the link:

http://www.hash.com/support/updates.asp

Have you done a clean install? Here's how for Windows (from Hash's forum):

Hash uses the following folders in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Hash, Inc.
-and-
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Hash, Inc.

just delete the entire 'Hash, Inc.' folder in both places, then re-install...

**warning: use regedit at your own risk, deleting keys/values/folders other
than those above can cause your system to fail to boot**

I use the following procedure:

-use add/remove programs to remove all instances of A:M
(add/remove sux, that's why the following steps are necessary, but do it anyway)
-use regedit and delete the above mentioned folders
-use explorer to delete program files/Hash, Inc. from your HD if it's still there.

-reinstall!

Personally, 10.5 has been working fantastic for me. Version 9.x was hard to deal with, but I haven't heard too many complaints once you get past that.

As for tutorials...have you been to this site?:

http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/

It has loads of tutorials.

[raillard]

Originally posted by Yardie
Are you telling me that AMv10.5q will let me load materials without messing up the dispaly in the projet workspace.

I've heard of this bug, where the PWS gets screwed up whenever you import a material. I *thought* they had fixed this problem, though. That's one of the reasons why I encouraged you to gravitate to v10.5. DISCLAIMER: I don't fuss with materials very often. In fact, currently I'm still using AMv8.5p+ mostly. I tinker with AMv10.5, but whenever I'm in the mood to animate, I find myself using v8.5. My alligator boy model requires some "grooming" in his fanbone constraint pose before he can function properly in v10.5. So for me it's like: What do I want to do today? Retool constraint poses in AMv10.5 or animate in AMv8.5? Life is filled with tough choices. ;)

You might want to doublecheck your video card drivers, to make sure they are up to date. Having the latest drivers may help alleviate this PWS glitch.

About calculating dynamics: Try hitting "shift 8". This is the hotkey that toggles on and off dynamic calculations specific to particles and fur. When this is on, the program can act sluggish with furry characters or blobby materials. Hence it's a good idea to keep this off until you are ready to work with fur, particles, etc.

I hope this helps a little.

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

[Yardie]

Okay so I have stuck to the Cd version of AM 2004 or v10.5 (cd). The only problem I seem to get is after doing work on it for a couple of days the chorography default colors start to get darker and darker every time I open up a fresh chory.
I would use the updates but when ever I try and resize either the Timeline or properties windows they hide or Stick were I dont want them to be. Is there away of making the v11 window resizing look and feel like am v10. I like to have my timeline show when I choose and not have AM hide it everytime I move my cursor.
I run the same version of AM on my XP home edition and XP profsional computers. If I save a project or modle on the profesional XP it will not open on the home edtion.

I ran v9.5 and 10.5 together before changing over to v10.5 and I never had any problems with the choryography getting dark or the colors and lights changing.
The must be a rock solid version of v10.5 or v11 out there that you guys know about.
I am I the only one that cant cope with the v11 Timeline and project work space jumping about every time you try and resize them

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