Eric2575

Hi Ken: I'm actually using a different rotoscope for this character than the above reference. There seem to be several variations of the character whose basic concept I am trying to loosely interpret. Below is the roto I'm using - Also notice this version has no drill attached to it's arm and the helmet is completely different. This may be a different character from Bioshock, or an earlier interpretation.

It's very tempting to want to skip every step toward becoming a master at anything, but that isn't what it takes to become proficient. What the heck am I saying - run, before you can jump, walk before you can run, and crawl before...well, you get the idea, don't you? This being your first model, stay basic, do it like the plane exercises in the book, be happy with a solid model depicting the outside first. When you ask about doing the interior, you are jumping way ahead of the game, and quite frankly, although this forum is extremely helpful and patient, I don't think anyone is going to spoon feed you when you are not making the effort of going through the exercises and learning the basics first. I hope I don't get into too much trouble for spelling this out, but too many noobers want to become instant prodigies without the required effort on their part. I could go on and talk about the world situation in regards to this line of thinking, but...... So, put more effort into the outside of your model first, finish it from the outside; there are plenty of challenges still waiting for you there, wings, details, decals, etc. Do the exercises in the book first. Read the beginners' section of the forum and do lots of searches for anything you might find a challenge. You can be assured that whatever problem you are encountering, someone else will most likely already have experienced it and will have an answer for you in the forum's past posts. When you have done the exercises, done the searches, and done the required grunt work, then, people will be more than willing to help. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people willing to help you even now, but... Sorry, but it's been a long hard month for me and I just had to get that out.

Hey, that's a great reference Cronos, it will surely come in handy. Starting to rough in the body. Pic #1 Edit: Two more hours of work, arms attached to torso and Dex's heavily nodified hands sewn on. Pic #2

What's going on with the balls of his feet? Also, his arms and legs seem a bit on the emaciated side? He doesn't scare me yet

Mech Piranha?

Forget about the hazy directions I gave earlier, they were sorta off the cuff. I had to do it differently and will put together a tutorial on how it's done - one of many ways, I'm sure. As far as the plugin, that's easy. Take the plugin and drag it into the HXT folder in your AM directory. The default location is C:\Program Files\Hash Inc\V13.O\hxt Yours may be different according to the version you have. In my case that happens to be V13.O. Once you have it there, start up AM (you need to restart if you had AM open during this procedure) and open a modeling window. Right click and chose Plugins from the context menu; choose Wizards and then Primitive. Have fun experimenting with all the goodies.

Robert has started a thread about Bioshock's Big Daddy character in this thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...t=0#entry245969 I really liked the character and asked Robert for approval to model Big Daddy also. With his ok on the subject, I splined away. This is my humble beginning, um, I mean Big Daddy's humble beginning. Critiques and comments always welcome.

Me thinks you're way ahead of the game. Doing that in Photoshop requires some skill and a working knowledge of making awesome decals. To get the specularity and such, just make spec size and intensity maps from the color decals and apply them in AM. Decals is a nice way to go if you have the skills, and you do. They render faster than materials and look as good or better than materials. The big thing about materials is that they are resolution independent.

I tried my hand at the drill and below is what I got. Was a bit more involved than I thought. Robert, if you want to use it, modify it to your needs, go ahead. Same for anyone else that may find it useful. Screw.mdl

K, I'll model the one without the drill. I'll start a new thread for that one.

Robert, stay with your original Big Daddy post, so it will all stay together. If you don't already have it, get the primitive plugin from: http://www.sgross.com/plugins/. With that you can make manny cool primitives including a spiral. Once you have the spiral, set your distortion box to 1-2-1 and then taper the spiral. With this path, you can use sweeper to sweep the spiral path to make the actual drill. I'll try to put a quick tut together. Edit: I'm Having a bit of trouble getting sweeper to behave the way I want, so I used "Duplicator." This little model was more involved than I thought. See the Pic here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29373&hl=

Looks pretty good so far. How much experience do you have modeling? Have you done some of the tutorials, some other models? Any experience with other Apps? Keep us posted.

This is how I learn in leaps and bounds; watch other people - Rusty - forge ahead, bump their toes, and then I take all the credit at the end. Just kidding. Thanks, Rusty, for asking all these questions about the rig, cause that's how we all learn - 'cept for the Bradbury's and Yves, they had a copy of AM and Quantum Physics theory placed in their crib at birth . Again, all your posts having to do with the rig are tremendously helpful and will be invaluable to me when I rig my first character. Now, what horrible creation will I come up with...hmmm, Halloween....hhmmm...

Don't forget booleans! You can make a really simple low density building without worrying about where the doors or windows go by using booleans to cut a hole anywhere you want. After you make the hole, just make a frame for it to hide the cut. Dhar is right, though, why do all of this when you could probably just do parts of what you are going to need/shoot and save a lot of time. Look at Hollywood, they rarely make a whole city (make that never), because no one will ever get to see it. The story is where the attention is, not the city - unless you are making a documentary of a city. Blah, blah, blah...

Excellent all around!

Dhar, what you don't know is that Stian is building miniatures. Remember the coins Stian floated into the air, one of his first cool projects? The Bismark is actually no bigger than one of those coins. Ok, Stian, fess up, show the actual scale of your battleships to put Dhar at ease.

You'll have a hard time topping the Bismark. Just curious, is the red hull just an attribute or a decal? AO? Can't wait to see more.

How did you do the hair?

Go John go!!!

I don't think an expression would work in this case, but I like the idea. Now a pose, that might do the trick.

I rigged a simple mechanical model to rotate two arms. This model will be multiplied in an action 10x. Is there a way to move the rigged arm on one of the instances and have that carry over to the other 9 instances? The arms should all move in tandem. One bone at a time is very tedious.

What rig will you use?

Awesome!

That scene I had with so many lights turned out nicely by faking most of the lights. I just made light panels and set the ambiance to 100%. After that it was just a matter of using a few lights to do the rest.

What kind of computer are you using? I did a scene with around 18 lights or so and it took about nine hours to render on a dual core 6600 2.4 machine. 50 hours plus is way over the top. You're not running AM on a Commodore 64 or an Atari, are you? Seriously, I'd consider starting a new chor from scratch and rendering VGA test scenes as you start filling the chor. Just one corrupted model or light will mess up everything. Find that one and you're good to go.