MMZ_TimeLord

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!

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.

Am I missing something or is that Earth in a BINARY star system? Trinary from the look of the lighting... LoL. (One behind the camera) Nice render though. I donated a project to the data CD a few years back that used several different resolutions of images from the "Blue Marble" project. I also have a full solar system project with textures. The orbits are to scale. Let me know if you want either of them. Included are land images for earth from all twelve months of the year for different snow and ice lines as well as a map for city lights so you could light up the dark side... I would concur with the less or smaller lens flare and the lighting of the planet itself, unless that's the look you were going for. Cheers!

Welcome back Rusty!!! Great to see you again... I too have been away FAR too long! I agree with everyone else, something to add texture to the scalp under the hair and dull the skin. SSS would be good, but I'd keep it a bit muted. Every time I see SSS it seems set to the point where it looks like wax instead of skin! Conservative with the SSS! AO is a good idea to level out the overall lighting though. Cheers!

Looks pretty good from the top Gerry. I'd have to see it from three quarters or side to make a real call.

Robcat, Yep, that was the first version I purchased back in 1992. The pitch was that Will Vinton, being such a good stop motion animator, could and DID help sell the software. i.e. - You could do stop motion type animations with it. Which you could, but it was even easier than that! I agree with Rodney also. Post a wireframe or shaded wireframe of your model at about a 3/4 view and that will give us a better idea of what's going on with the 'ribbing' effect. I suspect most of the splines have a low magnitude or are peaked and therefor bend very sharply. Again, excellent motion!