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As someone who helps and who likes to be helped.. I can say that there is a right way and a wrong way to ask for assistance. I usually look at questions and evaluate the complexity of the question. If it is something that is obviously answered in the docs or one of the tutorials on ARM I'll let it go. Not out of spite, but as a way of trying to get a person to search. Often more information comes from the search than from the straight answer. If someone asks me directly.. I will usually respond, again based on the above statement, but more likely to help. If the question applies to a very broad population, instead of how do I make thor's helmet, How can I model a helmet.. I'm more likely to answer. If there is some sharing of Knowledge with a question.. ie.. I know this, but I have a question about this.. then I'm 99 percent likely to answer. If someone says.. do this for me... forget it. I try to keep the above in mind when asking questions myself. Not long ago I posed a question that had bothered me for a while. In five minutes I had not only an answer, but the answer that solved the problem. Had I asked earlier that answer could have spared me 2 weeks worth of painstaking work. Live and learn. The moral? Ask questions as soon as you have them. Offer some knowledge with a question (no matter the knowledge) and ask the question in the right way. Most of the time you'll get an answer and save yourself much trouble. C

Nope. Ive got two vacations coming up.. one in three weeks and another in April.. So unless you guys meet without me.. I'm out untill may C

Its not to bad. Raytracing shadows eats it up.. but the displacement maps I used before.. werent much faster. Keeping the actual Hair count down helps a ton.. and you can use multipass.. jiggle the hair a little and get some really nice looking hair. I'm playing with that last bit right now. C

Looks pretty good. I might add one more ring around the mouth and nose. Basically along the crease lines. I think the jaw line will be ok.. unless you plan on unhinging it to eat a couple of Large rodents. My thought is that the bridge of the nose is a bit wide. I know this is an asian trait.. but that is do more to the fact that the bridge is flatter to the face.. Your bridge actually sits of the face quiet a bit.. if you want it to be wider.. you might pull it back toward the cheeks a little or if you want it narrow.. leave it where it is an make the bridge thinner. Looks good though. C

Now you're cooking with gas! very cool. Check out my mat for metal fleck on my cooper wip post. C

Finally got it to render correctly with an all white background. Changed the roof to black (are you happy Sac?) and fixed the chrome. http://www.colins-loft.net/free/mini/MiniWhite.jpg I also made a copy of the material and even made it metal fleck candyapple red! here are the files. 2 mats (1 for color and 1 for reflections) just drop them on the object or group of your choice. If you want a flat color.. just get rid of the cellturb and make it a straight attribute with the settings from the first attribute of the cellturb. There is also a targa of the Uffizi gallery which I took from an HDRI image.. that just needs to be imported into your images folder before you import these textures. carpaint.zip I dropped the project in to show how it all goes together. Have fun. If you have any questions.. let me know. C

here is the new tutorial.. I did on hair. http://www.colins-loft.net/new_coop_tutorial/CoopHair.html one of these days, I'll get around to updating my site. C

Julian. I basically colored the car with a surface.. gave it the right settings for specular and reflections. Then dropped an evironment map material on it that had a pano from an HDRI image. this image was toned down depending on how much I wanted it to reflect. The Chrome is the same thing.. but much more reflective and little color. I'll try to put some material project together that has this in it.. Its hard to do a lone material because its actually done in parts. C

Hey Jamagica, You should seriously consider modelling in pieces. It'll make getting exact and smoother shapes much easier. C

Yeah my plan was to use a displacement or a bump map for the tread. I did model the wheel well attached to the quarter panel. I didnt have to but I thought that later if I did the transformer thing I might want it that way. The cool thing was that I could use what ever type of spline I wanted to connect the well. Its hidden and dark so no artifacts would show up anyway. Sac.. I'll think about the roof. My initial thought is that its CG and can look as I want it to. I'm not going for a realistic accurate Cooper. the nice thing about building your own car is you can paint it whatever color you want? What color should I make the mirrors if the roof is white? C

Here is a view of the parts blowing up. with a wire overlay. Hope that helps. http://www.colins-loft.net/free/mini/MiniBlownApartWire.jpg C

Not to shabby! And I mean that with great respect! You've gotten really far considering you are doing it in one piece. I see some dimpling here and there. You could probably get rid of that by modelling it in pieces. Modelling the panels seperate allows you to only use the splines you need. Add more when you need them and take them away when you don't. Right now you're carrying to many splines all the way back along the body. This makes it allot harder to make a smooth surface. You're doing great though. Go man Go! C

