MMZ_TimeLord

My name is Jody and I've been using Hash's Animation:Master back in the day when it was Playmation on floppy disk. (1992) I had always interested in 3D animation, ever since I went to see Disney's TRON back in 1982 and even tried to code my own 3D engine on my Commodore (commode-door) 64 when I was 15. I've upgraded consistently almost every year for A:M with the dongle (non-expiring license) and am now happily on V16 Web subscription. Being part of the A:M community is truly fun and an honor to see so many different styles and types of 3D Animation. Working with Martin and his crew on the TWO project was extremely enjoyable. I missed out on SO unless it's still under production, but hope I can work on another project like TWO soon. Modeling and character animation are probably my two strongest points. Texturing and lighting still need lots of work for me to feel I've learned them well. I have not yet had the opportunity to work in the industry, but would love the chance to ease into it or find a niche that I could fit into while doing 3D animation. Hi, My name is Jody... and I'm an AMaholic... ("Hi Jody!" )

itsjustme and thekamps, You guys got it, but I knew as soon as I released the name of the author it would be just a matter of Google seconds. thekamps, that image is WAY off, but a cute little attempt. Unfortunately, there are many mathematically verifiable contradictions in the books. Here's all my notes and what conclusions and decisions I came to for where to start the model. Enjoy. Maps and Mathematics of Jack L. Chalker's Well World 780 Southern Hexagons 780 Northern Hexagons 1560 Total Hexagons (p 62 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]) 614.86 km is the length across of each hexagon (p 88 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]) 355 km is the length of a side of each hexagon (p 62 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]) Avenue width: 35.5 meters or 1/10,000th of the length of a side of a hex (p 199 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]) Area of a Hexagon ½ x (6s) x h ½ x (6(355) x 307) note: h is the radius so it is half of 615 3,269,552^2 Area of a Hex. (This is roughly the size of India) 3,269,552^2 x 1560 (number of Hexes) 510,049,800^2 (projected area of Well World) Area of Well World is 5.1 x 10^8 km^2 (p 55 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]) 5.1 x 1,000,000,000 or 510,000,000^2 This is remarkably close to the surface area of the Earth which is 510,072,000^2 We are told that the hexes that border the equatorial barrier that separate the Northern from the Southern Hexes are “two hexes wide and half a hex tall” (p 287 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]). We are informed there are 24 such split hexagons. (p 71 [acronym="Quest for the Well of Souls"]QftWoS[/acronym]) This would mean there are only 12 avenues if 24 refers to the actual hexagons and not the pairs. If pairs, then 24 Avenues. No exact reference that I have found is given as to the width of the equatorial barrier, nor it's height. I will make it about 35 kilometers tall. 1/10 the height of a hexagon side. Lastly the occupied surface area of the Well World is not all of it. The text below refences large black polar caps. If all of this information is used along with the partial southern and northern maps to compile a model of the Well World, there is a serious contradiction of information. 1. 780 Southern and Northern Hexagons will NOT map in a strip 10 Hexagons high with the split hexagon spacing shown in the map. If we take the map as the more likely source, then the total count per side would be 800 hexagons. This would allow for 20 Avenues total. 2. If we use the 24 split Hexagon data, along with the 12 avenue model, then the total hexagon and area count drops significantly. Calculations show the total number of hexagons per hemisphere would be only 480. WAY too small to be the size stated in the book. If we use 24 Avenue model then the total number of hexagons rise to 960. This is quite a bit larger than the size in the book, but not out of the realm of possibility. 3. Either of the larger models, 20 or 24 Avenue, would result in a larger circumference than mentioned in Exiles at the Well of Souls, which was 40,000 km. No matter how you map the strip map onto a sphere, the southern most and northern most hexagons WILL be distorted. This is verified in the The Return of Nathan Brazil. (p 128 [acronym="The Return of Nathan Brazil"]TRoNB[/acronym]) If we base our calculations for the equatorial circumference, planet diameter and radius on the hexagon dimensions given above: (355 km on a side) 20 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 800 hexagon hemispheres, 42,600 km circumference, 13,560 km Diameter, 6,780 km Radius 24 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 960 hexagon hemispheres, 51,120 km circumference, 16,272 km Diameter, 8,136 km Radius Earth, as we know it today, has an approximate 40,074 km circumference, 12,756 km Diameter, 6,378 km Radius Subtracting the unoccupied area of the poles would still give us a nearly equivelant surface area to Earth. I would infer with these discrepencies, that the 20 Avenue model is likely to be our closest one without seriously distorting the overall size of the Well World. If we take the 24 Avenue model, then the total number of hexagons per hemisphere is VERY much in error as well as the size of the planet itself. Based on all this, I have begun modeling the Well of Souls based on the 20 Avenue calculations. Refence text: From Exiles at the Well of Souls: "Look-you got all those jewel faces on the south, but you can tell it's lots of green and ocean and stuff like that. Our kind of world. Then you got that great dark-amber strip around the equator, and then a whole different kind of world up top." "The poles are interesting, too," Gil Zinder noted. "See how dark and thick they are, and how huge. Almost like great buildings hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers across." "Finally clipped it a little low, got within the Well's influence, and got nonteched, same as the first one. The reason you haven't heard is that they had swung up North for a look. Near as we can tell, they went down in 1146 or 1318, Uchjin or Ashinshyh. Got anything on them?" From Quest for Well of Souls: A tall minotaur paused before the door, looking curiously for a moment at the symbol embossed on everything. Unlike his native Dasheen, which used a standard hexagonal symbol, Yaxa used an ideogram which he mistook at first for a pair of stylized wings. After a moment he realized that it was not so. Yaxa was a state along the Equatorial Barrier. It was composed of one half of a hex split horizontally joined to one half of a hex split vertically. Only twenty-four such hexes were so split on either side of the Barrier. The "wings" were, in fact, two half-hexes joined. From The Return of Nathan Brazil: Mavra smiled wanly. "Like anyplace else, really. Just imagine a planet that was a lot of little planets, fifteen hundred and sixty of them, in fact, each roughly six hundred and fifteen kilometers wide at the Well World's equator—they get a little distorted as you go toward the poles. Each one is shaped like a hexagon, the Markovians were nutty about the number six. Each one with its own plants, insects, you name it, and all with different dominant races. All the carbon-based ones are south of the equator, seven hundred and eighty in all. The ones north of the equator are non-carbon based. They can be anything."

