frosteternal

Yes, the decal was a heavily modified version of the reference photo. Here's how : First, I cut the photo in half, and mirrored the sections, since it was not quite a head-on shot. I used Photoshop's "Heal" tool to eradicate parts of the photo and "stretch" the face out to cover the un-wrapped ("flattened") face model. Also, I evened out the brightness, removing shadows and highlights from the source. The "liquify" tool in Photoshop is inadequate to distort images with the precision needed, so then I used WinMorph (a wonderful freeware bit of morphing/warping software) to stretch and squish the features such as the lips, brows, and eyes so they also matched the flattened model face. Bump and specularity maps were derived from the "un-wrapped" image as well, which contributed to the effectiveness of features such as the eyebrows, and the beard stubble. Additional profile decals were also used, with some tricky alpha channels to hide the decal seams, for the sides of the head. The hair was a pain, as I am NOT a hair-stylist, but after a ton of tweaking, I was able to generate a reasonable simulation of D.'s tousled hair. The eyes are standard DarkTree "humanIris" textures, on eyeballs with modelled corneas/lenses with transparency and refraction. (This looks more "deep" in my experience, and good eyes are ALWAYS worth a render-time hit.) Whew. Lotta work.

I totally agree with Vern here - you should aim to have fewer patches, not more. One of the beautiful things about splines and patches is that you can generate astoundingly complex surfaces with a minimal number of control points. This is what gives a patch-based model enormous advantage over other modelling techniques. Rendering, texturing, animation - these are all stream-lined by an efficiently built model. In a world where computer power and memory are indeed, desperately finite, getting the "most bang for your buck" is key.

Not at all! Don't worry about it; I'm always glad to have stuff like that pointed out; it is so hard to see one's own work with a critical eye. Be picky =) And I'm feeling much better now, thank you!

Added teeth, eyelashes, finished decaling rest of head, gave him creepy smile, changed the jaw-line to more closely match that of the subject (whom now I ca'n't look at without seeing splines swimming across his face.) Whew. Time for bed, long day (job interview wish me luck)

Just a little lost. =) Yes, built the head.

Okay, changed the hair (at Dushan's request), added eyelashes, and some shading. Caroline, yes, the nose pores are a bit stretched. I'll get to it. =)

Okay, now he's not quite so creepy, with ears and hair. Neck is still way rough. Looking much more like Dushan. Still needs eyelashes.

The colour, specularity, and bump decals were all derived from a highly-distorted, very re-touched photo. (see below) He was VERY unsettled to see his face all un-wrapped like this!

I've been rather ill lately, and have not had the concentration to work on the real project at hand (our Mountain film) so I built a 3-D model of my roomate's head. It's kinda creepy without ears and hair and the neck is incomplete, but it was a fun challenge to build a realistic head for a change. (We may use it in an animated version of him to introduce his architecture portfolio in the future, but no immediate plans.)

Sounds like you have the sound attached to the action. Drop it into the Choreography instead. Delete the sound from the action. Now you can loop the action to your heart's content and the song will play unmolested. Hope that does the trick!

Wow. Very nice. A bit "jittery"; I assume that is due to inconsistencies in tracking those oh-so-stylish dots on your face. I watched the split screen several times in succession, very promising, very weird to see the bug mimic your face. Can't wait for more details on "how it was done".

Try transparency decals for the vent holes; they are a small enough detail that you shouldn't need to model them. Nice job thus far =)

Cute. I like how he falls over at the end. Nice music; he seems to be "power-walking" to it. No real critiques here.

I LOVE IT! That is my all-time favorite poem; I memorized it in 2nd grade because I loved it so much, and can still recite it to this day! I am thrilled that you used Tenniel's illustration; it is mesmerizing and comical all at once. If you want to really make your Jabberwock "pop", exaggerate the size of his fore-claws and feet; I think they are actually larger in the drawing, not just perspective at work. (I admire such a faithful 3-d version of the creature, I re-designed him entirely when I did an animated film of the poem for my literature class in college, mostly for the sake of time. Golly that was fun.) Beautiful work!

Yikes! Done? But she has no belly-button! My advice, give it a week, then load her up again and see if you are happy with her. I find that I need to "rest" in between tweaking characters sometimes; for instance I just recently cleaned up and re-worked my Woman/Death character, whom I had declared finished months ago. I opened her up to animate her scenes and said "ugh. she's UGLY." and fixed her. Not a bad start however, she looks quite...super

I'm not entirely sure what is causing the noisy background; but it appears that whilst the background (read : camera) is moving, the background "fuzzes" or become all crawling with tiny dots of noise. (Did you render directly to a compressed format like quicktime or Avi?) I also suspect that whatever texture you are using is too finely-grained, and might benefit from a little blur to soften the "crawly" effect. It could just be poorly anti-aliased bits of texture due to lower resolution. Try scaling up the roughness or whatever texture you are using and see if that helps.

You should be able to make a "open_closed fist" pose out of your individual finger poses; although I always had problems blending poses within poses. Just set the pose sliders you wish to use while editing a new pose. You should see new keys for them show up under "User Properties" under the Relationship that partains to the pose you are using them within. I tend to take a simpler approach - I usually have a hand "tense/relax" pose for each hand, and then an "open/close" pose for each as well. I find that creating any other more specific hand poses just gets "cluttered" as far as pose sliders, so I tend to build new hand motions on-the-fly. Just my personal preference. Also, I'm with Robcat; I prefer the first walk with the quick slap down of the foot. It's got more "snap" which for your super-stylized character looks much more lively.

Very, VERY nice. I can't even imagine the work that went into a piece like that, considering I've sqeezed out a mere two minutes in a year on my latest project. The expressions on the fish are wonderful, and the sound effects and nice and cartoony. My only critique would be the pacing, since most kids are impatient nowadays; it could move a bit faster. Wonderful!

Yeah, the voice is me. Thanks! I might throw in some more vocal-linked blinks, as I can see a few places that would totally enhance it. As far as pupil movement, he was rigged for it, but for some reason, I didn't like it. When I first sketched him, he was of my class of characters with staring eyes. For some reason the pupils moving destroyed his "look". So he shall only blink, for now. Thanks for the comments, when I re-open this project (after my main project, this was a bit of a sidetrack), I will probably fine-tune him, particularly the fingers as you suggested.

Thanks, glad you liked it. He's very much me, but a bit more "valley-guy/goth". I swear I'm not that dumb. I don't think so anyhow. LOL And I *hate* ceramic garden animals. They are evil. It just makes me laugh. ps..who's "Dora"?

A quickie little film inspired by the all-too-real horrors of my upstairs neighbor installing creepy ceramic animals in the front walk-way "garden" of my apartment building. download it here enjoy! (yeah I know it's weird. that's my mind.)

Toon looks creepier, more sinister. So it depends what look you're after. Nice work!

Try adjusting the "Bend Angle Limit" on the fur. The default is 180 deg., which tends to be way too free. Try maybe 90 and then adjust from there. Also, the mass of the fur may be too "heavy" for the stiffness settings. It looks like the "stretching beyond its limit" is long fur going through feet, etc., so the other thing you may want to do is adjust the length of the fur on legs, feet, etc. so it is not all the same length. I have gotten fur dynamics working properly before, w/ collision detection on, it just took some tweaking. That aside, I do like the "kows" [?]; they bound oh-so-amusingly.

Wow. I especially love how you can see the skin moving and twisting over the creature's ribcage. Amazing detail. I really get the feeling that the creature (despite being fantasy) is really alive and breathing. I almost wanna dissect it =)