Iham Wrong

Here's the F-hole.

Hehe! Bat Capsula. Everything is looking really spiffy. I too love simple characters and these gems look like they are going to be just too much fun. I would include some special charactures such as Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon, Omar Kadafi, Fedel Castro, The Marx brothers and the Three Stooges. Gosh! There are so many possibilities. Frankencapstein, The Warecap, The Swamp-cap-Thing. Even Mr. Potato-cap. Then there are also NASA's notable characters to play a role in the the space capsule. So many possibilities can make your head spin!

The pinbox and scroll were terribly difficult, the biggest problem was working the cavity in. Basically I started by laying out the scroll using a single spline. This forced me to place cp's in a rather tight configuration to get the curvature about right, then nudging the cp's until it represented the general shape. Then followed up by a series of Extruded - freeze - nudges - tweeks. Lot's of tweeks! Get half the shape and copy/flip/attach.

Looks like it might be some odd OpenGL error. I get strange display malfunctions on ATI's last two driver updates; Things disappearing at certain angles. ?Did you update your video card drivers by any chance?

I had trouble making the f-hole on my first violin a few years back. I might do the geometry differently now and use a boolean cutter instead. Using them may have made your bridge construction a bit less tedious. Note: The thing to remember with booleans is that the cutter geometry's has to be capped off and assigned to a bone. If you would like to take a look at it there is a QT movie (Sorenson3) of the thing. Sorry if the gamma seems a bit bright, but some folks have dim monitors. http://home.comcast.net/~frank_h/old-violin.mov

Nice. It reads really well, even if it is a proxy model. It also looks like it would work as a silhouette as well?

I can get the start of a little story from this thing. An unsuspecting customer purchases a special can of royal blue paint that comes under the label "Magic Sheen". Unknown to her is that the paint formulation was derived from a Arabic magician potion recipe that was discovered in an ancient book of magic. Little does she know what events are about to unfold from it's application.

Everything looks great. Very clean. It will be interesting to see how you work through the previously mentioned hints and suggestions. Things I would like to see added: A few persistent weeds along the buildings a few in the cracks along the side walk. A small trickle of water along the curbing to suggest it's been raining and explains what the street is so clean. Oil and grease spots where vehicles have parked repeatedly. Fade the pavement's center stripes and perhaps add some cracking to the asphalt and paint. The lurkers are watching!

Nice smile.

Hmm.. He's a bit specular in A:M v.s. the other app you made the previous renders in. Looks like you need to use a softer type of material such as a combiner gradient with a falloff setting around 30% to 40%. I'd also spend a little time explorering lighting setups. 6 bulb area lamps can do a lot for a simple scene shot. The JPG you posted is rather small. If you want it less chunky you will need to post a larger format and reduce the compression a tad.

With a little fore thought you can accually model out the scrimshaw graving work in A:M. A:M can render very clean details that can easily be set colorwise to make excellent bump and displacement maps. You could actually model out the Celtic knot and render your bump detail.

Everything is looking wonderful. I wish I had words to offer that would make it go faster and easier, but you are getting there. UGo!

Where's the updates? How are you progressing or have you moved on to something else?

Silly you. You have A:M and you can map it out on simple geometry then stretch, shrink, twist, skew, flip, scale, wrap, box, or anything else you can think of. Set the image ambience up if needed and render. Clip the screen or render out in the choreography. I have even applied it as an animatable alpha mask generator. Your imagination is the limit with A:M.

Hehe, go back and try that in v8.0. It's kinda amazing how much better the channel and key control is in v10+.

Very, umm... dead I suppose. Congratulations with the characters completion. She looks great for a dead movie star.

That's really interesting. I really like the wacky stylized buildings and the way you set them all up. It really works well.

Very cool looking. You will have to step up your asset making process so we can watch the movie on A:M Films.

Everything is looking great so far. I really like the classic cartoon look, but if you want to punch it up a bit, take a look at one of your stills or post process some footage to black and white. B&W seems to allow you to focus better on the color levels and balance. Hey, I'd like to report a nefarious looking alien character named Vegis in the WIP sector. He was acting really suspicious.

Heck, that is a simple choice... Do them all. Women change outfits on a whim. Too, she would look great in any attire you choose. My preference would be dressing her in a classy blue business suit, blouse and some nice high heels. Kind of a day look when she's not out saving the world from villains.

The magnitude, alpha and gamma values can be read directly from the show manipulator properties dialog panel (top toolbar) or the standard properties menu. Values can be typed that effect a single control point or the entire group selection and or model. So you have to be careful in it's use. The inside and outside magnitude can be set directly on the properties menu. This feature is restricted for peeked CPs and allows for a higher level of adjustment in mechanical modelling. My apiologies in advance if this is not what you are asking for.

OT: The ultimate scary is experienced while rasing children.

I don't think you are going to get many crits on this Amar. Too you have quiet a bit of experience modeling chracters. Therefore the body geometry looks well thought out and the splinage carefully placed. Side note: If I didn't know better I would think you were planning on doing something to compete with Joe Williamson's Huntress model. Of course I can't blame you. She's very interesting and the attention to detail is mind blowing. <grins>

Basically you have most all of the splinage laid out ok for animation. The mouth area looks like it could use another spline ring around it to control the general lip shape. The biggest problem areas I see are the forehead in the eyebrow area and the neck. If the character has hair then the top of the head can be left open. No one will see it. The neck will require that you think about the geometry and try to re-flow it for a smooth transition to the other features. Try to keep the spline spaced out fairly even then go ahead and sculpt it on out to represent the final form that you have envisioned. As an aid for us, sketch the character out on paper, post that and we can help you figure it out easier. It's like a road map. <grins>

Gosh! You know Balrog would be an excellent spokesman for Zantak, Tums or Rolaids. How about a parody Mylanta or PreparationH commercial where he get some relief from either burning reflux or itching.