NEKOSEI

Combing to get it in the right spot the rest was done by adjusting the hair control points. especially on the longer sideburns. That was also made using three colors of emiters hence why it looks so much like real hair. Unfortunatly particle hair takes a massive chunk of horsepower if you have shadows turned on.

I have tried making helmet hair, and I didn't do too bad a job if you ask me. I needed a fairly fast rendering hair in a hurry for my first big project a year ago, so I had to go with modeled hair. Now, I didn't try to get the look of what can be seen in Square's CG. That stuff looks like it's got layers and layers of mapping to get it to look like round hair. Here's the quick and easy hair I made for that project. [attachmentid=17768] Nothing more then making a few shapes, and copying and pasting them then assiging bones to them randomly. Then there was my attempt at a more helmet hair. [attachmentid=17769] Didn't spend nearly enough time with it to get rid of that spidery look of her bangs. XD And finally and example of particle hair. [attachmentid=17770] Unfortunalty all my turorials on hair seem to be broken links... hmm...

Easier to move the arm. So the displacement gets a little touchy... Alrighty, I'll model the treads then in the mean time, and try the displacement for the heck of it when the upgrade arrives. [attachmentid=17762] I figure it would be a windy day, so that's why she's got her arm up, keeping her hair out of her face. That new arm position works pretty well. Though I should tweek her hand some more. Keeping the thick of it away.

Hah! I designed this car to be Diablo-esque! Glad that it did show through. I will be doing some more alterations to the car as one can see right the treads through the holes in the hubs. Making the tires wider does make sence. Extra sability. Thanks for the idea! As for the tread pattern what I was thinking was using v.13's displacement to create that when my upgrade arrives. Assuming it arrives within the next week. Previous with Shadows: [attachmentid=17734] Current look of the girl: [attachmentid=17735] Not totally happy with her legs yet, and that arm going behind her head looks like it still needs some fixing at the elbow. Her swimsuit also needs to be fitted to her shoulders more.

Yeegads... That sky so needed some fixing. Now I believe it to look more realistic. Also added some worn down parking stall lines to give it that used parking lot feel. And a car just doesn't look good unless reflections are turned on... Hmm... I really need to figure out how to get that skin texture to wrap around her rather then look like it's a decal thats pasted on. Only thing is I've tried Cylindrical and Spherical mapping using Enviornmental and Projection mapping, and nothing has looked good at all. The only idea I can come up with is to create a grouping for the sides of her, then rotate the material.

I've started work on an image that will be used to help promote my work in the CG and artistry realm. This image will mainly be used on my business cards, as well as a background for the business website, but I hope it to also be so good that I can print it off in large sizes. I thought I would share the various stages the image goes through as I create each part of it. Today's work entitled finishing off the suimsuit the female model will be wearing, and starting work on the background element, for now being a parking lot eventually with some kind of photographic background behind it. Some of you may recal the car model I was working on months ago. Here it is again with some minor fixes thanks to what I have learned since then. No muscle adjustments have been made as of yet.

I implied a different method for creating the saucer aztecing, and the whole saucer is made of 2 decals. One for the color, one for the color, one for the specular. And I think it looks pretty darn awesome now. I've gotten rid of all of the darksim paneling, and AM rendered the full size image in 3 hours instead of 5. [attachmentid=16862] Better? I don't suppose there is a way to change the image I uploaded to A:M Stills is there? I'd rather have the new version there than the old one.

Yeah... You're right. I really should be less lazy about this. Heck, rendertimes might decrease a little bit if I do the texture by hand... To the drawing board!

Presenting the finshed U.S.S. Gage: [attachmentid=16811] Yes, that is the absolutely wonderful Earth model created by MMZ_TimeLord. (8k version using earth image 7) One down. 42 ships left.

Interesting suggestions... Small magnitudes with smothed splines... I'll give that a shot. And grunge...? Don't want to over-do that natrually, but I'll come up with something.

Thanks for the continued encouragement Martin! I swear there's no better compliment then the man behind the program telling me things look great so far. The original model itself is very straight and blocky. Just take a look at what I'm working from: [attachmentid=16691] And that's the *only* real life model shot there is of it. The rest are very very old and undetailed sketches. Personally, I'm more of a DS9 man, but I have quite enjoyed every version of Trek that has ever been produced. The only thing about trek I don't like is the constant time travel crap. For something that's supposed to be so hard, it sure happens alot.

I am proud to announce the first (95%) finished starship for this project. Only some very minor decals need to be added, but the majority of the work is done. Say hello to the nearly ignored Apollo Class starship, the U.S.S. Gage. This ship was designed to be the next generation of Enterprise way back when Star Trek: Phase II was in early production. However the project was scrapped in favor of ST:TMP. However they did get as far as to make a mock-up model of the ship. And as a result of the needs for the Wolf 359 graveyard, was one of the many mock-up ships that was tossed into a box and photographed for use in that scene. I present to you, my version of this poor little vessel. Note that this is probably the first time this particular ship has been moddeled in 3D with this kind of detail.

