heyvern

Ah yes... procedural materials... This is just me.. but... if I can photograph a piece of wood... and it looks realistic... I just don't have the skills with materials in AM to make them look as good as I can with photoshop and a decal. Plus, more flexibility. I never got into doing those hideously complex nested materials. Pixel size is not an issue... I just determine up front how big I will need it. I have never had any trouble with resolution. I always do the original creation in photoshop at a higher resolution than I will need... then I can resize as needed. Keep this in mind as well... complex materials take more time to render... even if you don't zoom in. Ultimately there is nothing more realistic than reality... so a photo of wood is going to trump the procedural every time... in most cases... sometimes they do look pretty good. All of the surface detail on this is a direct scan from the actual object, I would not have been able to do it otherwise: Just a humble opinion. Vernon "!" Zehr

Like I said only two choices... 1) It doesn't work 2) I am an idiot... or ... I did something goofy I find for myself at least, that number 2 is more likely to be correct 4 out of 5 times! The fifth time I am just lying to myself... Vernon "It doesn't work!" Zehr

You did something goofy there... It should work the same as previous but with the fade. Make sure you didn't accidentally change a setting somewhere.... or maybe you have an extra image in a decal set for color or something. If you have a version saved previous to the "mistake" version, start again and make sure it works the way you want. The key is to find where the change occured. Rather than mistakenly thinking it "doesn't work" or "I am an idiot" (that's my motto when things don't work) try to figure out what happened between the two versions. Go back to the original decal image file and make sure you didn't inadvertently change it when you added the alpha. Make sure you have the decal assigned as diffuse and not some other attribute... (you said bump in the last post... the first post said diffuse map?). If you changed the strength of one image in a decal it will have no effect on the others. If you lower the bump value it will not effect color... so something wierd is happening. I think you have the bump assigned as color by mistake. So... on top of the color decal image already there makes it appear "black"... color images can be cummulative in a decal. Vernon "!" Zehr

I tried that John... no luck. No matter what I did I could not get the vertical lines consistent around the sides of a cylinder. Very ugly results. I think that technique works better with flat shapes. I could get horizontal "rings" no problem. The gridturb was perfect. It will be used in my image entry for the contest... as will a lot of stuff I have been helped with lately on the forums. Thanks again Mark! Vernon "!" Zehr

On of the main reasons I join rather than stick... or whatever... in mechanical modeling... Bevels. I am very obsessive about bevels. I like them. They give wonderful little bounces of light... I also hate with a passion... perfect razor sharp corners. Now there are instances where I can get away with out joining... if the edge touching is beveled and I nudge it ever so snuggly up against another surface... usually only when the spline counts don't match up and hooks won't work for various reasons. I just did this last night! I had a 4 patch area on a larger model. I needed to add a more detailed suface on top of it... but 4 patches wouldn't cut it... I couldn't add any splines or else the whole thing gets wrecked... So... I broke the patches, extruded a bevel for the edges added a new "object" with more splines just touching it... looks great. Nice little beveled seam. So, that being said... I join... and I am looking for a thearapist as well. Vernon "!" Zehr

That's it baby! WooHoo! Thanks much kind sir. Let you know how it goes... Vernon "!" Zehr

John... that is by far one of the coolest wierdest things you have done.... it is on MY list of the top ten favorites of yours. Vernon "!" Zehr

Ah? It doesn't look better yet. You need to "sharpen your pencil" Took me a while to get he hang of rigid bodies but now it is pretty easy for me... I had experience with some spoons a while back. If I had to tumble a stack of boxes... I would absolutely use rigid bodies before attempting to hand animate... But that is just me. Even if it wasn't perfect, I could bake the action and tweak the motion as needed. I don't have the skills or the experience to simulate dynamic gravity effects by hand. I need the simulation. Vernon "!" Zehr

Ah! But the results from rigid body simulation are ten times better (realistic) then hand animating... Plus if you want to add some stuff change things around... if you get it working you don't have to start from scratch with hours of hand animating... It took me all of twenty minutes to use rigid bodies on the cap getting knocked off of the can in my quick animation. I wouldn't have even bothered doing anything with it without rigid bodies because I was in a hurry. Vernon "!" Zehr

I would suggest baking the action once you get it close. Then you can delete the key frames at the end to get it to stop moving. There is probably a way to make it stop... I just don't recall how. Save a file with the rigid body seperately so you can go back if needed. Vernon "!" Zehr

This will be stupid and silly but... Make sure the floor has enough patches... if the floor doesn't have a dense enough grid of patches the boxes sort of poke through the holes. You can cheat and have an "invisible" floor section in the same spot as a single patch floor. I do that sometimes. I just did a rigid body thingy with Gene's spray can vs. the fire extinguisher. The can lid gets knocked off and bounces and rolls across the floor. Video is in the wip section. After I simulated I baked the action so I could move the can. Vernon "!" Zehr

Guy in a suit! Guy in a suit! You see how amazingly realistic AM is!?!? It is so realistic and powerfull it can capture and portray the subtle details of a REAL life man in a big hairy costume... p.s. I really think you should TRY to get sued... imagine the publicity... AND this animation will end up on every news show, late night talk show... you would become famous. If the lawsuit starts to go bad for you... I am sure we can all pitch in and... oh... have to go phone's ringing... Vernon "NOT a lawyer" Zehr

