Paul Forwood

Wow! Thanks for that link. Rodney.

Huh?! That's very interesting, Matt! What file format did you have to provide for them to make the former from? Or is this just so they can visualise what it would look like and then they'll have it sculpted? I guess that you could seal up the back of your model and send it to someone like Art To Part and they could print a 3d former. Interesting though.

Beautiful work, Antony!

Victor My personal preference is for the first version. I think that where his fingers lift and his wrists maintain contact with the planet it seems to squeeze more effort out of him. In the new version his hands seem to be glued to the surface of the planet. Just my humble opinion.

Jim Thank you so much for that! She is beautiful and the rig holds up pretty well. A couple of glitches on the ankles and the left knee but with the extremes that the feet in particular are being pushed to by the real dancer it's going to create rigging problems for any model. I think that the white background gives this a wonderful quality. Each frame is like a beautiful study of human anatomy in motion. It is as if I have opened your sketchbook and the paintngs have come to life. It's a bit difficult to be sure at this resolution but it looks as if you have animated over the top of the BVH motion to add eyelid motion. Did you do much tweaking elsewhere? Stunning example of BVH motion on a beautiful model. I'm sure I knew her a long time ago.

That flying dragon looks amazing! Perhaps you could use it in the background?

Jim I would love to see your ballet dancer but unfortunately it's in a format that crashes my machine. Sorenson3, I'm guessing. Is there any chance that you could render a version in MPG1/2, AVI, WMV, DivX, etc... ? If not don't worry. I'll find some way to get my machines to view this format without jeapordising security or crashing. Thanks

Check the chain of bones that the eye stems are assigned to. You may have some which are not attached to their parent/child. That would cause a sharp bend at the unattached joint when moving the nulls down.

Nancy Your feline friends are FANTASTIC! I love the floppy hair on Madame's feet.

It's a L/R handed flashlight? Ummm... If you turn it up the other way it's one of those contraptions where you have to click the trigger to snap a ball up into the air and then catch it in the basket? Hmm ... it's the base of a lamppost with an integral bubblegum machine and litter bins? It's a battery operated plunger with handy view port? Have I won yet?

Man there are alot of cars in production at the moment! This one is looking mighty fine!

Just beautiful!

You've got some really cool stuff going on there, Jessmusic. I'm not sure how to do what you are suggesting with colour and falloff but I'll have a play and see what I can learn. Keep up the great work with your project. Bet you can hardly wait for that new G5! Josh, these images are just the results of experiments. I was actually looking for the aerial perspective affect but couldn't help playing with fog as fog to see how effective it is. Yes, that's a good suggestion for fog. For my current purposes I just need an almost imperseptible interpolation from crystal clarity to haze. I think I can use FOG happily enough now to achieve the results I'm looking for. Just need more time playing with it under various lighting conditions. Cheers

Thanks, Steve, but just to put you straight about the effect ... Although this thread started out as a question about depth of field I suddenly realised that I was using the wrong tool for the job. Depth of field is for creating those shots where you want to keep the subject of interest in sharp focus but throw everything else out of focus, just like with a real camera. (The first example above shows a render using DOF with just 4 passes.Not enough to do it justice.) What I was actually trying to achieve was aerial perspective, where objects in the distance tend to fade and look more blue. In the real world it is caused by lower frequency light being lost over greater distances, leaving only the higher frequencies to reach the eyes. That is why when the sun goes down we get a sunset. The sun's rays are passing through more atmosphere, before reaching our eyes, than when the sun is directly above us, thus filtering out the colours at the lower end of the spectrum. I think i got that right. Anyway, if you want to get that aerial perspective into your images try FOG. This thread should be called FOG. Cheers Edit: I just wanted to correct something that I stated earlier concerning the water looking transparent where the fog is. It turns out that when I turn Fog off the transparency remains so I think I must have altered a light or the water properties since that earlier render. So that's GOOD! Fog works well!

Thanks, Josh. I hope I can retain that until the next time I use DOF.

Hi, Eos That's a mighty fine looking dragon that you've got there! So what exactly was the answer to the shadow problem?

Great! Now that I know how to play with fog I can get back to the landscape. Thanks for your input, guys!

I'd like to see the camera's background colour available in the final render options to act as a reminder and to give you the option of setting it without having to abandon the filename that you may have just setup. The previous fog was a pale blue and this one pushes it towards the red end of the spectrum. Violet.

Okay, I've had some success after playing with the settings. I didn't realise that fog takes it's colour from the camera's background colour. I also had the start and end settings far too close to the camera. The blend was so short that the fog was very close and dense. Here are a couple of renders that are closer to what I was trying to achieve:

Thanks, Ken. I've got one rendering at the moment with 16 passes and fog. So far the preview is pitch black after 10 passes. Hmmm, somethings not right.

Here is another example with no D.O.F and a different point of view. It has just occured to me that fog might be what I need to use for the aerial perspective. Advice required. Please!

Hi I am still trying to get my mechanical model into a pleasing composition and at the moment I am working on the terrain. I have been playing with different camera angles and depth of field. I particularly wanted to use D.O.F to help give some atmospheric perspective but my results are less than satisfactory. Here is an example with depth of field with just 4 passes:

Here is an example of modelled pantiles, Simon.

That is an amazing image, Vern! You should be very proud of that one. Great modelling, textures and lighting! Great concept too! Is the corrogated edge of the cardboard modelled or what? Amazing attention to detail throughout.

Very nice, Andy. Lots of potential.