heyvern

I appreciate the effort of producing a short, but... Seems odd to be showing off a wip done in another application. AM's modeler is one of it's strengths. If you plan to "trace" this model in AM later.... ...how is that easier than just doing it in AM in the first place? It seems very confusing to me... and a freakin' ton of extra work. You may want to hold off posting too many images until you get to a point where they are relevant to AM. Just a thought. Vernon "!" Zehr

Couple of things to check/try.. Do a render to make sure this anomaly is visible. Also, whenever I do this type of modeling... I will peak all the splines in those areas and use bias to create the curved "bevel" on the edges. When you have the "curved" splines in that situation wierd things happen... specifically a single long spline like that across a patch. I bet if you added a couple of extra splines... hey! You already have 'em! As Ken mentioned this will go away if you continue those dead end splines all the way across to the other side. It will of course create 3 point patches but they won't look too bad. Vernon "!" Zehr

Hee hee.... ...and yet... no matter how annoying... you guys keep.... reading... and being annoyed... ... actually I thought the last image was Mr. MM giving us all the finger rather than a phallus... hard to say which is worse... I suppose the phallus... is less of a threatening gesture... than getting flipped off... it also could be interpreted as a mortar and pestle... but then we are back at the phallus again with that one... Oh... the cave... yeah... definately a phallus... I am a little slow on picking up those subtle references. ------------- Imagine a scale with... Die Hard on one end... and ... Altered States on the other... On the one end of the scale we have Mr. Willis blowin' stuff up... very straight forward... on the other end of the scale... we have William Hurt forcing us to examine the meaning of life and the origins of existence... Mr. MM... you are stuck... the needle on your gauge can't find a spot in the middle. Sometimes we just want to see Bruce blow stuff up... not think about the nature of the universe... Of course... ...[/b]Altered States[/b] does have a very young Blair Brown neked... you can't beat that with a stick... or a phallus in a manger. Ban? The images or the message? Be carefull... I think some of Brian Prince's stuff has telephone poles in it... and very tall "erect" trees... Vernon "!" Zehr

No! I like the sounds! I was sitting here running the mouse over the buttons making a tinkly joyful noise... then I heard all of these dogs barking and started to wonder if it had anything to do with me... One of my neighbors has a "hive-dog". that is my name for "it". "It" is a single dog with 7 heads and 28 legs... "it" moves as one creature with a swarm like motion... barking and yapping. Occassionally one "piece" of it will get seperated... like the metal hook on the T-1000... this smaller piece is easily frightened, and will scamper off to rejoin the "body". Some day I expect it to assemble itself into the shape of one large dog like a transformer robot and go on a rampage through the neighborhood... I loath chihuahuas... like skinny, vibrating, hairless rats with bug eyes... Vernon "AAAHHHGG! Chihuahuas!" Zehr

Thanks Ken, but actually... I was trying to find out some background on Mr. MM himself, not your background on this forum MM. I get the impression that Mr. MM is "having some fun" with us... no one can be THAT obtuse. You have to really go out of your way to miss a point that far. That last group of links was hysterical! I almost thought you might be Kte'pi... but that would be too easy. Those links you posted, though all over the place, seem to have a theme to them... or maybe they are just random? Some were quite humorous... which leads to yet another analysis of your motives. (I hope some of you read Bill Kte'pi's rambling on determinism and "life as game". This is great stuff.... I liked the painting done with the wip best.) Anyway... since Mr. MM started this thread I don't think I will worry as much about possible thread-jacking. Perfect opportunity to delve deeper. ---------------------- Mr. MM, Was that your voice in the God head animation? I sensed a slightly humorus tinge to it. I sensed a somewhat comical tinge to the first animation you posted on the forums... the little block of wood character. I may be reading too much into it... it is well known I find the oddest things comical... or maybe I am just whistling in the dark... you are really freaky... I have met some odd characters here in cyberspace over the years... you are tops in my book... don't rest on your laurels, still early days yet. Vernon "!" Zehr

