Iham Wrong

I attempted a few alpha blocks on the volumetrics. It's a bit flaky with some really strange results on negative lights. Has any one tried the alpha fog map since v8?

Have you tried a large volumetric light with a light shadow gel to make strange projected shadows? Might be a worth a try.

Amazing transition to a weathered, slightly hardened personallity.

It would make a pretty good chocolate malt. Here's a thought. The v11 hair looks and behaves a lot like water in some ways. Has anyone else noticed how hair can look like whitecaps on waves and hair plugs like ocean spray? I did tried making a waterfall with an hair, but soon discovered the guides didn't animate directly. Maybe when collisions detection becomes part of the system, hair might lend itself to frivolous aquatic pursuits. Perhaps with the combined brainpower of the A:M masters and programmers a real fluid dynamic method will be developed.

Hehe! That's pretty neat. Pretty big role ahead for the little guy. How about a mix of the two methods by using toon render with shading. Tweak the gradient mix till it gives you a nice custom shadow effect. You may need to assign some lights to the character model to keep him from getting blended into the environment though. In an action you can add the same light multiple times. Just add however many lights you need as action objects and position them then apply a translation to with the offset (compensation mode). Later in the choreography drop the action on the char and all the custom lighting is there. It's one of those things to keep in mind if you need it.

That's a fairly lean model. Are you referring to bogging down in A:M or the game environment? Water - water everywhere and it takes forever to render. Will Sutton offered a very nice ocean combiner material he made for one of his projects. I think a general search for ocean might produce the original message. Bobbing and rolling on the ship could be done using a variety of methods. Probably the best would be straight animation - which offers maximum control. If the motion is cyclic then an action with stride length would work. Place it on a path and it would be like a skiing rocking horse. A path system using a stern and aft bone could be setup to follow paths. With 3 paths and a few bones. A ship rig could be made to do anything the path dictated. Project file: http://home.comcast.net/~frank_h/sea-rig.zip ============================================== Umm.. There are more complex dynamic rigging solutions that utillize the surface features of the mesh. This would be very restrictive, but could use a water surface made of a cloth spring system. The path could also be cloth and drapped over invisble controlling geometries such as crest, wakes and breakers. I suppose forces could be added to add extra turbulence to the surface as well. A:M has all of these features and with lots of patients, many hours of experimentation and a bit of imagination they might be able to do such a simulation. There is also the expression system to explorer as well. Unfortunatly, this potentially powerful feature is not comprehended by left brain challeged people like me. If memory serves me right, Marcel Brinkman is working on a reactive water plugin that reacts to external objects.

Hehe! I thought he was the English butler and head of the household. Afterall, he is dressed for the part. Of course, excellent work as always. You are getting too predictable in your quality these days.

Hey Scott. Have you added any bones to the model to see how the jaw geometry moves?

He looks nice as is. Dragon flys are rather difficult to watch or inspect up close. Plus they bite. There is a neat trick you can do with your background image that would give it a nice 3D feel. Use the image as a rotoscope. Build splinage to match one or two of the cattails and decal it with the same image. Pull the fake cattails to the foreground. With that same geometry you can use it to make an alpha image for either cookiecutters or alpha layer. A:M can work like a super alpha mask maker with fancy spline controls. It can also be used to do some complex perspective adjustments on any picture; basically a Super Goo. A:M is a very versatile application. Just add imagination and a lack of funds for fancy software.

Inserting images here is perfect. Sort of you own personal progress website.

Wow! That is freaky neat. I'd hate to see his mother and father up close.

Bakerrod pretty much nailed it. With some scale adjustments and a few more visual cues to give a sense of depth it should turn out quiet nice.

Nice website and that is an impressive list of works. It's apparent that you plan to do something special in A:M. Should be fun to watch as you keep us updated. "Thom the Movie" hehe!

Hehe! I can see it now. Greenglen's Nursing Home presents "Pushing Miss Daisy" A novel animation of geriatric proportions that exposes a world of discovery and explorers the unseen potentials of senility.

Hey, you have the rest of your life to do this. Too! It's difficult to change gears while going ninety to nothing. There is a lot to think about when building webpages. Html, frames, links, scaling, java bots and all that garbage takes time to learn. Do all of this html thinking in your sleep and stay healthy.

You weren't kidding about image heavy. If the subject was broken down into parts you could categorize images across multiple pages. Perhaps using a half body image with frames as your menu system would make it easier to manage and download the content. I wish I knew more about the Flash SWF system. The Camtasia software is a bit expensive for hobby use, but it would handle this project with ease and amazing efficientcy. Feet: Hmm.. Think about this appendage and approach it as you would a hand model. After all, it's basically the same with the exception of function and scale.

It took some searching (not that easily done) but I found Jim's first tutorial. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2315

That's a cool looking and bazaar critter. Sort of reminds me of the wizards hat from the Harry Potter movie.

It's apparent that being an artist has an advantage in this medium. You and many others here have proven that. Since I'm not an artist I have nothing to contribute, but I can point out one when I see one. Here's an artist: I'm not sure if you saw this thread or not, but Mach's modeling techniques are worth noting. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2755 There are many more, but that silli-ninni-littity thing has kicked in.

Hey that's a great face you got there. You did and excellent job of spline placement in proportional to the musculature. Keep that model in case you want to build a static model of yourself; such as a granite statue. Toss a couple of the library combiner materials on it for texture and grunge Perhaps you could use it for that virtual garden spot. Place the possessed figurine in a visible area, but have it move very slowly when no one; (except the camera); is looking. It could follow a haunted garden or legacy by heirloom theme as such. You could also use that statuette as a trademark in all of your images just for fun. Perhaps in a classical thinker pose.

Everything looks fantastic. Are you planning on invoking the power of radiosity on this set? I would speculate that Yves with his expertise and patients could harrass it to photo realistic.

Very good animation Cyber. The sets are superb. Did you model all of the props by yourself? So, how does the snack taste?

Very nice design indeed, but I agree that you need to explorer other ways to attach those longitudinal splines. Sometimes you can get away with dead ending splines, but those sleek surfaces wouldn't allow that without creasing. Perhaps after texturing the creases may blend well or add to your design. The manta style kinards offer a lot of weapon possibillities. Between them you could generate all kinds of nasty effects from high energy particle burst to gravity wells.

Very nice elements and variety, but now I wonder what is the main focus. The usage and color of the pond is very clever. It instantly draws your focal point down. The mushroom house gets all of the attention here. The centipede is a bit subdued in coloration and seems less significant and the eye is drawn back to the mushroom. If that's the intent you did well. If the centipede is the target. Then perhaps using a more saturated or contrasting color could help guide the eye.

Hi William, Is the vacant lot located in a more urban tennant slum type setting? Travis Price has a large collection of urban textural treatments that might interest you. http://digitalcraftsman.com/textureBin/textureBin.htm -------------------------------------------------- Here's another interesting texture link done by Jason Waskey. http://www.pixelpoke.com/ornament thumbnails.htm -------------------------------------------------- http://www.marlinstudios.com/home/home.htm Is a premire supplier of commercial textures, that is if you have the funds available, though they do have some nice free samples. -------------------------------------------------- http://www.1000skies.com Offers some of the best sky textures you can find. -------------------------------------------------- If you use either Corel's Painter or JASC Paint Shop Pro and dream of jungles, woodlands or rural open settings. you might find this interesting. http://www.gardenhose.com/