JTalbotski

Thanks! I would work on his clothes, but he uses a LOT of starch. Can't do a thing with 'em. I'll probably move to the hands next after a couple more tweaks to the head, then the clothes. Jim

Thanks, Sam. You're right, I need to work on the moustache. I knew I was forgetting something! If I remember correctly, it took around 6 minutes to render, with 2 ray casting lights and one z-buffered light, 9 pass multipass at 600X800 pixels. There are 2 different hair materials on him and I gave it a tiny bit of bloom and softened it a tad in Photoshop. Jim

Another update: This time I've added some hair, moustache and eyebrows. And a few more tweaks to the mesh. He's starting to get that "Alec Guiness look" that I'm after. Jim

Ross, I use a Wacom tablet (exclusively, no mouse). The bump map is a duplicate of the face color decal. I changed it to grayscale and deleted the layers that weren't neede, like the rosey cheek and nose color layer. I just use the mesh template as a guide for where the wrinkles should be. Sometimes I wrinkle my face up and feel the direction of the wrinkles or look in the mirror to get a better idea of their direction. No vector paths, just freehand drawing with the stylus. Jim

I like the house, Sam. They always seem to have faces, to me anyway. The sketch looks like the doorway is much smaller in proportion to the rest of the house. It adds a bit to the scariness, I think. Rodney, you were right. In v 10.5 you could make a spline a hair guide. It's different in v 11. Jim

Thanks, Dusan. Here are a couple jpegs at 75% of the actual size decal images. I set the value of the bump map at 50% in A:M. Jim

Uh, it's Jim. I've been using A:M since v5 (about 6 years?) and all I've done with it, until this year, has been modeling characters. One is bound to get better in that amount of time. If you can't learn from a tutorial, then you'll have to teach yourself. Just start modeling something, anything. Stitch more splines into it and notice what happens in different situations. Pull cp's outward and try to make them into something, an arm, a nose. Model things out without trying to make a masterpiece. Make it a fun learning experience. And if it bombs who cares, just make sure you learn something from it. Jim

Very cool, Javier! It's kind of futuristic-spooky! How long to render? Have you rendered an animation? Thanks, Jim

Gazz, Perhaps you haven't seen these? http://homepage.mac.com/talbotj/FLATTEN-TUTORIAL.zip http://homepage.mac.com/talbotj/FEATURES-TUTORIAL.zip http://homepage.mac.com/talbotj/EYEBROW-DETAIL-TUTORIAL.zip http://homepage.mac.com/talbotj/EYELASHES-...IL-TUTORIAL.zip The bump map tute will be next, when I can find the time. Jim

Here's an update with textures (just color and bump) and some tweaks to the mesh. I reduced his nose size and made his brow less sharp. Jim

Just me being a blockhead. Jim

Looks great so far! The only thing I would say is that his eyes might be too close together once you copy, flip and attach the other side. Show us more as you progress, Jim

Phew, I'm glad the confusion about the bear has been removed. I wasn't sure what to think of this model if it was supposed to be a bear. Now I can say, Excellent modeling Javier! I love the proportions and spline layout. I'm enjoying it's progression and will be checking in frequently. Jim

Zack, When I opened the project it wanted the porcelain material. I have found that you can't paste into a model with porcelain applied. Delete the shortcut to porcelain from the model and then try to copy-flip-attach. If A:M quits when you try to delete the shortcut, drag the shortcut up to the materials folder instead, and then do the copy-flip-attach. Jim

Thanks! I'm not sure what they will be for. I'm kind of having fun watching them develop. But they seem to be leaning toward being in a quasi-James Bond world, but set a little farther back in history. I have no story or plans for an animation, but I will probably do some still scenes and some animation tests just to learn. Thanks, Jim

I do have a couple 3 point patches tucked away in the face, as seen in the first image. I had to go back and check whether I had any in the eye area or not. Even though the angle of my original screen capture looked like there were 3 pointers there, I kept them all 4 pointers with a couple 5 pointers farther out. As far as I know, I haven't hooked into any 5 point patches. I don't even know if you can. I try to keep hooks in areas that are generally smooth and surrounded with enough cp's to get the job of animating done. I haven't noticed any popping of hooks in the last year or so, maybe because of my placement of hooks, but I think the Hash guys worked on it some. I've just started getting into animating so I may not be the best source. Jim

As long as you place, 1st-4th place, you can become one and Steve posted other options here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3477 That's all I know so far. Jim

Thanks one and all! "Butler" did cross my mind as I was modeling him. Maybe he's the head of ops while just disguised as their butler....okay, maybe not. Javier, I think I'll make him just a tea drinker. Someone has to be a clear thinker in the bunch. Rodney, the Abe model is lost, due to a stupid back up mistake by yours truly. Sigh. Stephen, I'm just using lighting at the moment. He is colored only with group surface colors, but I will start the textures soon, I hope. He does look more like De Gaulle. Perhaps I'll have to focus more on clothing as a clue. How about a bowler on his head? Robert, I will definitely be adding quite a few wrinkles as I progress, right now he's untextured. Thanks, Jim

I would try to maintain a similar style to all elements, to give it a cohesive look. I know there are times when mixing styles can work, but in this case I would try to texture things the same way. Mixing texture styles can draw attention to areas you don't want to focus on, if one style of texture is too different in quality or detail from another style. Just my opinion, Jim

Here's a screen capture of the shaded wireframe. He's basically a reworking of the younger gent I did with some deleting and adding of new splines and a lot of tweaking. Jim

Thanks for the comments! Even your sentimental message, Bud. Yup, the moustache is too square. It's just dropped the material onto a few patches and didn't apply any controlling decals yet. I'm trying to do this character in the OSX alpha to help with the bug reporting. So maybe I'll try the decals soon. Now that you mention it, I do see some Vincent Price in him. I want to stay away from making him look like a "badguy", but I want to make him pretty stern. I was toying with the idea of a monocle, but wasn't sure how vintage British that would look. In my head it seems more vintage German (I don't know why), but I could try it and see. I'm definitely going with a pipe. I don't know why all these characters seem to need to smoke, but I'm just rolling with it. Thanks again, Jim

Hi all, Haven't shown anything really new in a while, so here's a peak at my newest character, to go along with the elegant lady and gentleman I did a while back. He's sort of the head of the investigation agency. At least, that's how I see him now. And I think he says "Jolly good" a lot, too. I need to give him some thin hair on his head. Jim

Your style is very ...uh, captivating. I find myself staring at the characters in a kind of morbid way... I need help, I guess. Jim P.S. Are you still having problems with the cookis cut map?

Holy guacamole, Ed! That's excellent stuff. The logos looked very sharp! Jim

Pengy, I like your characters, they look like they will be fun to work with. The penguin is very cute! The man's head looks very cube-like. You need to round-off the corners of the head. What I do, to help get smooth and rounder overall shapes early on, is hide everything except a quarter of the head (work on a back up or copy if you are afraid to ruin what you have already), say from the ear up to the top center of the head. Then rotate that section around in shaded-wireframe mode or wireframe mode (with lots of progressive renders) and tweak control point by control point until you see the corners smoothing out. Change the angle you view it from and tweak some more, change the angle again, tweak some more. You can't trust just the front and side views, you need to keep seeing the model from all around. It's a lot easier when you don't have the rest of the model in the way. Focus on making the patches as square as possible and of equal size (which it seems you have done pretty well already), and in a nice smooth shape. Then unhide the rest and compare. HTH, Jim