Rodney, Visio is useful for lots of decal layout. You can make a checkered grid and save it as a image file (.jpg, .png., .tga, .tiff, .bmp, etc.) Visio even has the ability to export to Adobe Illustrator format. I find that VERY useful if I've got a general layout for something and just need to extrude it. I'm still doing my research, but I'm thinking at this point I'll just start picking hexagons and colors. At least I'll try and find the various references in the books for the environment, so I can get most of them started in the right color. (tan for desert, dark green for rain forest, etc.) More to come... Author's name is Jack L. Chalker *BIG HINT*

Okay, final hint. It's from a Science Fiction book series from about thirty years ago. I won't reveal the author, but he's one of my favorites. The white is primarily UNpainted, the blue is ocean. Here's a minor update. Rodney, As to painting with Visio, I can't draw consistent hexagons to save my life, so I arranged them in Visio first. Now I just select them and choose a fill color. When all the main coloring is done, I will go into Gimp and using the push/smudge tool and blur tools to make it more organic looking.

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Okay, the decal/texture map in the first test render was not and is not complete yet. It's just a base reference for me to paint on. And my painting sucks, so I'll be making the basic coloring in Visio first, then painting over it later in Gimp. The Hexagon grid IS complete and accurate as well as the poles and equatorial band. A planet. I can't be clearer without giving it away.

