NEKOSEI

Very nice so far, though I'm pretty sure those grills on the nacells arn't supposed to be glowing. Reguardless it's a good start. Jin- you should have recieved that email by the time you posted your last message, if you have not, then I'll re-send it via a private message.

Martin, we will do our best to deliver! Jin, thank you very much for your offer of help. For now we need the models more then anything else, but I definatly would like you to help with effects when the project gets developed more. I'll send you an email via the board with a ship assignment for you. So far so good!

The question may have been withdrawn, but really it should be answered. And I must admit, it's a very hard thing to answer. Why should this be made? I took this to the director and we both mulled it over, with this final answer: Because it screams to be done, is why. It's a big missing part of the Star Trek history, and like Pearl Harbor in REAL life, is something that Trek fandom has always wanted to see, but has never been able to. In the absence of any new Star Trek stuff anytime soon (new film by the Alias guy nonwithstanding), it falls to us - the fans - to go to it.

The types of ships that we *definatly* need are shown in this image borrowed from "Ex Astra Scientia" http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/wolf359-all-ben.gif I have some really good blueprints of some of these ships, but not all of them. Fortunatly most of them are "kitbashes" anyway, so one can easily produce a ship just from re-using a saucer and a few nacelles. Also, I believe we will be putting in one or two possible prototype ships that *could* have exsisted at that time, for example an Akira class or a Steamrunner class ship. As for how soon, there is no deadline set. My time is just as limited as everybody else's, and the finished product itself could take a few years to finish once all the ships are made. So don't feel you need to rush to get it done. Take your time with it.

Oh yeah. I have no dillusions about how long it will take. But I love AM's ability to save actions. That will be very useful for this. I can create an animatic of what the ships will be doing, and as the models are finished, replace the icon for that ship with it's finished model. The big thing will be making the destroyed versions of each model. That's something I'm not looking forward to. XD As for warping, we might not even see a ship go to warp, but if we do, I'll certainly warp slide the thing.

A friend of mine and I have been wanting to re-create the battle of Wolf 359 in 3D format for quite some time now. It has been a year since I first purchaced A:M and I am still loving to work with this product. I feel I can start working on something that could take years to get done. But it will be done right. The Battle of Wolf 359 has been a major battle that has been torn apart, analyzed and theorized about for years, but no one has ever tried making a rendition of it other then a version made using Bridge Commander. My friend, Mark Nguyen and I wish to create one possible version of Wolf 359. A possible "chronicle" of events. I have created a teaser which can be seen at the following webpage: http://nekosei.com/stw359/wolf359.html Please do check it out. But that's not all. I would love some help with this project, so I am bringing this to your attention. We will need ships built and/or donated. I wish to ask for you to build one of 20 ships that we need. I've been hunting for the best schematics I could find and will offer them for your use in building. I am also attempting to find a set of decals that we can all share, and a font for the starship names and registries. "But there were 40 ships at wolf 359." Yes, there was. This is where a kind of reward comes in. As thanks for building a ship for us, we would allow you to build a second starship, either using your first model and modifying it, or from scratch if you prefer. So long as it's a design that could be from that era or slightly earlier. Obviously there were no Soveriegn or Defiant class ships then. Likewise it is doubtable an NX class ship would have been there. This offer isn't official yet, as we're not 100% sure of the exact types of ships we *need* yet. It could turn out that we need 25 specific kinds, and 15 randoms. But I do know this: We will need ships for a "decommissioned fleet yard", so just about anything from the past can show up in that scene. All help will be appreciated, full credits will be given on both the website and in the final animation. If anyone is willing to help, please let me know in this thread. All comments are appreciated reguardless.

Those are really really nice. I really love the ambiance of the first one. The mist from the window looks just awesome.

Okay, so long as Darktree still has it's uses. A beautiful starfield, and iris's you say...? I must learn and make some for myself.

O.o Please tell me I didn't just plunk down 500 US for DarkTree 2 only to have something just like it become native to AM and come out only a few *days* later... Please tell me there's still something worthwhile to have DarkTree for now...

Maybe in the future when I manage to get the time to get all the smart skin worked out, and so long as she's not used for profit. As it stands I've been manually fixing her CP's for each picture, and forcing others to do the same just doesn't seem right. I will have some of my other models available on my website in the new year though.

XD I call that a great compliment. And... more then three hours later >.> I've got that new render of her finished. (I kept finding some things to fix... usually after the render was about half done.) As I mentioned, I couldn't get the ambiant light to get any darker, so I moved it to a different angle so that it's what shows off her curves better.

That's the thing that I've been noticing now that I've been playing with it. I can't get a darker shadow to appear on her at all, even with only one light in the chor, she still appears to have an overall ambiance about her. So, I think the best think I could do is change the angle of the light that's hitting her on the opposite side from the lamp and have that one show off her curves a bit more. Results to follow in about three hours...

Not enough tail? I've never had that complaint before... As for the ambiants, that might be a bit of a problem to fix... there already is so little ambiant light in the scene... If you mean on just her, then I can certainly play with her render layer. (The two taller images were rendered in segments and then photoshopped together with alpha channels.) I'll play around a bit with the one of her touching her breast at least.

Every year I create a new set of images of one of my nekosei girls to host my website. An image for the spash page, an image where just the girl is used as the background for the menu, and a special naughty image that is hidden somewhere in the site along with the complete menu image. This year I worked on getting these images made in Animation Master, and I feel they are finally finished. I am extremely pleased how these have turned out. Note: The taller images (which are the hidden ones) are shrunken in size by 50%. Gotta give you a reason to search the site how don't I? I also create a signature to use on the various forums I go to advertising my site, and including the clue to find the hidden images. Usually I crop one of the other images, but thanks to everything being 3D, I can even create a unique signature. This is a sneak preview for everyone here as they won't be online until January 1st 2006.