Good lord! Skeletor really let himself go. I always wondered what happened to him. You don't keep up the regimen all that muscle just goes to fat. Very interesting character. Look forward to more! Vernon "!" Zehr

Nice job. What did you have for reference? Just photos or did you get some 3D data? BONUS! I can make all the dogs in my neighborhood bark up a storm by running my mouse over the buttons! Vernon "!" Zehr

Mr. MM, Can you give us just a tiny hint of your background? Your story? No specific details. I am just so curious to know more of YOUR big picture. To be honest you come across as a very...uh... strange... but unique individual. Sometimes a bit over the top but still the animations and images aren't... bad... they aren't jump up and down great... but... they either are very very funny... or very very frightening... depending on how you look at it... and if it is late at night and very dark with 40 mph winds howling ominously outside... as it is right now here at my house.... that howling God head scared the bejesus out of me (kind of ironic when you think about it). I have to watch some Disney now to stop the shivers up and down my spine... Chitty Chitty Bang Bang looks good... I have to know! Are you playing with us or are you for real? If you are "for real" you may want to cut down or increase your medication... I can give you some referrals to specialists if you need them... I don't get any finders fees just because they are family either. If you are "playing" us, then... good job dude! Vernon "Truly Scrumptious" Zehr

That is beautiful. I remember the previous thread as it has "evolved"... amazing final result. Keep this up and you will give Brian Prince a run for his money. The only critique I might have... just a tiny thing really... The pillars look almost as if they are a little "shiny" or slightly "wet". This may be intentional... like some sort of wet fungus is growing on it... maybe a dank atmosphere... just my observation. Vernon "!" Zehr

Wow! Rodney you should go into politics! Very nicely done. There is a fine line to straddle in these situations. You don't want to discourage people, but at the same time... it can get out of hand. What I try to do is to make an effort to read between the lines determining who "deserves" a thorough response. This is not scientific... and probably is not exactly fair... but I have to start somewhere. This could also be a tip to new users. When you ask your questions, dropping subtle hints about tools and basic use of AM, and other places you checked for information, indicates that you have made some minimum effort to try on your own first. Asking for help in small chunks is beneficial to both sides as well. Sometimes there is so much information requested I just roll my eyes and click out... sensory overload. Attitude is a big plus. If the "attitude" of the questioner actually "puts me off" I am less likely to help. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. SUBJECT TITLES!!! Put the actual question in the subject, or as much as possible! Please! You have two whole lines available. We could almost read a plot outline before we even click the link. "I have a problem!" I almost never click those... unless I am really bored or curious... plus doing searches later... these can get totally lost. ----------- One last tip! Every member of the forum has an option for a signature. Go in there and just add your computer specs and AM version. This helps when others are trying to solve your problems. You will never get those responses "What platform and version of AM do you use?" ever again. Vernon "Do as I say not as I do" Zehr

Heres another one.

Great dragon! Can't wait to see it fully textured. Don't forge to put in a translucency map for the viens in the wings! there was a link recently to a photoshop tutorial on different map creation techniques in photoshop. One example had this gorgeous grayscale image for slightly translucent bat wings. p.s. The origins of the dragon myth have been linked to the skeletal remains of the extinct cave bear. These bears were HUGE and seemed to spend a tremendous amount of time in large caves. Because of this these gigantic huge fierce looking dragonlike skulls would be found in caves. Piles of them sometimes... along with all the bones of the animals they ate as well. Since cave bears were extinct, the early discoverers of these skulls would make up fantastical stories about flying beasts that lived in caves. ...these things were HUGE! They were GIGANTIC! Vernon "!" Zehr

