80's cartoon Post Mortem: Tell us what you learned...

#80

I learned that no matter how hard you try to keep a thread on topic, it always seems to digress… :smiley:

-Rage

#81

What I learned

  1. How much I like everyone here. Even though its a competition, peeps are very nice when it comes to c&c, and sensitive to other people’s differences in skill level. It lends to an environment of positive encouragement really helped to drive me to finish the model on time.

  2. I need to upgrade to x64, had memory & crash issues despite having 4 gigs (which I understand a x32 can’t use or recognize it all).

  3. In making a model with a complex costume that hides the body, it is important to have a “dummy” body underneath to remind you of where the underlying limbs are in the pose. This is important for getting the cloth draping and folds to look right.

  4. In an asymmetrical pose with lots of cloth, symmetrical modeling is pointless with the exception of the face. In this case, pose first, then detail.

  5. Next time I need to insert more polys into areas I expect to have lots of detail in the end, ran into problems where the polys were too homogenous and I didn’t have enough polys to hold displacement detail for the decorative dress drim/complicated cloth folds unless I went above 7 subdivisions. eek!

  6. Related to #5, when sculpting for cloth I need to think ahead on where the wrinkles and folds will be and prepare the base mesh differently (more detail) before moving on to zbrush.

#82

Yes, but mostly for the body in general i think its important to make the mayor proportion sculpting first with symetry, and only when it looks good and almost finished, then you can rigg/pose the character and do the last final details and forms of muscles more bulged or stretched etc without the sym…but knowing that the proportions are the same and saving lot of time with the symetry sculpt.

Another thing…the next time i will try to organize the proyect more like…

week one: concept and research.

week two: base modeling.

week three:sculpting.

and so on to the finish result.

i say this because it happens to me that when i think that a step of the process will take 5 hours, it will probably take 10 or 15…and because i always let all to the last minute…shame on my:surprised. This happen to anyone here too?

…

#83

Well i learned how to manage zbrush more than before…:cool:

this past week a also learn how not to pay income tax, did you know income tax is voluntary act is not mandatory? the truth will make you free

jeje je cool no more income tax

#84

but if you don’t pay income tax and then no one else pays income tax. whose going to maintain the roads, railroads, water purification, take the garbage to the landfill, provide public transportation, pay off the national dept, provide school for children, build and maintain national and state parks…the list goes on and on and on…

-Rage

#85

Nope, never, I’m always on time… lol :D, almost held a straight face.

And jhasse, do more research. I don’t know who is giving you information but it takes a lot of legal defense and mucho dollars to fight off the courts when you go this route. You will get thrown in jail for not paying your taxes.

That’s what happened to Wesley Snipes.

The supreme court ruled back in the 30s, I think it was the 30s, and yes you have to pay taxes. Unless of course you make below the poverty level but that’s not what it sounded like you were saying.

#86

Well, this was my first challenge. The theme selection forced me to enter. I couldn’t say no, I’m too weak. I heard voices in my head from my 80’s child personality. I would lo ve to participate in a challenge similar to this one.

I already had decided to go for a 3d Aioros, but knowing myself, I needed a deadline to make me work really hard. I usually start but don't usually finish works or take too long to complete. Thanks to this, I've been able to see where i can arrive to. I've got a better result than expected. I'm really happy with it. So just with that point, this challenge has been worthy.

As it rewards to the deadline... the first thing I thought was: Oh shit, I could have gone to bed before if I had known before. (I had already finished the character)
Tuesday afternoon the thought was: Oh shit, I still have three days to improve the scenario, think, think.
And then back to the computer and the hours of uncountable and exhausting crative fun. I work better under pressure, but I really enjoy it. And the scenario improvement really really worths it. So, I can only thank you for making me see I can do good things In a short period of time.(I still haven't had a 3d  professional job, so lack the experience)


Furthermore, I've learnt I still don't know how to go from zbrush to 3d Studio Max using displacement maps. (you can see it the hair tests) So I finally exported high resolution meshes.

Apart from this, some other details about how to avoid problems when modelling and getting results more efficiently.

And but not least (maybe the most important), a throne with two skeletons as armrests should be in the IKEA catalogue right now. IN THE HEADLINES¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡


To sum up. I love the whole experience. (my mother doesn't, she thinks I changed my timetable drastically in a bad way [and I did]. She is my first 3d widow [don't know if you name it like this in english])
#87

first watch this movies:
Zeitgeist: Addendum
Zeitgeist, The Movie

let me know what you think?

#88

income tax is a voluntary act, the IRS they just want to confuse you to believe that is the law, even my economic teacher and logic teacher admited that income tax is a voluntary act because all of us are protected by the constition the our founded father left us. IRS is only administrative deparment no thing more they don’t have the right to take your money and nothing else because their is no law for them to do what they do.

about wesley snipes all lawyers knows the income tax is voluntary act they just get paid by IRS and Judges too to shut their mouths to miss leaden to believe people have to pay income tax.

take care

#89

i learnt that i never have enough time :slight_smile:

#90

Well, here are three things I learned from this challenge:

  1. I learned more about how to use ZBrush displacement and normal maps in Lightwave.
  2. I learned more about my current computer’s limits! :wink:
  3. I learned that I’d better pick something harder to model next time! :slight_smile:
#91

This is so way off topic it’ll be the last I say on it but you sound like you still need to be warned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
If you don’t trust Wikipedia then here is the 16th amendment on USConstitution.net.

