heyvern

That model looks fantastic. For some reason I love the spot on his back where the arm bulge meets his torso... I don't know why... that spot just... looks good, it appealed to my aesthetic sense of form for some reason. -------------------------- I actually talked to a company about a year ago about creating plastic parts from 3D for a little project I have in mind. The cost was NOT prohibitive at all... I could get a prototype for less than a couple hundred bucks. And the material was a good long lasting kind of plastic.. stuff. Basically they did the same kind of thing but created cheaper reusable molds from the original output that were cheaper to produce (not metal). The molds would cost extra... or I could just do "one offs" since I wouldn't need so many. What I have in mind is to create the working internal elements of a Rubik's Cube in plastic from my 3D files, that can be used as a base for "snapping in" or gluing hand carved wooden surface "tiles" for a large "executive" style Rubik's Cube suitable for display... fully functional of course. The company I talked to would allow me to order as many or as few of these elements as needed. I would save money by cutting out, trimming and assembling the parts myself. I had originally planned to make the whole thing from wood, keeping with the hand crafted art motif... but it was way too much work and I was concerned that the wood would swell and shrink preventing full function... plus it needs lubrication inside for smooth motion... not sure if wood would hold up. Vernon "!" Zehr

You know.... ...that paneling is so 60's... you should really think about updating your wall treatments. p.s. Gorgeous model! Very glossy! Like a new car... if you look real close you can see the fan bones. Vernon "Smart Ass" Zehr

Hey! When we eventually get the "real time" thingy... use this to make some cool maze games... Vernon "!" Zehr

See Josh? That is why I was confused when you couldn't model a baseball bat! I just assumed you were very proficient in ALL areas of AM. Nice job... he makes me laugh! Vernon "!" Zehr

I have used QT Pro for some very heavy duty editing... size and length. The fractured film project I did some years ago was almost entirely assembled from TGA files into QT Pro. The resolution was 640 X 480 if I recall correctly. edit: I then imported these clips into iMovie for DVD and web export. With the pro version there are so many output options... plus you can even paste in the sound track... I feel your pain! I hope it works out for you! p.s. Prayers and support for Katrina victims? This guy REALLY needs our support! I would gladly live on my roof without food or clean water for 5 days than have to explain to a client why I missed a deadline... they usually suggest that as punishment anyway. Vernon "!" Zehr

Thank you for the compliments! I really really really like how this is working out! The out put is so DANG CLEAN! The lines are perfect. I did have to set the toon line falloff or whatever it's called, to 100 to keep lines out of the "face" of the objects. Then I have to make sure they don't get to close to each other or the outline... "shrinks" slightly in spots. I have a question.... I have tried to get the right kind of glow I like out of AM... but... I really like what I get in photoshop... I kind of figured out a way to do it with AM but it requires doing several renders, changing the toon line color... turning glow on and off... and composting. I have an action in photoshop that gives the same results much faster... well... instantly actually, from just the one render... plus I can change the glow radius and brightness really fast and easy. For animation I can run the same PS action on the image sequences then composite using AE or QT Pro... Is it okay if I just do it with photoshop? Will it offend the purists out there? Actually... I am a purist and I need some reassurance so I don't lose too much sleep worrying about it. Vernon "!" Zehr

Here's the animation.... nothing to jump up and down over... but just a preview to make sure my ideas are doable... yes... strokes are way small... On the illustration previously... the "road" shapes are all done in AM. Each road is a complete flat mesh with groups for the sides and middle. Vernon "!" Zehr building_grow.mov

Here is the rough illustration I showed my client... They love it... I love it... I get paid to use AM! WooHoo! I just did a small animation of the buildings growing and shrinking... WooHoo! I will make a small confession... For this illustration I "removed" the toon lines from AM and used a stroke in Photoshop so I could have more control if needed... Don't get me wrong! The toon lines from AM were PERFECT... I just needed more control. this way I can use the same illustration in many different sizes and won't have to rerender to adjust the stroke weights. The glows were done in Photoshop as well... I am working on doing some tricks in AM to get something similar... but in the meantime this gets the job done. I used several of the layer styles in Photoshop to get that glow just right... I am sure with some time I will figure out some tricky way to get something similar right out of AM. Vernon "!" Zehr

After studying the image a little more I realize now that it is some kind of beverage dispenser... possibly coffee or some other type of hot caffeinated beverage. Please note however, that a urinal and a coffee dispenser sort of go... hand in hand, which could account for my confusion (just remember to wash your "hand to hand" if it is a urinal). Excuse me, I have to go wee. Vernon "WEEEEEE!!!" Zehr

