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Xtaz, The more I look at it, the more I like it. You are either a- inspired, b- have a very solid background in art or c- are lucky as hell. But I think it is mostly a- with b- I particularly appreciate the diagonal composition between the painting, the character and the gun. In this context and through this composition, the painting acts like a thought baloon. That is clever.

Cool scene. Cool composition. I really like how you succesfully conveyed the character mood with an extremely simplified scene and one very well positionned prop. And the painting behing ... Nice touch. Nice illumination setup too. Indirect illumination is hard to do with Photon Mapping but you pulled it really right.

I have to concur with the rest of the critique. I also found the clip way too long. And I actually had to reason myself not to close it before the end. I think your concept is good. A meditative clip focusing on a meditating monk. Th music is nice too. But you need more variety in the point of views. All the shots are static. It would be easier for the viewer if you added long and very slow camera motions. Also a few shots which focuses on some details of the scene still with slow camera motions. Some close-ups on the monk face and hands too. Still with slow camera motions.

Yet again very nice images. I admire your dedication.

That was Boids of feater

This is a fantastic job. The texturing adds a lot to the character. I like your poses you are showing here. Nice attention to details to have asymetric poses.

You really got the underwater feel to this image. It is difficult to see the details though but knowing how you model cars, I have no doubt they are well modeled.

Very nice walk action. This guy is scary.

Fabulous model. Very efficient splinage. You found some interesting splineage solutions there. I especially like your solution for splining the shoulders and the gridlike splines for the breasts which is non traditional but gives you very low patch counts there. Bravo!

Excellent results. You did a very nice hair job. And the expressions are a nice addition to this model too. You on a good start for a gallery of expressions. Do you intend to add phoneme poses too? One observation: I don't know why but in all the poses, the mouth seems a tad too small. Like the pose don't reach all its latitude. (BTW, Colin, your hair tutorial is very well done and easy to follow).

Action objects (One model, many instances): - Crate the rivet in a separate model. - Create an action using the submarine. - Drop as many rivets as you need in the action and position them. - In Choreography: Drop the submarine first - And then drop the action onto the submarine next. Another way which gives you more control later when animating is to add tiny bones at each rivet location and in the action, translate-to and orient-to each rivet instance to one of the rivet bones. One advantge of this method is you can use a bump map for when the submarine is viewed from a far distance and use the action when you view a close-up view.

Wonderfull model and pose. If a were to encounter this individual somewhere, I would wonder what he have in mind.

Everything You did nothing wrong. My point is we all have very different goals when we do a project. The end product is the result of the decisions we take to reach our goal. So unless you are very specific about what you consider wrong in your render, I cannot say for sure if something is the result of a concious design decision to render a specific mood or something else that went wrong. I then have to project my own goals into what you are trying to achieve and this is very probably not the same goals as yours. For instance, until you specifically pointed to this stripe, I was not sure if that wasn't a design decision to get a particular specular effect. Given the same topic, two designers will choose very different set of design decisions. Fortunateley, that is what makes the monthly contests interesting. On a purely technical POV, have you tried using the ambiance intensity setting to achieve the wax SSS you are trying to get? You could either do that with a gradient conbiner which controll the ambiance intensity property or an ambiance intensity decal.

I observed that stripe too. But thought that was intensional. I'm not too good at speculating. I need very precise description of the problem, refering to precise spots in the images. Otherwise, I can see several places where I would not do it that way.

I'm reading this topic since the beginning but I don't understand what is the problem. You seems to both see the same problem. Could you explain in further details?

Good point and good eye Dan View 1 aligning edges: - Foreground lamp top aligned with floor-wall edge. - Back of chair aligning with fireplace inside wall. - Chair seat edge aligning with floor-fireplace base. View2 aligning edges: - Top of chair aligning with frame bases. - Chair seat edge aligning with floor-wall edge. Edit: Oops, I did not see there was a page 3 when I wrote this. Well...

You could set some jittering for Final Gathering (like 50%) if you want to trade the shadow edge artifacts we see under the table for some tiny little noise. Yes, Radiosity also works for animation. You will have the same render time for all frames though.

You should increase the photon sampling to 100. And with a room this size, even up to 200.

Cute character. And I like the expression. I can tell you are having fun with it, posing him in different situations. I'd be interested in your radiosity settings for both images. Could you post them?

Impressive. It is a very good start. One thing that I would nitpick is the star movements. As is, I'm not sure the camera if trolleying-in or zooming-in. It seems like a mix of both. Normally, with distant stars, the sky would not look like it zooms if it is only a camera trolley-in. Or if a zoom-in, then the stars would keep their relative distance from the foreground subject. I think a darker sky would help too.

Hey Colin, Do you know about this paper about the technique employed by artificial eye artists? It is well worth the reading. It is amazing how many different layers they use. Your eye model looks very interesting. A good piece of engineering and artistic feat if I may say. Thanks for sharing it.

You would get better result if your patches were more rectangularly regular. Try to remodel your cube so that the face patch is square or rectangular. Take a look at my Beveled tutorial to see how I handle these situations.

That's a nice project you've got there. And you're on a very good start. Your clips are fun to watch. I especially enjoyed the first one. Good timing to the music. Good variety of character design too. They are all well typed and we couldn't mistake one for another. I can't wait to see more.

I suggest you use the beveled primitives since most of your models are already nearly primitives. Take a look at my beveling tutorial to see how to modify them to suit your application.

Very nice image. I particularly like the feeling of motion even though it is not an animation. My own nit-pick is about the thickness of the clothes. For some reason, the clothes does not seem to fit her. Like if they were too loose. It seems to have to do with the beveled thickness and the uneven borders. Also I can understand why you used reflection for the skin. But the reflection kind of give her skin either a plastic look or a bronze look which is somewhat disturbing. Have you considered using reflection mapping with a very blured map?