Sometime in the future I have plans of creating something quite ambitious with a friend of mine, however things need to blow up reeeeal gooooood. So I'm wondering about what you have done here: 1) How did you get the black truck to crumple? Pre-modeled with bones or did you alter the shape again with sliders? 2) Are all those flotsam bits also modeled and hiding inside the trucks until needed? This is definatly very cool, and gives me great hope that what I want to do can be done as well as I want it to be.

Well, after testing some gradients out, as well as some other kinds of shaders, I have decided that short of adding more geometry to her and using hair, the spotted fur texture from DarkSim is the best option. Still need to add her hair and a few other colorations however, but this is the best I think can be done. http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/naote6.jpg Unless there is something else someone thinks I should try...? Thanks for the help, everyone.

Using 12.0m, and I actually did not think grooming it would make that much of a difference... I will try that. I will also take a look at your example to see how well it works. Thank you for your suggestions. >jon Alrighty then. I'll see what I can do with a gradient. Thanks!

I've been working on figuring out how to create a furry character for a few weeks, and have had very little success with Animation Master's hair material. What I've been able to get so far: http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/naote0.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/naote1.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/naote2.jpg All slightly different variations of the density settings. But you can see why I'm having problems. The fur looks too uniform in placement, even with the position variation set to 100%. Recently I installed the DarkTree plugins, and got the spotted fur texture applied to her after working on materials to get the fade between the two fur colors better. Here's the result with the DarkTree fur texture: http://members.shaw.ca/nekosei/others/naote5.jpg This makes her look furry... but I certainly need to make her I still want to use some kind of particle fur or hair material, and I'm wondering if there is any way to get a more random look to the hair placement. What else I have tried: -Insane density settings (10,000%) -AM's own Fur materials -multiple hair emitters As I understand how the hair material works, a higher density model would cut down on the uniform placement. But, does anyone know of a better way to get her to look fuzzy? Some other enhancement for Animation Master? A different Plug-in? Or do I need to bite the bullet and double, triple or even quadruple the patches count? Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

I did some experiments with Hair particles also, and found that the best way to create non-uniform hair was to actually add in more colors to it. Now I don't know if version 10 can do that, as I was working with version 11.1 at the time, but if you can add more hair emitters into your hair material, then you can make the hair color varied. 3 Hair emitters are creating the hair in my attached example.

Well, I have thought of making a few tutorials, but I don't really know what kind of topics I should cover really. Certainly there will be some modeling tutorials I could create from what I've learned so far, and from what I plan to create eventually. The quick pull from Fuji was basically figureing out a way to have a shadow show up fairly close to the shape it should be, and be able to zoom out from a 2D image that could not be rotoscoped. Since zooming a rotoscope is a major pain to match up when the subject is off center of the image. The all white background was pretty simple to create actually: The camera background color is set to white. This elimiates the need for any kind of walls surrounding the scene, as well as any potential shadow problems from them. The ground Diffuse color is also set to white, with every other setting set to 0% and every other color setting on "not set". Setting everything to 0% is probably not really needed, but it was just something I did to prevent any potential problems. The light is a Sun light, positioned at 0,900,0, and X rotated 90 degrees. Intensity 100%, Wdith 100cm, Fall-off 500cm, Shadow intensity set at 50% so as not to make the details too dark. And that's all there is to it. Believe me however, I was reading every tutorial I could get my hands on online. As for my camera work... I have done work with creating short films using video cameras before. Two of my other videos on that page use live footage that I filmed myself. The Animethon 11 opening, and the Sakura Con opening.

Well, I must admit that I have done some animation before, by hand. Nothing professional, but enough to get a feel for how the process works well. So this was just a process of figuring out how AM does it, and adjusting. As for the song, it's quite similar to YMCA, in that they form letter shapes with their arms, but for G-R-double E-N instead. And the song is about accepting what life throws at you, and finding the joys in just being alive. As for posting on AMFilms... One day. When I manage to make it a quicktime file. *goes to put some band-aids on his teeth*

Way back in July, barely 2 months after getting animation master, I decided I would make the opening video for Animethon 12 in full 3D. By that time I had played around with the program enough to get a good start on one of my characters, Phin-Phin, whom you saw with her car in a previous thread here. And by that time I had created a Fuchicoma from the Ghost in the Shell manga and PSX game. Quite literally I was cutting my teeth on the program and using this excuse to create something really cool to help me learn how to animate with AM. I managed to create 2 pieces specifically for Animethon 12 that was to be shown August 5th, with one week to spare. The first was the opening video for the convention. The second was an introduction video for the AMV contest. And now that the bandwidth usage on my website has calmed down from the many people downloading it after the con, I can offer to show the folks here where this was born. All you need to do is go to this page: http://nekosei.com/amv/amv.html And download the two videos at the bottom of it. I hope you all enjoy my first animated works using Animation Master.

And now I believe her car to be as complete as it needs to be for what it's being used for. Yay! Now for the next hard part: Creating all the props, swimsuits, and a location for the "shoot" to take place.

Agreed, this is *really* snazzy! It doesn't seem to me that there is too much beveling anywhere really. Maybe, just maybe, a little too much on the battery compartment, but it's nothing that takes away from how good it looks overall.

Allright. I'll try those settings out. Thanks for the tips! Yeah, Alberta is a great province to live in. I certainly like living there.