pdaley

heads a little big and the necks a little long. i dig the body proportions though. stylized is great fun with the female body. Ask Will Sutton...

If this project is meant just to be like a 3D Visio kind of thing, I wouldn't worry too much about the detail (beveling). If you are trying for full-on architectural visualization, then the detail would be required at least for the pieces that will end up closest to the camera. Don't worry about the lighting yet. It will bog you down as you try to finish the modeling and texturing. Once you're down with that, mimic the positions of the real lights in the room, then add bounce lights and light lists to light up the undersides and nooks and crannies of your objects. Turn up the rays cast on the key lights on the final render to at least 16 and you'll be happy (not with the render time, but with how it looks) For the people, explore the models on the CD. They are there for you to use. It would be a lot easier for you to stitch up a dress and put it on Lambrina than it will be for you to model a woman and her clothes from scratch. You can credit Den Beauvis for the origination of the model if you want to, but it's ok for you to change her to suit your needs. Just save a separate copy of her, give her a dress and then assign cps to it. Easier said than done, BUT still faster than going by scratch. Good work so far. Building up a library of models is part of working faster as you gain experience. I would also drag these things into the library pallete for easy access in the future.

how much further does bob want this model to go? Does he need the inside of his mouth and tongue? Does he need eyelids? Luckily last year's training CDs had a whole section on rigging wings. I wonder if goosey is going to use a feather/hair system or something lighter.

That is a sweeper-made creation. It's a natural for pipeline kinds of things. Unfortunately, the magic wand is kind of sloppy for what I wanted. But then again, at the size I ended up using them, it probably wouldn't have mattered.

Thanks everybody. The hot chicks came from a whole day spent try to find some stock photography of officey looking young people. Is it my fault that officey looking young women wear short skirts? I thought not. These guys and girls were only a buck a piece. If you've ever tried looking for stock photos... it sucks up a lot of time + when you find something good, it costs $80. These were reasonably good and super cheap. plus they were hot girls. Is it weird to get a little uncomfortable when I was cutting an alpha channel around the guys' crotch areas?

I liked it too. I agree with Vern that some of the fighting dragged. I could see that we were building in rediculousness as the fight went on, but maybe the tempo of the fight should have sped up too. Also, I thought it was interesting to find that a lot of the fighting animation was good, but the other stuff like walks and jumps were less convincing. I'd recommend some time on the basics, but you should feel pretty good about your ability over all. Congrats on getting a piece done!

This is for my boss's presentation on Monday. I just thought I'd post as an example of AM in an everyday boring old job.

It's fun to use. Here's a tiny little silly dance move. Not perfect, but it was easy to do. squetchTest.mov

There are far FAR too many splines for the shapes you are representing. You can make the cylindrical shapes of the ufo with as few as 4 cps. For the alien character, look at tarzan or the hulk on the CD to see how economical you can be with splines to get easy to animate, realistic shapes.

William: Good job putting that together! Participants: I expect all of you to sign up for the Oz movie!

At Hash Bash there was some dicussion about contact Darkling and seeking permission to distribute the Simbion plugin on the Hash CD. This image was one of the reasons why we would want to do that. Joel, thanks for reminding me. I will touch base with Steve and Martin and see how this will proceed. I'll get back to you as soon as I know what the next step will be.

reminds me of ed norton in American History X. Scary guy.

Did those girls even know where 'Attack pattern delta' comes from? Congratulations on many levels to you and your crew. 1. You had an idea that was your own. 2. You figured out how to make it do-able. 3. You DID it. The chemistry between the girls (sisters?) made for overall much better than average voice acting. A couple spots were iffy, (if you're going to say woohoo, say it like Homer and mean it) but there were many more occasions (like attack pattern delta) where the flow and interplay between them made the characters believable. I also like the technical jargon of breaking up the park into sectors and quadrants. Made it seem like this is very competitive business being a skeeter and it requires some amount of organization if you're going to make it. The sound recording quality was good and warm. You might want to think about laying down a general 'outside at the park' layer in the background, but then again compressing it for the web might just turn it to junky noise. The music (ukelele?) was also a nice fit . Thanks for letting us see your work and good luck!

I'm a little disappointed that there aren't any boobs... I've come to expect a certain quality to your work that wasn't present in this piece . As Ronald McDonalds go though, he's great.

Umm. Jim. That's awesome. How much will she cost and when will she be ready?

That looks like it took a long time to figure out. Without knowing the behind the scenes math, it looks like you are using bones to simulate some of the motion that the cloth simulator would generate using springs. I think that v12 cloth will still be the first thing that most people try when it comes out, but your system seems to offer a little more predictability than a simulation. Good job!

Vern: Can this be a flaming bag of goop?

I noticed a couple things. The character is obviously not the most feminine creature in the world, that much is obvious. However, I would consider thinning down her legs just a little and allowing them to taper at her ankles more. They currently look too powerful, al most like a man's legs coming out from under the dress. The other thing I noticed is that the acting is good, but needs more anicipation. The little 'never mind that' hand gesture she does should be casual, almost involuntary. Her hand at this point kind of jerks in and out of the sequence. Slow it down a lot. If you have the time and the means, maybe a short video tape of your self or an extremely confident woman you know acting out the same gesture would give you what you need. At any rate, I hope to see some more. Is she part of a larger project or just a learning tool for now?

Would you be the least bit interested in including a project showing this technique on the next HASH CD? It's a cool effect and we're a little low on cool effect projects...

Thanks for the freebie! Do you mind if we add it to the rest of your contributions on the CD? Also, what are the chances of getting your stuff re-compiled for the MAC? I think we can get some HASH assist on that...

I'm not planning on working on this much more, but I thought I'd post it anyway. PROJECT There's the project file if anyone wants it. I used an enhanceAM texture for the clouds, bout you might be able to use a standard noise combiner instead.

There may be an oil rig in there soon...but which kind to choose? There are so many models to pick from! (really)

Thanks for the comments. I'll give the 'feathering' a try, Philip. What about the rocks don't you like? I tried to choose rocky patterns that would contrast a lot with each other. As far as I understand, rock formations do occur more or less in slabs like I show here. Maybe not so smooth, but I'm just generalizing.

This is for my day job. It will include camera animation and some other stuff to look cool. Anyone know why the background is showing through at egde on the upper left hand corner? There is a displacement map that ends right there. Could that be it?

Noah: You have a great eye for female form. Yves is right about the clothes. It seems weird, but they need to be tighter. Not gross, just like the waistband doesn't seem to give any indication as to why it would stay up. You don't need elastic like granny panties. Maybe take that bevel down to almost nothing and add a little cinch some place. I would take a hard look from the elbows on down. If you need to add more splinage and another bone or two to smoth out that wrist roll, then do it. You can actually see the faceted edges on the right forearm and both wrists kind of seem flat and rubbery. The hands and fingers will also need a nother tweak pass to soften up the hard edges. She's got a little can of man hands I'm afraid. Are you using porcelain? Go ahead and do use it if you are not already. We don't need every last detail on her knees and fingers. The bump texture is a little to pronounced. I think the color map is probably fine, but the bump map is giving her a textured feel that is akin to a longtime tanning bed abuser. Nice work and thanks for sharing, Noah.