Eric2575

Are you sure you don't live in Tokyo? You've got that Japanese style down pretty good. How about some bright colors for the armour? Shouldn't he have some kind of face or at least eyes? Make them glow. Background - Tokyo skyshot. Are those appendages on his hips holsters?

Check out my Christmas contest entry, that was done with sprites. If I had used three or more different pics for the sprites it would look even better. Did not take much to render either. http://www.hash.com/imagecontest/Dec07/03.jpg

Wow, I think I need a dictionary for that one. Anyways. I just browsed flickr and yahoo images and have found a few background shots that would be a great start. Could someone post a link to some pics of Klu Klips workshop? That sorta looked like a mad scientists lab and would also be a good start for you. Could you give us a little more background info on your requirements for this project?

The lack of critique is definitely because your model of Grievous is awesome. You should know by now that we would really say something if we thought it needs improvement. Get to the decaling and don't worry about the model

A couple of pointers from someone who is NOT an expert. To get you started, you can get away with desaturating your color decal and make that your bump map. This will already give your texture a bit of a 3-D look. You can use multiple maps for your color, bump and or displacement, and grime maps. The maps do not need to be in order - this is per Martin. Do you have photoshop or some app that will let you make pics with an alpha channel? Do you know how to make an alpha channel and what it's used for? An alpha channel will hide everything in that channel and show everything else. This is perfect for grunge and scratch maps as well as a ton of other things. Here is a link on a quick way to do it: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...l=alpha+channel Since Grievous is composed of so many different parts, you'll have to decal each piece by itself in a on/off pose. Are you familiar with creating a pose to decal a part of your model? Do you have good reference material for the model's decals? Matt's pics of the plastic model are a good start, but a full shot would be even better. There is lots to learn, but just about anything you need to know about basic decaling and texturing will have already been discussed on this forum, just do a search for specifics. I will be out of town tomorrow and Sunday with no internet connection, but I can get back to you on Monday if you get stuck on something. Good luck Eric

Quick and dirty: The stars look like snow flakes and the depth of field is out of sync - look at the sharpness of the ships vs the planet.

Here is a page with several great links to various tutorials that should get you started: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...2&hl=sutton Scroll down to Materials and Texturing. What kind of experience do you have as far as decals and bump mapping are concerned? Do you know where and how to apply them in the PWS? If this is for a client or a project that has a deadline, it may be a better choice to get someone here to texture it for you this time.

Awesome modeling job Kevin!!! The force is truely with you. I have no crits, only praise. When this sucker is decaled and textured, you can stick him in a Star Wars movie and no one will be able to tell that it wasn't done by the big boys. Very nice.

That's fantastic for your first almost completed project! I especially like the flames coming out of the rocket. Keep contributing.

Stian, my hat off to you as always, great work! Believe it or not, but if you are planning to make a tutorial disk, you could start with a finished model and work your way backwards. Just that little diagram you gave on how to make the oval indentation is a little gem. A tut doesn't have to show every stitch, but tricky, difficult parts could be explained just like you did above. I would also buy a tut from you in a second.

Very cute animation, though I agree with Dhar about the mouth movement needing a tweak or two.

Very nicely done David. Looks like you were really working to keep the spline count down while still getting lots of detail - bravo. Wait, did I see another render with a black background? Well, I forgive you this time, since I can actually see the model in this one I'm really looking forward to the first few action clips. Keep up the great work. Eric ps. Save your attachments as jpg's, bmp's are too big and take too long to load.

Make the candles different heights; add wax droppings to them and the candle holder; give the holder more specular and reflective properties; give the wall material less specular and add a dispalcement map to it; change the wood texture on the table as already metioned; add several grunge maps to the table and use three light sources, since you have three candles.

Hey there, long time no hear from you. I like the animation, but there is something missing when the character studders on the words "ch..change for me." Maybe a little head jerk and eye squint as he tries to spit out the words. Otherwise, I think you did a really nice job.

Looking very nice so far. Tip: You can actually make a hose identical to the one you have with a simple displacement decal. The decal has to be applied in a pose because you have to straighten out the hose and apply the decal in a cylindrical fashion. In a model with lots of splines or lots of hoses, this will save many cps. Since MC does not have a lot of hoses, keep this in mind for future reference.

Don't worry about spilling your beans, we understand; go ahead and start over here

First off, you must have a group setting with the transparancy set to something other than 0. Why don't you delete all groups and resave the model. If you still have the ghostly green surface, then you must click on the models properties and check the global settings there. Set the transparency to default by right clicking and selecting - default. Resave. Next, make sure you don't have mirror mode on when you are trying to copy/flip/attach. Mirror mode is the blue happy face icon with the line down the middle. Make sure that is not on. Now you have to make sure all splines running toward the center spline end there, and do not continue down the center spline. The most obvious places for a mistake here are the top most and lower most splines intersecting the center spline. An easy way to tell if you joined the horizontal spline with the center spline is to select a cp on the top or bottom horizontal spline and then hit shift right bracket or shift left bracket. This will highlight the selected cp and then move on to the next cp in line. Once you get to the center spline cp, the next shift right/left bracket click should stay on the center spline cp. If a consecutive cp up or down the center spline gets highlighted, then you know you must break that continuation. It's a bit hard to put into words. See if the illustration helps. You also must make sure that all center spline cps are aligned on the x axis. Do this by selecting all center splines, then go to "scale" in the project work space and enter "0" in the x-scale. After that, select the whole model, hold down the shift key as you click just to the left of one of the center cps. Once you did that, right click and hit copy/flip/attach.

There is nothing sad about it, as a matter of fact, I really like it. The model looks pretty good from this angle, but I think you can make it even better if you change the camera angle a bit. Show more of the bike's profile, it looks like you put some work into it and it should be seen.

Again, I can't really comment on the model, although what I can see looks pretty good. How long have you been working with AM? What other 3D experience have you had?

David: from this render it's really hard to analyze the model. Even for an advertising poster it's a bit too dark. People want to see the product in clear detail and AM users would like to see a wireframe on a bright background to give you crits on your work. If you are planning on entering your work in a contest, it's usually a good idea to keep it under wraps. Part of the contest's allure is that the creators aren't revealed until judging is complete, which also helps in keeping judging unbiased. This is not a written rule though, and you can post your progress if you like. Eric

Robert, use the sweeper plugin to quickly make the tracks. In case you haven't used sweeper before, here's a link to some tutorials on it: http://www.hash.com/Sweeper/

The first thing I would check is the Normals. Press shift + 1 to see the yellow normals on your model. All normals should be facing out away from your model. If that does not take care of the problem, the next thing I would do is to delete all decals - you don't have that many applied yet, right, and see if the yellow square is still there. If it is, you know the decals are not the problem. Also, give us a shaded wireframe render on a white background to give us a better view of the problem area.

Looking at your outline, I get the impression that you might have quite a few extra cps' that you don't need. I'm guessing you could delete almost half of the cps' and still get the same outline you have now. Go ahead and make a copy of what you have and then experiment with that copy to see what can be deleted. In AM the addage "keep it simple" really does apply.

Not cows???? Lee, I hope you are laughing right along with us in our sillyness

Yes, I have. That's how I learn to get different moods, lighting, and effects for my work.