Paul Forwood

Nope. Displacement gives similar results to bumps when used with SSS. Maybe by playing with the SSS properties and the bump/displacement value for long enough it would be possible to find a good balance that works. Here is SSS with dispacement at 100%:

Haphazardly? They are only temporary, some very quick scratches to play with while I get a feel for A:M15.

Thanks, Mark. No, I have never tried the skin shader. Are you suggesting using it with SSS or just generally? Thanks, Robert. Do you mean setting the transparency along the length of the hair from the surface properties? I haven't tried that. Good thinking! I haven't tried SSS with normal maps or displacement yet. Displacement test coming up...

After playing with SSS for a while I have decided not to use it at the moment. It is difficult to make it work with bump mapping. If the bump value is low the bumps get washed out, a bit like porceline. If the bump value is high it doesn't play well with the SSS. (Of course this all depends on what you are trying to simulate.) This is 3 passes without any SSS and with my bump map set at 30%: HeadC_Test_A00a.mov This is 3 passes with SSS and bUmp set at 150%:

Just making a start on the textures:

Well spotted, David! I haven't even put any detail in there yet. That just shows the skill of, Fabricio Rodrigues Garcia, the guy who designed this caricature. I saw this great work on CG Talk early last year and felt compelled to model Clint but I have only just stumbled upon the painting again. His characters look like 3D models already so I just had to have a go. For more examples of Fabricio's great exaggerations check out his blog: F R Garcia What was the name of the program that would allow you to distort a face like this? Goo?

Playing with A:M15 hair and SSS here: SSS_TestA00.mov I'm still modelling so there are no textures yet. There are so many shaders that I have never tried, This is Muhair's default, which I have tried before, but I have never learned to tweak all of the properties to get a mix that works from all angles and all lighting conditions. Something else to play with, I guess. I'm aiming for silvery-white hair that doesn't look black in the shade and doesn't look overly specular. The blue patches at the back of the neck and head are just patches with inverted normals that I missed. Well, that's what these tests are for.

Are you using SSS on her face?

Yes. Of course. (slaps forehead). Indeed WWI.

Woah! Heavy machinery in town! It looks great but the ground and curb stand out as needing more detailing. Perhaps seperate curb stones and a patch of road that has been chewed up from the weight of those tanks? This project has a strong WWII atmosphere with surreal elements. Very interesting!

Petokosun, I rigged your character several times, (rather roughly), in my efforts to produce a tutorial with sound. The file size was just too big to be practical so I gradually lowered the amount of screen that I captured, reduced A:M to about a quarter of the screen size and finally had to leave out the sound all together in order to get a smallish file. Even so this file is still 21 MB when zipped. That means this TSM2 Rigging Demo might be a bit harder to follow than I would have liked. I hope it helps some though. Just remember to use the following keyboard commands when manipulating the bones and you should be alright: "N"- Move, "S" - Scale, "R" - Rotate. Using these commands will ensure that you are manipulating all of the bones in the selected branch. Also be sure to keep all of the roll handles facing the correct way when setting up the geometry rig. TSM2_Demo.zip TSM2 rig was installed in 13 minutes and 23 seconds. Please note that, in order to keep the file size as low as possible, I have not taken as much care rigging this model as I should have and I haven't even assigned the finger CPs to the individual finger bones. ( I have done that too many times today). Also I haven't added any fan bones or done any CP weighting. There are some minor mistakes in there and I'm sure that the verbal explanation, that would have come with the audio, would have been helpful. Happy rigging!

Yes, Robert is correct. You have scrambled the rig while attempting to install it. Never mind though because that's how we learn. I hadn't tried TSM2 with A:M 15 and I wasn't sure if some incompatibility had crept in so I tried it for myself. It all seems good to me. KM00.mov I did record a demo as I insalled the rig but it came out at 115MB and about half an hour. I may try to do a shorter version later.

These are just a couple of tests of A:M 15e Fluids: DomeEmitter_A00d.mov Notice how the surface starts to boil once the particles have built up to a certain depth. I would like to see the surface creating waves that radiate out from the impact zones of incoming particles but all I get is boiling at the moment. Does anyone know if that is possible yet? TapFlow_A00d.mov

Very nice, Mark. Have you ever read, 'Swallows and Amazons'?