The first thing this... uh... thing conjures up in my mind is an alien urinal... ... a bidet? If so I have no idea what the thing on the left is for. I like it though... just make sure it gets washed before posting another preview. Vernon "!" Zehr

Yes! What Bill said! That was my experience as well. I put in another light on the "other side" set for specular only... and got the same highlights on the edges... on the one side only... if I set the new light for diffuse.. of course it washes out the whole thing... because of the gradient settings. So.. then I tried putting in a "fake" highlight in my toon gradient... it almost worked... but I got "funky edges" around the bevels. Not a problem now. I like my "new and improved" method using a decal tapered "shape" on the edges and corners. I can control exactly how those little highlights appear... just like in Illustrator! Plus... 3D... so I can rotate around... Vernon "!" Zehr

As stated in my other thread about toon render... The "offset" image bump/color issue went away as soon as I turned on multipass. Even just one pass (which is all I need anyway) fixed this problem. I can render at any resolution now and have no problems with the color and bump decals lining up properly. Vernon "!" Zehr

Well... the toon render uses the gradient... so... the highlight is on one edge... and it effects the whole "range" depending on the light hitting it... I am not very knowledgeable with the toon renderer although I am getting absolutely FANTASTIC RESULTS! I think what I will do is just add a "shape" along the edges that taper. I will use a pose to fade them in and out as needed... they will just be flat solid white shapes, 100% ambient, that taper just the way I want. I could even use a decal with an alpha... the possibilities are endless... now that I am getting a feel for the technique. This will work FANTASTIC and be very easy to deal with. --------------------- the other "problem" completely went away when I bumped up the multipass... actually just turning on multipass fixed it. The doubled up, offset decals were fixed using multipass... WOOOOHOOOOO!!! I am having fun again... Vernon "!" Zehr

Just for you Rodney! First off... I am thrilled with the toon render... I have never used it very much before and did not think I was ever going to get the nearly EXACT look I was going for with this! I fell off my chair when I saw this final render. I plan to import these into Flash and auto trace them for use in Adobe Illustrator... at some point... may need to animate... will probably just do that in AM since the client won't need to have those files for editing. I am converting to Adobe Illustrator so the client can use these images in other documents. -------------------- This project involves interpreting the extremely complex internal operations and connectivity of a very large organization. The analogy we agreed upon is a "city"... you have different areas that are connected and work with other areas (color coded)... all connected by... people... streets and electrical systems... plumbing etc etc... They want to show how different customers with different needs can "enter" their city through more than one place. This also needs to be as simple as possible to illustrate and also "reusable" for internal presentations... My idea was to use extremely simplistic flat shaded buildings... and people (think Fisher Price people), in bright colors that can be used individually or as a group and be moved around and highlighted to show how the various interconnected groups work together... The attached image is very very very rough. As you can see I originally was going towards a "non perspective" type of illustration so that the building "objects" could easily be moved around in a drawing program without worrying about perspective and scaling issues... ...however... I don't like it that way... it looks so much better with perspective... so... the heck with reusability... anyway... I will do both and let them decide. edit : This is a total and absolute untouched render straight out of AM!!!!!!! I am soooo happy! Vernon "!" Zehr

Yes... the settings for the two images were out of alignment.... It works fine now. I have found however, that at very small render sizes using the toon render... the images are consistently slightly misaligned. I need to do some more testing and then may report this... I think it is just the nature of the beast. Vernon "!" Zehr

I am enjoying my new found skill with the toon render... it is finally starting to make sense to me. I have two questions... 1) Per the attached image... is it possible to create "edge" highlights... closer to my reference drawing? I know... it isn't "realistic" lighting... would there be a way to fake this with the toon gradient somehow? Or a group with different settings? Would like as simple a solution as possible... may have to animate this stuff later. Hard to see in the illustration but those highlights on the edges "taper" off at the ends. 2) I noticed that if I do small test renders... my bump maps seem to be offset... I have two images in a decal... a color image at 35% and a similar image set for bump. The color image has an alpha and is a single square that repeats depending on the size of the "buildings". The bump is the same as the color without the alpha. It looks as if the bump is offset from the color image. On the larger renders this doesn't occur. It also is not happening on anything "flat". It only has this effect on curved surfaces. I am guessing this has to do with my toon gradient... at that small size... the gradient is too "big" for those small highlight details. If this is the case I can just live with it... I will render large and scale down. Vernon "?" Zehr

