Eric2575

Knowing absolutely nothing about radiosity, I'd love to hear how you did that fantastic bathroom render. Really great stuff you've got going here! Oh, Wow!

Al: thanks for looking in. The shadow thing is actually a trick on the eye caused by the overhang in front of the building. There is only one light source casting shadows high and to the right. Because you are looking at the overhang from a tight angle, it doesn't look very deep, but it's actually about 4 or 5 feet deep, causing the large shadow on the ground. Thom's shadow is what you'd expect, but it does make for an interesting comparison. I used AO, one keylight with shadows, and one fill light under the ground in front of the building. The background image was a camera rotoscope and the whole shot was rendered with 25 passes. Though I don't consider myself anything but a novice when it comes to texturing, I have learned quite a bit by trial and error on this project. Hmm, what if I take one of the components of the shot and do a small walkthrough on texturing with accompanying texture maps? I'll try and put something together. Eric

Well, yes, it actually started as personal challenge on what I could do with textures. The modeling was not that big of a challenge as you can tell, but every texture in that piece was either all done by hand or heavily manipulated by me. There are many layers on some of the surfaces. It just goes to show how hard it is to do photorealistic - at least for me. I'm happy with the way it turned out and above all, I learned a ton in the process. Now if I could just do this for a living - and get paid for it Thanks for looking in Eric

Thank you to all who voted for my image. I'm happy for the win with such stiff competition. This one was a lot of fun to make and was actually based on an old abandoned market I had seen in the Arizona desert. Below you can see the pic of the original mart and a wireframe of my model. Crits, comments, and questions are always welcome.

The first reference that comes to mind is the Technical Reference Manual. You can download it from the Hash web site. The second place to look for would be a search on the forum with key word: "boolean" Here is the result of about 5 min worth of spline tweaking the way I described it. Oops, sorry, the pics are a little big.

It looks like you are very close already. It looks like you have the mouth spline as one continuous spline? If so, then you can select that, also select the bottom neck spline as a guide, and then hide everything else. You should now be looking at two continuous splines in wire mode. Next, lock the bottom giude spline in order for it to stay unaffected during the mouth spline editing. Now comes the bias tweaking from the top down view. You have to tweak the bias handles of the mouth spline to follow the locked guide spline exactly. Once you have the splines match perfectly from the top view, you may have to carefully do some adjusting from the side view. Be careful though, since even small tweaks from the side or front view will very often need some corrections from the top view again. This is actually a technique that requires a bit of practice to perfect and conceptualize, but once you get the hang of it, curved surfaces will be your friend. Hope that helps. Eric

I'm still having issues with the scale of the fence and especially the telephone poles. A pole can vary from 20 to 60 feet, but the majority around my neighborhood seem to be around 40 feet. The attached pic shows the scale of height to width pretty well. I also did a search of telephone poles on Yahoo and found that almost none have the boot holds. Most pole climbers, at least out in the country, have the spikes on their boots to climb the poles.

Nice job so far. Here are a couple of tips: 1) instead of the dirt material, substitute with a color that matches the overall hue of the ground. Right now it looks as thought the ground is white under the grass. 2) Do something to differentiate the fence from the grass. In the last render, the fence blends in too much with the grass. There might also be a scale issue with the grass and the fence. 3) If you look at a real electrical pole, you will notice that the boot holds are spaced much further apart than what you have. Minor tweaks, but will make a real difference in your render. A skydome is not hard at all, do a search on the forum on how to do it, it will improve your sky ten fold. Looking forward to your next render. Keep up the good work.

Gold, Gold, Gold.... Gold color: RGB 253, 100, 200 Spec color: white Spec size: 212 Spec intensity: 700 Reflectivity: 30 with reflection filter set to 100% and reflective blend set to 50% You can use a small amouint of glow, but I did not. I also made a bitmap plus material set for bump at -14 percent to give the rough look and used the same bitmap material to give a bit of an environment. The jpeg I used was just a pic of a piece of limestone that I made into a tileable image. Lighting is also important if yo want the gold to look right. Make sure you have specularity turned on when lighting. That's about it. Btw, the pic with the pile of gold is a true representation of what $200 million would buy at today's price. That's 540 ingots of gold, each weighting 27 lbs at $925/oz.

Not all gold surfaces reflect the same. Polished gold jewelry is highly reflective, whereas gold bars or gold dabloons or Egyptian artifacts are not nearly as reflective. What is it you are going to use the gold material on? I am tweaking some gold material now. I'll post the render when I finish tweaking.

