Roger

Heya Yeah, this looks pretty good. From what I remember, butthead had a pretty large pompador (sic?). You might want to adjust the skin tone a touch, it looks off for some reason.

Oh it doesn't have to be all that big. A few years back I came across a web site describing an experiment that put a 25MHz 486SX machine inside a domestic fridge-freezer and managed to cool it enough to crank the clock speed up to 247MHz.... (link) LOL I think that might be more than a little bit of exaggeration......but it was funny...also involved chilled vodka, if I remember. Ahhh, the cockles of my heart (what are cockles, anyway?) are glowing with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling now. Glad I was able to help you. I was pretty sure that's what it was, because that was exactly what happened to me several years ago, only w/ a pentium 75.

What ddustin said plus this: Chances are if you have a store-bought pc (emachines, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.) it came with a rather wimpy heatsink/fan combo. The fan on the heatsink may have died, and if its a small heatsink it may not be able to radiate heat away from the cpu fast enough. Try blowing the dust bunnies away from the heatsink first, if that doesn't help and/or the fan doesn't even spin up, remove the heatsink/fan combo from the cpu. Go to any computer store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Frys, Radio Shack) and get the largest heatsink and fan unit you can find for your processor and socket type. i.e if its a p4 make sure you get a p4 heatsink/fan, athlon xp make sure to get that type. You may need to write down the model number of your cpu by looking at the top of the cpu or at the bios when the screen comes up and going to a KNOWLEDGEABLE tech at the store and asking for a heatsink that will fit that. Make sure you can bring it back if they tell you the wrong one. Also pick up some heatsink grease/compound. You should be able to find this at a Radio Shack or a smaller independent electronics supply store. You could probably also find it online. Take the old heatsink/fan unit off, scrape off old thermal compound, and apply a little bit of new thermal compound. Then put new heatsink/fan unit on, hook it up to the appropriate power cable and you should be good to go. Make sure that any cables are not touching the fan, as this can prevent the fan from spinning up. I recently had a problem with this when I went to a small form factor case, my cpu heated up so hot that if the thermal shutdown hadn't kicked in I would have had a meltdown. Alternatively, you could probably just buy a new fan to sit on top of the heatsink, but I would go with a whole new unit. It shouldn't cost more than $20 or so, and if its for a modern cpu it should feel heavy enough to bludgeon someone with. You could probably have the store do the installation for you, but be prepared to spend $50 or so for the hardware and install. Hope this helps. Roger

OK.... I didn't care for the way the modelled mouth was looking, so I sorta did a Gumby/Killer Bean type mouth. It worked for them...*shrug* I think it looks better. I also modelled some floating eyebrows, to allow for more expressions since I am not planning on having lids. I widened the chest, so its not quite so thin. The legs were moved in from before. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I need to tweak the textures on the eyebrows, mouth, horns and eyeballs but other than that I think he looks ok. I may add some decals to him, he seems to be missing something. I need to get busy rigging, but I don't know if I feel up to it right now. Maybe I'll model some of the other things that I need to get done. Comments??[attachmentid=19268][attachmentid=19269]

OK..... Here's another shot....I was trying to add a mouth. Its not done yet, but I think it looks a bit funny right now and I am not sure its going to look better once I add the mouth interior. I am going to leave the eyes the way they are, but add floating brows above to allow for more emotion. Thing is, just the snout w/ no nostrils or mouth looks ok, it looks a bit off like something is missing.... but when I added nostrils and a mouth it doesn't look quite right either. This character is not supposed to speak or do anything like that, if I leave just the nostrils I can still have him "breathe" fire. In my original character design, its just a snout though. Any votes on which way looks better? [attachmentid=19236]

OK I've got some nostrils now, let me know what you think. I had modelled an interior for the mouth, but unfortunately, it seemed to have screwed up part of the muzzle so I am going to try again. As far as the eyes go, do you think I made the right call to put them in actual sockets? I am not sure how I am going to make proper lids for them, though. I don't know that I like how these look, he looks constantly suprised. I was going for a sort of Wallace and Grommit look, but I seem to have missed the mark. Let me know what you think of the modified snout. [attachmentid=19221]

