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Thank You! The outer shield was a displacement/Bump map. Modeling that would have taken me longer than the dress Luckily, I had a rough sketch of the shield design to start with. (shield_design) Then I divided the design into areas depending on how much each area lifted off the surface. I painted the base a neutral gray (128,128,128) I painted each of the areas (castle, rocks, ladders, and figures) with a slightly different shade of gray, each on a different layer in Photoshop. (Shield1) Then for a little more detail, I extracted just the lines from the original drawing and cleaned them up a bit. Then, on a separate layer in Photoshop, I filled certain areas with white, then selected all the lines (the lines were on a separate layer), and deleted all the white areas that were behind a line, so what looks like lines is actually just empty space. (Shield2) Then I blurred the layer so the white areas bled into the places where the lines should be. Then I saved a displacement map of the blurred white layer and the layers painted with different shades of gray. (Shield3). Then I made just the layers with the lines visible,blurred them a little, and saved that as a Bump Map. (Shield4). The displacement map is applied at 400%. The bump map is applied at 100%.

Well I didn't finish it by Sunday but I gave it a good effort. This is my 46th model that has some kind of crazy Greek cloth in it, and even though I underestimated the amount of time Athen's dress would take me (it's still not done), this is the fist model where I actually feel like I know what I'm doing. Everything I've encountered in this model so far are things I've encountered and solved before. On the 45th one I still felt like I was figuring it out to some extent. I've tried all kinds of different modeling techniques and combinations of bump, normal and displacement maps in the past to try and save a little time and work, but the results from simply modeling every fold are soooo much better than trying to fake the folds with displacement/bump maps, especially on something like this that will be the center of attention. The downside is that modeling every fold is SLOW and HARD when you are trying to at least come close to another source such as photos or a live model. I estimated 2-3 days on the dress and it will end up taking me 6 days (just for the Dress).

Day 7 - more cloth I'm almost done with the cloth. Man that left leg was a challenge. Holy cow. ... but it's done now. Whew! I have to add a doo-dad on the other side and make some adjustments here and there. Then I can move on to the Shield

OK, you convinced me. Thanks Nancy. I'll try to add a touch of asymmetry if I have any time left at the end.

I'm not sure that you would need Deskpins when using Irfanview? Irfanview has an item in the Options menu named "Always on Top". If you choose that, the Ifranview window will stay on top of all other open windows. I use that one a lot. (I'm using version 3.00)

Day 6 - More cloth. I got another gig animating on a low budget flic (when it rains, it pours) so I'm going nuts trying to juggle everything. I have four more days to finish the cloth, add a spear, some sandals, a palm-sized Nike, an insane shield decorated on both side with painting and bas relief carvings, a large base showing the birth of Pandora in bas relief, a couple of stylized Medusa heads, a giant snake and various doo-dads. I don't know if I'm going to make it, but I'll give it my best shot. Thanks Nancy. This statue of Athena was done in the Classical period. Although those Greeks had a maddening fascination with convoluted cloth and body postures during that period, pretty much everything else adhered to the principles of harmony, balance and symmetry. All the faces I've studied from the Classical period, other than a few centaurs and non-religious busts, were symmetrical and showed little,if any, emotion. In the Hellenistic period, a bit of emotion (aka asymmetry) starts to appear, but that was later. I'm definitely not a Greek art history expert though ...

Day 5 I added earrings and a few details to the helmet. I also started on the cloth. It may not look like much, but trying to match cloth like this from a bunch of photos all taken from random angles is HARD.

Day 4 I have to make some tweaks to the head area, but it's basically done. Put together a quick body. The arms are a little large, but not by a whole bunch. I was amazed at how big boned those greek goddesses are when I really began to study them! Made a rough pose for the body. I'll tighten the arm poses up when I get a little farther along. Made a rough outline for the cloth. The cloth is going to get a lot more complicated, but I had to get the general shape of it first.