My advice would be to not even look at this for a long time. Months and months. When you do go back to see it... it will look like someone else did it. Things you never noticed will pop right out. As for imediate critiques... Well the obvious ones are... More secondary motion. Characters shouldn't freeze solid. Lip synch of course... sheesh! That's going to be a lot of work. Smoothing the joints on the models. Either fan bones, smart skin or weighted bones/CPs. And one big picture kind of thing. Camera moves and angles. I don't have a specific suggestion for this, just think about some possible dramatic camera moves on some of the wider shots rather than a hold from the same spot. For instance when the house is disasembled... man! That would look so cool if the camera could pan around and in the house as it is pulled apart and float away.... You could have the characters visible during this process as the parts drift away.... That is directing though... you are the director and will probably learn better and more at school than my feeble attempts. A lot of these things I noticed starting to come through in the last section, when the woman goes up into the space ship. It was almost like you hired a new animator there. Definate change in quality. Some of the "acting" improved as well as the lighting and composition. I won't kid you and say it was ground breaking but it is obvious at this early stage you have the potential. p.s. Great penguins Greg! v4! I am impressed. I am working with a golf client right now. They chose a dog as their mascot... I may get to do some AM stuff with it for the web site! At least a dog can have arms and hands to hold the clubs properly... Vernon "!" Zehr

Excellent job!!!! 6 weeks! You should be extremely proud. This is amazing considering you had to go from 0 to 60 in such a short time. The story line was very clear, and it worked well with the music. I can definately see you after some "skoolin" going back in and redoing it. Of course it has a lot rough edges. Don't even worry about that. It's the big picture that counts. I won't make any critiques as you probably know the big ones anyway. It would be pointless to go into too much detail at this stage... it did its job. Did you do all the shots in sequential order? I mean did you do the begining first and the end last? I thought perhaps I saw a progression in the skill level from the beginning to the end. Forgive me if I am mistaken. Great job and congratulations. You should do well with that kind of dedication. Vernon "!" Zehr

Oh my GOD! Tom Servo WAS in Troops! It was absolutely hysterical! As far as I am concerned Troops was the best Star Wars fan film ever... it was better than the prequals... Vernon "!" Zehr

Mystery Science Theater 3000 No longer in production... It was an absolutely hysterical cable show about this guy trapped on an asteroid with two robots. He was forced to watch horrible B movies (mostly sci-fi) by these evil scientists. Then he would report back on them. While the actual movie played, he and the two robots could be seen in silhouette at the bottom of the screen in the front row of like a movie theater. They would heckle and make comments about the movie as it played. The first host of the show was the best. They replaced him later and it sort of died. They made it into a movie... which is ironic really. This is very funny. I do this myself when I watch movies... not in the theater of course. I only did that once during Matrix Revolutions... I screamed out in one scene towards the end "Die already! Why won't she just die!". I was applauded by the other six people in the theater... it was a very long scene. Vernon "!" Zehr

MST3000 VZ

He looks a little like... ...like if the blue fairy... turned Buz Lightyear into a real boy! I agree with the comments... the 'eyes' have it! Vernon "!" Zehr

I think your CP count is good actually. Very effective use of low patch count. The only place to watch out for is where there will be motion. But bassically a rabbit just sort of twitches his nose and nibbles. If you plan to put fur on this guy... you can hide a lot of mesh "irregularities" with hair. That is something to watch out for though. Consider a "bald" rabbit (I am sure some lab somewhere has one). When you add fur or hair... he will get "poofier". I made that mistake with my Happy Bear characters and had to put them on crash diets so the didn't look like big puff balls. Especially the legs arms and neck areas. As for the teeth... can't tell where you are having a problem. I had to do the same thing with my characters in happy bear. I have HB with a set of "human" teeth. It was that free model someone posted a while back. An absolutely PERFECT set of realistic teeth, gums and tongue. Beautiful. I carefully scaled and tweaked until they fit his mouth. You may want to check some skeletal head shots of rabbits to see how the teeth are actually positioned, and how many they have. For Gary the Gopher, I only created two teeth... right up front... that was all you would see anyway. Oh wait! You have a rabbit! Can you get him to open his mouth for some photo reference? Vernon "!" Zehr