Glad I could help! Yes , it is possible Though, from what I've seen of the Newtons Physics, it breaks the shape up into it's various patches when exploding or breaking them. Most areas of these ships won't require huge numbers of patches to create the shape, and having those areas explode will look very odd at close range. Even with a bunch of sacrifical polys just laying around waiting to be tossed. I've not actually played with the plugin yet myself, but I do have it. Can the plugin subdivide a polygon? If not, I just might need to create an "explodeable" version of any ship in question, and keep it hidden until the very last moment that we need it to break appart.

If it's installed correctly it should be there... There should be a file called "Simbiont2.atx" in your textures folder. If it's not there, try finding it and putting it in yourself. Hopefully that will work.

No, you don't need to buy v13 to use darksim. I've been using darksim on version 12 before v13 was even announced... Did you install the plugin properly or only get the textures?

right click the attribute-->"Change type to"-->"Plugin"-->"Darksim"-->"SimbiontAM" Done directly in AM, no other programs needed. Nope. Leave that alone. Click where it says "Load Dark Tree" and find what you want in your file system. The darktrees I linked to have .jpg samples included so that you can see what each dark tree looks like before you load it. The samples *WILL NOT* work as dark trees.

It's a material plugin, so you need to create a new material, and change the material attribute to a the darksim plugin. Then you can load one of them in the properties box.

Last night I decided to install the beta of v.13 and play with the improved displacement abilities. Just out of curiosity, it's only working for my on decals, and not when I add an image to a group. Will it eventually work like that? I've not tried it in a material yet however. Anyway, what I did to play was take an image of one side of a borg cube, and in photoshop made the image a greyscale, and then inverted it. That will be my displacement map. I then decaled all the sides of a cube shape with this displacement map, and the original decal to add the color. This is what I got: [attachmentid=16461] Each side only has four patches. Now, this is by no means a final product, but it does give me an idea on saving processor time by creating a simple under layer that uses a detailed displacement map, while the outer layer is a more complex mesh with a DM for extra texturing. This little thing can at least be used for the animatics. And to answer Dark Jedi's question: the darktree I used is in "ba_map/Division.dstc"

Simbiont plugin: http://www.darksim.com/w/SimAM25.exe Darktree textures: http://www.darksim.com/Repository/DTRep_thumb.zip

It's a Darksim texture plugin. Head to: http://www.darksim.com/index.html and download the free "symbiont" plugin and the free darktree textures, and in there you will find something that makes panels like that.

The following is a successful test in creating a hole in a ship and being able to see "stuff" under the hull, and an animated test of creating the look of a beam weapon burning a hole though an object. Both examples used cutting bones The hardest part about this will probably be creating a jaggy hole and matching it up to a flat room. I may need some basic male and female models to show poor unfortunatly souls getting blown out into space in some close shots.

The idea of this is to be primarily CG ship trying to stop the cube. The human aspect will be told through a narrative briefing at the start, with starfleet com chatter throughout. There will be a story going on as each group of ships tries to execute their respective plan. We plan on using some audio from Best of Both Worlds and Emisary to help tie everything together. There will be storyboards made up, and in order to post them I'll need to link them off the Wolf 359 page, we're still early in the development stage. The script isn't finished yet, right now we're still getting the ideas worked out of how this will pass. But you are correct, any ship that's going to be seen close up will need to be fairly well detailed. And we do know a few that will be seen *very* close up. An Excelsior Class ship (including cargobay), a Maya class dry-dock, a work bee, and some equipment. A good plan right now would be to model any ship so that it will look good fairly close up. Because we can be quite sure that every ship will have some screen time, but in the same vein, every ship will need to be complete. We do have a plan and there will be four waves of ships attacking the cube. 3 Federation and 1 Klingon. Fortunaltly you don't need to physically model every bit and attach it to the mesh, you can model it separately and just place it where it where it wouild be. Same with window holes, a cutting bone can be used to make those. Remember, we're certain on this taking *years* to make. So we don't need everything done right now. We do want to get a good start on things, and getting the models we need made is very important.

I'm sure all of us will do our best. I don't suppose you'd like to help with a ship? I have checked out your Jedi Starfighter WIP, and am quite impressed with how it looks. And to Jon, Jin and Scott, and anyone else interested: I have a forum set up on my website with an area designed for discussing all aspects of the project collectively. It would be much easier to co-ordinate our input if we all check in on the same area. http://nekosei.com/naproom/

You have all the time you need. This project is going to take quite some time to put together. I've sent you a PM with my MSN in it. If anyone else wants to contact me, my MSN is in my profile.

Jin- Sending ship data ASAP. Scott- It's allowed to get carried away. If you're having fun, it's all good. Jon- We do need Klingon ships actually, and a BOP design is among them. Thank you for your assistance in thie project. I'll send you some plans so you can get started when you get a chance.