It has nothing to do with the IRS. The 16th amendment was ratified on February 3, 1913. That means long before we were ever born congress passed the law and then the states ratified the amendment as part of the constitution. That means it is the law that there can be an income tax. Your teachers are dead wrong and will get you thrown in jail. I too bought into this nonsense years back but if you do proper research and not conspiracy crap you will see it is not voluntary. Those guys that preach this idea, including the ones I originally listened too, ultimately get thrown in jail themselves.

#92

Man I tried SOO hard not to reply to this recent shift in topic, but it’s way stronger than me.
I just wanted to add to this, Wyatt.

Using common media tactics, it is possible to “prove” virtually anything you want to. What people need to understand, especially when dealing with propoganda such as zetegeist or Michael Moore films, is that what they DON’T tell you has much more meaning than what they DO tell you.
Also, Zetegeist was a really stupid “film” IMO. If you look and listen closely, there is virtually no solid scientific or factual evidence to backup their cases. Verifying and checking up on these so called “facts” on the internet is an exercise in futility, because the fist few pages of results you get link to conspiracy sites anyway who all recycle their info between them.

-Rage

#93

Guys…

Stay on topic.

-R

#94

ok guys let stay on the topic, roberto is right. You win Harris :curious:

#95

je je je ok let stay on the topic, ok :wise:

#96

I think the major thing I learned was how to use mentalray. I use other render programs at work, so it gave me a chance to explore mentalray. It’s nice that max ships with such a great renderer. I’m also proud of the fact that I stayed with the project for the duration. All too often I get sidetracked or lose interest, but I’m glad I made it to the end! Great job everyone, you guys kept me going :slight_smile:

#97

Things I Learnt and Likes
my goal with modelling challenges right now it to start modelling in a way that allows both animation and the generation of high quality stills.

to this end i focused on cloth modelling and, despite not finishing, felt i made some good progress. particularly, i was happy with my modelling of cloth using a low-poly base mesh. i think that this is important to me because nCloth for maya responds well to using low res meshs, post smoothed down the history tree.

i also learnt some more about zbrush pipelines, particularly for LW through the discussions on it in other peoples threads. despite me being a maya user i found this interesting. thanks to wyatt, rage and some others for their contributions there.

i particularly enjoyed razorsedge’s WIP as i felt his modelling made use of some interesting techniques (syflex, low poly etc) so that was good.

Things I Learnt and Didn’t Like
i have this, perhaps irrational, dislike of poly modelling anatomical form without following muscle flow and there were a number of WIP’s where the creators were not making use of edge loops etc in defining muscles and joints and all that good stuff.

what bothered me about this was that, for a lot of them, this worked perfectly fine. i mean the outcomes still had anatomical detail.

this has made me wonder about how poly-modelling is changing with tools like zbrush and mudbox providing billion poly displacement approximations without breaking a sweat.

i think though that this probably comes down to Animation vs. Illustration, and the need for deformations however i’m not necessarily convinced of this and have decided to investigate how well this less involved method of modelling works along with other possible things like driven displacement textures.

so yeah, i like modelling anatomically but if it’s just a waste of time doing so then i want to know about it. efficiency and moving forward and all that :slight_smile:

@japetus: if this was your first render using MR then i’m even more impressed. it didn’t look like the shaders were complicated (i’m guessing mostly simple MIA materials?) but they all came together so nicely, accomplishing a cohesive style that captured both the interpretation and the original cartoon. i think you can be justifiably proud :slight_smile:

my only crit of your render would be the backpack which i think ended up feeling a little flat. i was thinking perhaps a more ceramic/glazed texture (fresnal ref, ior ~1.4 ref 1.0, diff slightly off white etc) just to give it a bit more presence.

so yeah. just thought i’d mentioned that i think you learned the thing you set out to do well.

#98

Axiomatic: Thanks for the comments. In retrospect it would have been a good idea to give a bit of reflection to the jet pack. Kinda wished I had chosen a pose that showed it off a bit more, I had put some nice details up there. Oh well, I guess that’s why we have the ortho views too right? :smiley:

#99

No problem bro. Amazing how easy it is once you get the specifics down.

Now I have a question for you or anyone else that wants to answer. I’ve seen messages before about Mental Ray and that its tricky but it give such good results etc. etc. Coming from the Lightwave side, with small bits of experience in 3DMax and Maya, the process is you make the model, you texture the model, you prepare your scene, set your render options and you render. Usually that means hit F9. If your using FPrime its a little different but still its not that complicated. Mental Ray sounds like a separate program but if its just for rendering what is all the talk of shaders etc? If the answer is too long and complicated, point me at a wiki or info page that gives the basics.

One more of those questions that I never bothered to ask.