I was actually thinking you could just do one tiny scene from the book. I would love to "borrow" your rabbit when you get him done and give it a go... just for fun. I wish someone who loves the book would do it as a movie... someone "like" Peter Jackson. Those movies wouldn't have been so successful without a huge devoted (and talented) fan like him. Vernon "!" Zehr

I was going to reply but Josh beat me to it. It didn't show up (because I discovered later I mangled the material by accident) but I did a, not exactly similar, but sort of, material for that "translucent" flexible foam packing stuff for the image contest using the technique Josh described... minus the hair... didn't need hair. It really looked perfect. It had those nice "big" bumps to distort the mesh for the edges, plus the wonderful little bubbly details in the bump, all done with material turb combiners. Trust me on this... you do need a somewhat higher patch count for displacement but you don't have to break the bank. It doesn't need to be a bazillion patches. For instance I had a fairly simple shape for the foam... and decided later to add displacement. my original mesh had more than enough patches to work... which probably means it had too many in the first place... but still, you get my point. ------------- You could also try a nice big ole hair image for the hair. This is where you assign an image to the hair emitter. it allows you to cut waaay down on density and it really gives a nice curly patchy hair look. Coling Freeman gave me one for Happy Bear that looked a lot like the nap of a paint roller to be honest. Vernon "I need a REAL hair mat!" Zehr

Good grief! I just realized something... I think Steven Spielberg's movie directorial debut was a TV movie called... Duel I loved that movie... This looks great Raf. I can't wait to find out why they are fighting... he cut him off in traffic... spilled his beer... or... tastes great... less filling... polygons vs. splines... so many options... Vernon "Splines taste great!" Zehr

More stuff! Some "beauty" shots of some of the items in the project... probably should have just focused on a few things in a tighter image instead of like 50... These were a bit "out of place". I had intended to have a creature partially climbing out of the Wonder Womb... but... it was too much... besides everything was fresh out of the box... unused. The scissors got "bumped" before the final render so you don't see much of it in the big picture. So my thought was... you would need some sort of medical instruments to work on these creatures... like clamping off the embilical cord... or snipping open the artificial placenta in the Wonder Womb... Scissors and clamp I always try to put stuff on these things even though it will never be seen. I know it's there... so it makes me laugh. The text you can't read is just lorem ipsum... greeking. Most of the text on the Quick Start Guide is just lorem ipsum... so no... you can't actually read anything about maintenence. Like AM... Creature Creator 7.5 is Mac and PC. You can't see it... but I did put a special warning at the bottom of the CD for the EvoSim application... for those of us with different beliefs... Sorry Dan! I couldn't resist! It's all in fun! It was our powerful discussion in the rants and raves (R.I.P.) that sort of inspired this idea in an indirect way. Junk DNA... that was the first thing. I kept laughing thinking of a bag of junk DNA with a big caution label... Creature Creator CD-Rom I had intended to use red dye for this as a contrast to all of the blue. I couldn't find any photos of red DNA stain. Apparently it may be more toxic... or expensive. It also doesn't give as accurate results. The references I did find all had cool names like "Azure Blue" or "Mystic Blue" stuff like that... so... for the kids... Concentrated DNA stain bottle If anyone would like to have any of these models, just let me know. I don't know how often I will ever be using a medical clamp (that sucker is very accurate as well). Vernon "Nurse... clamp..." Zehr

Hey! If you get this done... it would be great to do a scene from watership down! I keep thinking that is one book that could be re-done as a CG movie. Looking good so far. Definately has the spirit of a rabbit in it. Vernon "Spirit of a gerbil" Zehr

Wow! So many people staring at my image all day... every day... I will warn you... I did that as I worked on it... it gets kind of old. I have spoken with my agent and he feels some remuneration is due. I think that a reasonable amont would be $500.... ...$50? ...50 cents? Okay! Okay! No charge! But this is the last time! p.s. I'm kidding! I don't really have an agent. Vernon "Thank you!" Zehr