jakerupert

Yes, competition is not bad at all. Maybe it can push A:M to become more flexible in working together with the polygonworld. (I think Malo`s investigations are heading in that direction.) Integreation with sculpting apps and external renderers would be great for A:Ms future. At the moment I have the impression also from this forum here - correct me, if I am wrong- that the userbase is rather constant instead of growing. I don`t want to sound ungratefull after having the new great A:M 17 , but as sure as A:M is steadely evolving, some competitors , even open source, are developing even faster and with more manpower. Allthough this might sound a bit neagtive, its not meant that way and I am a loyal fan to A:M nevertheless, who just tries to follow the "global" cgi-development trends as well.

For A: M it does mean that the advantages it had with its patchmodeling over subd polymodeling are further melting away. In the struggle of systems (there also have been Nurbs, if someone remembers) subd clearly came out as winner and has become industrystandard in games and movieproduction. Another major proaspect of that pipeline is that sculpting mode can be integrated into it, Which also is standard nowadays. A:M s live will become harder in the future, i guess, as competion is coming closer.

Hi MikeV, Jts all about spline continuity. You can always check edgeloops hiting the spline and the comma key. If something really won'T work, don't break your head finding out why, simply break splines And delete cps til your reach your goal. You can live well without ever touching the biashandles. (there was a time, when they had some disadvantages so i never used them ever since) AM is sometimes a bit sturdy , the 5 pointers always have been, but you get used to it. (peaking is always last step ,because it will make it harder to judge splinecontinuity.)

Hi Chris, Very nice work indeed! Is this shown on a kind of Chinese "you tube" or "Vimeo"? the first demo is for a smartphone game? I would try that direction jobwise creating smartphone game apps. I don't know, if you can sell from china to the android and apple app market though? I have been to China many times as a designer for decorational items (christmas,easter, etc.) Mostly to Xiamen and nearby. Very nice and enthusiastic and dedicated people over there developing their country at a fast pace. I wish you all the best of luck for you and your company ;-) Jake

I iinstantly get a picture of Wallace and Gromit and the Technotrousers before my eyes. Wouldn`t dare to risk some slapsticky gigs on your roof...

Hi Robcat, Don't want to step in your way, but from the point of astethics i defintily have to second your city council in that the chindel look much better and fit better to the old style of the house, but thats just a matter of personal taste. Maybe there are still other possibly advantages? Lower noise on impact (rain), better to repair in smaller parts, better room climate? Just guessing. Good luck in this endeavour! PS: Maybe the metalroof would look better in black and they might have it with a sligthly roughed surface. I think, i have seen something like that in denmark I guess, the work is done much faster in putting on some bigger metalsheets than all these tiny chindles? Could you post the adress from that metalroofcompany, i am curious?

Very sorry to hear, that Paul finally lost his long fight. My condolences to you and your family from all my heart Josh. He was also a very important part of this "small world" here!

Yes, supercool!

Hi there, Please let me ask a question related to the new "retopolgy" tool. Could I bring in an obj complete with uvs and texturemaps, normalmaps etc. then retopo in AM without breaking these? (to animate and export later to a gameengine)

This Looks so Good! If this is Not going to become a huge succsess, i will Loose my Faith!

Hi John, here are the ladies under development for the time being... Moony0.tga Olga0.tga

Hi jimd, Thank you for the very interesting info. I will investigate this. What is the best resolution for kindle (Jutoh) As for Apple, I doubt, that I could get an developer license with my content... But I guess I can live without a developer license, if using Lulu maybe I would need a free isbn from Lulu then. Is this comicpage your work? (sigh, a pity I prepared all in 768x1024 now, well back to the drawingboard)

Hi Roger, This is very easy. You have to have an amazon account, which I believe many of us already have. Then you go to your bookself at kdp kindledirect publishing, where you can upload your own books to the pulbic or just for you. I created mine with the free Mobi pocket creator by just doing a photoalbum. The quality though is not very good due to high compression rate of the jpg. (and that`s done automatically) So the wording gets difficult to read. I think ,you can get better results by creating html pages and convert them to e-pub. This format is also obligatory for the apple store, so one more reason to create one. (If you don`t own a Mac you can reach the applestore by way of LuLu) The problem is, there is no template for comicbooks yet, so I am also quite lost for the time being in achieving satisfying results. Guess we have to check forums for e-book comicbooks and the like. What I found so far: There is the free converter calibre, that can convert comicbookzips (cbz) into e-pub I will experiment with that one next> Just zip your comicpages (jpg), rename the zipfile to cbz and then let calibre convert to e-pub Do you need a comicbook also,by the way? Please keep me up to date, what you find out ont his topic...

