Anim8or Community

A problem that seems to recur and I'm not sure I understand what causes this yet.

2 symptoms -
1) In a mesh, a face looks darker than those around it; the angle between the odd one and the others are all similar
2) When I import the mesh into road kill there are extra edges and faces

It looks like I have 2 edges between 2 points and then 2 faces one on top of the other.  Sometimes when I double click a triangle face it says there are 4 edges (quads sometimes have 5 or 6 edges).

Sometimes a similar problem is caused by 2 points at the same location but I can fix that by selecting the whole mesh and merging points.

When I have the double edge problem, it's hard to find the edge that's doubled and fix it.  Is there a quick way to find / fix these edges / avoid them in the first place?
thanks A

@ENSONIQ5 I really like that effect - we should have a "techniques" / "tips and tricks" / tutorials, etc. section on the forum.

Often when I'm trying to do something I remember a post about it but can't find it.
A

Your project is looking great

I use a Pinnacle studio video editor and I found that it's not that stable , it crashes, a lot.  This means I can loose work or end up with corrupt work.  (to be fair, I have v15, I heard the later versions are better).  Apart from the stability, if I have a long scene - say 10 minutes, if a make a small change near the beginning, it can affect the relative timing of the tracks later in the scene - so if I've synchronised video to image overlays and  to music I can get in a complete mess, particularly if I've spent ages getting the bit at the end right and then muck it up with a change near the beginning.

To a lesser extent, I found the same thing can happen in anim8or, a change at the beginning of the scene can have unexpected affects later - because of smooth keys or by moving the initial position of objects, etc.

For me the solution is don't have long scenes.  Break everything up into lots of short scenes and then compile them in a master project.  It takes more planning but that is a good thing.  If I have a 5 minute video it may have 1 master project that compiles the results of maybe 20 studio projects in a hierarchy.  Each of these sub projects may have 1 or more anim8or scenes (for me they are often chroma keyed overlays). 

The other advantage is that if you are unhappy with a small scene it's much easier to bin it and redo from start.

Your animated scene looks like one scene, you could break it up so that for each of your captions you switch to looking at what it describes.  Your voice overlay commentaries could be linked to individual scenes.

Also you can experiment with different sequences using more than one master project, each one a different version of your production but drawing on the same assets.
A

Options->Debug->Use Original Arc Rotate

I haven't practised much with the new track ball, sometimes I don't hit the track ball lines so nothing happens

What uses most of the memory? Is it related mainly to the total number of faces?

 

Thanks all

Hi Steve,
Anim8or stops responding in a scanline render in the attached.

OpenGL Vendor:   Intel
OpenGL Renderer: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
OpenGL Version:  4.2.0 - Build 10.18.10.3412
OS Version:      Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1) build 7601 (64 bit)

thanks for all your hard work
Alec

When I enable casts shadows in my light I see shadows in an ART render.  The object's casts shadows and receives shadows check boxes do not have any affect.

I don't see shadows in scanline or opengl renders, at all.

Is that the current functionality of shadows or should I be able use the object's casts shadows and receives shadows to change the way shadows appear?
A