ooookay, did it, got that now. It worked, and I understand how now.

Next hurdle is speed, it took me more than a half hour to do a slap-shod job on one mouse ear. The biggest issue I have beyond speed is the jumpy nature of the curser, its like playing pig pong, where you aim your paddle (curser) and try to predict where the ball will it (paint), at a rate of about 3/4 a second per fr each movement of the paint region. I;ve tried toggling force to vram, didn't help. Video drivers were updated very recently, so not much I can do there. I will see about the low res thing tomorrow.

Thanks bazza, this helps.

The quickest way to solve the speed issue is to contact Lee Page who wrote Tattoo.
Like Richard, you will find him very helpful and interested in the problem you have.
There is a contact address on the Tattoo site.

Give him All your system details,especially grahics card details and list what you have tried so far.

On the bottom slider bar of Tattoo you should have a frame rate per sec. and an available video memory figure. Send him these figures also.
What are they BTW?

If you load the woman.b3d file what frame rate and video memory do you get?
I can load the same file and check to see what I'm getting.

I'm pleased you got the unwrapping sorted at last.
When you come to unwrap a complete figure you will see what I mean about how good Ultimate unwrap is.
To be able to lay out all the faces around the map area, and then jugle them around on the UV map is a godsend.
Maybe we will get this feature in 3DC one day.

Bazza

I believe it was 4 frames per sec, 40 meg video mem available.

I went to the tattoo faq and trouble shoot, followed the instructions there, including Low spec addition to the prefs(?) file (did this last night, working on low memory - mine, not machnes). It did help the rotate controls considerably, but paint operaton is still very slow and choppy.

I've been trying to resolve a video driver delema for about 2 months. There is a version of ati Radeon graphics driver (catalyst) that would seem to be right for my set, a lap top, the graphics card was even listed, however the ati site was ambiguous enough that it scared the cheez-its out of me to try the install. It would require uninstalling the driver I have, which is at least something. I got a driver update from Microshoft about 2 months ago, seemed to fix a couple of problems in 3DC. Then I run across a blurb that ati doesn't support notebooks. Nice. They seemed to have made a card for one, but don't seem to want to own up.

Tonight I found a graphics adapter service pack for my specific HP model on the hewie site, much more recent version, so I'm hoping this sp update will resolve some issues. The list of fixes didn't look familiar as far as the trouble i'm having with speed, however I don't supposes it could hurt. Fingers crossed. Eyes crossed too.

As to Amabilis putting in a more complex unwrap and/or 3D texturing, that would actally be fabulous. However, having cruised some of the code out there, I rather imagine thats a mountainous task, and might be a bit much to ask. However.... I seem to recall even 3d studio max didn't even have that, at least the version I was playing with, so... talk about competitive edge....

I still think a limited partnership with Terrabit might be worth a phone call...

I'm getting 30 to 40 frames per sec. with the Woman.b3d file and with a radeon card.

It does seem your drivers are the problem. If, as you say, you've found a set at the ATi site that match your card I would try the install. You can always do a roll-back if they don't work.
Also set a restore point before you do the install.

There should be a contact address on the Ati site, maybe sending them a mail asking for clear instructions might help.

Bazza

great mother o' RAM! display driver update worked, now running like a screamin' eagle! 3DC runs faster too, one happy camper, and without risking the ATI web site nebulosity.

Only prob so far is I can't get tattoo to give me a 'maximize' screen of I can't get the bottom slide bar or frames per sec, but I'll figure that out somewhere.

Now.... where can I find some TALENT??

Sorted at last, great news.

Bazza