Wildsided

That's cool, John.

Just finished another base image and thought I'd share it. Everyone is pretty miserable in this one. Ignore the fact that the boxer dog kid is naked, I don't have a complete model of him so his body is a stand in.

Not posted in a while, but I just finished a reference image for chapter 7 and thought I'd post it. As you can see Bernie's Grandpa has excellent fencing form 😄.

Well that's good to know, lol. Even if it does demonstrate how much my system chugs along sometimes.

I've just noticed that most of the time A:M tells me how many Frames Per Second I currently have. But sometimes it tells me how effective it would be as a sun block...

Stay safe Robert, we had a couple of days without power when I lived in Bracebridge Ontario and you don't realise how dark and cold it gets until there's no power. Hope they get it sorted soon.

Oooooh that's puuuuurdy 😮.

Great job, Robert. Congrats to all the winners.

Nice one.

Thanks everyone I thought I'd post a more extreme example of the process. One of the pictures was supposed to be of Bernie and his Grandpa inside their local Newsagents, Bernie is browsing comics and Grandpa was talking to Mr. John the owner. This meant that in order to produce the image in 3D I would need models of: Mr. John, Bernie (outdoor clothes), Grandpa (Outdoor Clothes) and everything inside the Newsagents. I didn't have any of that. So I roughed out a basic layout of the Newsagents interior using shapes and a free prop plant I found online, slapped on a few decals to give me an idea of what certain areas would look like and then figured out character positions using the models I did have (Including a basic squirrel head and male body). I also refined the process to only rough sketch the parts I absolutely needed to so there isn't a full image for that aspect. Also the text on the pop fridge, sweet packets and numbers on the clock are in 'Eulish' the language spoken by the inhabitants of Bernie's universe. I made a font for it so I can write things easier.

Sorry, Robert. I was just making a rude joke about November and there being much ado about 'nutting'. At least according to the Internet. (trust me,no need to look it up if you've never heard of it)

I wonder if this originally came out in November...

Happy Christmas to you too and to everyone else on the forums. 🎄🎅

Thanks Robert. I've made a picture to demo the work flow. Essentially I'll be using a choreography and the models I've already made, plus stand-ins for the ones I haven't (Like basic blocks to represent furniture or a body to represent characters I haven't modelled). That will allow me to get the correct perspectives on the images and then I'll use photoshop to finish the pictures. I've uploaded another example of Bernie waking up in the morning. In the story he's wearing his pajamas, but I don't have a model, or the time to model and texture a different outfit for him. So I used the model I had to pose him and then drew over the image to have him in the correct outfit.

So, I ran the numbers and quickly established that if I wanted to release Bernie some time before the heat death of the universe, I was gonna have to change tact. Modelling each individual character, costume and location was going to take waaay longer than I had available so I came up with a solution that I think will work. I'm going to use A:M to rough out the images I need and then sketch over them in photoshop. Case in point I needed a picture of Mrs Burrows in exercise clothes. My model of Mrs B has her in a long dress and rather than remodel and texture her into a new outfit I tore the bottom part of her dress off, posed her and made this.

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.