Wildsided

Work on the illustrations continues. Just finished up another of Bernie's schoolmates, his name is Melvin 'Mel' Trough.

He looks great David. His skin has a nice matte quality to it as well compared to the shininess of the untextured part. I think he looks fine bald.

Thanks again David ☺️ I've finished off the textures and added fur to the character. Her name is Katerina Hawthorn. She still needs hair adding.

I've been working on one of Bernie's classmates over the last few days and decided to give her a cable knit sweater. I haven't done the sleeves yet but figured I'd post a work in progress.

Well that sucks. I don't recall having too many interactions with Gene personally, but I remember seeing him around and know he was always supportive of the community. It's always sad to lose one of 'our own'. My condolences to his family and to all the forum members that knew him better than I did. Rest in peace, Gene.

scratch that. I deleted the materials and reapplied them. that seems to have fixed it so must have been a bug. oddly, nothing else was changed for this re render but the shadow placement seems totally different. Ah well, I'll worry about that once the rest is done. Also in the middle there is Lilymoss pond. 40 ft diameter, 15 ft deep in the middle.

Thanks David. Quick questions lads (and lasses) Have I got something setup incorrectly that's making the shadows of the leaves render without their Alpha? The leaves themselves have rendered properly but the leaf shadows are rectangles.

Cheers John

An important scene in the book takes place in a cave near Lilymoss Pond. So I've been modelling them for making illustrations. Bernie is tiny in the choreography from this angle. The hill itself is 120 feet across, stretches back 100 feet and rises 40 feet from ground level. I've used maps in the decal to dictate the length of the grass (hair) although it's not very visible from this distance. The trees are separate models made using the treez plugin and the leaves were made using hair again with an image of oak leaves added to the emitter.

Looks pretty neat, Gerald. Have you given it a field test? Are you planning on a version 2 that's maybe half the thickness? There seems to be quite a bit of excess material in front of and behind the plastic mouth shield.

I finally finished the first draft of Bernie Book 1 so treated myself to doing a bit of work on the illustrations. There's a scene where Bernie's Grandpa is helping him do some homework and as the bedroom was mostly done I decided to start with that. I don't think I've shown the room from this angle before so that's a thing. Pointless details include the maths homework being appropriate for the year Bernie would actually be in at school, there's a very faint wisp of steam coming off of his tea and one of the books on his shelf (sadly not in frame) is titled Captain Bombastic Is Really Fantastic.

My brother-in-law got Covid-19'd out of his job in HR management and is considering starting up his own firm. So I made him an animated logo. Animated Logo.mp4

There are some shows that need it to remind people that "This is the funny bit."

Nightmares! Get your nightmares here! Always fresh, never frozen Nightmares!

Hiya Tom, What this situation called for (as with so many situations) was MORE POWERRRR!!!! The forces only push the particles so far so I added some more at key points. The bunching was caused by particles banging into each other and getting stuck so I turned particle collision off while leaving object collision on. Also cranked up the particle bounce a bit to help them keep momentum. I've attached the modified project file. Hope that helps with your experimenting. Dan blowing.mp4 WindyTunnel powwwerrrr.prj

When I finished the last chapter of Bernie book 1, I decided to do a bit more work on the character models for the artwork. I've also been making an effort since last year to make my models in the correct scale rather than resizing them to fit the scene. Because of this I noticed that when I stood Bernie's Grandpa (who was built to scale) and Bernie (who was not) side by side, when Bernie was scaled to his actual height he was totally out of proportion with all the other characters I've modeled so far. Turns out his proportions matched that of a toddler and as Bernie is around 10 he didn't work when scaled to 4' 2" tall (Bernie is short for his age). So I made a new Bernie. He is to scale now and I've been working on making his textures, just figured I'd post a work in progress.

Could we make a leaf out of stiff cloth. Use the simple scatter effect to spread the leaves around and then use a force to blow them? Just spit balling but I did an experiment with blowing around cloth based hair with some success so a cloth leaf light work.

Great stuff Michael.

Was done with bullet.

Cards go boom. Admittedly over-sized cards but they do uniformly go boom. Edit: I just realised that you wanted the individual particles in the shape of a heart/club etc and not the shape of a playing card. Sorry, ignore me, carry on. House of cards0.mp4

Hello to you too. Welcome to the forums.

Are the normals reversed for those 3 patches? Don't know if that makes a difference, just stabbing at the dark.

He'll never suspect a thing <twirls moustache>