Scottj3d

Heres the bird with a bump for facial skin.

Thats what I'm finding. Reading how to do it looks complicated but after actually doing it it seems much simpler "so to speak". I've had AM a couple years now and have had spells of interest as well as intimidation but just recently "made it move" I am addicted as well as determined. Thanks for posting the project! I'll see what I can break(on a copy) as I study what you did.

Here's the darker one anyways. Also I lost my glow in the area in front of the seat. My glow is on but for some reason it no longer glows. Anybody got any ideas where I might have turned it off or maybe turned something on that wont allow it to glow. I have messed around with my render settings for experimental purposes so I may have enabled something that disabled glow. It is on in the camera settings as well as the render options just before rendering to file.

Trying my hand at environments. I would like to know how to add things like stars and a moon.Should the moon be a model placed in the chor or the stars be placed as a decal on a patch stretched across the background? Still working on some textures for my mountains. I'm thinking some bumpmaps for cracks down the sides of the mountains. I'm not sure as to the use of displacement and specularity maps. Any tips appreciated immensely! If the image is too light I can post a darker one. My AM machine displays it well but after bringing it into my internet machine with a lesser vidcard it was dark so I adjusted the B/C.

That would probably be me. I'd be interested in seeing the project but may not be adept enough to reverse engineer it (yet). I'm still learning how to animate but will take any help I can get. The movement looks like what I am going for. Thanks!

I do want photorealism as I get better and I am told that this is not good for animation. I have 2 gigs of memory so I dont think that is a prob although I do have a couple of models that tend to slow the performance a bit. I had seen some other birds recently and got some ideas about modelling them but you just dont know until you try. He will only have a few appearances in the eventual animation but rather than start another WIP I tacked him on to this one. I was impressed with some of the realistic 3d stuff that I have seen in movies as and that was what got me looking to learn to do it myself. I like a challenge and it will be one to become that good. So much to learn!...yet.

And a wireframe.

A close up of the head. The upper mandible will be getting a decal to correct the color as the entire mandible is not supposed to be totally black and for the face skin I will create a bumpmap as well as to define the feathers unless there is a "hair"solution. I would like to be able to "ruffle" the head feathers but splining them over the entire head seems like it would be the hard way.

Well I've been modelling a new character who is my pilots pet. I have been seeing all these birds in the WIP section I had to see if I could make one. So far he is all diffuse colors with no decals (until this weekend) and still needs some tweaking. If anyone can point me towards some V11 hair tuts I am interested in learning to use hair. And would like to know if there is a way to make hair look like feathers.

Looks cool! I dont know if it will help but you can try upping the resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768. I dont know if you mean actual blurring or that pixelizing from zooming a low rez file in. I know it will show better detail by rendering a larger image.

Worked for me.Looks good. I think the wings could be layered for the feathers but it depends on how much detail you want. This could probably be done with a bumpmap as well as modelling.

Thanks Entity, but to be honest the ship going out of frame was an accident. I have tried a few more renders and moved the camera and I understand about it being disorienting though. I'm still getting animating it right (or animating period) but it is supposed to have a helicopter/hovercraft feel to it. I'll be posting some screens of the secret hangar soon. I still have a few more props to build to get it together. The modelling has slowed up a bit due to my learning how to screw up choreographies. I'm using the "OK don't do that" approach!

Well I did the constrain to path and it came out decent but had some choppy spots but it was 30 kb too big and wouldn't upload. But it gave me a better feel for the speed and getting things smoother. I'm posting this one to see if it will upload and because it wasn't too bad. I didn't use the constrain to path but did tell the camera to aim at and I think I got too close to the camera (failed to pull the camera back) but when it landed the camera followed it. I'm not sure if I am right about that though. I used pose sliders for the upward and downward motion. The only thing I woulld change in the motion would be a slower liftoff with a noticable forward shift of the axis much like the stopping action at the end of the forward motion. Thanks fot the tips Ganthofer they helped alot. Now to work on the bots treads. FT3.mov

It brought me to tears. OF ENVY!! I was taking in the appearance of depth as we we moved up the mountain with the stars in the distance. I thought it had a disneyish quality which is meant as a compliment. Nice work!

