largento

Hmm... Something must've gone screwy. I'll try breaking it up. Here's the files in 3 zip files... materials.zip model.zip images.zip

I love the characters, Gene! Your style is really showing through in your modeling! Here's a couple of materials I made when I was modeling the monkey ship that might be helpful to you with your ark model. The materials make it look like the surfaces are made up of boards. They are cartoony, but I think that will work well with your style, too. Note the custom settings in the object groups. I give the materials negative bump percents and mess with the scale (to make the boards the right size.) Here's a super-simple model to show what they look like. The negative bump percent cuts the grooves into the surface. You can choose your own colors. Here's the zip. Sorry for the enormous size, but the deckpattern image I made is enormous. shipstuff.zip

I'm starting to think you're pulling our legs here. :-) Okay, your example is one spline ring with additional splines coming out of that one. Not sure why this isn't getting across, but a single spline ring makes a *hole* NOT a patch. In Myron's example, there are four splines. Two vertical and two horizontal. They are attached at the four CPs, forming a patch. Try this: Make a vertical spline with four CPs. One at each end and two in the center. Copy and paste it and move it over to the side, so that you have two identical vertical splines. Now, click the "a" button to begin making a new horizontal spine and then click on the CPs of the two vertical splines as you draw your horizontal spline. Repeat this for the second horizontal spline.

Very nice and believable!

Elliot, you've got to think of the splines and their continuity. Like I said before, one spline making a ring is a hole. In order to get patches, you need to use splines that intersect, like this: 5-Point patches are a special consideration. 3 and 4 point patches occur naturally. 5-points were created to aid in modeling.

Elliot, a continuous spline that attaches back to itself is a hole. In order for a patch to occur, at least two splines must be involved. The extruding example in the square was a short cut. When I extruded the spline, it made new splines so that I ended up with four splines intersecting instead of one spline. Draw splines and have them intersect, say three splines that where they intersect draws a triangle. That will form a 3-point patch. See the "long" way in the square tutorial to see what a 4-point patch really looks like.

There are some great ones out there! For a start, check out my comic-book-style basic tutorial pages here. They cover some of the basics of modeling in A:M including continuity and the difference between a patch and a hole.

Great movement, Robert! Very cool! I've always avoided the hook/5-point patch, too, but I thought I heard somewhere that the 5-pointer wouldn't close if there was a hook attached to it. Nice to know differently!

720x480 is the size of the image on a DVD. The trick is that widescreen (16:9) or standard (4:3) isn't exactly proportionate. So the DVD either stretches or shrinks the pixels. For standard (4:3), the aspect ratio is .91 for widescreen (16:9), it's 1.2121. You can set this in the resolution settings for the camera in the "Aspect" setting.

Wow, that looks really great!

Thanks, Rodney! Yes, Greyhawk is getting close to the end of the first story (only 5 more pages, I think) and The Wannabe Pirates and the Curse of Greyhawk Island is getting into the good parts. :-) The second 100 parts are going to be heavily sci-fi, which is a lot of fun for me. People have this impression that I am a crazy-go-nuts pirate fan, but I'm really just a minor fan who likes the old Errol Flynn movies. Sci-Fi is something I hugely love and I'm going to see how much of a blast I can have with Star Wars/Star Trek references and the like. :-)

Been spending most of my time working on the interior set for Greyhawk's Cave. It's massive. But more immediately, I needed to give Glimey a plazter (or as Flemm will call it, a fancy pistola): pistola_s.mov

I do love this new feature! My old workaround was that I would select a single spline ring of the group that had the surface settings I wanted to copy, copy and paste it (which created a new group with the same attributes), delete the spline and then rename that new group and use it for the new part of the model. This has the advantage of making it easier to create a library of commonly used materials without having to start from scratch.

*VERY* Nice!

Thanks, Gene! I *always* appreciate your saying so. :-) Here's something different. Here's Greyhawk's ship, the Renegade 2. In thinking about how to bring it into The Wannabe Pirates world, I thought it would be fun to make it like it was a toy. Coming this Christmas from Kenner! The Renegade 2! :-)

Great job, guys! Only a couple of years in and you've already done a biblical epic! :-)

I'm a-scared! :-) But it's a great start, Myron!

This isn't free, but these tutorials were the keys to creating characters for me! When I bought them, you had to get them on DVD, but now they are available as downloadable files from here: Barry Zundel's Animation Master Training videos I can't recommend these high enough! Barry goes through the entire modeling process, discussing what he's doing and why he's doing it. The other parts cover rigging and animating in A:M.

Happy Birthday, Holmes! Hope it's a great one!

I know! I'm trying to reach a place where I don't feel like having to create models limits the storytelling. That may never happen, but at least I won't be stuck with *too* many limitations. I don't think I did anything special with the lighting on it, other than I think the keylight is angled up from a lower angle. The sea monster is really large. Not toon render on the teeth, just a design choice. :-)

Sea Monster! Flemm will be fighting with this fellow in this weeks' strips!

Looks incredible, Eric! Between you and Al, somebody needs to make a cool Star Wars fan film with these models.

Thanks, everybody! Nancy--Greyhawk has one electronic eye ...a space piratey sort of replacement for having an eyepatch. He can see far distances with it. Ken--There are indeed, Ken--Randarr, Scanner, Baxter, Deexler, Rhisha, etc.---but I'm trying to keep the numbers of new characters to a minimum. :-)

Whew! The last major new character for this story! Greyhawk! The long hair was definitely a challenge. (I took some cues from the way they did Anakin's hair in the Clone Wars series.) Greyhawk will make his first appearance in strip #100! Here's a turnaround greytrn2.mov