zacktaich

So have you begun modeling?

[quote]Displacement and bump both slow things down a lot[/quote] Tell me about it, I just did a very basic test, and look at the rendering time. 105 hours? is that all?

I think turning down the specularity would make it look better!

I think we need a tutorial, If I knew how to do this my models would turn out a million times better, and even if not it would help making characters w/ extremely fast renders

You did that all w/ displacement maps? You Rock!

funny cop but always convert from tga to jpg's

Those are awesome. Barely doodles if you ask me. the pig, bug, and violin especially stick out for me. fine quality stuff, some even worthy of cgtalk.com glory. any tips for people who are not as prolific?

looks good. Her cheeks seem a little bit off, but you could fix this by bringing her hair forward a bit (so it falls basically vertically down. it seems like a top view of her cheeks would look like this: \ /. I don't know how to explain it. Great work.

That's awesome. What would be REALLY awesome is if you animated them some.

Beautiful stuff, It would be awesome to see those on cgtalk. I would love to see these w/ a background and textures

Link doesn't work!!!

I like the imagination that went into this but I've got a few suggestions on the modeling: 1) There are lots of creases in the model and places where it's bumpy, for bumpy places you just have to tweak until it looks smooth for creases I'd a) suggest you add porcelain material or follow all the rules of splines (e.g. only two splines may go through any one control point) 2)Shape: A few suggestions .His bottom lip is flat .His head looks a little squarish .His gills all look the same(try and make them a bit less uniform) 3)His earing does not seem to affect his skin at all, make his mesh deform to the earing, add a hole there and then put it through (this is a bit nickpicky) I believe with texturing and the above suggestions(and maybe some eyes!) this character could turn out to be one awesome lookin' dude. EDIT: please post a wireframe, We could better help you with your model. Just hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard while in the shaded/wireframe mode in the choreography or modeling window.

It looks like a lathe/tweak technique. What was your technique?

I'm curious to see where it goes, this is one tute I really need!

Is this secret project still underway?

All my updates are currently being put on http://www.angelfire.com/ca7/zachary/head.html

I might try that if I have the time, the right marker, and the comfy chair.

I see *many* more creases than that. I'll see if I have time tonight for eyes, ears and cheek tweaks. Thanks for your comments

Thanks for the help! re-reading your post made me think that I do need to work on his eye sockets a lot. Just thought I'd post a render. My ear's are horrendous and sadly they are probably not temporary. Tell me what you think. C&C neccesary!

I meant that to be positive... I added the splines and majority of the creases disappeared. I'll give another shot at Skylark, I tried it out 2 or 3 months ago.

Your shark looks fine overall except if you want to add gills I would have suggested you plan the holes before hand. Another way is decals

And here is the current wire:

The skylark tutorial can be found on the arm under modeling I believe, and yes I have tried it and my results were horrendous because I was not good at all the preplanning (laying the splines for the outer nose before making any connections, etc.) For this one I used a mix of many different tutorials which I have read. Specifically the Cooper one, a bit of the skylark one (the eyes), Dan's little video, and a few others which I don't even remember. I took your suggestion though and added literally only 1 or 2 splines (along w/ Mat's tip on normals) and this what popped out. There are a few creases but its a thousand times better.

Ok, I need a few tips on this becuase I've been having problems. 1) When I flip the normals it does not always get rid of the problem, sometimes it just moves where the black part is. 2)It's impossible to tell which problem correlates to which patch 3)I don't know how to determine what way the normals are facing. btw: The picture is just an example, I can't finish.

Thats cgtalk front page material, can I see a wire?