Yes I set the height but as you can see it was too high. Instead of lifting off it was already airborne. I'll keep playing with it till I get it right. I appreciate the tip on the camera view, aim at sounds like what I want. Perhaps that will get the gnat a bit closer in the view. Hmmm... Gnat may be a good name for the ship. I was almost ashamed to post it but at the same time I was proud to have done the path thing even if it is the tip of the iceburg. Making the pose gave me some insight into animating the pilot with no helmets face. Thanks again for the help! My next one will be better! I look forward to a time when this stuff seems as easy as modelling. Two weeks ago it was beyond me!

Ok so here is my first constrain to path. Not much to see but a gnat flying in a circle. I expected a larger file size but this was decent size for posting. How can I get the camera view ? What I got here was what I was seeing on my monitor in the chor window. And can I constrain the camera to a path as I did the gna...ship to follow it in a closer view. Also what would be a good resolution for something this short. It still is moving too fast but the speed is steady. I plan to try again on this one and made a pose for the lift off then transition to the path then touchdown. The pose is simply a slider to change the altitude as that is about all I could come up with for this. Ship_path.mov

Soon as I start getting a better understanding of the animation aspects and get a set together. For me the modeling part is easy. Understanding poses and actions is just starting to happen. I did my first motion test about a week ago (barely) but it was enough to inspire me into thinking it will happen. AM is the first and only 3d software I have attemted to use. I love modelling and really want the action to start soon but I am kinda slow in the other areas. Part of why I posted was to get pointed in the right direction to straighten the curve a bit. I am reading all I can get my eyes on (but much of it is spanish to me) and playing around in the chor window trying to become more familiar (comfortable) with how things are done. I have a city and a secret hangar to build yet as well and many props. I made my ship fly which inspired me to get the pilot together(whom I still need to rig and figure out how to get into the ship and stay with it when it flies) Watching the online tutorials at the hash site helped me alot. Sometimes seeing it done makes it look easier than reading how to do it. Eventually it will come together as the desire is there. Thanks.

And a close up of the chaingun. The bottom will hold an ammo crate that detaches and reloads from a door that will open and feed crates from inside the chassis (front side of the main body. It can be seen in the concept pic.

Got the chaingun assembled and did some adjustments to other areas on the bot. I have the "arms " protruding from the cabin but not attached and saw this done on some of the models that came with the cd (wings on the planes). I guess under certain conditions this is considered acceptable? I have also done this with the ship and with all the parts that make up these models Connecting them to the main mesh would add many splines to the already dense ones some of the parts need to keep thier shape. The arms will move like human arms but I do not want moving the arm to affect the cabin as a human arm would desirably affect the shoulder and chest mesh.

Starwarsguy, I agree about the keyboard. I am adding a couple of levers to one side and planning to make a different decal. I was testing a bumpmap to see if I could see the keys protruding but they dont protrude enough to make the keys stand out the way I wanted. It was an attempt to make the keys without splining them but as often as there will be close up's there I do not plan to model them. I have the bump decal saved in it's original format PSP with all my selections from making the bump so it wont be a hard task to change it. Thanks.

Thanks for the input.Here is a shot of what I have so far of the cockpit of the ship. I am still building the guages and levers to give it a hard to operate appeal. I came up with the idea while playing a helicopter flight sim. It demonstrates what my PC is to me when I play So I opted to use a PC for the control of the ship.

Ganthofer, Thanks for the links. I will need to absorb the tank tread animation tutorial as I am still learning the other than modelling skills in AM. I'll work on the accelleration first and play with my render settings to see if I can get the filesize down for posting. Ddustin the beer will be at the bar where my characters meet and the locals go to watch TV to see whats happening in post apocalyptic earth. So far it's only in the script....And the the belly of the artist. Heres the ship in the early stages and a wireframe. I will copy it today and see if I can lessen the splinage at the front of it. Thanks!

They didn't have this stuff when I was a kid! Now I can have anything I can ponder so long as the splines wish. Kinda goin for a post apocolyptic GI Joe/Tom Sawyer feel with beer.

Should'nt be too hard to duplicate the top section at the bottom with a bit of tweaking.

Thats close. I would repeat the process but try extruding 2 times. Go back and select the vertical splines one at a time that are peaked (p) sometimes they extrude that way and round them (o) that should smooth them out.