John Bigboote

Global ambiance! Coooool! Never knew that was there...I'll try it! But is that the way the SoulCagers do it? Now, I'll probably get stuck on the next step too...

What? I didn't know A:M HAD Global Illumination? Where? The last i heard you could do a GI 'fake' by setting-up a fast spinning light rig and rendering in multipass(is that the poissant rig?)...please fill me in.

OK JoBub...Elmer... I'm stuck! I'm trying to do what you are showing above...I have a character in my chor with a default light setup and I am trying to get the flat shaded 100% ambient-look you get in your first image... I try adjusting the ambiance for the character in the chor to 100 %...try setting it on the model itself under 'objects' I do not get the flat-shaded result, I do not get anything different at all... Do I need to go thru each group in the model (there's a lot) and make the setting change? Do I have to use the skylight/poissant lighting method?

I was gonna do the 'dont cross the beams' joke but...alas.. Vern! There's some cool materials out there...energy or electricity...which have the look of the beams.... ......it's the Stay-Puft marshmallow man!

Jo B. GREAT STUFF!!! Can you elaborate on the compositing method for 'how you do it'... do you just overlay everything and mix levels and use various compositing modes? Are there any alphas involved? I've been trying to get my stuff in 1 pass 'out of the box' and need to learn your approach. LOVE the 'Beauty' girl! That picture of you and the Hash gang looked like the poster for 'The Usual Suspects' movie. Thanks for sharing!

Could you post an image of Mr. Superintendant...perhaps someone already HAS a model that could be close-enuff or slightly modified, and we'll take it from there...

Thats got a great illustrative comic-bookey feel to it... "I like it a lot"- Forrest Gump

HEY! Another interesting test....it looks like the hair's collision-detection worked pretty well.

I recently changed my Avatar to a clip of one of my 'gurlee gurls' unleashing her hair, it worked pretty well for a test...thought I would show the gang. In the model, the character's hair is 'down' with dynamics ON...then I made a pose with hair 'UP' and dynamics OFF... and as I animate I turn the pose from ON to OFF and the hair falls and becomes dynamic, which I thought was purty cool... I plan to further explore the ability to use grooming mode in poses and actions. To see the clip, simply roll-over my avatar and a button will appear to see the QT sample.

Nancy--- WOW! If you were to make several of these and go for authentic (yeah-yeah, I know!) you would have yourself a saleable commodity! I know it's not intended for motion...but could'nt you give us an encore and do a small motion test???? PWEEEZE! Thanks for the info on how you did it....DANG, now I have to try it!!! BTW- I enjoyed your 'pass the ball' entries as well. Keep-up the good work!

Shaun- Coming in late...just saw your wave...THATS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE COOLEST DANG THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN MADE WITH A:M!!!! Hey...send me the project file...I'll stick a surfer-chick in there! (winkwinknudgenudge!) GREAT JOB!

THIS needs be said: I LOVE THE DAMES!!! That aside... about your glitches... have you checked your normals? If you are using porcelin and normals are flipped you will get that shmutz. I (myself) have been dealing with similar rendering problems but have recently discovered that if I use 'lighting sets' (drag and drop a light onto a model in the chor and explore the options) that this COULD be my workaround... Very inspiring work!

HEY! Thats quite cool JohnL! AND it raises some questions...naturally. WHAT IF you only used the 1 sprite material and made the cloth material invisible...could this be the crux for a 'primordial goo'??? AND... have you, or anyone, tried applying hair to the simcloth? Could be a great way to do long hair.... ???? I don't have 12 yet (what am I waiting for?) Or I would experiment. GREAT TEST!

HEY WILL! Nice work! I just got back in from vacation and that was a pleasant return to HashLand! Matt Campbell (PS: You mis-spelled my name on credit #1...it is Campbell...with a 'P' in it...like ''Campbell's Soup"---if it's not too late.- if it is nevermind)

WOW! Thats GREAT! THANK-YOU!

That test brings-up an interesting question: Why can't HashHair make smooth gradients on the strands? Why is there such banding?

AND...my avatar is also..."avatar and NO nicotine!" (please excuse the above attempt at a pun.)

WHOA! Paul...that's COOL! I had a dream like that once....! DEARMAD: Sorry for small Avatar, but YES! There IS a larger version for viewing. Simply 'Roll-Over' the lower third of my Avatar and a button will appear that you can clik-on to see a bigger version. I used FLASH to make my Avatar... also, upon further investigating...can be found a link to my website. WHICH really, really needs updating! EDIT: Oh, and 'CrimeBomb and MsDeanor' have taken a backseat to other, bigger...ideas and schemes. Maybe SOMEDAY I'll rehash that concept.

WINDBLOWN: This is an old animation (to me)...done in V11.0 about 1 year ago. The vortex can be seen in her hair... I think I was going to try a more subtle effect but got sidetracked and never did it. This shows hair being affected by a fan tho--- as I said in the other Forum, use 'vortex' on the fan setting...I think I remember the others don't work...maybe by now they do... windblown2.mov

Nice work- beautiful imagery- thanks for sharing...those render times scare the crap out of me, I won't be trying radiosity for quite some while.

Looking good Fitz! Hey- a trick I do to 'beef-up' the outline of the character if you have After Effects... Render your guy with an alpha, Open him in AE, use filter/matte choker to suppress the matte a pixel or two giving your guy a nice, bold outerline. Helps to define him and make him 'pop' off the page... Keep up the good work.

Oh wow! Thats weird! Thats an Avatar of mine from about 3 months ago ( I change them frequently) I don't know why your browser isn't refreshing to current images. Maybe try hitting 'refresh' or 'reload current page' button...

Vern---Oakchas... Thanks for pointing that out. I made an adjustment in Flash and my avatar movie 'should' pop-open in it's own window now and from now on. Yes...it's the lighting guy. I fired him. No, I don't have any sliders or keyframes assigned the lights. Once I am done rendering, I go thru the animation, make a list of all the bad frames (in a 10 sec seq there will typically be 20-25 baddies) and then rerender those frames only. THEN, I go thru again, to see out of the rerenders which ones need to be RErerendered....it's a pain in the ASS!

John- That's a great method for bubbles...I'll have a look at that---THANKS! HeyVern- That's a distant cousin of Ms.D Yes, a lot smaller...but her 'mamms' were generated with the sphereize plugin so you KNOW I toyed with the 'bigger'---'more bigger'----'bigger still' idea. Andy- Yes, caustics are on. The transparency of the beer is tricky. It's the same model but it looks too opaque in the fore and background instances and too transparent in the smaller instance the model is holding. hmmm! Mr. Jage- THANKS! BTW---I am STILL being plagued with my render anomoly and from the sounds of it, I am the only one experiencing this crap. Today I am rerendering the glitchy frames, and some of them...even after rerendering 4 or 5 times do NOT want to render right...then all of a sudden they do. It's almost as if something is passing in front of the light (a ghost?) on those frames. Me perplexxed!

And here's a frame full-res. Since everyone is talking about fluid dynamics lately, maybe I'll conduct a test having the glass tip and pour some blobby particles out.