williamgaylord

I like the look, but technically speaking your ocean waves would be sunamis that would dwarf Mount Everest. Depends on whether you want a realistic look or an artistic fantasy look.

Very nice work! Very believable, natural (but creepy) form.

I'm unable to view it either. I have Quicktime 6.5.2. I would upgrade to 7, but I'd have to pay for the Pro upgrade again. (If I need to, I will.) Anybody else have the same version that can play it? At the first attempt I got the error message that the "required decoder was not available on the Quicktime site". Bill Gaylord

Thanks. With practice I should get better at it. This is my first try, so it is very much a learning experience. I'm following Bill Young's "Model a Face" tutorial, so you might see some of his style reflected in my head. I'm amazed at the elegance and efficiency of some of the work posted and aspire to approach that kind of skill some day. There are some really talented people out there, most of whom are very helpful and generous. Thanks for the encouragement.

I did say that is was an idealized portrait... Have you seen my baby picure?Baby Pic Since I plan to use this to hone my facial rigging and animation skills, I may wind up removing the hooks. Thanks for the suggestion!

This is quite interesting. I'm not familiar with the term IBL. Are you saying you are creating the illusion of a surrounding image field that simulates a 3D point of view that can be rotated as though you were in the room looking around? BTW, I first caught the title out of the corner of my eye and misread it as "Hoovering coin", promting a vivid image of a coin vacuuming the appartment. Nice work! Bill Gaylord

Thought I'd finally take a crack at modeling a realistic head to go with the ears I made earlier. This is a self portrait (egomaniacal person that I am). I made ears during a post debating what is the most difficult body part to model. (The "ears have it" in this case.) The ear models (I made an elf/orc version, too) are still available if anybody needs ears for their own model. Ears Here's the face to go with the ears (idealized of course--"Isn't he so handsom! Gaffaw, gaffaw..."). Any suggestions for improvement--for the model that is, not plastic surgery for myself--are quite welcome. Thanks!

Here is a start on the Mascot of my trademark Arty-Joke Productions. It will be an artichoke, of course. (I can hear some of you moaning!) He'll be a stand-up comic when I finish with him. Any constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks! Bill Gaylord

Wow! Will have to catch up to V13 soon! Bill Gaylord

That is pretty amazing! That could probably be used for an interesting flame effect with some tweaks.

I want one of those! That's the kind of car I'd like to drive! Do you ever sleep, Stian? I'm amazed at how you seem to crank out these amazingly detailed models seemingly so quickly. Nice work! Bill Gaylord

Only just caught up with this thread. Brutally funny!! You guys are amazing! Bill Gaylord

I just uploaded more complete copies of the Marshmallow Lecter movie, complete with title, credits, and stereo sound! Enjoy! (Same link posted earlier: post #85) Bill Gaylord

I hope it will be quite a bit more awsome when I get the episode animated. Anybody out there know how to get a character to blow smoke? Need to teach the angry marshmallow how to smoke. Thanks! Bill Gaylord

OK, it's back to work on this project! No promises about completion time, though. Here are the two characters of the first episode of the Marshmallow Safety Films. I apologize for the stereotype "French" marshmallow, if anybody is offended by such stereotypes. I plan to do the dialog in French, with English subtitles. The angry marshmallow will be complaining about being called a "mere marshmallow" by some snooty "high class" confections, while smoking up a storm. Bill Gaylord

Hairy Kow, Batman! This must be the ice age kow...a wooly bovine? Bill Gaylord

Good choice for the song. More of a sultry amazon voice which fits the model better than this petite sex kitten voice (Rrrrrrr!): Eartha Kitt singing Santa Baby!

Here is the fly-by animation (beware--about 2MBs): Fly-By (Ooo...It occurs to me now that a fly-through might look very interesting! A bug's perspective!) Next I'll likely revisit animating hair based leaves growing. The last time I tried it there was too much "popping", but I've been told this might easily be overcome by tweaking a parameter or two. Bill G

Here is an example of a hair based leaf cluster I developed. It basically uses three invisible overlapping dome shapes and hair for the leaves. The recipe is here: Leaf Cluster Recipe The project file can be found here: Project File Here is an sizeable collection of leaf images I supplied to the TWO movie project: Leaf Collection I am rendering a fly-by past the leaf cluster that I'll post later. Bill Gaylord

Quite elegant splineage! Inspiring! Looks like she would animate quite nicely Maybe she should sing "Santa Baby" like Eartha Kitt! Bill Gaylord

Think I might get hopping on this project again. Haven't tried the project in 12.0 yet so it will be an interesting experiment. I would like to explore ways to avoid having to render up to 9 of these trees and I might also try out using hair for foliage, now that most or perhaps all the technical problems I encountered earlier may have been solved. I have yet to experiment with AM's layering capability. It might be a big help in this project. I may have up to 9 trees in the scene, which would be a huge rendering load. If I could separately animate and render a single tree, rotating it each time so it looks like different tree, and composite the renderings into the full scene, that would be fantastic. Is this sort of thing possible? Is there a tutorial on this sort of thing out there somewhere? Thanks! Bill Gaylord

Yah! My kind of Christmas tree! Merry Christmas John (and to your family, too)! Happy Holidays to all! Bill Gaylord

That's a great idea, John! Thanks!

Thanks Dan. I'm new to compositing in AM, so any such advice that can help me learn to make the most of AM's capabilities, is much appreciated! If there is a good tutorial or overview of the process, that would be very helpful. In the mean time, here is test of my simple idea for moving shadows. I just painted a long strip of leaf patterns to create a cookie cut to run past the lights at a rate to match the motion in the video. Works pretty well. As this is a very preliminary test, all I did to animate Shaggy was to move him up and down, right and left like a little plastic figurine. Shaggy on a wire: 2.4 MB, so right click and download if you have a slow link. Bill Gaylord

I'm trying out John Henderson's SkyCast in AM version 12.0n for more realistic lighting, but I'm encountering some difficulties. For some reason the sky dome is being lit so intensly that it almost completely saturates even with only the SkyCast lights. Shaggy looks almost perfect, the leaves come out somewhat dark, and the box and sphere are a tad to bright for a medium gray. Also, the ground which should be brown is also too brightly illuminated so it looks more like a bright yellow-orange. You can download the project file, which should have everything imbedded: Project file If anybody can figure out what I might need to change, I would be much obliged. Thanks! Bill Gaylord