Anim8or Community

well my cool computer broke. so now im stuck with windows 98 for awhile. im wondering if there are any art programs sort of like gimp and photoshop but really old school. its gotta be freeware because i try not to steal stuff. (unless i really want it). 

ive downloaded a few things but they were unsuccessful. really the key element im looking for is having layers integrated into the software. alpha channels are huge (so i can see whats underneath what im doing) but i can do without.

its mainly for texturing. i just unwrap and follow my wireframe to make my textures. im trying to (finally) make a complete model. all kinds of accessories and everything. its gonna be big. and texturing is a huge part of it. (ill post in the wip section what im doing).

i know im rambling but i havent  been around for awhile and i probably wont be for quite some time. that and iive been drinking this four loko stuff (which is way too strong and illegal in most states )

if any1 has some info on what is out there please let me know.  ive been looking and really havent found anythign that works.

i know this isnt anim8or specific. but i know alot of you have gone to school for 3d related fields. im looking to go to school for video game software / programming. ive been researching myself but if any1 knows a good bad or indefferent ONLINE SCHOOL. please let me know.

my top choice as of now is westwood college. if heard some very good and very very bad results on westwood. but i cannot attend traditional in class college as of now. so online is the way to go for me.

i figure on going to go through school doing programming and not art or animation. i dont think im "worthy" of being in a school for art (2d or 3d) and i do want to get in the video game field. so this is a safe bet. i can work on my 3d stuff on my own whilst getting a degree in a programming class.

if any1 has gone through or did their own research on online game devision schools please post and let me know what the deal is.

happy anim8ing.

im going to try and use sculptris with anim8or. if you dont have it you probably pick it up. its pretty much like zbrush but its free. you need to triangulate your mesh b4 you try and import it into scupltris. this is basically a test. it has a lil over 180000 faces and 1 is subdivided and 1 isnt. when i subdivide it i can hardly move around my 3d enviroment in anim8or. im going to be doing tests on real models to see how i can pull this off with rigging and posing and whatnot. but heres an example.

ive read the manual and i think i have it down. but im still a bit confused. my main objective is to not have my bone go all whacky and rotate in reverse. ive tried 2 fix a previous sequence by messing around with the limits but nothing will work. this might be because the animation was done with no limits and it just wont change it on the fly.

i guess what im getting at is if i make the parameter form -179 to 179 will that stop my bones from going in reverse?

another thing i just ran into. i cant unlock my bone. the checkbox will fade out but it still has my bone checked. i dont know how to get rid of it

is it usually this frustrating? i think i broke my anim8or 2. since i couldnt unlock that bone i just deleted it. made a new 1 and now everytime i go to reskin it it just stops responding. so i think im gonna have to redo everything just to get started again.

why does sometimes my animations lag when i hit the play button and sometimes it plays smooth?

its gets annoying sometimes i have to render the animation to see what the actual frame rate is.

edit:

even if i turn off everything and have just the bones showing its still lags. + i dont have a high or even a mid poly model animating.

ive rigged it and it looks like it works pretty good. the only thing i might change is his torso. ill cut the top chest part in half. this is strictly for animation purposes so if any1 sees anything that needs to be changed let me know.

im not sure if it can b done or not. but my idea is to lock an object as a solid view. this way you can make another object (most likely clothing) over your mesh without having to dodge all your points on the object your trying to put clothes on.

another idea i had before was to hide edgepoints. since im pretty sloppy with my models doing one side the model can get a bit iritating because i have to dodge all the point that are behind it. clicking the front and back options dont exactly work that great. sometimes it ignores what its supposed to do and u select a bunch of things on the back side when u aim at the front.

its just an idea. i know it would help me and im sure it would help others.

well this is more about object mode to scene mode. i know that if u scale an object in scene mode the object in the scene is scaled but your original model is untouched. maybe im thinking ahead on this but is there a way to fit your models to scene mode then have your original model the same size? i would think that if u have multiple scenes in a video you would have to resize your model every scene.