Feature Requests

#1

What do you want from AM? How would you make it better etc.

#2

I will kick in here with the request for a faster renderer. I have been playing about with multipass and I like it. However, it is realy fustrating knowing that those big clouds are being rendered 16 times when they only need one pass.

There are three roots to go down (as far as I can see).

  1. User controll over the number of passes for each object:

Maybe there could be a master controll and you can set each object to a percentage of that. For example, Master=16 passes and object a=half of that(8passes). Some textures need much more multipass than others. The problem with user controll is that it could cause a lot of hastle for small/one man studios who have limited render test time.

  1. Automatic controll of multipass level:

This is where I get a little out of my depth, but surely AM could look at the areas that it is rendering and say “Ok, this pixel has been exactly the same shade of blue now for 4 passes, I won’t bother rendering it again”. Or “This object is not moving much so it doesn’t need many motion blurr passes, I will just use point sample AA on it”

  1. A combination of the two.
#3

  1. A knife tool - This would allow us to quickly add detail to the model. I see it primarily as a way to add edge loops, say to an arm. Go to front view, hit knife tool, drag a line across where the new loop goes, and bingo. Certainly much faster than the current method, which usually involves me hiding half the model.

  2. Break spline without altering the curve. This is the obvious counterpart to the new add points without altering curves. Why have one without the other?

#4

Originally posted by Wegg
What do you want from AM? How would you make it better etc.

I’m using AM since version 3.5 till now, I really want AM become a Professional 3D program(even price will boom to over US$1000), now it just a toy.

I want…

  1. Make it MORE STABLE, version 10(latest ver.) constraint still has I lot of problem, the problem I cant report coz I dont have enough time to get the exactly step. if Hash inc. have a Animation department, then they will know how many problems we/they meet during making the animation.

  2. Write more simple tutorial explain what the function is, (ex. Oren Nayar shader and Anisotropic shader, Fur, etc.

  3. 5point patch & hook render without any problem(smooth).

  4. Add a subdivion function(selected patches).

  5. REAL smooth function(now I need to waste a loooooot of time for weak the cp to make it smooth,(the result is never smooth). POLYGON have smooth and subdivion, so they dont need waste time on that.

  6. Make the spline more like Nurbs(just like), so that we can turely trim the surface and it wont affect the other spline Bias(of course the above No.3 must no any problem otherwise useless).

still have alot of things I want…

But the above few points is what i reallllllly want hash can do.

Btw, I wasted my money on v.95 and v10(coz still has a lot of problems so I still using v.85 for commercial project).

:annoyed:

#5

The way A:M handles light with materials and objects…

A:M should allow sub-surface scattering of light in materials to make more believable skin, wax, etc. The materials I’ve bought from Eggprops are great, so are DarkTree and the others that I’ve found online over the years as well, but some materials would look better with sub-surface scattering. I would think it could be achievable and backward compatible with existing material libraries by adding some setting that could be easily added or tweaked.

If it could help caustics, that would be great as well. I’m thinking of the way light through glass, crystal and jewels can be prismatic…rainbow colors, etc., as can be done in Virtual Light and Brazil. If it can be done in A:M, I’m missing it…

While we’re working on the way the renderer handles light, maybe add true HDR capabilities…

#6

I have never understood what fur is doing on the A:M features list:). How many have been using fur since it was implemented into the software, and has it ever worked. Think I tried it one´s and my whole system crashed. I have always felt that Hash should first and further more focus on getting a rock solid modeling and render functions up and working. Before implementing something like fur. Hash could also try to open up more functions for import/export, maybe then some 3d party developer would come along and write a kick ass fur plugin:). It´s also a idea to get some kind of camera data info export/import in A:M, could be come easier to work with other programs? For example make character animation in A:M and some other elements in other programs. In the end everything could be combined together in post production.

Top off my list.
I would like to see integrated Skylight, Hdri, and images passes output render.

:buttrock:

#7

Antonyw–after all of that, especially the nurbing and price, what would be left of AM that would be any different from any other CG program? Why even use AM?

