kboc2

You're right they're not at all the same structurally. But the spline curves that generate the shape will be almost identical if not identical.

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NURBS are not very good for creating localized complexity without adding unwanted geometry to other areas of the model

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I've never had this problem.

I didn't even bother to try modo. I can't afford it.

NURBS and Subdiv are two aspects of 3D Modelling that are very similar. If you take a mesh surface with 9 polygons, z-trans the middle polygon then subdiv the object, youll get basically the same shape in NURBS if you take a nurbs patch with the same number of points as the control mesh surface has in verts and put them all in the same place. The nurbs patch will look like the sudbived mesh if not exactly the same shape (I've found I get exactly the same shape in most instances).

Modeller for you guys to check out:

http://www.nevercenter.com/silo/

Check this vid:

http://www.nevercenter.com/videos/in...lter%20Behrnes

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Though Lightwave also offers the option to bake a texture onto a surface (at a resolution you specify).

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yet another feature I drool over

What I had intended to do was to pick up Messiah and eventually upgrade to C4Dxl9. Unfortunately, Messiah doesn't plug into xl9 (yet, hopefully someday).

I may just go with Messiah Studio and just keep the modellers I currently have, which are just fine. Neither Rhino nor xl6 doesn't do NGons, which is okay by me since NGONS can cause issues in subdivision even in packages that support them. Rhino models usually don't need subdivision if I mesh them correctly.

I don't know a whole lot about the Arnold render engine. One of the reasons I wanted to hook Messiah up with xl9 is that it produces high quality radiosity renders at high speed.

XL9 doesn't have texture baking, unfortunately, but interestingly enough it was designed specifically to bring Lightwave models in seamlessly, materials and all. So whatever is produced in LW will translate over to C4D usually without need to re-build materials.

I didn't mean to slander your uncle, btw I know a couple of colourblined Photographers who do amazing work. George Georgiou is one of them. He does more than a few Playmate and Cybergirl pictorials for Playboy. Very neat guy, and I think quite an artist.

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Cowl. Cowl is a head thingie (like what Batman wears). Cowell/Cowel is the judge of American Idol (or other country Idol of choice). But lots of cool stuff being discrussed even if I don't know most of it.

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Didn't they name the headgear after that guy because he's always wearing something on his head that makes him look so mean?

Hehe... I just thought of something... some genious over at CGTalk is gonna model his head someday soon and wow everyone with his ability to create ghastly images...

It's not the bones that worry me... those are easy.. it's those bloody jaw morphs... trying to duplicate all those phenome actions with magnets is a bear...

I always keep animation in the back of my mind though... if it's not usable as an animatable piece, it's not worth it for me to do IMHO...

The problem isn't the face so much as the ears... I'll see what I can come up with... but if you like, I'll send you the jpeg of the body alpha channel... see what you think.

It's Mike3 (unimesh)

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Continue the great discussion

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Last time I checked you were a pretty important part of it...

Working on a texture template for APEX... I think I have the body down... not sure how to make his cowell may have to model the durn thing

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The only thing that phoenix says that I'd disagree with is that NOT everyone would consider photography an art. Many painters and sculpters tend to look down on photographers (my uncle, who is a fine artist and sculptor, often refers to them as "image-thieves").

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I'd tell your uncle painting is not even close to 3D in the way of creative processes (talking about the guys that build everything from scratch now, or the teams of people who do)... They're sculptors, painters, photographers, light engineers and a whole lot more... So phoey to the opinion that Photographers aren't artists.

Anyway, I know both y'all are on CGTalk... I'm KBOC there too [ QUOTE ]
If I create a nice rock procedural texture that doesn't use any image maps, I can apply it to ANY rock of any shape any time I need one. Rather than creating an object, I've instead created a fully 3D volumetric material that I now have the power to apply to any shape.

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Yeah, but for a rock, that's great because it can be pretty uniform in the way it looks, depending on the rock, of course. It's why Bryce and Vue are so powerful for creating "natural" lookiing scenery. If you have a rock that's not uniform, you don't need to worry about doing anything but mixing shader nodes or maybe going so far as to set up material groups.

For things like human skin, which bends, flexes and has no consistency over its surface, you absolutely need to make good use of UV if you want it to be at all realistic.

