Iham Wrong

I like it. He has confidence and a bit of attitude. As the son of a clothspin. He has learned to hang with the best and puts his life on the line everyday.

I don't mind. I made it for you or anyone else that wants it.

Maybe that's part of Vern's upgrade on the coffee maker plug-in. <grins>

Guess he's a subscriber of "Body by Jake" Hehe! Nice muscular grimlin model so far.

The modeling took maybe an hour or so. It started out as a 10 segment sphere. A few click here, scale, cut in, extrude, delete a section, push that, pull there, reflow and there you have it. No mystery, just practice and applying what you learn here on the Forum/List.

Hehe! You could have said something to the effect, ...... it had a peice of fruit in it's mouth.

Here's the model if you want it. sir_piggy.zip

Here's half of a cartoon like pig head with lots of 5P patches.

Another shot with a slapped together low rez wheel.

Here's the simple model. It will need some tweaking to get the shape and color that you want. ADV_tire.zip

I thought about doing another tutorial, but it just seems like a drag. Here's the results. A slightly worn out tire. I don't think it would pass a safety inspection though. The model is in the next message attachment.

Wow! That hair system is turning into one versitle do-it-all FX do-hicky. Next thing ya'll will try is making ocean wave crest. Or a waterfalls. Or something really unexpected and nifty.

Looks really good to me. But, i'm no expert. Just a hobbiest. <grins>

I must have missed John's posting while composing my message. So, that answered all my questions.

I like this idea. Sorta like a DIY PlayDoh or Lego Monster Factory. Now all I have to do is come up with something monsterous to attach. Teeth! Monsters need heads with lots of teeth. What about the model scale and including bones or feature controls for facial expressions?

Wow, that stuff is really dated, but it might work. What he is wanting is a rather complex tread shape for a trendy and costly tire. I saw some of these tires the other day when I was getting mine rotated. BTW! Really nice rim. I bet the car using them is going to be a smash too!

Hehe! For a minute there I expected to see Nemo and his Dad swim out of there.

Woo Hoo! Congrats! Now all you need is a finger - followed by a hand to touch it and make it change colors. Oops! Where's the power cord? <grins>

So what is the plan for this? Are you going to keep refining it for animation or is this just practice?

Looks just like the real thing. Good work. Hmm..here's something to experiment on. How about an animated sprite emitter perhaps or a hair emitter using a short lightening animation and rotate the emitter to make it do it's electric dance.

Looks different.. sorta like it got a dose of Triox or Ortho Roundup. Did you use edge shaded gradients to get the effect?

I just used that skeleton pic to model the shape. It was just a quick slap together - 1/2 model to demonstrate how lean the splinage can be for attaining detail. Reference pic: The fossil picture was really small and of low quality. It had to be massaged to get decent detail and scale. I can't recall where the image came from but, there is a B&W version on a Russian website. Do a Google search for desmostylus. Somewhere I read that they thought this fossil might be an ancestor of the hippo, by the looks at this skeleton I think they are probably right in that assumption. Something else, there must be more than one animal in this classification. I saw references to a manatee like creature, but no real examples except teeth. It would also help to actually see the fossils to determine the animal's scale. You can gladly have this partial half-a-potumus model as I never intend to finish it. http://home.comcast.net/~frank_h/example.zip

Got to thinking about how that example didn't quiet fulfill it's purpose. So here's another try. Sorry about that.

I don't know if I should put this here, but you did asked for an example of reduced splinage. So, I looked around for a skeleton of one of these creatures and all I could find was something from Japan that looks a lot like a hippo.

Do you have any way to convert the image into a JPG? If so you can just attach it to your message down at the bottom of the message composition page. BTW, the image does look like a soap dispenser. There are a number of ways to make things look metallic. One way to simulate reflectivity is to use a material that spherically projects an image. In the materials section of A:M there is the projection map and environment map. To use these all you need is a good image of a room with good contrast. Apply the material to the group, tweak a little and it looks just like metal. For fun, a picture of your face or a camera up close will make things interesting. To color it. Group the metal parts and add a bit of color and set the material opacity down between 85-95% and it will simulate the reflectivity of polished metal. To finish off the effect, add a specular size of 6 to 8 percent.