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Looks very good to me. My comments are pretty simple. What you are looking at based on speed and size is a shot of average ocean (not the southern straits or anything super stormy) from several hundred yards away. Might cover about half the Titanic. In other words for close shots.. say canoes on the water.. this is more than enough ocean to create a realistic scene. Anything bigger and you'll need lots more water. You could scale the plane on the Y or increase the displacement and have a pretty good stormy sea. What They mean by tileable is that you could replicate this plane if the waves rolled across the borders and appeared on the other side. This could be done by first making sure you are using images that tile (In photoshop you can use the offset filter to check this) If the images you use tile Then when you create the animation for displacement you'll want to make sure that the movement is one full length of the image. So that the wave ends where it started. Then your animation will tile. If you lay two plains side by side the waves will continue across them. As far as color.. you could try several things, For some reason I wonder how Yves Skin shader would look on this (with the blood color set to a dark blue or greenish blue) Just a thought. Wavy ocean water is light bluish green at the peaks and dark blue in the trough.. You might be able to use your displacement for some crests as well.. ie add them as a spec highlight after some image manipulation .. or something to that effect. Here are some that I made for reference in... well use them if you like them....(these are to help you with color references and scales, not to start a thread on how they were done or what they where done in so don't ask and apologies if necessary to the powers that be). http://www.colins-loft.net/free/oceanShots/ here's a sample shot if you don't want to check out the others... Hope that helps. Looks great so far.. keep up the good work. C

Well here he is without the middle area. With a logo on his chest.. though its hard to see right now do to the way I'm shading it. I also inverted the boots to look more like metallic circuits. Still need to get the gloves and boots working better, but I'm liking the shading alot. Zaryin.. I'm shading him with toon shaded falloff/no lines. The blue is the gradient and the gloves and boots are cylendrical decals with all kinds of tricks thrown in. I might do a tutorial on it later. Here is a 2.5 meg movie.. a simple 360, but it shows off the circuits and logo. All comments are welcome. http://www.colins-loft.net/free/MajorInnovation.mov l8r C

thanks Nimblepix. I found those as well. I remembered that his heads and hands where the things that were mainly different. Side shots of his heads usually had ovals for skulls.. flat faces and horizontal jaw lines, Square jawed .. Fleshy lips at the sides as well. His hands where very curvacious. I'll go back through my comic collection and see what I can find. Here is my attempt at mimicing the chrome costume in AM using toon shading with falloff, and some tricks with negative specs and ambient maps. It gives me alot more control now and I like the result pretty well. What do you guys think? And yes you can still be brutally honest. L8r, C

I forgot that he uses Strata. Hmmmm.. you may have inspired me to give it a shot. If you where going to do a Byrne Character, who would you do?.. My favorites where his fantastic four. But he did allot of DC stuff as well. Which would you choose? And do you know if he has anything useful for a full rotoscope anywhere? C

Hey Rodney. I just saw your picture. Is that your daughter with you? She's a cutey. C

Hey Rodney, Your observation about the groin is actually pretty dead on. I intentionally altered it from the original in order to play down Superman's .... ummm .. masculinity. Again.. That darn client of mine. I'm just trying to do what I can to get past the puritans. What I did was widen the groin vault so that there was less of a bulge. Kinda "Ken" doll style. I may go back to the original later, but if the client accepts him as he is now.. I'll modify him later for my own purposes. As far as a John Byrne model.. I think its a great idea. He was my favorite artist when I was a teenager. Good luck with the splining. C

Rodney, I don't know what I do different that might make our stuff look different. I do follow a pretty rigid method, which is the way I modeled Cooper.. What is it you think looks different about your models? As far as the photoshop effect. Here you go.... http://www.colins-loft.net/free/peffect/chromeeffect.htm Its not everything I did to get this look but about 95 percent of it. Follow this and play around and, in the words of Lukbat, you to can come up with all kinds of amatuerish Photoshop effects Now I'm off to AM to figure out how to make this effect work with materials. If I get there I'll let you know. C

Oh yeah.. I love dogwaffle. best natural media tool out there in my honest oppinion. And yes I've tried Painter. I'd call Dogwaffle the Hash of paint programs and Painter the.. Maya. Anyone who's used both packages knows what I'm getting at. C

I was thinking of having a inverted circuit pattern that comes up from the pants or creating a circuit belt. I'll post more later. C

Oh I forgot one thing.. The thing I really, really liked about the bottom costume was that the circuits took on a metallic effect. and started to invert. Something about that seemed appropriate considering the technological role he'll play in the marketing my client is doing. later, C

yeah I like the bottom one as well. I agree its a little over the top and needs some control which I'll try to do by recreating the effect in AM. I like the colors better. the top one is too flat. As far as the stripe.. its there for a reason. This guy is for a client. I'd prefer a full body suit, but my client is rather puritanical, and insists on him having "underwear" (their words not mine). I think they are intimidated by guys in spandex with large bulges. Anyway.. the initial sketch I did had underwear (ala superman, but dark blue) and I hated it. So I went for a pants look instead. I added the top line because there will be a logo on his chest and I wanted to integrate it into the suit. Its a circuit that resembles an M and an I (his name is Major Innovation) and I wanted to have the strips or circuits coming out of the sides.. on to the right and one to the left. Those would be were the suit transitions. As far as the brutal critique.. its fine.. though you should refrain from overly descriptive adjectives, It comes across as someone who just learned the English language and well frankly its amatuerish. Kidding. My skins tough. and I know I'm not an amatuer. I actually agree with the point that over the top photoshop is a thing amatuers resort to. I'll see if I can clean it up a bit. Thanks for all the input guys. C

