Eric2575

If I know John3d at all, you'll have a sample project from him in no time

Nancy: I just tried front projection - worked great, thank you! Eric

IBL=Image based Lighting, a setting in the chor. IBL and/or AO will no take the color from you model, you have to do that. An easy way to do this just for experimenting with AO and a model that has color is to select the complete model in the modeling window and name the resulting group to something like "white" - easy to remember. Now set the diffuse color of that group to white. Since this is the last group in the model, it will override all other colors in the model and now you have a white model to play with. To get all you colors back, either delete the white group, or drag it to the top of the list in the chor. Note, this will not do anything with any decal you may have applied to the model, they will render as usual. In order for the decals to disappear, you can set the decals' properties to "other" and then reset when you are finished with the AO render.

For more variation in the grass, do a search in the forum on using grass with decals. In my July '08' contest entry I used that technique pretty effectively, although mine was easier to do since it was set in the desert. I used a tga with a transparent background to do grasses and dried up bushes. I attached one of the grasses for you to examine and or use if you would like to experiment with it. Grass_test.zip

Worked a bit more on this. Shaping the lower hull and playing around with a generic hull decal - which I don't particularly care for - see the right nacelle.

Nice work Stian. What's the cp count right now? Are you modeling parts and using an action to put them together as usual? Sorry, I just realized that you may have answered that already in your post. Me just lookie at the pretty pictures :-) -E

Thank you Steve.

Haven't had much time to work on this, but managed to add a few details and changed the sky to match the lighting. I'm gonna add quite a bit more details and start work on the hull maps. Yes, I did play around with modeling stars and planets, but had some problems with the size of the maps required to get the detail I was after.

Very nice work and project. Doing something like this really helps hone your skills and imagination. Try giving a taper to the grass and using some other vegetation like random bushes or tumbleweeds to break up the scenery a bit. It might also help if you did not do the grass so uniformly all over the landscape. Have some barren areas with gravel or rocks - pretty easy to simulate using decals. Looks great, keep it up. -E

Changed the clouds and started adding back some of the details. Not much time to work on hobbies these days.

Al: Please don't ever apologize for giving me your valued input. That line could very well have been a crease that needed attention. You have an excellent eye for detail, and when you give input, I listen Eric p.s. Who is Mark? Ha, ha

I should have know not to throw out a quickie without taking into consideration the keen eyes of this discerning audience. I will fix the clouds/lighting issue, but that crease in the hull is not a crease, it's a reflection from somewhere. The hull is smooth as glass. I'll double check though.

Al: Secondary hull? You mean the wrinkles in the nacelle casing, right? Sometimes I get those when I do a copy/flip - for some reason the bias values don't translate the +- values correctly. Will get to that right away. I was going to smooth that out, but was too tired lasty night. Ok, back to the shipyard;-) -E

Did a lot of tweaking to the main hull and rear shuttle bay. Here's a desktop with a NASA background. Enjoy.

Thank you for all your support and encouragement. bighoop: The lights are just one simple decal applied in a pose and set to ambiance intensity. This was just a test and will look much better once I tweak it and make different decals. Largento: I have a sneaky suspicion that my laptop drive is about to bite the dust too. Praises about eliminating paper clutter are one thing, but it sure is harder to lose a file cabinet full of paper vs a hard drive with three or four years of data gone in one second. Eric

Since the new Trek movie is coming out soon, I started to work on my Enterprise again. I lost all model parts except the saucer section and the engines due to a drive malfunction. Just as well since I did not like the way the body section was evolving. Here is a sample of the revisited WIP.

Ever since I saw Lee's awesome Ironman, and then the movie, I've been wanting to model the hero. Here is my start. I don't have much time these days for modeling (heck, I'm a slow modeler anyways) so this will take a bit of time to flesh out. Happy New Year and enjoy.

It has something to do with my user name. I just signed in with an old lurker id and had the option to upload. Now the $1,000,000 question is why can't I upload under my Eric2575 ID anymore?

Ok, weirdness abounds. John, when I clicked on your posted link, I get a message saying I don't have permission for this operation??? I am logged in as Eric2575 but no go. Will, I only have the option to log out - since I am already logged in- but still don't have the option to upload. Could this have anything to do with my ZoneAlarm firewall?

Bumpidy bump.

Oh man, that's pretty solid work, but the she-man boobs a gotta go Post a wireframe. -E

That is looking good, and I don't want to hear anything about not finishing on time. You've got over three weeks left and plenty of time to flesh that dude out. Turn in what you have at the deadline, no matter what. Let's make this about what you can accomplish, not whether it's totally finished or not. Have fun with it.

When I go to the stills galleries, I don't have the option to upload anymore? Is it just me?

Hey Ken, usually I'm the one that ask those kinds of questions I think what Ken means is that every aspect of modeling, animating, etc, is a lot of work and although this forum is one of the most open and helpful forums you'll find, fishing for freebies is kinda frowned upon. When we see someone who puts in time and effort, then we are more responsive. You might try to model your own or pay someone to do it for you. Who knows, you might even find someone to do it for free if they get credit for their work in your movie. BTW, what kind of experience do you have in making an animated movie? Just curious. -E

What kind of experience do you have? Your work is not that of a noob.