Thanks Phillip! My brain was locked... Works like a charm. The only problem... I couldn't figure out how to use hold interpolation in a pose... how do you find the key frame settings in a pose? The reason I would like this is so that the windows don't "grow" out of the "ground". I would like the Y repeat to "snap" at specific points along the pose slider. Even if the window decal "squishes" slightly. This will work fine for now. I won't be animating anything yet for a while... just stills for a PowerPoint presentation. This is going to work great... as many different buildings as I need all from one model... yeehaaa! Vernon "!" Zehr building_grow3.mov

In the attached image I have several different styles of simple "building" graphics all created from one model with several poses. Now... check out the short building and the tall building. I am using a "window" decal with a color image and a bump image with a repeat. For the tall building I increase the vertical repeat.. depending on the height I increase or decrease this value. My question is this... I am very lazy... would there be a way to "link" the Y repeat of one image in a decal to another image? ... or... for bonus points, would there be a way to link the Y repeat value to the value of the "height" pose? I would love to have the "windows" automatically decrease or increase with out having to set it "by hand". Thanks for any guidance. Vernon "!" Zehr

There is a thread on the forum somewhere... about this plugin. Somewhere in that thread is a post with a link to a PDF with tutorial instructions. It isn't hard... but... could be tricky without some guidance. The thread has even more info about it. Vernon "!" Zehr

Regarding the mammarian glandular protuberance dynamic oscillation simulation (MGPDOS)... From my experience... which is not as broad as I would like (forgive the pun)... those babies would have more movement overall... Let's face it... they would really bounce over to the sides more and have a lot more "jelly wiggle". Actually... if she is going to be wearing some kind of... support... the pointy bits would move less than the fatty bits... pardon the scientific technical jargon. Other than that... Woohoo! Seriously though... MGPDOS aside... you are definitely on the right track... according to my Mennonite brethren... it is the "wrong" side of the track... but much more fun. Vernon "Check out her MGPs!" Zehr

On the legs... Isn't the "3rd" section of the legs actually the feet? He walks on his toes... that would explain the variations in length in the animal world. Thinking this way has helped me understand the construction of these types of legs a little better. I am dealing with this right now with a couple of my Happy Bear characters... should Larry the Liger have... animal legs? Or will he have... "regular" legs and big feet... he could kind of... switch around if needed... like... suddenly he goes "animal" and pops up on his toes... Can't wait to see a walk cycle on this demon... Speaking of demons... Uh... Then maybe he should be very skinny with glasses and pale skin from sitting in front of a computer writing viruses and trojan horses... and spam... Sorry, couldn't resist... Vernon "!" Zehr

Hmm... I don't think there is something specifically wrong with wood as a base for the watch... but... what bothered me was that the texture map was at a low resolution and a bit over saturated. I love the contrast of wood and metals. Maybe a darker wood, or something with a tighter grain. Definitely a higher resolution decal image. Vernon "!" Zehr

Amazing model. The only tiny criticism I could make is in regards to the close up view of the hands. The hands are very beautiful... however... for some reason the pinky looks too skinny. Very small criticism. Vernon "!" Zehr

Yikes! W98!? 96mb ram!? That might... be the problem right there... am I wrong people? Should AM run on win98! More ram is going to make a big difference. Most newer computers in the last few years come with more than that by default. Vernon "!" Zehr

There would be as many ways to do this as sand on the beach... In the movie the beams are not "straight"... so you would first want to create either a spline or a tube. You could use just a spline and use render as lines with some glow. (I recommend a tube... more options for creating the effect). You will need then to bone and rig the tube so you can control its movement. Make sure you would have a way to constrain the tip so you could lock it in place to another object in the scene while still being able to animate the rest of your beam wiggling around. Sort of like a tail rig or a tentacle. As for materials... you want some funky stuff going on there... lots of glow... Way too many options to describe specifics... you would need to experiment... Look around for some funky electric looking material samples. I bet the CD would have some on there. A material effector would be nice. Some kind of blobby thing similar to the beam material and animate it traveling up and down the length of the beam. Probably would use a path constraint to a spline on the beam mesh and control the ease. The material effector is actually optional... you could just have another mesh model with slightly different material settings do the same thing. Now remember... if you have more than ONE of these things in your animation... DO NOT let the beams CROSS or touch in anyway... Vernon "!" Zehr