Thanks Mr. Big Bootay! I think it is going to be used for illustrations in a book. I will definitely not be animating this one. When the details in the cloth start taking shape, you'll see why Hi Myron, The creatures on the head are separate models. I am assembling everything in the chor. The creatures are constrained to "Translate To" and "Orient Like" Athena's head bone. All of them had to be boned and weighted so I could pose them "just-so" on the helmet. The hair is semi-modeled, sort of like the wings on the horses. I modeled the outline and some basic contours, then I slapped a displacement map on it. I think the displacement map makes the wireframe disappear in a shaded-wireframe render.

Thanks Eric. Here's a wireframe. For some reason, a lot of Classical Greek statues didn't have much of an indent at the bridge of the nose. Here are some faces I'm using for a general reference. But, because you pointed it out as looking odd, I'll try to add a little bit of an indent and see what the client says. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks Robcat. The creature in the center is a Sphinx.

I got a quick gig modeling a statue of Athena. Yippee! The head and helmet is almost done, just have to add more hair and a few details. Then on to the rest of the body. I've spent three days on it so far. I'm going to try to finish this by next Sunday. Wish me luck.

that's awesome. Love the style. Love the camera.

Look in the Tutorials forum http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=50 There are tutorials for Streaks, Hair, Blobbies and Sprites (all particles).

Try reading through this Post Effects tutorial. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30168 Hopefully that will answer your questions.

From the description of your problem, it sounds like you have not assigned control points to your bones. Once you have placed your bones, select a bone and, with the bone flashing, drag with the mouse around some control points. The control points should now flash the same color as the bone. You can also [shift]-click control points to asign them to the selected bone. Once you get the hang of CP assignments, you may want to check out these tutorials for basic smartskin and control point weighting. Basic Smartskin Tutorial http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29742 Control Point Weighting Tutorial http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29734 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are some other tuts you may find useful. Basic Constraints http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29743 Modeling with Distortion Boxes (beginning) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29735 Animated Distortion Boxes (Intermediate) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29730 How to rig a piston http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30019

Yep. Delete the original *material* from your patch. Or, if you want to be safe, make a new patch and apply your quicktime movie to the new patch as a decal. The quicktime movie should play on the patch without you having to do anything to it, but you may have to do a quick preview render to see it. Once you apply the movie as a decal, render a few frames to make sure the movie is actually playing on the patch. (Rendering displacement maps can slow down your renders considerably, that' why you do a preview render first with the decal type set to "color") Then, in the Decal properties, set the movie decal Type to "Displacement". I don't have AM open at the moment, but I think "displacement value" refers to the "Intensity" property. Just set the Intensity to something low at first, like "25". Babbage's tutorial is pretty old, a couple of things changed in AM since he wrote it, so you probably won't have to set the displacement to "-7" like the tutorial says.

The only things I can think of are to: Post a message in the Forum Support section detailing exactly the steps you took and the buttons you clicked, along with the results. Then ask for suggestions on how to submit your animation so it is viewable on AM films. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=13 Then send an email to support@hash.com with exactly the same information.

Tat part of Babbage's tut doesn't sound right. You can only drag a material onto a model or a group within a model. Make a model of a large flat square, like the "ground" model that appears whenever you make a new choreography. At first, just make it out of a single patch. Later you can try making it out of many smaller patches to see if it looks any better. Drag your material onto the model name (in the PWS). Now the material is applied to the model. Now you can drag the *model* into a new action window and continue with the tutorial.

Caroline, words like those just make my day. Thank you

Here's the classic tutorial on animating water http://www.babbagepatch.com/water.htm It's an oldie but a goodie.

Great model so far! There is a tutorial on hair here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29738

Very nice. This model is just begging for the HAMR treatment! Using WebHAMR, you could have a real-time walkthrough.

photorealism is an art form in it's own right. Whatever software you use, it takes skill and practice. For starters, use good quality decals for most of your textures and read as many books on lighting as you can. In addition, you will want to be familiar with how AM handles lighting. Here's a tut on lighting in AM. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29732 You may also want to be familiar with Image Based lighting. I don't know of an AM tutorial on IBL, but there have been many posts in the forum on the subject by Matthew Bradbury. You can use the forum search to find them.

Hey that looks promising so far. It you designed the characters for this comic, then you obviously know how to draw the character from just about any angle. It would be easier to model it if you draw a front view with his arms straight out, and a side view without arms. Then use them as rotoscopes in your model window.