largento

These are amazing numbers, Gene! I'm jealous!

I think you've integrated the models into the background really well! The only suggestion I might make is to attempt to recreate some of the ground plain to use as a foreground element, to give the composition added depth.

You could achieve the color effect using MatCap shaders with a glass sphere image.

Interesting. I'm likin' the skin texture already

I'm no polygoner, but I believe you'd take an A:M model into one of the others and apply a subdivision command that would create the resolution for you. Can't wait until my hose hold gets a 3D printer.

Thanks, Rodney. These guys knew what they were doing! The buildings were designed by people who were well-versed in set design. There is much all of us could learn from them.

Good grief! I've finally finished this building. Don't know why, but I really struggled with this one. But it's done! This one is really useful since it's not only a center building that the streets and other buildings go around, but it has a bunch of cool faces that could be used for any number of other buildings.

It's very impressive. Maybe the ping pong balls was an effort to demonstrate the number of points it was calculating. The white caps and movement and look of the water all look great to me. It's by far more realistic than I'd ever want.

It's a lot like animating a movie without animating. :-) In the case of The Wannabe Pirates, they began life as a comic strip. Usually a 3 or 4 panel gag. Each panel was a choreography set up and rendered. I then took the rendered images and placed them in a template in Illustrator and did the lettering and then exported them out for the web. For the comic book, I reformatted the strips into comic book pages (using a template from the printer), made the files print ready and sent them off to the printer. You can change the dimensions of the camera frame, so I would set up the camera to match the dimensions of the panel and arrange my objects allowing for room for word balloons, etc. I did this strip as part of a series about how it could be done, but this process of placing the word balloons and panels into A:M was something I NEVER did when I was actually making the strips: [EDIT] You can start from here to read the "How To" strips I did several years ago.

Cool! Really gives some contrast between their outfits and their skin.

People *say* that, but when it comes down to it, they go for what's cheaper.

I won't forget that, Tony! Rodney, I'm looking at other options for digital distribution right now. Storenvy isn't designed to do digital downloads. It's more for physical products. As it is, if you were to buy a comic through them, you'd have to wait until I got an email, uploaded the files to my server and emailed you a link. That's not acceptable. You need to be able to download them at the time of purchase. We're still waiting to hear from Comixology. If they pick us up, that may be the way we go. I'm also considering going through Gumroad and selling them as CBZs. Right now my focus is on getting the print issues finished. I want to have at least six issues in hand to sell at the next con I do.

I am the very model of a model model modeler! :-)

Thanks, guys!

Sad to see it fail, too, Will, but you've got to put a positive spin on it. You're not out anything but some time and you've no doubt found some valuable information and connected to some folks who had never heard of it before. You'll do your own post-mortem (as I've done with mine) and gain some insight that you didn't have before. I was googling Tar not long ago and came across a 3D model you did of him in 2002 with the idea of doing a digital comic. I don't know how long ago you did the airbrushed comic, but it's clear this is a demon that isn't going to go away. You gotta' release the beast! I can't wait to see it happen!

For no good reason I was suddenly taken with the urge to model a Smurf tonight. Not a particularly elaborate model and it isn't rigged, but thought someone might like having it... Here's the simple splinage behind it... Hope somebody gets a kick out of it. And hey, if you do rig the model, upload it here, so other folks can play with it. smurf.zip

I say, go for it! I've been using Ka-Blam, a print-on-demand company specializing in comics. It's run by a trio of independent comics folks who I met when I was doing comics in the 90s. A 24-page floppy, full-color is only $2.67.

Go for it, Rodney! It's a whole lot easier now than it was back in the day. With print-on-demand you can literally order 1 copy. All you gotta' do is get to work on filling up the pages! :-)

Still continuing on with making individual issues of The Wannabe Pirates. Nobody may ever buy them, but I sure love having them for myself. :-) Working on issue #4: This one includes a new splash page and, as always, a puzzle page. So far I've done a maze, a crossword, & a word-search. This time out, I'm working on a connect-the-dots. :-) I think I may have to put in a bug report, though. For some reason v17 can't handle displaying the Sea Anemone in shaded mode. It crashes everytime. I even tried saving out the model again, thinking maybe it was a versioning issue with the model file. However, everything worked fine in v16, which I've had to go back to for the new images.

Does make it look more like steam. Good call!

This is pretty cool! Uploaded Flemm in a heroic pose: http://p3d.in/Ec8vy Flemm's Ship (modeled by Stian): http://p3d.in/Di2Hs And Greyhawk's Ship, the Renegade II: http://p3d.in/DLSLm

Day for night has been around for over a hundred years, Rodney. I didn't invent it.

Big-time fun, Sebastian! And very well done!

Lloyd, have you considered shooting day for night? Here's an example: The lighting setup on both images is exactly the same. However, to make it look like night, I set the global ambience to a dark blue and set it at 30%. Then I added a black fog to the camera. By controlling where the fog starts and becomes solid, you can control where your light falls off. Finally, I created a 1-patch model that was colored blue and the transparency set to 60% and place it in front of the camera. You could adjust the transparency of the blue patch to allow more to show through. In post, you could slightly desaturate the image and help control the darkness, as well. I find this much easier and controllable than trying to simulate darkness in the choreography.

Thanks for rediscovering this, Robert. I think this may be the approach I need to take with the exterior Wobbling Dead scenes.