R Reynolds

So if you turned on manipulator properties, you couldn't manually reset the values to zero? One thing that I find helpful is to select the spline, open the properties window and click on bias. Now you have numerical access to the manipulators and can incrementally increase or decrease the value while you watch the spline and/or surface change.

Don't worry about it. If you're really paranoid, make a new copy and mess away. Bias tweaking may be boring and annoying but it's not dangerous.

FWIW The original 36 in. (91 cm) wingspan miniatures built by the Paramount prop department were finished in copper sheet metal to give the them the appropriate red colour (from the "Red Planet"). And if I remember correctly they had a brushed finish.

I'm in Windsor; about a 10 min. drive south from the Ambassador Bridge.

Most impressive! May I see a wireframe so I can see how you punched the holes? I'm especially interested in those in the large disc and the angled flange on its hub.

Beautiful work! I think the final touch would be to give her skin pores. Something to break up the specular highlights. Has anyone built a procedural material to adequately simulate this texture? Why does Hash think that two decimal place is sufficient? Although I guess things have improved. I remember times way past when all values were displayed as integers! I had to model everything 20X too large just to be able to get 0.05" in modeling resolution.

I'm impressed that those 5 pointers look as smooth as they do. It's been my experience that they don't like being this contorted, especially long and skinny. May I see a close up view of a progressive render of one of them? Thanks.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've taken another pass at them; punching up the streaks and changing the colour balance to something a bit rusty-er. Use the original link; the first image shows the new version. The larger arched section to the left has the new texture while the section to the right has the original. Please ignore the decal distortion around the arch; I didn't take the time to massage the decal. Jesshmusic; The light setup is a hand positioned version of one of Yves skylight setups. That is I let one of Yves pre-rigged actions tell me where to position all 52 skylights. (This manual technique was my response to the original v8 action not playing well with subsequent versions.) However none of the skylights is casting shadows only the sun. Yves; Yeah I know about oren nayar but I can't justify the 35x increase in render time (from 17 min. to over 10 hrs. for the above image). This shader won't be useful to me until processor speeds have increased significantly, as they inevitably will. Of course thats also true of 52 shadow casting lights. Ken & Vern; All corners are filleted with a 2 in. (50 mm) radius. Considering the only concrete bridge in town of a similar vintage has 1 in. fillets I thought this was more than sufficient. I'm assuming they look sharp due to the scale of the structure. Matt; The decorative boxes are there (but so far only on the sections with individual columns; you can just barely see them in the long shot, just above the columns nearest the camera) but I built them using bump maps and they only really register in close-ups. I may have to add a colour decal to darken them. I'd like to see a render of your Ambassador Bridge. Did you paint it the current teal colour? I always preferred the more industrial look of the original black. How'd you handle all the rivets? I love the look of structual steel bridges but that's what attracted me to a concrete bridge, no rivets. While I fully understand the advantages to building things in the choreography, personally I consider it cheating so I avoid it.

Here are three large stills of a railroad bridge I'm building. railroad bridge WIP The fourth image is the magazine photo that inspired me. It's reinforced, poured concrete and I'm going for a look of being in service for about 50 years; used but not abused and rust coloured like in the photograph. It's over 600 ft. (190 m) long. You can get a sense of it's scale by comparing it to the red-checkered reference cylinders which are 6 ft. (1.8 m) tall. I've been working on these textures for some time and I'm beginning to lose perspective. I've started applying the decals to one end of the bridge and I'm asking for opinions before I continue. I'm satisfied with the small scale, colour & bump materials of the aged, slightly spalled concrete. But I'm wondering about the large scale discolourations and streaks. I don't want them to be too detailed so the images don't have to be unreasonably large (currently each bridge section gets a 1000 x 1000 decal). Any close-up detail (cracks, graffiti, etc.) I'll add with separate decals in those areas closer to the tracks since they'll get more camera time. So whadaya think? Too light, too dark, too distinct, too subtle, just right?

Well done. I'd like to see it in bright sunshine.

