heyvern

Unfortunately no... need it now. I think I am just going to use a bunch o' little meshes and scatter them around. Using 8 patch sphere shapes and distorting them into a bunch of amorphous globs should do the trick... only need about 50 or so...phew... I tried animating this technique using John's project file... it won't work!!!! I posted a more thorough explanation to the general forum if anyone is interested. Has to do with booleans and dynamic chains. Can't have a booleaned chain of bones. Vernon "Globs of goop" Zehr

Need some more help if possible... I would like to have a material for the goop that is sort of "thickish" (opaquish) in appearence, with some globular particles floating in it. Can't use blobbies... for some reason they won't show through the boolean cutter. It sort of eliminates it... or maybe they don't show through the transparent goop... either way blobbies don't seem to work... I could be doing it wrong... or my version of AM is too "old". I have not tried spriticles yet... I just kind of figured I would get the same result. I seem to recall that someone created an example of this, I am just having trouble finding it. thanks for any guidance. Vernon "Very Thickish" Zehr

Well, I threw this together to show the process. Hope it makes some sense. It is kind of hard to show it what with all the hidden shapes and transparency. On the left is the pws showing the groups and bones. The key thing is that the plastic bag is assigned to the "dont_cut_me" bone which is a child of the boolean cutter bone. The big green boxy shape is assigned to that. The goop shape is just left unassigned to any bone or the model bone. It could be assigned to another bone as long as it is not in the same hiearchy as the boolean cutter... this info is more for people who are not familiar with booleans. Let me know if you need to see more. Vernon "Don't cut me!" Zehr

I tried a new version of this technique with out any success. The basic concept is this... A "goop" shaped cylindrical tube... with thickness. Like an extruded doughnut. Bag shape "inside" extruded and wrapped outwards. To create sort of like a mold. Then put stuff inside which gets cut away by this boolean "mold" What happens is that the transparent bag (not booleaned, child bone) is fine, but the goop shape which is now just a block inside the bag shaped "tube" becomes invisible where there is "overlap" of the boolean shape. Where the double/quadrupled surface of the mesh in the view plane overlaps... the shape inside becomes totaly removed... rather than picking up the texture of the boolean as in the original example. Hard to explain. Needless to say, it just doesn't work. I am still playing around with the technique. The other way works fine. I will stick with it for now. Will post some screen grabs later of the technique. It is really simpler than it sounds. Vernon "Is that a boolean or are you just happy to see me?" Zehr

I will kill two birds with one stone here... well, two questions answered anyway... I know, I know, it is called "Animation" Master but... ...this bag of goop will not be animated. It is for a still image. If it ever needs to be animated, that will have to be addressed separately I think. Should be a fairly easy matter of moving and rotating the boolean bone I think. I would have to make the boolean shape larger to make sure it encompasses the goop shape. As for what the goop really is... uh... you will just have to wait and see! It is a surprise! thanks for all the comments, those that have been... and those that will be... I will definately take them all into consideration as I perfect my goop. Vernon "Happy Gooping!" Zehr

Thanks Joakim! Yes, there is a slight blue cast to the plastic bag. It is mostly white with just a hint of blue. I actually studied the type of plastic I was trying to simulate. It has a ghostly bluish cast. The blue becomes more pronounced at that corner because I have set a fairly high density on the transparency of the plastic. I also have a great big dome with a bluish image and a skycast material on it for reflections in my scene. There is just a tiny hint of reflectivity (5%) in the plastic so it will probably be picking up some of the dome. Density will cause the transparency to "thicken" the further away something is, it will become more solid, and show more of the color of the group. The bluish tint in the upper corner is more pronounced since you are seeing more plastic at that angle and there is less goop. Since the goop is practically touching the bag at the base, the density doesn't have as much effect. I used the density so that I get that thickening where the bag is sealed, without it the bag becomes very cellophaney... too clear. Keep playing with AM. You will get the hang of it someday. Of all the cool things I have done over the years, this is probably the easiest with the coolest result. p.s. if you see a blue shine everywhere you are taking too much viagra. Vernon "!" Zehr

Well, it works! Is it just me or does this look like a good ole bag o' goop? Still needs tweaking for its final use of course... I like it! I used a boolean... here is the set up.. Plastic bag mesh. Duplicate bag mesh slightly smaller (bag is transparent... need some air between goop and bag to avoid the transparency artifacts when surfaces are too close. Also avoids accidental pass through of the goop outside of the bag). A box like mesh above the goop shape. Assign box shape to boolean bone. Assign plastic bag to a child of boolean bone so it won't get... booleaned. I then use two different groups and material settings. The boolean shape has a lighter color with a bump. This would then be the surface of the goop inside the bag but not touching it. The main goop shape gets a darker color with out the bump (there would be no bump since it is conformed to the bag. The bag has its own bump). This worked great... but I took it a step further. I was getting a perfectly flat surface across the top of the goop with the boolean... I didn't like it. So I added more splines to the boolean shape and and added slightly curved edges, lining it up as close as possible to the edge of the goop where it touched the bag. It was not perfect since the boolean shape is boxy... but close enough to work. What this gives me is a slightly curved edge to the goop, like surface tension, which catches the light for a nifty specular highlight right along the edge of the goop as it touches the bag. Vernon "Big fat goop monkey" Zehr

I seriously hope that the cypress wood was recycled from old trees harvested from under the water in rivers and not cut down from living plants. Vernon "Environmentalist Conservationist" Zehr