This is just another test render that I did of Alfred E. Todd: ATodd_Comp1a.mov As you can see there is much work still needed before this model is ready for action.

That is going to look amazing when it is finished! It looks pretty cool already, especially in full screen mode. The beast needs loosening up, adding some head movement and some dynamics will add to the feeling of weight. There are some CP weighting issues around the back of the legs at the moment but I'm sure that you are on to all of these things already but haven't finished animating yet. I would like to see more depth to that snow effect. At the moment it appears to be snowing only in the foreground. I'm not sure if fog works with particles yet but, if it does, that should help the snow fade to grey in the distance which would help the effect. Failing this you could try using several emitters, placed progressively deeper into the landscape, each with progressively darker particles. I love the floating rocks. I can sense some dramatic music keeping time with the creature's pace. I look forward to seeing more.

Kelley, you should do something with those models. You had a good thing going there. Mark, thanks! Glad you recognised him! Myron, not normally but as it's New Year's eve... (Image removed) Right. And on that note I had better get out of here and join some revellers for a few hours. Happy New Year everyone! --------------------------------------- Edit: As it is well past New Years now here's the new wireframe:

I don't know what the problem is there, Steve. Nothing much, Steve, but I'll see what I can find if you like. ----------- Try these test renders: Hairy_A01.mov BobAbout_B00.mov He did also participate in this test that I did with Luuk Steitner's wonderful mocap software, ZignTrack: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...94721&hl=en Great! I couldn't get them to show up in A:M 15 but maybe there is something that I have overlooked. As you can see, in those crowd tests, shadows are rendering for all objects in the choreography except the crowd components.

And this is what happens to Todd when he gets M.A.D.:

Here is the head of a Sweeny Todd model that I made some months back, before adding textures: Depp_360__A01e.mov

Looks good, Mark!

Just guessing here. Are you rendering a scene which contains a large amount of hair or do you have a large displacement map with the camera very close to the surface? It might not be either of those that are causing the problem but they are my first suspects. It would help to know what materials you are using.

Thank you, Kelley. Most of those buildings were thrown together very quickly, just to test out Ambient Occlusion, which I hadn't really tried for some time but want to use for a CGTalk image challenge. The actual image will use new models but these were suitable for the AO test. It's funny how, when I saw the first AO render of this cluster of buildings, I thought of your wonderful brick and stone buildings that you have shown in the past. Did you use AO for those renders? It certainly adds a lovely quality to the images, giving a more natural shading and bringing out the details. The two thatched cottages are for another project. The clusters of leaves have not been arranged into a natural formation, they are just to get a quick idea of the effect and the amount of depth that AO creates. -------------------------------- I was just looking through some folders, searching for files which turned out to be on my other PC, when I came upon some test renders from another CGTalk challenge that I attempted over a year ago. I never completed the challenge, which was to build and texture one of a selection of characters suitable for Halloween. They provided several designs that had been contributed for the challenge and I chose to do a model of Bobby Chiu's Kangamolebunny. http://digital-bobert.cgsociety.org/gallery/ I only got as far as the basic model, rough rig and no textures. I was just playing with ideas for animating Kangamole's drool/saliva when I ran out of time. It hasn't been touched since but here is a clip of where I was going with the tests: KMB_reduced_Test_B04f.mov

Hundreds of glutenous special effects dancing together in space, accompanied by project file. Sounds good, John! Now concentrate! Thanks, Mark, but that only works in QT Pro now. Apple dropped that feature from the free viewer around the time that QT7 appeared. That would be cool, Rodney, but maybe I should just get QT Pro, or post AVI movies instead.

I played with Flock Crowds a little more and discovered that they do not cast shadows so they are probably not very useful for real crowd situations. Better to use individual models anyway so that each one can be placed precisely where it is needed. Other things that I learned are that flocks have a probem with fog on frame 0, you can put a flock crowd on a path and give it an action but you can't use it's Stride Length, you cannot randomise the direction that the objects in a crowd face. Has anyone else made good use of flocking yet? Total chaos: CrowdTest__FunA03b__A00d.mov mp4 version: CrowdTest__FunA03b__A00d.mp4 Does anyone know how to set a QT movie to loop without QT Pro?