Hey there... I've decided to take a break from rigging and go back to finish up some of the modelling tasks I was putting off. While nice, setup machine is not as "automagical" as I thought it would be, and rather than frustrate myself needlessly right now I am going to finish the modelling stuff and maybe do some of the rigging tutorials in conjunction with Setup Machine so that I will be able to use it better. I thought that the dragon, while ok, needed to have an actual modelled mouth with nostrils and a tooth or 2, and rather than having floating eyes I'm going to build sockets with actual eyeballs and lids. While I'm at it, I will fix the horns. Once I fix these things, I'll post something here, I think he'll end up looking a lot better. Hopefully I will have an animation test to post soon. I wish I didn't have so much other work to do, I still need 4 environments, 2 other characters, and a few misc. props. I think it would be a miracle if I got this done in 3 months, let alone 3 weeks ( I set an arbitrary date of 6 weeks a while back just to see how much I could get done----not actually have a finished product). So, as I tick a few of my milestones off my list I will post them in here. Thanks to everyone that has offered suggestions, aid, etc. Roger

OK.. Here's another shot with the legs fixed..... I moved them in just a bit. Not sure if I really want to screw with the chest, I tried it once and couldn't do it without messing it up. He's pretty close to what I want though, in terms of concept to finished model. Maybe after I have some food I will be a little braver and try to go back and fix the chest a bit. [attachmentid=19168]

Ok... Added horns and eyes, but they're just kinda floating now. I am not sure I can get the horns right without starting over and just extruding them from holes in the head. (I don't think that I can attach them this way without it being a HUGE pita) I agree about moving the legs in just a touch...doesn't look quite right. And I think I will widen the chest just a bit. But I think I will save a backup and experiment on that so I don't fark up my model. I want to do quick test after I get him rigged up.....I'm thinking 30 seconds dancing to Brass Monkey by the Beasty Boys.....lol [attachmentid=19167]

Ok.... I haven't posted an update in a bit, but I was working on ironing out some of the kinks yet with this thing. I have a fully modelled body w/ hands and feet properly attached, it looks pretty decent for a first attempt at a proper unibody model. I am working on attaching the head right now, currently its just sorta "stuck" there. Its times like this I really wish AM had some kind of boolean weld feature, but oh well. All I have to do after that is stick his eyes on, and some horns. Fortunately I will have Setup Machine to aid in rigging, so that shouldn't be too horrible. I hope to have some a really short 30 second animation or something that I can post soon. This model looks really close to my sketches, but I am bothered a little by the chest......seems a touch too narrow. Maybe I should widen it? I am also thinking of putting some decals on....but am not sure if I should put anything else on him....he is not getting wings (he's a flightless dragon) So....what do you think?[attachmentid=19164]

Grass looks good but a touch sparse. I found that when I was experimenting with it I had to bump the density to like 500% before it looked the way I wanted it to look.

I have to say, this is a sharp-ass car. Looks really slick. The top view looks awesome, but that hood still looks funky from the side. I think that if this was a production car you would have problems with wind resistance, as others mentioned earlier. If you modified the hood so that it flowed, or was a monolithic curve sorta....(does that make sense?) I'd buy one....if I had a gazillion dollars for the custom fabrication. Look up the thread of the guy that is doing the Mercury model. I bet this car would look awesome with a more Mercury type hood. Keep the chrome grills, just curve it instead of leaving it flat like that.

Ok, I have attached the foot, so now I have the foot attached to the leg and the hand attached to the arm. One problem.......I've got the foot attached so that the big toe is on the outside instead of on the inside, so I think I am going to have to go back and detach it, then mirror it and reattach so that when I do a copy/flip/attach it comes out looking right instead of arse-backwords. doh.