>Did you notice the floating car to the right of the building?

Cool!! (Sorry, didn`t remember the whole thread: do you go for a short or also gamecontent?)

>The Wannabe Pirates and the Curse of Greyhawk Island was made into four iPhone/iPad apps But wouldn`t it make more sense to create real e-books, that could be bought directly in the apple e-book store, then creating an extra app for each comic, which is very hard to find? I am just trying to find out, how this can be done and if you need an apple for upload... So far, I have created an indesign document 15 x 20 cm for pdf export with 150 dpi. I wonder if it does make sense to have all the fonts in extra textlayers before....hmm

Hi largento, Just discovered your thread here. Great outstanding work as usual! There`s exsisting a quite funny german startrek parody also: http://www.weltbild.de/3/13689378-1/dvd/tr...tml?wea=8001213 Wonder if that one made it to the US? On a sidenote: Haven`t you been experimenting with e-books for your content yet? Should be worth trying, shouldn`t it?

Hi Homeslice, Very good list all around! just let me add my two cents to that topic: >You have to do your own cooking. Eating out and buying boxed/frozen/processed foods gets expensive, fast. just cook a bunch of fresh potatoes and then together with butter eat them with some tincan fish (sardinas) or an avocado or some cottage cheese with herbs. Guess that would be a quite healthy variation once in a while to just noodles. Then as a reward you could go to a steakhouse once in a while. Since in the evening I always eat good dark bread (which you are lacking in the US as far as I know ) with cheese and ham etc. and drink a pure beer I dont feel that I am missing nutrition that way.

I made a "quick" fly through.....(16 hours rendertime) witchhouse0l.mov

>I thought maybe it was the way you made the ebook (the page size is small for the ipad) Maybe Mobipocket creator creates automatically for the standard kindlesize like 7" I guess and i-pad has 10"..... For the villain I used a different font to underline his evil character. I could change that to the other font. Seems all this is still in it`s infancies. The solutions that come to my mind are: -change the page-layout to newspaper strip or one picture per frame, which would ruin the overall page layout though. -in the longer run ask amazon to make it possible somehow to have the pictures and the text in the speechbubbles on different layers for different resolutions. All in one I think the kindleamazonstore is still a great opportunity for us contentcreators and the more competitors there are like applestore, androidstore etc. the better. As the competition will lead to better conditions for us. MAYBE it would be a good idea to make some picture-e-books with TWO and SO content?! Easy to do and could help to spread the word.

Thank you all! >Well I got your book on the iPad using the kindle for iPad app However tHe the text was difficult to read The transfir process was not very crisp But I did injoy it I did the book with Mobipocket creator (free), that compressed all my quite good jpgs to about 50 KB filesizes, which is not optimal for the typo. It would be good to have the possibity to zoom in for comicbooks. You could read it in fullcolor though? What do you mean by "transfer process" the download from the kindlestore? Maybe they will develop the e-book for special e-comicbooks further to better standards in the future.

Thank you! >However I made the book into an iapp and it sold immediately

Hi All, This is some setdesign I created thus far in order to bring some of my 2d comicbook creations to a 3d live for use in movies and games. At the same time, I am experimenting, if e-books from the kindle store could be a possible way for distribution of my comicbooks with these characters. The hardcopy version I tried from lulu gets way too expensive. You can see both and some more pictures at my website related to this topic: http://www.moonshinegirl.com -ONLY FOR ADULTS- Has anybody else here tried e-books for comics yet? cheers Jake

>It helps having photorealistic decals. You mean, one is the photo and two the model, right!

Hi Mark, Great work! Do you have certain plans for her? How come, you don`t have a website?