Hutch

That is an awesome model with alot of character. The animation is great too. Is that a floppy disk on his chest?

Thanks for the kind comments! KenH, glad you like the ear. I am pretty proud of it. I eventually plan to do some decalling especially for the beard. I want to get him rigged first though and I am a slow rigger. DarkLimit, thanks and I will post my progress. Flog, somewhere between cartoon and realistic is what I was shooting for. Best one in a long time? I am not sure about that. There are so many talented people using A:M but thanks. Nixie, I had originally planned to model in some folds and wrinkles in the clothing and I may still. His sleeves and the lower part of his robe are cloth and I was having problems getting it working. Some of the geometry for his legs and arms was just sort of quickly thrown in to see how the cloth works. I am sure it will change some but how much I can't say yet. Here is a look at the mesh of his head.

And here is a close up of his face.

Here is a new model I have been working on. If you have any comments or suggestions for improving it I would love to hear them. I haven't started rigging it yet and all of the colors are just grouped patches so his beard looks a little funky at the moment.

It looks really good. I am not sure about the reflectivity needing to go up on the chrome. Maybe just up the specular intensity or size or both. The painted parts could probably use a little specularity tweeking too.

Very nice! I like it alot. I have to agree that scales would probably not look as good to me. Right now it seems sort of like a dolphin-man. Maybe you could lose the gills and add a blow hole on his head to make him even more dolphin like.

I would try deleting everything from Gala that you don't want and then saving it as something else. Then import that. It should keep all of the poses and such.

The wood-a.mat on the cd also uses a picture. Look in the images folder after you import it.

The places where you have to many splines meeting at a control point are circled below (one side only). The top of the nose looks like it needs some help too. Any time you end a spline where two others cross is probably not going to work very well. That is what I have circled and what I think pixelmech was referring to.

I don't know what praetorians wore but this is what I was thinking of. I didn't say it was easy, just easier. I found this pretty quick by doing a google image search for "roman helmet." It may take a while to find good images but after you have looked at a bunch of them you can sort of fill in any discrepancies in your rotoscopes.

Maybe I know they were bronze but I am not sure they were always bronze. Surely at some point they started making them from steel. I am not really sure but I think steel just looks cooler

Well, google is your friend. You can find tons of info from those crazy guys that re-enact. I found actual dimensions and images that I used as rotoscopes. The helmet was a pain and still has some bumpiness at certain angles but Roman helmets look like they would be a little easier because they are not all one piece like my corinthian helmet. I did a little bit of googling for Roman stuff and it looks like there is way more info than for the Greeks.

Looks really good Mike. Are the walls and stalls suposed to be tiled or more like bricks? If it is tiles they seem kind of big and tiles don't usually wrap around outer corners. If it is supposed to be bricks or cinder blocks, maybe every other row should be off set. In the final scene this may not matter at all so feel free to disregard. Like I said it already looks great.

He looks pretty cool to me. I guess toon render is the reason behind that sharp edge on the chin that higginsdj mentioned. It sort of bugged me too til I saw the toon render. He kind of reminds me of that guy in Street Fighter. Segan, Sagan or something like that. The big Thai boxer.

Just finished my Greek hoplite's sword. Shortdog, everybody needs a good sword! How else do you expect to keep your neighbors in line?

Not so much weapons, but implements of war anyway. My hoplite sword and spear are in the works

The wings seem kind of stubby. Is it actually to scale?

Looks nice! Makes me want to find where I buried all my Elric Saga novels. I bet it has been about 15 years since I saw them. That makes me feel old

Hey Mike, I think it is looking really good. I didn't really notice the deal with the eyes, but maybe you could add a smartskin to her eye bones that adjusts the eyelid to the eyes position? Someone mentioned the walk looking floaty earlier. I agree that it doesn't seem to convey any weight with the steps. If there is any vertical movement besides her feet it isn't showing at this angle. I think her hips need to translate up and down more. Over all I am really liking what you have shown of this piece. How long is the completed thing going to be?

I believe you can set the default value of an ON/OFF pose by clicking the model in the PWS. Then in the properties panel expand the user properties and any folders needed to get to the pose. Where it says OFF if you click it should now say ON and that is the new default.

Basically, I made one barrel and copied it. I rotated the copy 90 degrees. From the front view I then locked one barrel and used the arrow keys to align the vertical spline of the other barrel with the locked arch (using mirror mode). After I had them aligned I bumped them all back out just a bit so that there was a small gap. I unlocked and deleted the untweaked barrel. I broke the splines and deleted the center from the barrel. Then I copied, pasted and rotated the whole thing 90 degrees. After that I just connected splines and made 5 point patches. This pic includes a closeup of the top of the arch. There is a little weirdness you can see. This could probbaly be fixed by making the original barrel with more lathe cross sections.

Is this what you are looking for? If you want details of how I made it let me know.

I would like to know how the clouds were made also

Maybe when they turn around the letters could change to become "festival." You would have an extra letter left over so maybe he falls down

Something similar to what David showed needs to be done on the outer part of the nostril where you have three splines intersecting also.