Shelton

I am working on a little video that has a horse a dog and a cow. Steve

I wanted to model a dog for a while. I was looking on the cd and found the Dalmatian. I started looked at it and I used it as a reference. I have completed the body and I going for a fun loving comical dog. Here it is! Steve Here is a wire frame. Still have to tweak the legs and other areas around head area.

I have created a path in the chor and have tied a character to the path and then applied an walk action to the character. I have set the time of the action/walk. The time only goes 3/4 of the path. I have render the chor. My question is this, why does the character continue to move on the path with out the action the last 1/4? What I want is to apply another movement before the character moves on the path later in the chor. Steve

I have rendered a test of thicker hair using Colin Freeman's tut. The only problem is the rendering time is about four times longer. The first took about 6 minutes a frame with hair. The new render took almost 23 minutes a frame. With the video of about 1.5 minutes that is a huge render time. I will have to look for a compromise. The thickness is what I want though. The length needs to be increased by about 20% in the main portion of the mane. The horse is a paint but resembles the Spanish Stallions with the color patterns. I will be on vacation for the next two weeks. Heading to Disney World and the Universal Studios in Florida. So it might be a few days before a new update. Steve Changed the eyes to a dark, dark brown.

Thanks for the link on the hair. I have been looking for something like this. On the eye, you are right about the shine of most horses. This particular paint horse had more brown eyes than most. i will turn down the color to see what it looks like though. Also, in the video I want the eyes to be seen Steve

Here is a three quarter shot with the finished legs. Does the mane need to be thicker? Steve

Here is a new update. Right side completed and waiting on finish around nostril and inner legs. Other wise I have started rigging the horse and hope to have some animation started. Steve

Ok, I am a fan of AM painter!! In just an hour of playing you can create a wonderful texture right on the model. The key is grouping!!. Here is an update. The lips and tone down of the head area is next. Steve

Hey thanks for the help. I will check out Will's. I read through the AM Painter manual and have started with auto decal. I was hitting the wrong area. I will hope to have something tonight. Steve

HELP!! I have tried several styles of decal and textures. What is the best way to decal/texture an animal? I have cut it 1/2 and but with decals it overlaps. i have AM painter but I have not figured out to control the painting of the decal. Steve

I have modeled the mane longer and will keep it this way I think. I am working on rigging tonight. I have tweaked the shoulders and body to give more muscle definition and have reduced the width of the horse body by 10%. Steve

Already adhead of you on the shoulder portion of the front legs. I have narrowed the body about 10% and should have an update later tonight. I can not make up my mind on the mane. As a person who was around horses growing up we kept the mane on our horses cut. Others would grow down aroung the shoulders. But on this model I think it adds more to the horse for a longer mane. I will shoot a render with long mane and rotoscope. Steve

Here is a small update. I hope to have things in the rigging by Sunday night. Steve

Oops, My mistake on the last post here is the horse with the tail intact. I am going back now to work on the texture/decal Steve

Hi David Thanks you are right compared to the rotoscope it was smaller. Help!! I can not get the tail to look right. In the modeling screen all the hair on the tail is going down, but when rendered the hair is not cooperating. Any thoughts Steve

Well, the horse is going to be a paint horse and I have worked on the texturing and hair. When I have added the hair emitters and then saved AM crashes. i just d/l 13 j and I hope that is taken care of. The texture/decaling is coming slower than I thought. I have had more trouble in painting a believable paint horse. I am looking for Will Sutton's tutorial uv mapping. Anyway here is an up date on the base color for the paint. the face will be a white with a black mask around the eyes. (actual horse). I hope to get a little further tonight. Thanks for the comments Steve

I have finished the body and legs and have to touch a couple of things but it is on to hair and painting with 3d painter. Steve

Since the video is only 10 sec in one part and another 10 sec in a sequence of running, I wanted to have the entire body with hair. Also I have purchased AMpaint and want to try it out on this fellow. I will try to update with the eyes and body tonight and hope to be well into applying hair and details by mid week. Steve

Went out this weekend and shot some pictures of a horse. Decided to model it for a video project. I want to try the new hair and other features of version 13 Steve

Truly incredible!! Steve

So I lied. here is the last post. The first chor had a slight movement of the toolbox throughout the animation. 2-5 chor The toolbox remains in the same place except for a few jumps. The camera is straight on and renders the shadows. If I rotate the model slightly the renderings of the shadow go a way. I believe it has to do with the perspective I have selected on the chor. Steve

Last post of the night. I have tried to rebuild the ends of the tool box and applied decals, and it still renders with shadows. Rendered with different multipass and still renders with shadows. Went to a side view and it renders correctly. I have checked the decals and reapplied to no avail. I have opened new project and rendered model and it renders with shadows. Why would one chor render correctly and the next render with the unwanted shadows? I have brought in older versions of model it renders ok in a new project and without actions. I have all the actions on this model other than lip sync. It would take days to recreate. This is a wierd one. Steve

I have tried to export the chor and render as a stand alone but teh black shadows followed. And it is only rendering the shadows on the top portion of the ends. Inside the tool box is rendering correctly and appears to be rendering with multi pass Steve

That is a good thought. Each chor (5 of them) have different actions added to them. The actions were lip sync to a voice over. I have about pulled my hair out tonight (what liitle is left). I built 5 actions and applied to each chor. The models were imported into the chor and then the actions were added to each chor. I could not see any differences in the poses. Steve Edit Also notice the resolution on the top of the toolbox in the second chor as the line on the side does not appear to be rendering correctly as they are jagged and this is with 9 passes turned on.

I have started rendering our animations. The first picture is from intro chor and the second is from part two. The animation was broken into 5 parts for animating and rendering. The settings are the same in each chor and this was rendered on one machine and then on net render. Notice the inside part of tool box that there is a shadow? has anyone run into this? The first picture was the first chor and the second picture is the from the second chor. All the other chor are rendering with the black shadow on both a stand alone machine or one in the net render farm. Any thoughts????? Steve Edit I thought it was because, for what ever reason, the normals were flipped. But that was not the case