Williamb

Pardon my ignorance but dont you use just a grayscale image to make a transparency decal? Why do you need an alpha channel with its inherent problems?

Couldn't you make a transparency decal in lieu of a glass material? Just cover the transparent areas with tranparency and leave the frame untransparent.

It rendered to file the same way and it did it also in ver 11.1. Making a copy of the model and pasting into a new model seemed to resolve the problem but then all the poses are lost.

This model intermittently has good cookie cutter eyelashes just not on every render. Usually if I go to the decal section and change the decal to color and then back to cookie cutter it seems to work again. I'm using 12i. Any suggestions? Thanks

Its great to have software for someone that can't draw a straight line (like me) that allows you to express yourself. Thanks for all the great suggestions.

Thanks Mike, I was definitely going for realistic, but I don't have a clue about decaling this model. I used the David Nagel skin technique and brushes but did a poor job. The tint of the face and body look different because they were modeled and textured at a different time. Is it possible to flatten both the head and body at the same time and come up with a good high res decal?

Any suggestions especially as regards to decaling and lighting appreciated

I've been bending these splines forever. It started out as a project to learn AM. The modeling is essentially finished unless someone notices a glaring flaw. The head and body were modeled and decaled separtely. I wonder if the proportions and the decaling aren't matched? I'm not finished texturing and the hair is still preliminary.

Thanks Jim Lighting really does make a diifference.

Also I didn't render this with multipass. I noticed the hair looked alot better with 5 passes.

Thanks I know what you are saying is true. I haven't learned lighting yet. Usiually my model looks best in the modeling window for this reason.

Heres another attempt. I still don't have the hang of decaling but have learned a lot more about Photoshop. Any specific suggestions about mapping or the modeling appreciated.

This is a female? character Ive been working on forever. I think the modeling is finished but I'm stuck on the decaling and hair. Any suggestions appreciated. I have been using the Nagel brushes with Photoshop. I really don't have a clue about the normal, diffuse and specular maps.

I probably have a hundred copies of this model. When I go back and look at the earlier versions they look just as good as the latest. I can't quite get the look I want. I suppose some accurate rotoscopes would really help

Which side looks best to everyone? This is what happens when I use mirror mode for too long. Eventually I have to turn it off for some reason and forget to turn it back on. Here comes copy flip attach again.

Ok, let me get this straight. We are supposed to think in three dimensions, learn to model, apply hair, texture, decal, bone, rig, animate, operate a camera, set up lighting, learn the physics of photon mapping. Then every year a new version comes out with features we have to figure out all over again. It sounds like fun. Anyway here is my latest attempt at making a realistic face.

I haven't decaled the model yet except for the eyes and the lips. In the past I have applied a photo of a face on models and it looks great but it produces a somewhat static image. I tried using a cell turb material with bump to produce the skin bump but haven't found a combination that works. It does make her look like she has acne. Perhaps this is a feature that could be implemented in future versions of AM. That is to say a combiner material that has the bump of skin. For that matter how about a skin plugin? I thought the hair material applied to the eyebrows and eyelashes worked pretty well since no tweaking has been done. Also the scalp hair doesn't show up vey well in the photo but it actually looks great on screen. I made the hair with black diffuse, white spec and 100% kink. No grooming necessary. In the past the kink has looked funky but it seems better in ver 11. Any way thanks for the constructive ideas. Willib

This is a head model made as a learning experience. Decaling is pending. The model is made with ver 11. The eyelashes and eyebrows made with hair material.

I'm working on the principle that if you move points around enough, eventually you luck into something that looks like what you are trying to model. I do have the rest of her, but the body looks pretty bad. Now I need to figure out how to decal her. sept0.tga

I've had AM for sometime and decided to model a human as a way to improve my skills. I'm not completely happy with the proportions of the face and would appreciate comments from any real artists on the forum. I think she looks too masculine. There are no decals on the skin, just procedurals. I planned on using the bump and diffuse procedurals as a base for the decals. I was curious if anyone had used this technique with success. Rudimentary attempts to animate using pose sliders seemed to work really well, but I wasn't completely happy with the model and had to delete the poses. (that was a learning experience right there) I modeled the body separately and plan on attaching later when the head is complete. I'm not sure I understand how to post an image, so if no image shows with this message you understand why. Thanks Bill Buffat test0.tga