Other than as a modelling exercise, there's no good reason to make the metal shaft from a 36 cp cross section. It just generates wasted patches. I'd suggest that you finish off the plastic handle with the fillet you already have. Then start the shaft with a 4 cp circular cross section that matches the 36 cp shape. If it's a driver for slot head screws, 4 cp's should be enough to finish the end. A Phillips driver end will require more than 4 cp's but likely less than 36.

In another thread about avoiding creases it was sagely pointed out; "...your breaking one major rule- a spline dead-heading into an intersection. Nope; not good. Gotta be another way to solve the splineage at that point." However it appears in the wireframes of Sachiko v2 that she has this very splinage at her cheek bone with no sign of creasing. What magic did you perform?

Normally I don't feel qualified to comment on character modeling but I am struck by how much your Hermione looks like one of the synthespians from "Polar Express"; that same sort of not-quite-dead look in the eyes. Considering the gobs of money (I assume) Zemeckis lavished upon his models, the fact that you're even close using A:M (in a few hours!) just further reinforces my opinion that when it comes to CG, Hollywood spends money just to "one up" the last CG intensive production with no thought whatsoever about the law of diminishing returns.

Never mind, I finally noticed the originally posted wireframe. I assume you have no problem with razor sharp edges around the rectangular intake holes.

Bravo, Phil. When I first saw those multiple rectangular holes in the curved air intake surface, my bias tweaking muscles start to twitch involuntarily. Would you please post a wireframe close-up of the region around the intakes? I'm curious how you approached the many Hash patch modeling "challenges" of such a surface.

First rate modeling and animation. But I'm curious about your modeling technique for the shaft ends. Is there any advantage to using peaked splines to assemble a four sided diamond other than avoiding the usual "infinitesimal" open 4 cp ring?

It has been my experience that, creasing 5 pointers are always trying to tell you that you are asking it to curve beyond it's built-in design limits, whatever those are. At any rate, the only solution is to add splines to reduce it's size and hence it's maximum curvature. I've attached one possible solution.

It's difficult to tell from your image but I think you'll have more success if you build a rounded corner to define the edge of the cutout with a spline defining both sides of the corner (see attached image). There's only so much contour you can asked for in a 5 point patch. You may have to stitch in another spline to reduce it's area and hence the amount of contour.

In my opinion, you can get away with 4 patches and some major bias tweaking for each rivet. You can get a copy of one here: Rivet tutorial Since Hash patched spheres are optimized to be smooth with 8 X-sections, a 4 patch rivet is a bit bumpy but considering how they were installed, so were real rivets. BTW, Nice Nautilus.

Martin said: "If we could aim a programmer at every feature a polygon program does, we'd win...Features: NUMBER ONE - EASE OF USE" Are you planning on applying any resources towards ease of use for hardware modeling. (e.g. fully or semi-automatic rearrangement of splines to allow filleting and boolean operations). If not, is the reason: A. It's too hard to automatically re-arrange Hash splines in these situations regardless of the resources applied. B. Such a feature is not important to the majority of A:M's target demographic of character animators. C. You consider imported poly props to be the preferred solution to easy hardware "modeling" in A:M.

Any particular reason you used sixteen radial cross-sections on the wheel covers and tires? Eight is standard. Similarly, your turn signal cases could have been constructed with four sections. Are you satisfied with the shading/specular reflections from your highly curved 5 point patches; especially the large ones on either side of the wheel well? I typically try to keep them as small and flat as possible.

You might find something useful here: Railroad Paint Shop If you want some reference photos or scale line drawings with side and front views, I can send you some scans from my copy of the Steam Locomotive Cyclopedia published by Model Railroader magazine.

Even though I don't feel it's my place to criticize the aesthetics of a piece of hardware, I can't buy into the reality of this vehicle with the look of the gold frame reinforcing the canopy. It looks to me like its made of inflated latex sheeting or perhaps manufactured the same way as those padded toilet seats. IMO it looks neither industrial nor military, but does scream Hasbro. But hey, it's your design.

Hard to judge with such a dark material. Would you please set the diffuse colour to a lighter shade of grey (e.g. 128,128,128) so I can see more than just the specular reflections? Thanks.

Let me know if it doesn't meet your expectations. rivet_head.ZIP