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Hey Jim, Brightness could be the problem. Its the brightness of the hair follicle and from what I've been able to determine.. its main use is in its variation setting. Using that makes the hair more natural.. not all the same color or brightness. Yves.. check out my Robin model and see if you see the ambience as up. The hair is black, which might affect things.. but I did have some diffuse falloff settings that seemed to blacken it up alot. If I want really dark shadows. I tend to over shoot the diffuse fallof in order to give the shadow more dark area to "stick" to.. pardon the silly terminology, but its the best way I can discribe it. one suggestion Jim. try using a color for the specular and giving it a large specular area. Another thought on the differences.. I make thicker hair than you .. I map a hair texture to the follicle which gives it a finer appearance than it really has. and use some transparency. That might give the z-buffer more to hit with the shadow and allow the hair shadow to be darker as well. Just some suggestions. I much prefer the z-buffer version of your hair Jim.. its softer, and though I see what Yves is saying, its a small price to pay for more realistic hair. Can't knock those render time improvements either. Awesome work, as usual. C

Julian, Yeah what you said... Arrgghh the math it hurts.. turn it off... Anyway, here's another. I like this one for the face and it reminds me of Alex Ross's Captain Marvel in a way. Thanks for all the comments guys. Guess I should get to animating him soon. C

Thanks guys, Jim, actually his outline is a happy side effect of the way he's shaded. I did render him on black with an alpha and swap the background with what you see, but the dark line is actually a slight reflection, specular size, diffuse falloff effect. ie.. I tweeked the settings to work good on the bright side.. rotated the camera and low and behold.. he has this nice outline. I could loose it with another backlight, but I'm kinda liking it at the moment. Mega, the "bump" on his noggin is actually the view angle of the camera (20 degrees) making his head warp a little. Its how I get the hyper style poses, with the big Marvel fists. I never go with the default view angle (to flat for my taste) I tend to like wider angle cameras. Not sure why. Ken H, I may make some desktops with him. I'm liking this mesh of all the ones I've done.. So I might use it for lots of things. I'm allready cooking up a semi wireframe shot of the valley of his eye... super close, that might end up being an interface for a flash version of my site. Of course that depends on when I get sick of him. If I get sick of him. Right now I'm having waaaaay to much fun. C

Here is a newer angle on the punch pose. Added more attitude in the face etc. I actually have a pose for clentching his teeth( you know how the muscles on the face get defined and flex?) (yeah.. I'm having fun ;-) I've got a few more I'm finishing.. I'll post later. C

Ken you may be right about the forarm... but I think he's leading the punch of the back arm.. Like a Major league pitcher. I may have to drop the elbow some. But, like the dynamics of the way he fills the screen here. C

Here's some more.. not sure about the power punch. He'll have some sort of Power.. not sure about the binary code... I do like the glow on him though. I realized I'd put the teeth on him with no specular hilite.. I knew something bugged me about them. I'm gonna keep both fist. I like the pose and I'll admit I tried it with the front hand open, but it wasn't as good, I thought. Mike, That shoulder is up and back actually. The extreme camera angle makes it hard to see, but He's already dislocating in a few spots.. I should post a side shot to show the extreme nature of this pose. Its actually a funny idea. We should take old comics and match the poses. Then show how silly the heros look from different views in the same pose. Anyway.. Here is the fixed pose. Thanks for all the input guys. Its really helped alot. C

Here's a fix to the last post. Fixed his ribs as much as possible and gave hime some attitude. Still working on the attitude. Thanks for the crits.. keep them coming. C

Thanks Starwars guy. More than enough time C

Yves, you're right about the stomach of course. Thanks.. I totally overlooked that.. but its and easy fix..Still putting smartskin on stuff. I was thinking the same thing about stereo. C

Forgot to post that I'm not sure about the mouth.. I'm definately going to give this one a snarl or something. And don't forget the angry eyes! Anyone know when the deadline for the Hero contest is? C

Ok here is my favorite to date. The costume is actually starting to grow on me. Hash, what can I say, You make work fun. C

John.. I got to tell you... you rock! Thats some of the coolest stuff I've seen in a looooong time. I can't wait for the theatrical release... the dvd.. well I can't wait.... Ohhhh the game.. yeah the game.. after that ... I'm speechless. Chalk it up to another idea I'd wished I'd thought of. C