George Lucas is rolling over in his grave right now... ..wait... George Lucas isn't dead! He will be after he sees this of course.... Holy cow! Wouldn't Chewie be like a young kid around the time of Episode 3? Maybe they could get this in there somewhere... "Episode 3... Star Wars Babies!" Vernon "!" Zehr

hee hee... this was fun... My turn John! Can vs. Extinguisher Models provided by Gene, available in the wip forum. Vernon "Ouch! Ouch... cold?" Zehr

I don't know John... it looks kind of fake... Check your specular highlights. Also the spikes aren't realistic. The lighting could use some work, shadows look a little off to me. Green needs to be saturated a little more. The DOF is a bit much for this composition... nothing to focus on. Otherwise a very nice aloe vera plant. What is the patch count? Can we see a wireframe? Vernon "I'M JUST KIDDING!" Zehr

Yeah, right... that's going to keep me away... You should have said "help me with this algebra equation" or "what hair conditionor is best" if you really wanted to keep me away. Nice one John. I don't need fire in AM... as long as I can use someone elses. There is tons of it out there...for a reasonable price... or... a video camera... some black paper... and a zippo... and an extinguisher just in case. Now someone needs to model an Aloe Vera plant. Vernon "Ouchie! Ouchie! Hot!" Zehr

WooHooo! I never saw the Stones thing final rendered before! Great job! The BVH sample seemed a bit... stiff to me... a little jerky. I was extremely disturbed when her arm passed through a breast... I actually shuddered! ..wait a sec!... holographic breast enhancement... future technology?.... Comments on the site (Flash content)... I love your artistic style... would really like to see it carried through in the interface design somehow. When the buttons zoom on and off screen... the click is still active so... if the cursor is on the screen the buttons click as they zoom by... if this was on purpose then nevermind. Portfolio section... I kept closing the window by mistake instead of hitting the back button... had to watch the zipper several times... ...don't get me wrong! I love zippers! I have a large collection of zippers I use everday! Would like a way to get past the intro animation stuff though. Very large stuff... Granted, no one but me uses a Mac... and everyone but me has a really really fast processor... but... very slow here on my end. Those women you draw... very naughty... is this a comment? I believe so! Vernon "!" Zehr

Hah! Got you beat man! I went to Walmart and bought one! Only took 10 minutes! Excellent model. Breathtaking... I can almost smell the grease fire... ...wait... ...That's my stove!!!!! Vernon "Ouch! Ouch! Hot!" Zehr

Wonderful use of booline! Zach... the moving stuff is being cutaway by the stuff standing still... or not stuff actually... the stiff... I mean the shape standing still.... Hey! Is stiff singular for stuff? if it isn't it should be.... ...Oh man... I need to go outside... think that is complicated... I figured out how to animate two identical shapes in a chor with some booline... very exciting... got goose bumps... ...is booleans or booline the plural of boolean? Or should it be a gaggle of booline... or maybe I am thinking of a gaggle of geese bumps.... ...I may have broken something in my head when I hooted so loudly in the forum support section.... Vernon "up up and away in my beautiful boolean" Zehr

I think you get extra points if you can get the point of your sword through the holes and poke your opponents fingers. Very nice sword. Vernon "Ouch! That hurt!" Zehr

This is like that routine on David Letterman... "Is this anything?" David and Paul see some ridiculous group of performers doing crazy stuff and then will decide "is this anything?" I would have to say after much consideration... hmm.... I am going out on a limb here and say that I think this is something... anything... whatever. It is border line though. Very close call. Vernon "am I anything?" Zehr

...Uh... my point? hmm.... uh... er.... I don't know... I guess... he looks like spiderman... and... uh... well... you know... ...he looks like spiderman... Vernon "Pointless" Zehr

I hate to be the one to say this but... ...his new costume looks a lot like spiderman... Vernon "!" Zehr

Large toil! Place it higher! Vernon "Large Odorous Primate" Zehr

WooHooo!! It jiggles! I figured out how to work around the animation difficulties. It can be animated... All the dynamics and rigging is based on Johnl3D's goo bag project in the wip section. Thanks John! I created two separate models. Model 1: Dynamic Bag This model is just the plastic bag with a dynamic constraint at the top of the bone chain. Very straight forward. Model 2: Dynamic Goop This model is the goop shape and the boolean cutter. The exact same set of bones used in the first model are used for the goop. the bones absolutely muct be identical in size position etc. The boolean bone in this model is positioned at the same point as one of the bones in the goop shape towards the top of the bag (5 bones, aligned to number 4). Poses One on/off pose the same for both. One dynamic constraint on the last bone in the chain. Choreography set up I added the goop model first. Just easier to work with out the other model exactly on top of it. I make whatever adjustments to the model position...etc (keep track of this exactly... need it to be the same for the other model). The model is horizontal so I had to rotate the base bone 90 degrees on the first frame. I then add a constraint to the boolean bone to translate to the 4th dynamic bone (the one it is aligned with in the model). Step through the dynamic simulation and adjust the translate offsets and rotation of the boolean bone to simulate the "air bubble" sloshing around inside the bag. Once this is done I add the plastic bag model and set it in the exact position as the goop model. Attached is the sample movie that I did very quickly. I tried to slosh the bubble back and forth at the end... not enough frames so it looks very jittery. Improvements I think I should be able to come up with a constraint set up that will allow the boolean bone to follow the motion with out the need for so much hand animation on it. That is the only problem right now. To much effort to get the boolean to maintain realistic motion and volume to represent the air bubble. I can provide a project file if anyone is interested. Vernon "Don't spill the goop" Zehr (edit: I did a new improved render. I think it looks a little better.) goop2.mov