Ian Ross has just released a book on Anim8or. It's perect for a beginner and a good reference for experienced users. It contains detailed chapters on every aspect, with many examples. Get your own copy here: "Anim8or Tutorial Book"
Could i ask you on how to get this water effect without reflections? I love this water effect and would like to use it. But i dont need the reflections as i would prefer to have speed over that feature but the only way i can get the water working is through enabling art render. Any help would be much appreciated
This was rendered with Scanline so shadows could be less than 100% without the need to add more 'fill' lights, using the ART renderer would allow the surface of the water to be reflective which could add to the realism significantly but at the expense of render speed. Experimentation is the key here
This file works on my computer. It uses ~850 MB which shouldn't cause a problem. How much is it using on your computer?
BTW very nice model.
Yes, I'm working towards a 64-bit version. I'm afraid to change too much in the release branch - don't want to break everything! So I'll probably make a new branch to do the conversion - same features. Once it's stable I'll build both 32-bit and 64-bit from that branch.
sadly my model is too complex for art as even in a new plain scene it causes it to crash right away, so its either scanline or open gl
itsstillthinking: No problem, the updated Anim8or file (with ART attributes) is attached. It uses the same textures as on the previous post. (Note: Project created using V1.00)
Regarding the lighting, most often this sort of thing is caused by the normals being flipped. My only suggestion would be to make sure your normals are front-facing and remove all lights other than one overhead 'Sun' light and see what happens. To check normals, in node-edit mode with 'Front' selected and 'Back' deselected, click on a face. From 'outside' the mesh the face should highlight yellow (front) and from the inside it should appear blue (back). If they are reversed you can use the 'Flip normals' and 'Fix normals' commands in Edit to sort them out.
Also, some of the meshes could be malformed with concurrent front and back faces in the same location. If you're not sure, consider posting the project so we can check the mesh.
fefe01: The water makes use of bump and transmaps on separate flat planes that are moving in different directions giving the illusion of waves, nothing is actually moving up and down. The ART reflective property is sensitive to bump maps so the surface appears wavy, so yes, it's an illusion. In reality, waves always propagate outwards from a source, as is obvious when making ripples in a smooth pond. At sea, there are many, many wave sources heading in many different directions resulting in 'noise'. In this experiment there are only two planes but more could be added moving in more directions, which should provide a noisier, more realistic effect, but at the expense of render speed. Feel free to download the file and experiment with the settings.