Tom, I'll write a post tonight on the process. Just about everything is its own piece. Quarter panels, Hood, windshields, etc. I did this so I could turn it into a transformer later. I'll do a render of the model busted up and show you. I'll confess that the rear is just a flip of the front right now. I might fix that soon.. since someone voiced interest in buying the model. I'll post some stuff tonight. C

Nope. Just a dash and some seats. I barely got this done as it was. In the end I'll probably turn it into a transformer or something. For now.. I'm moving on. It just so happens I have a paying gig thats a fantasy based model. So I'm shooting for the next contest as well. I was pretty amazed at how easy it was to model this thing. And it gave me more confidence in 5 point patches, which made the Rims easy work. It was a fun project.. but I'm not fond of Mechanical for some reason. So it'll be a while before I get back to doing anything with it. Though it'll make a nice prop for my hulk to through around or crush. C

Here's my Mech contest entry. http://www.colins-loft.net/free/mini/MiniCooper1.jpg http://www.colins-loft.net/free/mini/miniCooperRed.jpg http://www.colins-loft.net/free/mini/MiniWire.jpg Comments, critiques, whatever, welcome. C

First off.. Great model so far. Can't help much with advice. just cheering. As far as the modeling with the eyes open comment. There is a real good reason to model with the eyes open. Unless your model sleeps most of the time.. you'll have its eyes open "most" of the time. Makes more since to me to get that pose right than to focus on modelling them closed and using a pose to get them to work, if they work, open. After saying all that. It does seem like it would be easier to get them to work in a close if you modeled them that way. I just wonder how well they'll look when you try to open them. C

very cool

Ok let me clarify a little. This is just a peak at some of the spline types I've used in my mechanical entry. In fact I drew these in Photoshop so as not to even be showing "parts" of the same model. I was feeling a little peckish.. so I posted these as a place holder for when I will show my actual "piece" and how I made it. Once the contest starts, anyone care to venture which entry is mine? Just post an answer here. I won't say yes or no till I win.. or I mean untill the contest is over. C

I know! Isnt it ... beautifull? sigh.. I suppose I can retire now. C

Ok.. I did have one or two trouble spots in my Mechanical entry.. So I thought I'd post some pics here in order to get some feed back.. I mean.. hey all the entries are in right. What harm could it do.. So here is a very revealing shot of some of my spline problems.. Any ideas? I'll make it a link so as not to give to much away. Don't look if you don't want your vote influenced! C

Hey Mark.. its a good start. I took the liberty of circling the incorrect splines that i can see.. By incorrect.. I mean splines that will crease because they don't share continuity with the patch on the other side of the spline. Here are the trouble spots. and a spline 101 gif to go by. and the correct routing of most spline situations. The idea is to create x spline crossings.. not )( connections. You also have quiet a few 5 point patches that arent necessary. Use hooks instead.. they won't crease at all. When making 5 point patches.. Make sure most if not all of your spline interesections are the x kind. The only time I'll ignore that rule is if I have a particularly hard to model area in a groin or hidden place. Hope that helps. C

hmmm, What happened? well first lets talk about who was there. Will Sutton, J (middleguy) Griffon, David Dustin, Wade Sacca, Sevenar, gsellis, and me. Will gave out copies of his Kong model. I gave Wade Sacca a copy of Jeff Lew's Learning 3d character Animation DVD. I showed what I'd been doing for the last year and a half. I also gave a peek at my Mechanical Contest entry. Showed some stuff about the rigging tutorials I'm working on. J showed some peices from his short he's working on (which was very cool). There was lots of talk about AM and what you can and can't do with it.. More can than can't. Went on for about 2 hours, then we went and ate burritos at a burrito joint close by. Did I leave anything out guys? C

Hey thanks for coming guys. I'm pretty amazed at the talent in our area as well. C

take my fire spriticles and throw them on an emitter. tweek. and Burn! look up Lord of the Rings fire tutorial on Google. theres a good tute on how they did it. you can translate that to AM. C

there is your problem. No ambience. Only light emitting objects would have ambience. You could use it to do things with the toon renderer that give more shading options. But for a realistic pic.. If its not a light or something glowing.. No ambience. C