To that particular answer, I would say "Think smaller"... Seriously, planet... like about Earth sized.

Bigger... much bigger. Think "planet".

Get a basic USB hard drive and "Syncback:SE" from the net. It's free. And make a backup of your projects, resources and renders on it. I use Syncback across my home network to my wife's PC to a spare drive I have in it and I sync those two drives. Syncback can sync drives, directories and has filters to exclude files and directories. It's quite powerful. Usually you can get a 500GB or larger drive for under $100. Wonderful investment when you can't afford to loose stuff. Another option is to us a DVD-RW daily to back up your stuff. Not as easy or quick as Syncback, but you would not have to purchase much except maybe the media. The drives are only about $40 if you don't already have one in your system. You can even back up to DVD-R if your drive does not do DVD-RW. Media is cheaper and you will have a truly incremental backup. Looking good!

I'm not sure if you are trying to duplicate the original animation motion or not. I have not seen the original. I would tend to make their side to side 'swaying' motion correspond to each step. Much better though... tweak some more!

Got a sudden inclination to give this object a try... First test render with a simple sphere and a simple decal. Can you guess what it is? (Science Fiction buffs probably will...) I purposely made the seam face the camera for me to make sure the decal is on there correctly. I DID cheat a bit. Found that cylindrical mapping gives smoother results near the poles. The trick is to spherical map first, screen capture and use the capture as a rotoscope for sizing the cylindrical decal placement.

And Chekov!

John, Didn't intend to sound mean. I would say slow it down a bit and get more fluid between the bounces. A bit of stretch and squash should help some. Take a look at the world famous Pixar hopping lamp for some animation reference. Show us more!

Yes, the style is VERY cool. Excellent modeling.

You sure they didn't just get off drugs? There's some serious shakes going on... LoL

version of A:M - V16.0a - 64 bit - Web render time - 4:28 CPU Brand and model - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Actual CPU speed in GHz - 2.8 Ghz how many cores A:M is using -1 Core (CPU load was averaging only 28%-32% over all six cores) RAM - 16 GB OS - Windows 7 64 bit w/Service Pack 1 + all updates (Current) version of A:M - V16.0b - 64 bit - Web render time - 4:29 CPU Brand and model - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Actual CPU speed in GHz - 2.8 Ghz how many cores A:M is using -1 Core (CPU load was averaging only 28%-32% over all six cores) RAM - 16 GB OS - Windows 7 64 bit w/Service Pack 1 + all updates (Current) Where do I find out how many CPU cores are being utilized? I don't see the option anymore under "Tools->Options" in any of the tabs. - Answered

WOW!... WAAHAHA...OW.... WOW!!! All I can say is WOW!

All of those characters are very recognizable and yet, very different! Excellent work. I do love the texturing and modeling making them look like something out of Jim Henson's shop. Well done! Can't wait to see more!

They all look so cute I just wanna hug'em!!!

William, I feel your pain. I've been off the bandwagon of my own project WAY too long. Damn work, then Cancer. Beat the Cancer, so now it's back to work. I WILL be making time for my project soon. I would love to assist with yours as I did on TWO. Just let me know how I can help. Hang in there!

Nicely done! Thanks for the fun model to play with!

Agep, I love the splinemanship you show on those models in your video. VERY helpful for those of us that wish to model things like this. Excellent lighting and color correction too!

If you can control the reflection and/or specularity of the flake portion of the combiner, you could probably get a good sparkle from that.

Happy Birthday Rodney! *HUGS*

Fuchur, Sounds like you have a very creative solution to the glow problem. I fiddled with that for quite a while before I did away with it. Here's an old render from V14 that I did for a simple desktop background. It used a single light source (Sun) and Glow was still used and shows as a edge on the dark side. All in all it came out pretty good. I'll play with adding a star field to it and see if I can get glow to cooperate for me as you describe.