JohnArtbox

As always, it's magical Been stuck on commercial work for a month and a half and it's always nice to see one of the big shorts moving along. I can't wait to see the full version of this film, it's a definitive labour of love, the style is fantastic and the persistence is pretty awe inspiring as well. I'll race you Dearmad

website was only down for a couple of days. I gave the Osprey tuts to hash because they wiped out my web bandwidth(10GB) but if you do a search on Osprey you should get the hash links from the WIP. Otherwise let me know and I'll put it up on the site for a few days. This project is in hiatis while Investigating Jack is completed,then it'll be back in a big way. Got lots of new ideas.

That's a great 1st model Like Wegg says it has a scale model feel, probably because it's so clean and the material has a white plastic, rather than a white painted metal feel.

Hi all Rodney:You're welcome William: I'm not starting anything new until Investigating Jack is finished,it's a one off for the moment Phil:Ta..but what song? Dent: wireframe as requested , the detail is the arm from jack, it's essentially the same, but easier to understand. Xtaz: given the quality of the stuff you've been churning out, I'll take that as a compliment. But I'm predicting a high quality contest this month, lots of heroes doing the rounds at the moment

And for contrast..here's the original. stark contrast ! huh?

It's my new desktop. Christmas and work has caused a slight hiatus, but I did this to clear the flash cobwebs from my brain. The original only took 30 minutes, fine tuning the pose, energy blast and lighting(including skycast and a couple of lensflares) took another couple of hours. Getting trailing motion blur was also interesting Merry Christmas all More stuff soon..but now I've got to get back to a medical presentation

Looks great so far MiddleKid .... Only thing that gets to me is the cracks from the displacement on the 5 point patchs, but hopefully that'll get fixed before you hit the final render. Otherwise you might get a better image use two planes and a stack of disconnected cylinders where you match the bases, ie no 5 point patches.

Good to see the project continuing Robert. Always happy to get a fish hit

Cute... I like his hands, wouldn't mid seeing a wireframe of those

fantastic images...I've got a funny feeling this is going to be a standout image contest Have you animated her yet?

Hi John fun image. Part of the staticness of the characters is the fact that all the character's bodies are perfectly straight. Twisting their bodies off centre would help.

I think Fuchur's commenting on the wisdom of modelling a female friend . It can deteriorate into a "do I look fat in this"situation The model's pretty good, the crease on the 5 point patch is just a nudge problem, although personally I think hooks that connect in the centre seem to stand up better than ones on the quarter patch marks. The other problem is the crease on the cheek which if you carried the eye spline that's currently hooked, down the cheek and under the chin, would give you extra density to smooth the curve.

Been a while since I checked in on this thread. It looks fantastic, I really like the characters and the look you've teased out of the toon renderer. And I empathise with you on the delays. Good luck on the deadline.

and here's an image of the steps above

Ken:shadows, and Ididn't think you could bake any textures, although I don't mind the render time. The textures are pretty simple. Yves /TurboKitty: Thanks Dagooos: me too...although I missed the hand Robcat:everything is related Displace, bump and colour. Starwarsguy:minitute I add the displacement texture first and renderlock the object while dialing displacement up and down. Ithas to be a simple texture with largish areas because the displacement divides each patch into 8x8. I then add the colour texture which is a duplicate of the displacement, but with sub combiners in the place of black and white. This creates two materials, one for the hollows and another for the higher regions. I drop that on and the render updates. I save the colour material and reload it to creat a matching bump, changing the colours to push areas in and out . The only downside is the 5 pt patches which are hidden underground. Displacement is a bit of an orphan feature at the moment . Here's the project file displacemat.zip

I was going to enter a kapsule hero....Xtaz'sPzu is instantly recognizable and there are a lot of other heroes posted. I'd say you're OK

damn these are good bow controls the cross section of the hair. Hair with 0 bows appears as a flat ribbon(good for leaves, feathers) while 100% bow appears as a cylinder. Settings inbetween flatten the cylinder

Thanks for all the comments Quick update. Investigating Jack has built up quite a team. I'm calling it the Kapsule Kollective Dagooos, Dennis Borruso, and Pengy are doing modelling and animating. Pengy's doing the voice acting and JessMusic is writing the score. I'm a very happy man. Here's the first pass at the voices, there's some inconsistencies and some inflections that need to be changed, and Feei Fi(the giant's daughter)is purely a stand in, but I thought some of you might like a listen. jackvoices15122004.zip

rendertime was approximately 10 minutes 16x multipass, three shadow casting lights..a key and two in the SkyCast rig. Not quick, but livable p4 2.6ghz Probably too complex for Kapsules...have to think about that. Probably more 'Superhero' style, which I'll get back too after 'Investigating Jack'. Wish someone would pay me just to do shorts

base geometry image

just something simple I did to test a new material. Haven't seen many people use displacement materials so I thought I'd post it ..

Nice petrol station Xtaz, it's got that architechtural model feel. Quick note on the trees, I built a set of these in 8.5 for a commercial called Roadkill (on AM Films). Inhouse we called them Jonsai, they're not realistic, but they render really quickly. As Xtaz said, they're on the Skycast bonus site, but they should also be on the 2005CD.

Great characters david. I'd connect the arms and legs rather than having intersecting tubes, but the characters look lively and fun. When something looks this great in a neutral pose, you're onto a winner

Hiya Colin Fantastic looking thread. One silly suggestion, have you tried adding physical motion lines just to emphasise the motion, real comic stuff. Outfit is growing on me too

still chugging along...here's the final character for Investigating Jack, the wizard. Thanks all for the comments. It's encouraging. Little Andy: Generally I cap the cylinder using a grid, it means accepting 4 triangular patches but otherwise works well. with the kapsules there are a lot of small openings(at the ends of the hair, for example)