Bill_Y

To close out this topic for those who might only read this forum, Duel was released Today. Here is the official announcement.

Here is another sample of how things are coming together. shot1B_0000.mov

Thought people might be interested in how the trees are going to look animated. This is a test of wind effecting a tree. leaf_test08.mov

Thought I'd show one more image of the temple area. Again it's not finished, but will give you a basic idea.

And just so people know that is a 3D set.

I thought people might like to have a look at the scenic island where the Duel transpires. This is missing some of the vegetation and other such nurnies, but should give you an idea of what the setting is going to be.

This is a WIP for the next mastering materials volume. Thought people would be interested in seeing a face made of 95% materials. There are only 4 image maps used and 3 are for hair control. The last is for an environment map.

Darn I missed the animated showing. The effect in the images looks pretty sweet. I'd love to take a look at the animation.

Try adding a little specular to your hair as it will add a little sheen to each hair. Currently the hair color looks pretty good, but with out a bit of specular the hair looks flat. Also it looks as if you might have a bit of ambiance in your hair, and thus it doesn't look like there is much fall off happening on the left side of the character's hair when compared to the rest of the character. Removing or lowering the ambiance will also help add a little more depth to it. As a last suggestion I would try doing a render with the hair casting shadows as in this last image their are none,a nd it also might be contributing to the "flat" look of the hair.

actually, Thats a mistake. We didn't do this animation. This was done by one of the other animators on the paw island project if I recall correctly. We did do 3 in house test animations of KeeKat, but this isn't one of them. I'm looking to see if we can find the tests some place so that thy could be added to A:M films.

Well if you would like a suggestion then I would say that the front of the ears aren't flush with the side of the head; however, it's kind of hard to offer more suggestions with out seeing the wireframe.

Just to let you know the Alpha channel issue was fixed in v11beta8. So if you want to get the nooks and crannies on the edge of your J.D. label it shouldn't be a problem any more.

Strangely I have an affinity for using paths to make my selections... ;P

Bias handles in their free state can be either a blessing or a nightmare. There are times where being able to adjust the magnitude, alpha and gama all at once can be very useful, but most of the time I find it much easier to work with one aspect of the bias handles at a time. There are hotkey's that you can hold to lock out certain aspects of the bias handles, but for the most part I find my self adjusting the bias handles by simply dragging on the attribute I want to change in the properties panel. Magnitude adjusts the weight of a specific handle Gama most of the time adjusts the spline in and out agains the surface Alpha most of the time adjusts the spline back and forth along the plane of the surface There are times when alpha and gama can reverse their roles, but most of the time this only happens around 5 point patches If you want to see what these attributes do better, lathe your self a sphere, select a point, and start playing with each of the values. It will become a lot clearer what they do, and they shouldn't be feared like the black plague

Sounds like good advice IF you plan your model a bit, or have some experiance under your belt this can be avoided, but it's also prety good advice. Ok Buzzer is going off on this one. You shouldn't touch your bias handles till you've got your model fairly well shaped with the CP's, but bias handles are always worth tinkering with if you feel comfortable with them. They can easily save you from wasting splines in areas that don't need them. Sure there once was a problem where it was difficult to animate bias adjusted CP's, but seeing as thats no longer a problem then there is no reason not to play with bias handles.