largento

Set the Global Color to a warm yellow/orange. That should make the shadows orange instead of black. I wouldn't use AO myself. I'd set up some lights, so you can cast shadows within it.

Using Global Color is one step. The image in the commercial doesn't have black/gray shadows. It looks like the lighting is softer, too. You don't want such harsh shadows.

Thanks, guys! I ended up changing the scale to make it more threatening.

Here's a fun thing I'm building for tomorrow's strip: The Great Intelligence's Attack Module! I've been wanting to build this for awhile now. It's part chicken-walker and part War of the Worlds Tripod.

Just to put an endnote on this thread, I found Dark_Jedi's Deviant Art page and though he's moved on to using other applications now, he did finish the General: http://cc-5052.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1we7dm He's got a nice turntable animation with some images surrounding it. A very talented fellow!

Or you can render the same sequence. Say it's 200 frames long. Set one to render frames 1-200 and set the step to "2". On the other, set it to render frames 2-200 and set the step to "2". The first will render all of the odd frames and the second will render all of the even frames.

If you have more than one processor, you can run more than one copy of A:M. If you set them all to render frames (you can do a step for the number of instances you use), then all of those instances of A:M will be rendering at the same time, dividing your render time by the number of instances.

Gene, are you running multiple instances?

Two places. On the right sidebar of the website, there's a blue button that says "TWC Top Web Comics" with "Click the button to vote for us" and there's also a link in my signature below.

Thanks, Tony! Every vote helps! Robert, I'm pretty sure that alternate edit wouldn't help my chances for getting accepted on the "Family Webcomics" website. :-) ...and thanks so much for the donation!! I sincerely appreciate it!

Thank you, gentlemen!

Hey, just a head's up that I'm going to be posting a series of stories on The Wannabe Pirates blog about how I create the webcomic. The first one went up today and just answers the question "What 3D software do you use?" The answer to which, everybody here already knows. :-) I'm not sure how many posts it will take to cover the process, but I'm going to be putting them up every so often.

Boo, Paul, boo! :-)

Like Rob said, the $79 subscription is a great way to go. v15 also added fluids, the ability to bake materials and some other stuff I'm not remembering.

Thanks, Nancy, Ken & Jim! LOL, Ken, I don't recall Amidala having a fan (that wasn't attached to her head or her back.) :-)

Thanks, David & Gene! It's fun having a set to work with. For awhile now, I've been making use of some simple wall models.

I think that looks really great! Not having to place each one individually is awesome!

Thanks, Ken! The solution I came up with was to create a pose in an Action and then export a model from the Action. I then imported the model into the model of the bench and duplicated it until I had the bench full. This seemed like the quickest way to do it. You are right that the hand pose is a little stiff, but it seemed an unnecessary level of detail when you consider just how small they will appear in the online strip. I might do a close-up reaction shot, but that would be a situation where I would be creating new poses.

Another great looking character, Paul!

Thanks, Robert! Still working on the chapel set, but here's what it's looking like. I realized that having the Earth appear large in the windows would kind of suggest stained glass windows.

Flemm's wedding dress: I knew I wanted to do something goofy for the dress and first started just doing image searches for wedding gowns and then it occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to reference something from sci-fi and I immediately thought of the bizarre costumes Queen Amidala wore in the Phantom Menace. :-) I threw together some of the elements, plus a couple of similarly goofy bits. I've been stalling the story, because for some reason I had a mental block about modeling this, but I had fun once I actually started working on it. The chapel's going to be even more work. I'm intending that there be a couple of hundred aliens in attendance. We'll see how that works out. :-)

Nice job!

How close are you, Gene?

That's pretty awesome, dude! Has a wonderful stop-motion look to it that is completely appropriate!

Much appreciated, Gene!