Anim8or Community

Hey, startrekfan001!  I've been out of town with almost no web access.  Give me a break!

Image based shadow algorithms (which includes things like yout suggestion) don't look that good and can have some very noticable artifacts.  In some instances it would look fine but unless I get a lot more complicated that simply blurring a non-aa shadow there would be problems like dark smudges near the edges of something that was in front of a shadow, etc.

The file manager is the window that you view your files and directory names in.  You can double click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop (I think this works for Vista - that's how it works in WinXP) to open it, and then search for the directory that you saved the Anim8or.exe file in when you unzipped it.  If Anim8or.exe is on th desktop then you can right click directly on it there.

I used the "Sticky" command for the first time on this

Persistent variables are problematic in ASL.  They introduce a lot of new issues.  Are they part of the project?  The session?  When are they updated?  When are they initialized (if ever)?  If you render the same frame twice does it update the variable twice?  Same question for a script.  Anim8or needs to rerun certain scripts at unpredictable times (such as parameteric shape scripts and controller scripts).  If they have side effects then the shape or animation could change unpredictably.  Switching between different scenes, for example, might or might not rerun controller and parameteric shape scripts.

IMHO a better way to do this is using files.  Both reading and writing files are on the roadmap so you could deal with these issues as you wished.  Note that file input will not be allowed for some scripts (e.g. parameteric shape scripts) because these must create exactly the same shape each time that they are called with the same parameters.

As for keying off frame numbers,  there might be a better way to do what you want.  If you want to have a changeable time that something happens you can add a new controller to the world object in a scene.  (Edit->Controllers..Add).  Use an int named "InitialActionFrame", for example, and set it to the frame of interest.  Read it in all scripts that need it.  By changing this single value you can alter the timing of the scene without editing all of the scripts.

flametiger74, I'm using a different forum software package.  It's not possible to use the old look here.

I've decided to switch to new forum software.  It has a lot more features that the old UBB software that I think you'll enjoy.

If you are an existing member you'll need to reregister in order to post.  When you do please don't use someone else's user name.

I'm still working out the kinks in administering it so please be patient if you run into any glitches.

Steve