mtpeak2

Thanks Emilio. I'm not a very good modeler, so any help I can get to make things easier is a big plus. Your pic of the window with all that detail was amazing. Trying to model that would be a nightmare for me. And your pic of the sweep with the curve gave me the idea for this.

Thats guys. It was pretty easy. When I created the sweep model, the shape I got by using the font wizard and deleting the back half. Then for the extruding path I just created a straight spline with enough cp's for the cross sections to make a nice curve when animated. Then used the sweep plug-in. After that I boned each cross section, bones should not be attached to each other. Drag the model into the choreography and create a curved path. Constrain the bones to the path. Set the eases for each constraint to 0% or close to it (so they don't overlap) on frame 0 and turn off store roll. Then on the last frame set the ease for the first bone and the last bone to 0% and 100% ease and adjust the in-betweens to create a nice even curved shape. If you want it to follow like I did in the first clip, when you set the eases for the nice curve, just do that on say frame 15, then on frame 30 set the eases to 100% for all of them or close to it so they don't overlap. That's it. I hope I made myself clear enough to follow along. If you any questions about it or problems just post it here.

The only thing that really stands out is the size of the head compared to the body, it's too big to my eyes. It could be the shoulders are not broad enough. Everything else looks great though.

Here's a better example.

Emilio, Here's a quick test of animating it to a path. Needed more cross sections. Thanks again.

Can't seems to view it. It just comes up a QT logo.

Here's the project.

Here's a side render. Steve, as for a tut, it's been just playing with the settings of the emitter to get what you are looking for. The modeling is pretty basic. I'll post the project file for anyone who is interested in it.

Here's a higher res pic.

Here's the clip.

Here's an update to the galaxy. I'm rendering a short clip now. I'll post that when it's done.

Looks great William. Can't wait to see it textured.

Here's a quick animated test.

Someone was interested in a 3d galaxy, so I did a little experimenting with sprites.

Here's a new update. Tell me what you think and which one looks better. Thanks.

Hi everybody, thanks for the replies. The lightning is hair applied to different patches on the top half of a dome. The clouds, thanks to Phil Leavens, is a sprite emitter applied to a disc. Having problems with render times with the sprite emitter though. The lighting right now is a bulb keyed in the choreography, but I plan on adding the light to the model. Each hair patch has a slider to control the hair length. By adding the light to the model I can control the light intensity with the slider for the hair, so it does it automaticly making it alot easier. The dome and disc have a black decal on them set for transparency. With the decal in place I'll be able to swap out the image for a background pic. Once I get things worked out and I'm satisfied with it I'll post the model here. p.s. Keep the crits coming it will help me out alot. Thanks again.

Here's an update if anybody is interested. Comments welcome.

Hi everybody Brandon's plasma ball gave me some ideas for a lightning model with sliders that control different strikes. I plan on adding a light to the model for the light flashes that's keyed to the strike within the same slider. Right now I justed keyed the light in the choreography. Here's the test movie. Any suggestions welcome.

Looks great Brandon. You'll have to tell us the settings for the hair. That center rod, does it need to be that patch heavy? Can barely see it in the pic.

Same thing here Ken. Specular is working, but the color doesn't. It's using the diffuse color.

Looks cool Ken. It reminds me of the cave troll of LOTR. Is that what you were aiming for?

Thanks James. I'll have to take it for a test flight.

Looking good. The things I noticed is his legs seem a little too long and the head from a side view looks too flat.

Looking pretty good. Keep at it.

It's really take shape now. The landing gear shouldn't be to hard to set up.