Hey Mike, My only comment is that it looks good, but the right shoulder, though it moves correctly, seems to grow the front deltoid out of the bicep. I know this might not be as obvious in a shaded mode.. but texture maps would give it away as well. Could you move it so the deltoid started more toward the pec and slid up. If you look at the line of the detoid as the shoulder shrugs. the muscle moves to a point where it inserts almost vertically above the nipple line. Yours does that but doesnt seems to grow out of the arm as opposed to rotating up. I hope that I explained that right. and also that it didnt come across as a slam... I like this alot.. Just wondering how flexible the positioning of the center of rotation of the parts around the arm is.. not knowing the mechanics of how your doing it. What exactly are you using expressions for? rotation of the fan bones? or is it rotation controlling translation? if its a trade secret I understand. cool stuff.. Keep it coming C

Thanks guys, Yep Yves, That one was post processed. I did get something close to it in AM.. but there was a catch.. No color decals with Toon shading... at least not over a gradient surface. So no color in the gloves. but its doable with toon shading if you can loose the color decals. You could probably right a material to do the same thing. Its very similar to what I've seen some materials doing.. in that you can take the out put of a specific part of the image and use it to modify the same part. Gradients, inverted, and composited over with a difference effect, shift the hue 180, and composite that over again with another filter (depends on the desired look).. Your skin shader is part of the way there I believe.. if you could add gradients to the inputs.. It would be there I think. Or the ability to add gradients to specific parts of a surface.. (diffuse, spec, ambient, reflection, etc) Thanks again guys. I've got big plans for this guy. C

wow! Thanks Yves! coming from you thats very high praise indeed! Which material are you referring to? I'll be glad to clue you in. The lighting is just common backlighting, and shadow maps cranked up.. Raytracing looks better, but I'm not ready to commit to a long render yet. Thanks again! That made my day. C

One more, started playing. Now this was fun! That scale armor is hair by the way I know the lighting is iffy.. but I'll get around to fixing it. I'm thinking of playing with Yves sky rig.. but This one took a while to get to render.. something with hair and large files with shadow maps. Thanks for all the kind words, There like gas in my engine C

Here are a few more poses of him, Fixed the last pose to work better... and another pose... Thanks for all the kind words, C

Here he is in a pose.. Still putting the finishing touches on the rigging but its coming along well. Thanks for the idea with the 360s nimblepix... I'll have to try that. Man I can't wait to get this guy on my own and make him what I really want him to be. Thanks for all the input guys. C

Let me guess.. his knees go knock kneed.. and his thumbs look like the Fonz? I get the same things.. not sure why.. you can roll the knee pointers in an action or a pose and it will fix the knees (can't help you with what causes the problem) As far as the fingers.. The thumb actually works.. but the hand clench poses don't work correctly for some reason.. you sould go and make your own fists pose and it should work fine. you role the finger bones and it makes them curl. Hope that helps. C

Hey man, It's looking great! I love the wrinkles on the skin. Hair is going to throw him through the roof! It would be cool to see him battle Jurrasic Pork. I wonder who'd when? no... Tar! That'd be a battle I'd pay to see. Hell have a 3 way death match! Ok enough bad ideas on my part. L8r... C

Thats a good looking face you've got goin there. Can you post a shaded wire without the decal. I'd like to see the raw mesh. Its very neat and orderly. and the spline count looks good for animation. Good work! C

One more thing I forgot to mention. If you look at the images I posted.. You'll notice that lots of the color of the water comes from the reflection of the sky. But if you look close its not a true reflection, kind of like global illumination with a glancing reflection. Ie if you have clouds in the sky and you crank up the reflection to get the color.. you'll also get the clouds, which could look good but probably would look bad. Soft reflections might help alot. Using an environment map wouldnt hurt either.. I studied the pictures I did and looked for interwave reflections. They where there but only at extreme angles. I'll look more into it and see if I figure something out. C

Gradients work well. But it has to do with diffuse falloff as well and gradients in the toon shader disable that. Maybe the gradient material would work. Perhaps something from Toonation if you are using an older version of AM. Not sure. A nested gradient material might work well but I've not had much success with materials versus toon gradients. If you do toon gradients.. I'd use toon with falloff. That will work best. You could do that and map foam or whatever on the top. Toon gradients seem to disable the Color maps.. but you still get specular and ambient control which gives more color control to play with. Hope that helps. I know its criptic.. but I think there are several ways to skin this cat. C

Here is a 360 of the head mesh. I see several places I could cut down on the mesh without changing the shape. http://www.colins-loft.net/free/MajorInnovationHead.mov C

Well he took a direction I don't particularly like, but I'm stuck with it till I can redo him after the project is done. I made many of the modifications that have been suggested.. thanks. Here is an image.... and another 360.. smaller download this time http://www.colins-loft.net/free/MajorInnovation2.mov Thanks for all the input. I'll post more when I like him again. C