John Bigboote

Congratulations! You must have left-out the paragraph where they talk about the money...

COOL! One suggestion... try rendering that image again but this time turn on 'fog' and set it to the bkgd color...might be purt bit cool. It would account for the millions of particles in water deep water that limit visibility.

Make sure your normals are all facing the same direction. Porceline needs that. Yes, the distortion box feature is very powerful and straightforward and easy to use. Do not be intimidated, it's a piece of cake. Works good in actions and poses too! Play with it for 1/2 hr. you'll know all there is to know.

Great start! Get out the encyclopedia or google for 'parts of a castle' and do the rest! The barbicon, the moat and drawbridge, the bailey, the inner and outer curtains, the keep, the chapel, the parapet walks... Take a look at a Disney movie at the castle in their signature. Very simple, vericle...cool!

OK. Givin' up on the cape for now. It's just NOT in the cards for a long haired character...not in motion anyway. My cape had 3 layers of dynamic chains, and looked a LOT more active in the app than it does after render, what happens to all that cool secondary motion? I'll post my test in the WIP forum because this one will not allow attachments. Basicly, I rendered it 2 ways: WITH collision detection and WITHOUT. With CD the cape bounced off the hair repeatedly and sprang and recoiled furiosly out of control. Without CD, as in this test post, the hair simply passes thru the cape. An interesting side note: I saw 'THE INCREDIBLES' last night. They sort of cover the whole superhero-cape thing in a humorous light. What an UNbelievably COOL movie that was! TOP NOTCH! 3D feature animation has come a LONG WAY since Toy Story. Go see it. Don't wait for it on DVD, see it projected. cape.mov

THIS may be a perfect time to use the AI Wizard. Simply create the shape you need in Photoshop with the bezier pen tool, when done choose File/Export shapes to Illustrator. In A:M make new model, right click in new window choose Wizards/AI and specify the file you made in Photoshop, set the bevel options if desired and hit OK. A:M will do the modelling for you at that point, and it is usually quite good!

AWESOME! Great toon line style! LOVE the Jessica Rabbit hairdo. Show us more! AWESOME!

FRIDAY: This was my contest entry in the Anzovin's modeling contest this summer, and it took 2nd place in the Centaur categorie. Today I was tinkering with TSM2 and thought 'hey- I'll rig that centaur model'...so this is the result of 2 hrs rigging, 1 hour animating and an afternoon D1 render. There are NO cogs,intermediary bones or smartskins yet. We havent seen too many 'alternative' models rigged with the new TSM2 so I thought I'd post it. MONDAY:RErendered over weekend, the reflections appeared after restarting A:M and reloading the project, I also turned on the motion blur (multi-pass) for this test. 176 views over the weekend! Thanks for the compliments! I am updating the movie now. sexxycentaur.mov

How cool! Are you going to try toon rendering him?

pretty cool, not too meaty for a turkey tho- what tutorial are you referencing???

I applaud. AWESOME! However, I also took note of the stars. They are what I call '1 pixel stars'...meaning that- each star has the exact same magnitude in terms of distance and brightness as the next. When I look-up to a starry sky, the first thing I see is the multitude of depth before me. My recommendation: Since the camera does not swing around too much laterally, build yourself a 'multiplane' star effect using photoshop to create alphas for 1 or 2 foreground levels and a beautifull painting with a milky-way ribbon for the background, it's not that hard using copy and paste methods and the levels do not need to be too offset to sell the illusion of depth. Make sure the ambiance levels are set high and they should appear perfectly. As far as the mountain and the 'Balrog' I cannot bring myself to comment, there is simply nothing to pick at. I applaud. Happy Hallowe'en.

Hey cool model--- I'm always thinking in terms of motion so I need to ask- Did you leave room for his head to 'turtle' into his body? Maybe he needs a bit of a 'cowl' around his head/shell... Lookin good tho-

Believe it or not, for most of my mechanical 'blocky' shapes I do my modelling right within... Adobe Photoshop! Model in Photoshop, you ask? Yes, up to the point of extrusion. You draw your shape using the pen tool (bezier) and when done 'export' shape to an AI file. (adobe illustrator) Then in A:M, use the AI import wizard and it will add the bevels perfectly to your design. Works like a charm and saves hours of bevelling time.

Maybe something is missing in the veneer of the candy, you should take a good look at an m&m thru a magnifying glass...there would be a little reflectivity, no? Maybe this is a good time to experiment with v11's reflective filters and falloff... I look forward to seeing some animation with your TSM2 rig!

Forgot to mention, when you add a new pose to a character thats already being used in a chor you need to save,close, and reopen the project before that particular pose slider will take effect, I've heard of other ways around this, but this is the way I get my NEW pose sliders to react... Your animation is looking lots better.

Here's an example, no audio yet, of using distortions in the face to get some elasticity into it.... I plan to add more 'extremes' to these poses, seems you just can't make them extreme enough. In this scene MissD. complains about her boots... 'stars' were added in After Effects using an animated morey pattern. SHOE2.mov

As I said in a similar post... I'd like to see you take the mouth to more extremes. Here you have a hot chick in a men's room---I KNOW you built a wider 'O' mouth for her than that...

Good work. Here's my 2bits: The face is too static. Did you make the pose sliders or were they provided? Either way- make more. More EXtremes. It looks like he's got invisible glue all over his face prohibiting motion. Put your hands on your face in the Macualey Culken 'Home Alone' pose and talk, feel movement? Hash's new distortion box feature makes it easy to add flexibility to a face. I usually make a new pose with a +100/-100 range and call it 'FACESQUASH LEFT-RIGHT' then in musclemode lock just the facial-skin CP's and then go into distortion mode and add 'squash' to one side of the face while adding 'stretch' to the other...then go to -100% and do the opposite. Slide it back and forth accordingly during the animation and you have some neat facial action.

Yup- good idea Rodney... in fact that gets me a-thinkin...would'nt it be cool to use Arctic Pigs to recreate famous air-battles or to illustrate air-combate strategies? Does the military pay very much for learning tools? CA-CHING!$$$$$

Godfrey (Jeff Lee...not Lew) put-up a GREAT tutorial movie on how to make a globe which would be highly beneficial to you, unfortunately the link is broken, Godfrey- can you repost that globe-tutorial?

Hey- thats QUITE cool...have you ever done any animation with that? I would LOVE to see it taking off...or doing manuevers...or even just crewmen priming the prop or removing the choks...or landing...bounce...bounce...skid...

Alonso- Nice reel, I see your strength lies mainly as an animator. Your motions are smooth and have a similar 'look' from scene to scene. I know what you mean about relocating, I am in the same boat. You need to find a couple of off-site freelance gigs. Which unfortunately in the A:M market are slim2none. What to do...what to do...

Not much to critique yet. I see you have a side and front rotoscope for reference...good! Keep at it.

That looks like a dream I had once... of course, there was a train to fill that tunnel...dunnoh what it meant, but I dig the imagery!

I havent worked with refraction yet, but I would think the trick is that when you lathe the bottle you will need to include the INSIDE of the glass as well, and close everything best you can so it is a solid shape.