Wildsided

Every King needs his throne.

I'm confused Rob, you were making puffy clouds of cheese? Or was it supposed to be vapour coming off the cheese? Nice cheese model regardless......Said cheese 3 times now....crap that was 4.

Speaking from personal experience A:M is a godsend. When I was deciding what 3D software to use for Epic Gamin' I tried working with 3DSMAX, Maya and Blender (Now there's a steep learning curve). A:M is a different beast and has a feel all of it's own. If you're the kind of person who just wants to 'do' then I recommend A:M. Modelling, Rigging, Lighting, rendering It does it all and most importantly it does it all in an intuitive and logical way. For what you pay for it you get an amazing piece of high quality software that's constantly evolving and access to a community of ladies and gents who have no problem with taking time out of their busy days to help out with any issues you might be having. My bottom line answer is that unless you have your heart set on something free then A:M is definitely a piece of software you'll be happy you got on board with.

Needed a 'Cover' for the show's Facebook timeline Page (apparently they changed the show page over to timeline without mentioning it to me). It was a good excuse to start thinking of some promotional art for the new series so here's a 720p version of the image I used for FB (The Facebook one has a slightly different aspect ratio). If anyone wants to follow the show on Facebook the address is www.facebook.com/therealepicgamin

Love it. Dragon kicked that Fokker's ass

New E.G comin' soon. It's a whole new game

gotta agree with Simon on this. It depends what effect you're aiming for. They both work well though. If I had to throw out a personal preference i'd say number 2, just because like Simon said it sells the go cart.

Been doing some work on my core characters for E.G recently and thought I'd post a quick pic of her in her new outfit (not finished) and more importantly new body.

I don't want to speak out of turn coz it looks like everyone else here is way higher on the experience level than I am. But I was just wondering whether you could just do a google search for a wrinkled fabric texture. Open in photoshop, de-saturate it to make it black and white and then set the contrast to accentuate the wrinkles to the depth you want. Then hide everything in the model you don't want wrinkly and make a bump decal. I made my Gwen model some quick wrinkly stockings as an example. If I'm totally missing the point then feel free to ignore me.

cv wheatley_test_cycle.mov

Finished rigging Wheatley so i put together a quick test cycle to show a few of his moves. For some reason I didn't bother animating his handle bars but they're rigged too. wheatley_test_cycle.mov Just gotta record some dialogue and the where the heck is E.G video can get animated.

Thanks Chris. Just checkin' in, I'm off work for a whole week (daughter is on March Break) so I'm really hoping to have something animated coming soon. Seems like all i do is post pictures these days.

Finished Texturing Wheatley. He's been floating around in space for a while now so i figured he'd be a bit dinged up. I've also postulated that as he was blasted from the moon he might still be fairly close to it. (Which he'd need to be for another idea I've been playing with). Anyway I put a backdrop behind him and now i have a new desktop backdrop. His eye lids are the only thing I've rigged so far, but I intend to rig and animate his inner workings/outer casing etc.

Ya know that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about anything I've done. Thanks man I really appreciate that and thanks to everyone here that has supported what I do.

It's still a great start dude, very naturally flowing, him getting up doesn't feel forced for the sake of it

Thanks Nancy

Okay so apparently Ace didn't light up anybodies world......So I decided to make me a Wheatley. For anyone unfamiliar with the Portal series, Wheatley is a personality core.....Or rather an intelligence dampening core....but anyway he's your partner for the first third of the game and then becomes the games' main villain before finally being shot out into space at the end of the game. He's also hilarious and so I chose him to host the "Where the hell has Epic Gamin' gone" information video I'll be making shortly. He's not textured yet but I was pretty darned pleased with how he turned out and thought that as he's a significantly more complex model than Ace, I thought I'd post him. Dan

Looking at it I'd say the diner is supposed to be laid out like this. I'd say although it doesn't look it, the counter follows the curve of the building and the back counter is supposed to be parallel with the front. The artist probably wasn't the best at perspective drawing. The building wouldn't/shouldn't be triangular because it'd be a waste of a corner lot to have one triangular building. Anyway that's my 2 cents take it or leave it. Not like i'm an architect or anything lol.

Hey guys, for anyone who may have been worried I am still alive and kicking. As I mentioned I've been doing some work at the medical center my sister in law is the boss of (It's not what ya know, it's who ya know lol). Been making some fundage but it's not exactly conducive to getting much 'work' done. Anyway some of you may have noticed during the intro to the Christmas episode that E.G was presented by Ace.co Entertainment. This is the name of my little animation company. I created it in 1997 and it's been kicking around in one shape or form ever since. One thing that has been constant about Ace.co is our mascot Ace. He's evolved over the years but he's always been there on our logo. So as Ace.co Entertainment will be featuring heavily in my stuff I decided to make Ace in 3d for the first time (Well second time but the first was made using Corel Dream 3d 7 and doesn't really count) So here he is.

Okay here's Gwen in her current state. I've tweaked and thinned out the hair (Now tapers to 0.01 at the ends), made her bangs flick up at the bottom, added her lip bump map back in (Lost it on the trip over to the new computer) and given her eyes a much more realistic texture. (It's kinda weird coz now when I'm working on her it feels like she's looking at me rather than just staring forward). Not totally happy with her brows but I'd say they're a marked improvement over her 'grouchio's'. once I have a nice skin texture made i think she'll turn a few heads.

And the Dan Skelton is a dumbass award for excellence in dumbassery goes to.....................Dan Skelton. Spent the last few days trying to figure out why I could see Gwen's scalp in my chor window, when it's clearly covered in the model window. While I was eating lunch this afternoon it dawned on me that I hadn't attached her "Skull cap" where the hair is emitted from. To her head bone and it hadn't turned with the rest of the head. DURRRRRRR!!!!!

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I thought about transparency half way to work this morning and tried it when I got to my mother in laws (Had laptop didn't have internet) Nancy is totally right on the increase in render time. I'll try adjusting the jitter and density and report back. Lol if I ever get around to making credits for the show (Seemed a bit pointless as aside from Gwen's voice it woulda just said me for everything) I'll have to put you guys in as 'trusted advisers.'

I gotta agree with both of you on the eyebrows. I'd used a decal for her brows before but hadn't transferred the image to this computer so just did the brows in hair to stop her looking like she had Alopecia. Believe it or not Robert I'd done quite a bit of shaping and faffing with density etc on those brows lol. I think it's because the patches where her brows are, are too wide. As for tapering the hair Rodney, it currently tapers from 0.3cm to 0.1 cm, Probs barely noticeable, I'll have a whirl at lowering that further when i get back from work later (Damn you money work and you cutting into my make money eventually work) Edit: Turns out 0.1 is as low as I can go. So the thinnest taper I could do is 0.2 - 0.1

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls I give you Gwen with Sexy particle hair. I'm not entirely happy with it yet, so I'll no doubt be tinkering with it right up until the new ep is ready but for now I can live with it. Looks better than her old hair anyway. The next step in my plan is to make a realistic skin and Eye texture for her.

Well you've seen Gwen's hair before, just like that only with particle hair instead of helmet hair. When I brush the starter 'afro' down it sometimes ends up looking flat at the scalp. So I was just saying it'd be nice to be able to use the brush to manipulate all the CP's on the guide hair instead of just the end one. Like using the arrow tool to manipulate a single hair only on mass. There's probs a perfectly good reason from a programming perspective why that can't be done