Personally, I’d like to see a complete texture map generator (which would apply a decal over the entire model and output a .tga that could be painted in), a return of negative lights, and a 2D post blur attribute that could be attached to a material (for, say, blurred reflections.)

And I would definitely prefer to see an emphasis on stability over things like fur and particles and weathering that never seem to work correctly.

[Edit–And some more versatility in the materials would be nice. Drag & drop attributes and access to all of those funky decal channels through procedurals would be a grand start.]

#8

Being able to render in different passes like specular, diffuse so you can bring into After Effects.

#9

I’d like to be able to turn off email notification by default… I hate that feature…

Oh, you mean in A:M?? Sorry!

Well then…

Dunno if this is a reasonable request, but I’d like to be able to define areas of geometry or models to be “always on top” so for example a character would always render on top of the ground it walks, someone’s hand on another character’s shoulder doesn’t sink in, clothes don’t show skin through when folding… would save hours of tweaking, I think.

#10

I don’t think that would work. Turn at the wrong angle, and you’d see the clothing through the hands and things.

Just Hide the geometry that’s under the clothing. Much simpler.

And a feature request to keep this on-topic and non-commentary… Built-in sky domes that map a sphere about the “world” that would always render under whatever geometry is present, negating the necessity of pan-unfriendly mattes or tiny, constrictive geometry domes. They would simply apply part of an image map or procedural texture as the “background” color. This would work like a watered-down version of Bryce’s skies.

#11

I second that. Sky domes would look good, render fast and be easy to set up. I am off to send it as a request.

#12

One little feature that would be nice would be one that Wings3D has: incremental save.

You would do a “Save As…” to name your project, object, whatever… then when you want to save some changes but not over-write the original you click “Incremental Save” and it saves the file with an “01” at the end the first time, “02” the second, “03” the third… etc…

Very fast and helpful when doing a bunch of expirimental changes.

#13

Well, obviously it wouldn’t remove the need for the animator to be careful… but I think Playstation games already do something like that for their real time rendered games, it couldn’t do any harm.

And it would come in handy for all sorts of model interactions, not only clothes (What I do is make the skin, when it exists, the same colour/material as the clothes… kludge!)

To do incremental saves manually, I select the file in explorer and press ctrl+c ctrl+v in succession, and a new file +1 is added. It doesn’t sound like something impossible to make.

In fact some sort of autosave buffer, given that A:M files are text files, is something they could’ve had years ago and saved animators tons of grief and made A:M’s stability largely (You still need rendering stability) a moot point.

#14

Texture painting. If there is not going to be good export support then this would be great. It would be great anyway in fact.

#15

What about clicking on a cp and being able to bevel. I know there is a plug in but every time I try to use it I get some weird results.

#16

All the above requests sound great, but I would like one simple thing. I want to be able to hit the space bar and get the grabber hand so I can pan the work space, just like in PS and most other graphics apps. I hope this isn’t asking too much.

Cheers, Graham

#17

“M” doesn’t do what you want?

#18

Originally posted by Wegg
“M” doesn’t do what you want?

No it doesn’t. You have to keep hiting m to drag more than once. I want to be able to hold down the space bar and drag to my hearts content. Actually, If there is a way to set the tools to stay selected after clicking, I’d like to hear about it.

Cheers, Graham

#19

If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse that also acts as a button, in AM you can just hold down the scroll wheel and you will be able to drag the screen about! instead of having to keep pressing the m key.:slight_smile: :slight_smile:

#20

Actually, If there is a way to set the tools to stay selected after clicking, I’d like to hear about it.

Thats the one thing I’m really NOT liking about most other applications. 99% of the time I want to use a “tool” for one specific little purpose. But I’m constantly having to select the tool, do the operation and un-select the tool. AM’s workflow is consistent throughout the application in that you pick what you want to do, do it, and your instantly back into a wonderful “tweak everything/direct to the mesh” mode that is very unique.

You gotta embrace the few things there are about AM that really rock.