OK.... Here are 2 wireframes....side view and 3/4 view: [attachmentid=18867][attachmentid=18868]

I will post a wireframe as soon as I fix some of the issues I am having with creasing. Its looking better, the very back of the heel is going to look a little odd since it has a bunch of splines all converging at one point where I closed off a hole, but I am not too worried about that spot since I really don't think its going to be visible most of the time. I am anxious to get the whole model put together and start rigging it so I can see what its going to look like and maybe start doing some animation tests. Roger

Ok..... I took a break from modelling for several days because I had some home repairs/ maintenance that needed tending to. Anyway, I have tweaked the foot.....I made the arch a little more pronounced, and fixed the top so that it slopes up more. I also tweaked the ball and heel of the foot, so that they would look better. I may add claws to the toes. Any suggestions on making claws? I'm thinking just lathing a cone shape. The only other thing that I am noticing that still needs fixing maybe is moving the other toes down so the bottoms match with where the bottom of the big toe hits. Otherwise, it will look kind of wierd if I leave it the way that it is now. If anyone has any comments/criticisms to make, feel free. Thanks Roger[attachmentid=18855][attachmentid=18856]

This is why, at the risk of being a PITA, I start new threads of I am wanting to know about a new model for the same project. I figure few people are going to go into the thread and find this all the way at the end. Does anybody have any crits or advice to offer on the foot? I'll wait another day or so before I post it as its own thread, I'm really not sure what forum etiquette is in re: to that. later Roger

Ok, update on the dragon project. Rather than start a new thread, I just decided to post stuff about the foot in this one. In the future I guess I am going to have to give my threads names which are a little more all-encompassing. Anyway, here it is: [attachmentid=18567][attachmentid=18568][attachmentid=18569] My thoughts are that the ball of the foot is a little funky and that I will need to tweak it, but otherwise it looks ok to me. Rather than start over from scratch modelling a foot I just took that hand that I had made and modified that, it doesn't look too bad. Hopefully tonight I will also get some work done on the head, attaching the eyes and the horns and whatnot and sticking it on his neck. I haven't decided whether I want to have an animatable mouth or if I am just happy with a snout for now. let me know what you think. Roger

Its one of the darktree simbionts. They are now included in v13, but I downloaded these a while back. They have several varieties of shaders available for free download....about 4 or 5 dozen, I think. They sell a product that allows you to create your own packaged shaders for lightwave, am, 3ds, maya, etc. Roger

I guess this didn't merit creating a new thread, I'll keep future posts to the original thread since it gets bumped to the top of the list anyway. Sorry for the confusion.

er.... feel free to let me know what you think Roger

Ok.... Those of you that were following the other thread, I thought I would post the results of all my spline tweaking. after I had fixed the arm, I had noticed that the leg was jacked up too, so I fixed that. There's still a *tiny* glitch at the back of the leg, but the clay shader mostly hides it. I have attached a couple screenshots, I think you will agree that it looks much much better. Roger [attachmentid=18517][attachmentid=18518][attachmentid=18523]

Couldn't sleep. Got up, looked at the model..... I realized that what I had been doing to get those peaked points is that I was holding down shift while connecting the control point.....doh.... anyway I am doing a test render now and I will probably have to go break a bunch of patches and reattach them but I think that that is what was keeping it from looking smooth. thanks for jogging the memory. Roger booyah. that's what did the trick. I am too tired to screw with this now, but I will hit the offending splines tomorrow and post a good clear shot. Thanks again. Roger

Here's the thing, though, I've tried selecting those bastiches and hitting the O key and nothing happens.........they stay peaked looking. Soooooo I am not sure what is up with that. Any clues what I could be doing wrong? Roger

Scott, I could try the extrude from a new ring thing, but my new geometry doesn't look anywhere near as bad as the old. I don't have multiple splines going into the same point anymore. It still looks a touch funky because I haven't tweaked/adjusted all the cp's yet but its a million times better than what it was. All patches are quad with I think the exception of 2 5 pointers, and all splines are continuous. I'm not quite sure why there would be any residual funkiness, it looks good to me. I can post a wireframe image, with the rest of the arm hidden (so only the socket is visible) but I think you would agree that its better. I need to go to the gym again, but I will try to post a wireframe later tonight. thanks again everyone for your suggestions and help, it looks much better. I will have to wait and see how it animates, but I think it will be ok. Roger ok I lied here is the wireframe: [attachmentid=18485] and there are actually 4 5pt patches, but you will see that the existing patches are all kosher etc. There may be a few minor tweaks I can do but I think this is about the limits of my patience. I am eager to start doing some other things.....