Paul Forwood

I think you would generally call his waterproof clothing "oilskins". Charles Macintosh invented a rubber saturated cloth about 200 years ago which was/is used to make raincoats which are generally referred to as "Macintoshs" or simply "Macs" in the UK. Keep up the good work, Gene.

A:M 14 works well on Windows 7. Haven't used it much but no problems so far.

Nice work, Cronos! It is good to see examples of someone making those pipelines work. ¡Pancho es muy graciosamente!

Try turning on particles. You should be aware though that flocks do not cast shadows unfortunately.

You're welcome. I think the path to the graphic is wrong so you will have to reset it to the png in the sprites folder if you haven't done so already. I played a little more: RocketB04.mov

Here you go(earlier than expected): Rocket3.mov ExhaustPuffs.zip Just add your own character hanging on for dear life to a piece of string that is trailing behind the rocket. The sprite image is not perfect. It has a white fringe to it that could be taken out.

I'll post a project this evening.

Looking very good, Jason! My one concern is that the eye is not led to the question, "What can Jason Hampton do for you". On a single viewing that might be overlooked completely. Perhaps you could linger on that a little longer or have the character press a button entitled "What Jason Hampton can do for you", or maybe you have this covered somewhere else. Looks really slick though.

Thanks for posting those pics, Kat. I can't make up my mind which I prefer but as you are aiming to reproduce the look of your illustrations I guess the flatter toon renders are going to remain your prefered choice. I'm just not all that keen on the outline of the noses when they are facing the camera and the toon backgrounds tend to lose all of the effect of the bump maps. You seem to be making good progress though with your epic.

Yeh. He looks great.

Thanks, Gene. Don't forget, Jake, that your particles can also display image sequences: Trails18.mov The only problem, as you can see, is that all the particles are displaying the same frame of the sequence at the same time. You can get around this to some degree by using several emitters with the timing adjusted to start on a different frame of the sequence.

You can animate the opacity and the size over the life of the sprite. Here are four slightly different variations: 4variations_A00.mov Anything anywhere near to what you were looking for?

I really like the sequence with the roots of the trees but I noticed that in the previous sequence the tree is rendered with a toon outline while this one is not. Do you have any renders of your characters without the toon outlines? I would be interested in seeing how they compare.

Retro Rocket! That's great!

Exhaust_x4_c.mov This uses four sprite emitters, each with it's own "puff" material. The opacity is set at 10,20,30 and 40% for each respective emitter. ------------------- Edit: Robert, you have been showing some really fine and interesting stuff recently. I love that rocket on a string! Nice render too.

Your lightning looks great, Gene! More than good enough for a cartoon.

That's great, Mark! Looking better all the time!

Gamemaker 8 can be found HERE. The documentation can be found here in pdf format. I haven't tried it since way back but it looks like it has improved, it is drag and drop and it is FREE.

Posting a jpg or two will help.

Hmmm. Could this be something to do with the alpha channel? It reminds me of a problem that I was experiencing some time ago when rendering cookie cut imagery against an empty background. What do you get if you render inside a skydome?

Good trick. I have experienced emitters that wouldn't respect their own surface properties' transparency settings in the past but they do seem to be working alright at the moment.

Nice DOF, Mark! The one thing that bothers me a little is the hard line of the river's edge along the river bank. If you add a little transparency to the water it might help the transition between water and the right bank. You could add some delicate greenery and flowering plants trailing into the water to break up that edge a bit. Otherwise very nice indeedy! I would like to see that tree in the foreground bent over and then allowed to spring back, like the pine in the first Shreck movie.

Happy birthday, David! Take seven months off.

Amazing!

Yes, they all look great, Mark. That last one is roughly what you would get by using fog, isn't it?