I finished the model. Thanks Yves and William for the suggestions.. I made the changes and it helped alot. Now I'm playing with Costume. Here are two options... what do you think? be honest. Thanks for the input. Keep it coming.. and you can be as brutal as you want. C

Oh and thanks Yves. Coming from someone who models like you. That means alot. Oh and thanks for that skin shader. Its awesome! C

Added the arms and hands. Again I've played in photoshop with the look a little. But you get the picture. I modeled the arms freestyle.. didnt want to take the time to adjust the rotoscope. ( the arms were down on it). I always want a second oppinion when I do that. I model from my mind and it looks fine. a year later it looks like crap. Any oppinions on the arms? C

Forgive the unorthodox Wireframe presentation.. I was just playing around in photoshop. This is a cool technique and easy to do. One render and a little photoshop or after effects magic and you can get a terminator effect. Ice man.. the silver surfer.. you name it. and This is Hardware shaded. let me know if you want the usual wire style. Later,

Thanks again guys, I'll post wires soon. Martin. Yep Alex Ross is my favorite. I'm gonna have to see that original when I come to Seattle in April. So have the vault unlocked, and put the guard dogs out back. This one is from some sketches in "mythology" the art of Alex Ross. The actual model will end up being a different style hero from Super Man. more like Captain America in his outfit.. I'm just using Ross as a reference cause I love his style. Colin

Dearmad. Sharp from the side or front, or both? I see what you mean with the side. I'll check that out. Thanks, C

they look awesome John! Keith could use some more wrinkles, but you'd overload your computer if you tried to get them all. I like the yellowish skin tones too. Very cool. Are they for an animation? C

Here's a WIP of a superhero model I'm working on. I'm working from rotoscopes of a Superman Alex Ross drew. Looking for some input. C

I'm not saying that it wasnt idiotic to spend 270 million dollars on a movie that could have been made and marketed for half that. I'm only saying that it is that rarity of rarities a "good story". Not many movies contain those these days. And as far as the money goes. think about this. They've spent 270 million and its flopped for now. How many more years will the world continue to celebrate Christmas? 10... 20... 30... 300... hmmm. Lets see show it every year on NBC.. primetime or even in the afternoon.. multiply by 300... drop the one.. multiply by polar express book sells.. yep... it still makes money. Plenty of movies work on this formula. I still watch Peter Billingsly in "A Christmas Story" every year.. Heck.. I still watch its a wonderfull life every year. I doubt I'll be watching the Incredibles as much 20 years from now. My point is that there is the short road to money and the long road. Sure Hollywood wants it now. and Polar Express will probably be considered a flop, unfortunately, but it'll still make out in the long run. The same couldn't be said for Final Fantasy, or many other cg movies. thats my rant for now. C

Saw Polar Express... Loved it. Thought IMHO that it was better than the incredibles. I loved the look of the Incredibles.. but the story wasnt all that. Polar Express is a great story. Sure the plot is old.. but the telling of it is original. You come up with an original story that can be made into a good 120 minute movie and you will find funding eventually. If you look hard enough. The real test anymore is whether or not you can make something else besides a movie. A game, action figures, books, or in the case of the current movie... a bell. Think about how many 5 dollar silver bells could be sold this Christmas to try to convince kids that Santa came to their house to get them to believe. Plenty of people make bad movies... too many people go to the movies and get caught up in visible polygons, or bad motion, all the while missing a wonderfull story, great cinematography, and a genuinely good time. My advice... read a good book or two... write a good story. Go sell that. Where it goes from there? who knows. C

John, I think you could fix this by posing the hair, if it has dynamic constraints as well. just fan the bones out so that the hair stays higher when it animates. It works great. Same with the cape.. if it bounces to high.. just tweek the bones down and increase the stiffness or decrease the range of motion. Looks cool though.. for my part I've avoided flattening the animation and just let it figure it out on the fly. not sure why, but its worked so far. I'll admit my tests have been a little more basic than this, but from what I can see of this.. it should be easy to correct. C

Hmmm not aware of that problem. I'll check it out though. C

Hey Hypnomike, which shadow casting problem. I'm using mapped shadows so they are softer, but they render a heck of a lot faster. This render takes 8 minutes at 1024 x 900. I could probably uprez the maps a little, but for now its not bad. Did that answer your question? C

Well I got the cape on him. He wouldnt sit still but finally I drugged him and got it to work. It works pretty well to. fits well and has dynamics. the proof will be in animating him. All that is left is rigging and testing. more to come, C