Beast of burden - character - ZrO-1

#163

that is too cool…man this piece is great…the only suggestion I have is that I would bake the supports for the covered wagon a little thicker…they look a bit like 2 by 4’s right now…and 4 two by 4’s ain’t holdn much weight…other than that keep going man…:thumbsup:

#164

This is freaking me out:eek: I’m stunned:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
just a little crit on the slime : i think it’s shadow is way to strong, try dimming it down quite a bit.

awsome work, wish i could do just 10% of that :applause:

#165

one word:
Shiznitz.

:xtreme:

#166

hey zero first time i checked out ur string, yo man lookin good keep up the good work, i have a crit tho for ur peice so far;
the boards dont really look like there attached, u might wanna add more smaller detail like noticable nails and such, or just a bit more construction, thats about all i got to offer

:bounce:

peace

#167

Thanks for the praise and the crits. i’ll see what I can do about addressing them. As far as the shadows (particularly with the slime), I’m doing a render now with ray-tracing turned on, but it’s going to take a LONG time with all the hairs to draw shadows for. I’ll post it either way once it’s completed.

I still have lots to do. I need to fill the carriage and sled with coboy/wild-west stuff. And of course I have to model the cowboy. I’ll try and make a sketch to show you my plans for him ASAP.

Thanks again guys. :beer:

#168

WHERES THE DRIVER? that is such a good model but wheres his jockey?

#169

ZrO-1 these challanges are doing you good you just keep getting better! Your model is turning out great, I cant wait to see his driver!
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

#170

OK I’ve got a question for any body out there that can help me. It has to do with lighting (one my obvious weak points).

I want to get the shadow less intense for the slime. So I know that if I want transparent shadows I need to turn on ray-tracing. The only problem is that because of the complexity of my hairs (which are just a ton of nurbs cones) the ray-tracing takes all friggin day. I have all my shaders looking pretty good with d-map shadows instead (which don’t get bogged down with all the hairs) but then the slime’s shadow looks like crapola. So here’s my question: can I lighten/soften the shadow for the slime and leave everything else? Or can I set up the hairs to be more ray-trace friendly? Any suggestions would be really helpfull. Thanks.
[edit] the scene renders fine with ray-tracing on as long as I hide the hairs. That’s why I know it’s the hairs bogging down the ray-traced render [/edit]

#171

whats up zero if your using max you can make the hairs raytrace materials, but then just turn of raytracing on that material, i had to do this once with particle systems.

#172

I’ve been following all your work from the beggining and it really keep improving to higher level each time :bounce: !!!
Your sketches where quite,…simple… But your modeling technique are stuning.!!!
The sleam slidding system is really ingenious!!!
Can’t wait ot see more :).

One only suggestion is the size of the wagon, it could be bigger, i mean the beast is maybe 3 time the size of it! This powerfull insect could easelly pull a much bigger wagon, AND DON’T FORGETT the sleam trail system! So the contraption could be even more huge!!!

#173

zro: we should do something. my brother works at Loews, so we could probably go see a movie for free :beer:

#174

Ok ZrO!!! I might be able to help.
The first thing you might want to try is just rendering the hair cones seperately and then compositing them.

(1)Change the color of the Dmap shadows to fake what you want

(2)Play around with Paint effects, do a couple of quick tutorials to get yourself aquainted with its quirks and paint some hair under those plates

or

(3) Get rid of all that superfluious geometry. Put in some time making a nurbs or poly plane and pasting a texture to it. It technically isn’t cheating in the challenge. You still have to make it render properly. Texture maps cast pretty good shadows as well.

If I were you, I would cut the geometry down as much as you can for raytracing. If you dont have a spare computer for rendering, that may be your only option.

#175

@ dmcgrath: I apreciate the suggestions, but I think the only one that would work is compositing the hairs in in post. Lil’d or 'noxx had said in someone else’s thread that tranparency/clipping maps are considered textures so they don’t count. Paint FX and maya Fur are both also 2D post effects. So they don’t count either.

The plane gave me an idea though. Maybe I’ll make one plane and model the side of it in lots of long spikes to use as hairs. That way it’ll still be geometry but one simple object instead of almost 1000 (no joking there’s really almost 1000) cones.

#176

Geez Zr0-1, when do you SLEEEEEP? :surprised

Maybe you could take out all the hairs, then tell everyone that the hairs are now so fine you can’t see them. Then you could do a really close up shot, put back in one hair, render that and show everyone just how fine your hairs are! It’s called movie magic! :smiley:

Whee! :bounce:

ps. Sorry,that probably isn’t a practical solution!

#177

LMAO!! erilaz I might just have to do that. :smiley: hehehe

#178

Hey gang, I finally have some more updates for you guys. I’ve got raytracing on now. But not for eye-candy. It’s on for the slime, and for nicer shadows than I was getting with d-mapped shadows. Anyway there’s four pics so here they come.
This first pic is a shot of just the nurbs cones I had made for the hair. They are now extinct in my latest version, and I’m working on a more geomerty friendly version:

#179

This second pic is a detail shot of the slime. I need to make it a bit less radio-active but generally this is how I wanted it to look:

#180

This is a wide-angle shot showing you the entire compasition and how it looks with the raytraced shadows:

#181

And lastly, here is the scan of the sketch I did for the cowboy rider and a couple other things:

#182

the slime is really lookin’ cool now zro! :thumbsup: but one question: does your insect have a colour texture? i think so-and is this allowed? or better will it be judged?