It looks like you have some ambience on the car? It looks like it is "glowing" slightly. I would recommend not using ambience at all. If it needs to be "brighter" adjust the lights. I find ambience gives things an unreal quality and is hard to control. Just some food for thought... ...hmm... food... now I'm hungry... Vernon "!" Zehr

To Mike, If you go down this road you will find it hard to have any heros. Don't forget about eugenics in American history... look it up. Most people don't even know much about it unfortunately. You can add to that same list of "unworthy heros", Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, H. G. Wells, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bernard Shaw ...etc...etc... ad nauseum... ick... yucky... It was a different time... LOTS of people were stupid and misinformed by pseudoscience. Hopefully we know better now and have learned from those mistakes in the past. Vernon "!" Zehr

This is truely an outstanding image. Beautiful. The sky is well done so is the ocean, the plane... etc.. For me though... it just seemed... old hat. I can't even tell you how many sunset images of aircraft over an ocean I have seen. It seemed to me to be a bit too much "been there done that". The Lindbergh story itself is a bit worn and tired, at least for me. I don't judge his achievement based on his political views. He is still a brave and important figure in history. I guess a beautiful plane on a peaceful ocean at sunset doesn't say hero as much as... A really cool muscled guy flying through space with glowy stuff shinning off of his body, or a sexy woman with a really cool sword and not much else! I only had 4 votes! I didn't even vote for the one that was a likeness of me! I feel very bad about that too. Vernon "!" Zehr

I agree with the comments on the stains. In the reference photo the stains are much larger as well. On another note... the edges are... too sharp I think. I am sure they are all beveled but from the wide shots they look pristine and very sharp. Maybe a more pronounced bevel that is "varied" in its width and/or some more chips and nicks (not to be confused with chips and dip). Vernon "!" Zehr

Beautifully done! Excellent job on the ropes and fabric aspect of the item. I always find that type of thing very difficult to pull off realistically. I especially like the flap folded back at the top. Gives a real sense of the material. Vernon "!" Zehr

Hmm.... I would go with a bolder, stronger font for the text of the logo. Since it is in 3D the lighter weight font tends to look a tiny bit weak. Maybe just changing it to bold. It needs a larger front surface to read more powerfully. Other than that, excellent job. Vernon "!" Zehr

Very well done. The mammarian glandular protruberences seem to be overly effected by negative gravitational forces (the boobies are a little droopy)... but overall, they have a nice "feel". Arms, legs and head... oh yeah... I just noticed those are missing... yeah... I guess you will need those eventually... Vernon "Thanks for the mammaries" Zehr

It's funny... You explain what you did, and I always think I know what to expect.... ...it never ever looks like what I expect.... "Oh yeah, bones translate to another bone...random...with expressions...different lag rates... okay..." "" "What the heck....!?!?" Vernon "!" Zehr

Jamagica, You didn't have to take the subject that literally... Fantastic look! Can't wait to see some action! Vernon "!" Zehr

WooHoo! It's like a cross between the discovery channel and the airport luggage scene from Toy Story 2! (Pitch it that way to hollywood, maybe you could get Thom Hanks to do a voice over in the feature length version) I didn't understand any of it but I really liked it! Will notebook computers really float around like that in the future? That could could come in handy.... JUST KIDDING! Seriously though, positively amazing job. Congratulations. Extremely impressive. Man! if stuff like this keeps coming out... we won't be special anymore. Now when my brother visits for the holidays, and wants to see A:M can do... I'll just turn on the TV... Vernon "Nano-Nano" Zehr

I am so sorry.... this is not your intention obviously... But every time I see this animation I have these thoughts of clarified butter, or a cream sauce... I am evil... I am hungry... I am... Vernon "Where's my bib?" Zehr

That is exactly how my parents described me in their Christmas letter!! Very cool test John... did you pass? Vernon "!" Zehr

I'm impressed! You are very very good! The beauty of the image is created by the color and placement of the lights and yummy reflections. Hats off to you my friend. I think this is what some new users expect to happen "magically" when they create a chrome object. Vernon "I've asked Him...still waiting..." Zehr

That is beautiful.. absolutely beautiful... I wish my tub looked like that... maybe if I cleaned it more often... Would love to see the material settings for the tub... I love the look of it. Kind of like a car. Movie played very speedy for me... so fast I had to scrub through it slowly so I could gaze at the excellent inner surface of the tub. And I have an older Mac. "To bathe: perchance to soak: ay, there's the tub" Vernon "rub-a-dub-dub" Zehr

You could do a screen capture in the modeling window or the choreography or a wire frame render. Vernon "!" Zehr

Excellent job for a new AM user! I am very impressed. Don't be like me though! I have been using AM for years and in all that time I never completed the tutorials. Because of this I feel my life is a little empty and joyless... like something is missing... Looks great. Just a few suggestions: Add a texture to the end of the bristles... just to blend it in. And a texture on the side of the handle. Not neccessary for your use but would complete the image. Vernon "!" Zehr

You have to make a percentage pose so he starts out skinny and then gets fat. You have captured the look perfectly... I especially like the blank stare from those frightening beady black eyes... I remember watching that show as a young child... and being very confused... no way could someone get that fat that fast... I was a very cynical realist as a child... I also believed the other reindeer were not responsible for rejecting rudolf. He was a genetic mutation... most animals would do the same thing... ...man... I was a wierd kid.... I still loved that show! I have it on video! Vernon "!" Zehr