Gerry

He Vern, this might help. I just learned a new Mac trick yesterday: hold down the Control key while scrolling with your scroll wheel, and THE WHOLE FREAKIN DESKTOP ZOOMS! Scroll the other way and it goes back to 100%. And Largento, great, great tutorials, nice design and nice use of a comic book approach. I only just found this thread today. Gerry

Here's a rotation of the finished model. Now onto the color and texture! Croaker_rotate_h264.mov

It's not clear which direction we're traveling in, forward or backward. The distant mesas in one shot are moving one way, the cactus in another. It's also not clear why the power lines in the distance on the right are parallel to the horizon. Shouldn't they be along the road we're on to maybe enhance the perspective? The darkness is a problem but I can see it clearly enough, at least for a crit! Keep posting!

Wow, that's a nice textures site! Apparently the Mayang's free textures site has been shut down and I started jonesin' for textures as soon as I found out!

This is all looking great!

I have no comments other than to say it looks like you're onto something. Nice look, poppy techno sound, nothin' wrong with that!

That's my mantra.

I agree, Robcat. I had some trouble getting it lit just right. I don't know what it was. I'm on v15c and still getting used to some things. I had a rim light turned all the way to white and 100% brightness and it still looked like it was in shadow. The .mov I posted was about the fourth render and I wanted to post something before I quit, but I'm not happy with it. I also need to do some decaling and not settle for just textures. And thanks Rodney! I'm trying not to think about the rigging. That's what always bites me in the butt at the end and if I dwell on it I'm afraid it will all come crashing down! I was just reading about TSM being made available for free for A:M, and after all the time I've spent trying to get my head around the squetch rig it freaked me out a tiny bit, that I'd have to go back and learn something new from scratch. I want more than anything to see these characters move, too. But for now I'm just focused on the modeling. Gerry

Here's a beauty shot of the stinger. Still needs some work on the detail, the textures, the color, the... the... well, everything! stinger_beautyshot.mov

Dang! I wanna drive it!

Yeah, really nice as usual! Very nice look with the AE compositing.

And porn! don't forget the porn!

Yeah this is looking great!

Masna, don't worry too much about learning to draw. The main thing is to work out as much in advance with pencil and paper, but don't let your drawing skills hold you back on this step. Stick figures are fine as long as they help you think things through.

Here's a sketch and a start on modeling his double-barreled stinger.

It looks like you have a lot of creasing where you don't want it. Can you post a wireframe shot? You might also want to check out these face modeling tutorials, http://www.colins-loft.net/CoopFace.html and http://www.hash.com/users/jsherwood/tutes/SkyLark.pdf. the second one is a pdf download. they're both excellent.

Thanks Dennis! I'm looking forward to it too.

Nice modeling! you just need to get that lighting right, which I'm sure you will. We're working on a project at my day job that required hiring an outside 3D guy to do a kitchen and conference room. unfortunately they didn't ask for my input and hired a 3DSmax guy. It's coming out fine, but if we ever get another project like this I'm recommending AM so I can post a job offer here.

...Aaaand, copy/flip/attach worked just fine.

Well, he think he is, anyway! EDIT: hey, my 500th post!

More modeling progress...

That's a nice walk. I like the gut jiggle in there, lots of nice weight to it. A walk that loops would be nice! The fur in the stills looks grainy or pixelated. The yellow doesn't bother me, I'd heard about polar bears' hollow hairs and algae, but thought it was more green. Looking forward to seeing how this whole thing shapes up!

Yeah, that rig is sweet! Very smooth around the hips when the back legs move. Maybe post some renders of your hair problem. But really nice work overall so far!

Nice!

Or you could set up the render to have the action repeat a few times.