zandoriastudios

great to see!! was a little dark on my monitor--are you going to post some other renders of the model or wireframes?

Mark--this rig is AWESOME! I was just trying it out for the first time! I need to read this whole thread (are there installation instructions?), then put this thing into my "Tar of Zandoria" characters!

I just don't see enough of a difference to justify the extra time...unless you need to be able to animate a fly-by along the surface of the circuitboard, or something. I had to get on to one of my designers once, for modeling something down to the threads on a bolt...when the final rendering the head of the bolt would only be 1-3 pixels! Since he was an hourly worker, I felt that he was wasting time... but if you are just doing it for fun, then it doesn't matter.

Maybe a normal map would have been simpler? I don't see a visible difference between the first one and the last one, except that there is some thickness to the circuitboard and the chips have thickness.

For the record, you ARE a troll.

..........nevermind

definitely get rid of hooks in the cloth mesh!

Soon...

I'm putting my old tutorials [and new ones as well] on my new blog! Here is the link to the tutorial for decaling using the UV Editor: http://zandoria.blogspot.com/2008/07/uv-editor-tutorial.html

Check to see how many Library files (.lbr) are there. You can also have your library show only a particular library, rather than ALL.

lights off, but global ambience at 100% (Choreography properties)

Here is another one: http://www.3ds.com/products/3dvia/3d-xml/3dvia-printscreen/

What you need is OGLE (Open GL Extractor)!! Get it here: http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/

I would use the Bitmap Plus material, which will let you use an image for your bricks and it will be tiled evenly across the surface. It won't vary in scale like using a Patch image, and it won't smear (in the window frame) like a decal.

The image needs to be saved with an Alpha Channel that defines what areas are transparent. Here is a link to a tutorial (Google is your friend...): http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-misc001.html

You should have the ground plane cast occlusion, otherwise your global ambience will be coming from below as well. I would also increase the occlusion to 100%. Use an image instead of Global color for your ambience, and you can light your scene with just that (no lights required). The Occlusion sampling (render properties) is where the time hit comes in....20% is the default, but you can go up to 100% or as low as 10% (grainy).

Doesn't seem like it would be harder than gems...

sigh...I miss Tincan's "RTFM" advice.

Don't mix and match radiosity (photon mapping) and Ambient occlusion, first of all. Not every feature is meant to be used in unison. To eliminate the grainyness of an AO render, increase the sampling (which increases the render time). You CAN go as high as 100%

If it is just for a still, and you are wanting to cut your rendertime, then maybe you could just paint the hair in Photoshop afterwards?

use a bone aligned with the spline representing your "beam". (attach geometry to that bone) Then make a Percentage relationship that scales the length of that bone. Then you just adjust that pose slider for the length of your "beam": 0% not firing, 100%=10000cm, and your hitting an object length you can adjust by eye in your scene...

Ctrl+D to toggle Decals

change the order of your groups in the Project Workspace.

customize >appearance Set object color to black.

Constraint the root of the BVH hierarchy to translate and orient like the chest (compensate mode) on frame 0.