[Jon Okerstrom]

Michael,

It looks like you have a reflective material applied to part – but not all – of the edge profile. Take a look at the cross section of your object to be sure. To see that, click material set-up.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Donovan,

My first comment is that Alan’s “Making it Look Great” DVDs are application-specific. There’s one for ProAnimator and one for Invigorator.

In general, I can tell you the modeling and texturing aspects of the two applications are essentially identical. Any training material that teaches those techniques would benefit users of both applications. The fork in the road comes when you start dealing with motion control.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi William,

The biggest difference is motion control. ProAnimator relies on behaviors. Invigorator relies on keyframes. Each method has pros and cons for different kinds of projects. ProAnimator lets you create complex motion paths for tons of objects very easily. Invigorator’s strength is in being able to precisely and directly control the motion of the sets – the invisible containers which contain objects. Invigorator’s biggest limitation – IMHO – is the number of available sets. For some people, the fact that ProAnimator works as a stand-alone is a huge asset.

What kind of projects do you want to do? Your answer might allow us to give more precise advice on choosing one over the other.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

I suspect the issue is that you need a little mapping 1-0-1 help.

Let’s take the example of a cube with equal height and width.

The texture for the front face and the rear face needs to be 1:1 aspect ratio because height and width are equal.

The texture for the sides needs to be 1:4 because Invigorator wraps the side texture around the whole object, starting in the lowest, leftest corner. By the way, by 1:4 I mean one unit high by 4 units wide.

Does this help?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Are they in exactly the same position in Z space?

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Dave,

Make sure the aspect ratio of the texture you’re trying to apply to the face of an object matches the aspect ratio of the face of the object. Otherwise, you’ll get distortion.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Mike,

Deleting lines of text would cause the positioning to shift from layer to layer. One solution: replicate the text blocks exactly and make the lines you don’t want to see in each layer invisible – without deleting the objects. I’m thinking this would keep all of your text in proper registration.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Hi Alan,

You can choose “use comp camera” for many projects and it works fine. You can adjust the lens setting of the comp camera if you need to.

Having said that, there will be cases when it won’t work… depending on the camera movement and what else is going on in your scene.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

You’re very welcome.

Jon

[Jon Okerstrom]

Jay,

You will want to examine the corner point. Sometimes the control handles are twisted – sometimes you’ll find extra points. Either of these things can cause spikes.

Using the spike buster slider can eliminate the problem in many cases.

Jon