KenH

Aha! Good idea! You could make it even more realistic by dirtying up the image.

Cooool.

Yeah looks great! I'm also unsure why you used an alpha in your image. Couldn't you just use a normal decal? Perhaps I should look up the other thread.

Cool application.

I think that one pretty much nailed it. Well spotted. Just the hair left.

You're right. More tweaking....

Thanks Paul. Good idea and I just tried it but no luck. Either I'm missing something or it's just not possible. Don't know which. Xade: I know about Colins great tutorial (first and last one I ever needed!) but I was hoping to stay away from skull caps. It's a fine way, but it just seems "incomplete" to me. Also, I'm not sure it would work for this guy as his hairline is all over the place.

I'm having abit of trouble adding the hair. I thought I would be able to just add images(with alpha) to his head and then there would be a way to have the hair constrain to only inside the images. That way you can have hair on only abit of a patch if you only need it. Also that the hair would take on the colour of the image it passes through. But I can't see a way to do this. Would anyone have any advice?

Wow. Great stuff. I'm way off on alot of him. Cheers. Some of his features are very "chiseled" looking. For example his brow furrows. I'm not sure how that could be done with a small amount of splines. Maybe displacement/bump maps would be the answer there.

It's mainly for stitching a spline into an existing mesh. Pressing the shift key as you make it causes the new spline to align and integrate perfectly into the existing model.

Thanks guys. Here's a quick update. Not exactly like him, but without decent reference(or seeing the movie!) it's the best I can hope for. Maybe hair will make a bigger difference. Colin I'll be using your hair tut for that . And thanks again for his eyes.

It's hard to tell without the wireframe. Do you know about pressing shift when you connect a cp?

I'm not sure on this, but I think you can then save the model out of the chor and now it will be a seperate model with all it's rivets.

It seems like you have the shape you're looking to achieve (obviously there's a misunderstanding somewhere). You can remove those floating cps and the shape stays the same.

Thanks. There's not alot of images on the net of him and none are side profiles, but now I can improve his eyebrows at least!

At least I hope it is. I was in the mood for doing a human-like character and he was just....there. I might even finish him too.

Isn't there a second "softness" option (under the shadow settings" to adjust the shadow softness? Did you try that?

I agree, these two constraints could be combined into a "Sticky" constraint. That second one looks complexed to do alright. I know you had trouble with the roll....just a point.....the white piece should roll on the inside of the purple piece. But it ends up on the outside. Or am I missing something?

They do! It's called the community! If you ever need to meet a deadline fast, just hollar But what sort of "add on" would you invisage that would make creating this stuff faster? The animation is great. Nice and funtional. If it was me(but I know it's not! ), I would jazz it up abit. Maybe put it in a room and have a fly by so you can see the whole model and what's happening. Of course, you may have valid reasons for not doing this...

Here he is with wings. Unfortunately I can't use porcelain on him as some of the wing patches are 5 pointers. And we know what porcelain does to them when they're flipped. If anyone has any ideas on how best to do the eyes I'd appreciate it. Currently it's just a white patch with a lathed pupil on it.

That's right..give me more to do! I'll have to put them on him now cos now he doesn't look complete! Time to search the net for some examples.

Thanks! I wasn't going to use him, but I just thought of an idea to enter him in the A:M I contest. So, I guess I'll be texturing him.

You're improving! His upper body is too rigid and his arms aren't moving back to counter his legs moving forward.

There are many ways to model a shape. Here's how I would have approached the base of the ship. If you look at the spheres on the cd, you'll see they only have 32 patches max to make them. Yours possibly have 4-5 times as many. You're thinking in polys.

You're right, I was looking at the reference wrong because it was posed at a strange angle. This way looks better. I could move the neck point up 90 degrees on the head but I think this looks fine. I may animate him....if I get other projects finished. This was just a thereputic project while I wait for other stuff to come right.