Now for another amazing leap of deduction: check your fog setting. Turn fog off in the advanced render setting. p.s. I'm only kidding about the amazing part

I like it. Now you just have to make him bounce off people or walls coming around corners

The lights beaming sound like they might be "normals". Hold down "shift" and then the number "1" to activate or de-activate "normals". Are you adding the background to the camera as a rotoscope, or did you add it to a plane as a decal? The way you added the image may have something to do with it. Render a top down view of your chor setup and post it.

Looking really good, I like it a lot.

Beautiful render and modeling as always. Give us some details please.

Looking very good! I'm not sure I agree with the thrust, since this is after all fantasy/sci-fi/cartoon. Even the hint of levitation/thrust, indicated by wavy lines pulsing out of his thruster pack would do the trick. But, what I would change is the positioning and movement of the little guy. Have him sway, bob , and weave with the rhythm of the music, like a little boy who is totally infatuated with this robot girl. In my head, she is much larger than him, her head about twice the size of his body, and he is buzzing around her head in a love dance brimming with infatuation. Maybe you can make her head be vague somehow, translucent, like he is just dreaming or imagining her. Don't forget to have the hearts following his path. The hearts can have a short life, like a cloud following him and dissipating after a few seconds as new hearts form.

Al: The movie won't run properly for me. The bike turns about 5 degrees and then no more. I tried it twice. The splinage is first rate. Now you'll have to go on to more complex models to further hone your craft Eric

Listening to the snippet and looking at your model, I imagine the little robot flying/hovering around a much larger/unattainable beautiful robot. As he is doing this, his hands clasp over his heart while images of little hearts are following his trail like bubbles. Off course the hearts burst, just like his chances of hitting it off with the lady robot. You could pull this off with minimal or no background to speak of. Check out "Alien Song"

You got it right on the nose Rodney. I too was rushed as the deadline loomed, so I did not have time to finish the tracks and their displacement maps. I actually started to model the dunes as they could be used for other projects. I was pretty sure our discerning audience would pick up on the floating tank and that it could cost me a standing, but I saw that the competition was particularly intense and did not mind just placing. We really should have at least three votes with such a terriffic turnout.

If I put that much work into a piece of art, I'd like to get credit for both bears

Just wait until you guys gaze upon my Photorealistic entry. Since Vern changed the rules and incorporated a trecherous subliminal message into his T2, I have no choice but to reciprocate. A spline for a spline, an eyene for an eyene, apples for apples, potatoes for french fries, hash browns for country fried, cream and sugar, the foo foo creamer if you please, French Vanilla will do...wait, did I get off track Anyways, my sublim will be so powerful, I could enter a single spline, render it and you would still vote for it, MUAHhahahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH..... Alas, what came over me? I would never stoop to subliminal coercion, never, never, never, vote for mine, never, never

This is an awesome model and I would be very happy with it if I'd have achieved it. I wouldn't be surprised if your model inspires some of us to get a bike. Isn't it funny how we are our own harshest critics? The progress of many of the longer term members has been a real treat to witness. This is also the reason why I love this forum, even the masters are humble and always willing to share/help. BTW, AL, I consider you one of the Masters Awesome modeling. Now, if you would just get back to the hot rod you were teasing us with...

Thanks to all who voted for my entry, and to all for the comments. Marcos, this time you made me laugh more so than Vern, and that's an accomplishment Sebastian, Ich war auch nicht sicher mit dem Panzer. Es fing an weil jemand nach einer Panzer Kette fragte. Danach konnte Ich einfach nicht aufhoeren. I also didn't vote for my image, this time, because it just didn't seem right since we could only vote once. As for not having a second and third place, that is sadly missed. I looked on the winner's page and Vern's entry is starting to rust. Vern, those big, salty tears of loneliness are causing a mess of corrosion on the exoskeleton. But wait, that's a good thing...the more he cries, the more he falls apart. Before Vern can finish him he will have turned into a heap of rusting junk, and that way he will not be able to trans-what-cha-ma-call-it into the past to destroy our future. Cry, baby, Cry!!! Come to think of it, I'm not sure we need him to come back here anyways, since we are doing such a grand job of destoying the planet ourselves. Thanks for listening and peeking in Eric

Most of you probably already knew this was mine since I already have a topic going on it, but here it is again anyways

That's exactly what I thought, that you were in a hurry to finish this. Ok now, I'll be watching you. No more rush jobs from now on, you've set the bar higher than that Eric