Take a pair of worn jeans. No consistency at all. You have light and dark patches. Now, you can get away with a procedural colour, but you're going to have at least a diffuse map to keep it from looking completely uniform. An old leather jacket is going to be smooth in worn spots, and rougher in unworn spots. Not only are you going to have to have good specular mapping, but also good bump mapping applied to UV.

Anyway, you guys are both competent artists and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

But it's true they are all UV. If you're mixing up shader nodes with textures for skin or cloths (and I assume that would include BSSRDF) with textures, it's still all applied to UV.

For instance, when you're doing a specular map it's applied to the surface filtered through UV. (Poser people are just now beginning to get how important this is).

If say, I wanted a ruddy complexion to the guy in that tutorial, I'd have to have alternating red and yellow blotches applied to it, but if it's not done via UV it would apply uniform over the head and look completely unrealistic.

I do like how light comes through the ears, BTW... one of the cool things about it

P6 supposedly has this, we'll see... I'm still using P5.

Maybe I'll beat EFrontiers up for not giving us a fresnel node

Okay 200 characters in a scene I grant you. But those aren't close ups. For that proceedurals are just fine.

Fresnel... drool... wish Poser had it

I haven't yet played with BSSRDF, but you're saying it can't be mixed with textures???? I'd heard otherwise...

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And, IMHO, Poser is a great tool for doing poses/animation tests.....it is quick, and can provide great feedback during the roughs stage. I prefer LightWave for doing my final renders and my initial modelling though. But the animation preview work always seems easier in Poser. I love using it to tweak a BVH file or figure out exactly how I want an animation or scene to flow. Then I'll transfer that to LW.

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YAH! One of the things I know can be done quite well is taking BVH animation and moving it around package to package...

I couldn't dissagree with you more on the idea that Proceedurals produce more realistic skin texturing without bitmapped textures.

This is only one example of a render that tends to blow tha theory out of the water...

What did you buy? It's probably money well spent.

DAZ/Studiom Wings3D, Anim8or are all free downloads.

http://www.daz3d.com
http://www.anim8or.com
http://www.wings3d.com

what's this about a project?

sent

OBJ, yes... I didn't know NVidia got Exluna... people had high hopes for Exluna

I'll zip it up and fire it off... expect it within the hour.

<----has seriously considered switching from C4D to lightwave simply because Messiah does Lightwave best

You've no idea how much I want Messiah

The most powerful procedurals I've ever seen were in Bryce.

That said... BMRT is a very nice render engine... I think I still have it on this PC somewhere... Writing shaders though... oh the pain the pain the pain...

One thing, using blend modes with alpha channels on images, you're right...

Maybe I'll send you my mech and see what you can do with it...

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I also didn't like texturing until I learned how powerful procedurals are for achieving photo-realistic results (I'm still not crazy about doing UV image mapping). After learning more about them, texturing became pretty much my favorite aspect of 3D.

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The most realistic renders of human skin are all UV. The most realistic renders of human clothing are all UV.

Procedurals + Image is very powerful, yes. But procedurals aren't powerful enougn not to end up with a recongnizably repetetive pattern.

I admit, I got very lazy doing the Black Rhino renders. I could have done some more blotchy stuff and come up with a halfway decent cammo pattern...

On human skin: I've never seen them look good.

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I agree with Augur; most Poser pieces are recognizable as Poser because they're rendered directly in the Poser render engine (which is total crapola).

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FIREFLY, the new render engine, is derrived from PRenderman. You're still using P4 then

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...sylla-test.jpg

I did this render last night as part of a test. IMHO, that's as good a quality render as anything coming out of any other raytrace engine.

You might do this: continue setting up your scenes in P4, then send them to Daz/studio to use it's raytrace engine.

I'm sorry Auger I did misread your name...

The figure I'm using was modelled in Lightwave, btw. (the War Witch Figure) by the guys at DAZ3D.

The Mech Model was made in Rhino (my favorite modeller).

Here's the thing Auger: there's no such thing as a Poser model. The figures that originally came with Poser 3 and Poser 4 were created in Alias Power Animator by Zygote Media Group. Maybe that's what you're talking about.

I don't doubt your abilities as a modeller, never did. Right off the bat I could tell you knew what you were talking about regarding 3D. I've worked in the 3D Industry as well. I was the author of the tutorial section of the Poser 4 Manual back in 1999.

I happen to love character animation. I'm not a half bad modeller, but I'd much rather take an existing mesh and make it what I need it to be.

Poser is what it is. To say that all poser figures look alike is naive at best, as there are now 30 or so popular human female figures for Poser, and I have no clue how many non female figures... I haven't bothered to count them.

From DAZ alone: Aiko, Victoria, Stephanie, The Girl, Laura. Then there's the Default Poser female... Dina V, Natalia, EJ, Jesse, Judy... shall I go on?

Back before 1999, it was okay to say all poser renders look alike. They did. It was always the same figure. Now it's not. Plus, now you have sub-surface light scattering in Poser 6... and you're probably going to be hard pressed to identify a Poser render.

That said: when I can afford Messiah: I'll buy it. For now, Poser's the only reliable character animation software in my price range. And the figures don't cost obscene amounts of money to get either.

BTW: I SUCK at texturing... I resorted to procedurals entirely on the Mech...

There's crap that comes out of every userbase for every platform.

I know my piece isn't High Art... it's just a figure I played with and rendered, I liked it so I posted it...

What I'd like to know from Arguer is this: if I use an original figure that I created in Poser... like say:

This One...

Would it make a difference since I'm still using Poser?

Here's the thing, Arguer. Nobody is a jack of all trades in Proffessional Level 3D. You will almost never find a modeller who is also working as an animator. You'll almost never find a texture artist doing rigging.

It's why, outside of Poser, there are so very few people doing graphic-novel type work for fun. They're too busy spending hundreds of hours setting up their model. Even 3D God Stephen Stalberg doesn't have the prolific portfolios Chris Derochie has... Derochie doesn't have to bother building figures, he's a classically trained ex-Disney Animator.

He's got credentials that people in the film industry take very seriously and he'll be regognized long before anyone who has only animated in 3D (which is most of us).

But, in the 3D community, he'll be looked down on because his preferred platform is Poser.

I don't know that I'd call it great

But thank you.

If you truly want examples of GREATNESS...

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/...nt/entries.php

I started in Poser With the Victoria Model

The first thing I did was use the comic as a ref to try and get her face shape as close as I could.

I moved the head morphs to the Aiko Model which has a better base body shape for comic characters, imho.

I applied some skin texture maps I had on hand. Then used Xara to draw on the costume and Paint Shop Pro to colour it.

I exported the body to an OBJ file and build the Hair, leggings, belt and arm bands in Rhino, then doing the hair transparency maps and textures in PSP (which are fairly simple since Rhino assigns UV on nurbs patches automatically).

Then it was a matter of setting the poses, and fine tuning the materials before rendering.

What I didn't have to do by doing it this way: Custom Modelling and Rigging a figure, assinging a UV, and painting skin textures. Those steps would have involved a tremendous amount of work that people pay thousands of dollars for. As I said, I'm not willing to put that kind of work into fan art. It's a lot more involved than simply drawing it.

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It's an image from 3d package that includes a canned human model

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Uh... no. The model was not "included" in Poser.

This kind of attitude is not a little insulting. I don't creat 3D figures from scratch not because they're difficult to model, I'm a pretty decent modeller, but mainly because of UV and Textures. I suck at texturing. It's that simple. If I wanted to use some of the texutres that are out there, I'd have to match UV to those of existing models and that takes more time than I'm willing to put in.

If you want to know exactly what I did, and how I did it, ask, don't come off with crappy comments about "canned" models and such. I used Victoria for the face and Aiko for the body, if you must know. The skin textures were created by Mahna and Tiffani for their Ethereal character. The rest is mine.

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That's not original art.

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Save it. It's not an original character of mine, granted. I didn't create War Witch.

I ran into this kind of crap a lot over at CGTalk, but thankfully the artists that actually have talent don't have this kind of backward thinking going on, at least most of them do not.

Now, if you want to show me up and create a custom 3D Figure of some COH character (in MAYA, or 3dsmacks or Softimage) one that is of the ones we know (from the comics) and show it to us in all it's splendor, fine... show us what you can do before you start calling other people's stuff "Canned"... especially when I don't see anyone calling the videos we've all seen from CoH fans "Canned"... (like the one from Mr. Abyss, complete with "canned" animation, figures, sets and music...)

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you can play around with sliders and so forth to give it clothes and hair styles of your choice.

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Again... stupid comment that is a total lie. There's no slider for hair and clothing on any model I'm aware of.