now I don't know what to do with it...
Ideas? 

I'm in a modeling mood!  Is there any other wish list besides the, ahem, poser wishing well?

awesome

I could see doing a few replicas for a whole village scene with tons of similar houses.

Thats a nice village house....  you're very good.......   so thats where you been.....  are you going to texture?

I was dreaming up a rustic village, like those collectibles of Dept. 56 or Dickens village etc...

kind of like these:
http://www.dept56retirees.com/images/nev/words/bensbarbershop.html
http://www.dept56retirees.com/images/dv/words/ashwickhoseladder.html

Your houses reminded me a bit of it  (if they're free, I'd love a download of these once you make them available).  I bet there are other people out there who would agree with me on this suggestion:

Yubaba's Bath House from the movie "Spirited Away".  If you're not familiar and you like Disney in any way, you need to see it. :c)  But THAT would be just an awesome model to see, or at least something inspired by it.   Here's a picture of the bath house front:

Interesting idea eh?

MDB

Very nice model indeed. What prog do you use?

wow..I'm impressed..maybe a few blocks of this, you could call it Victopia or something..;) keep it up.

haha mbonchers pic reminded me of the samurai pizza cats! :biggrin: how bout u model a samurai pizza cat?? that'd be fun!

Awww, thank you guys :)

To answer the what program I used question...
being that I modelled this a while ago, over a year or so ago, I can't say I remember very clearly which one I used.

For those of you whom may not know already, I use Autocad at Wok, and 'am quite handy with it, so if I was in a hurry to make something, It is likely I used Autocad. But, this model is from the period I was pushing myself to get handier with 3D max, which I also end up having to use at work, about 10-20% of the time. I tend to worry that when  aproject hits, I'll have to be up to speed, so I invent these little tortures for myelf to try and keep my skills up.

Most likely it was a mix between Autocad and Max.
Sorry about the characters, since I don't get to model characters and very many nurbs based things for work, my skills with that re not as good - at the moment. i may be a good thing to try.
When I'mplaying with things though, i never know what I'll get carried away with and end up making... So, I'm not making any promises :)
Hugz, Connie

Nice work Connie, the texturing will be the fun part.  Reminds me of my childhood when making model boats and planes. Turning the dull grey plastic into a realistic model was the most challenging and rewarding part of the process :-)

well, having not done character modelling isnt that a great reason to try it? it would be awesome to challenge ur skills that way!

Nurbs oh no don't do characters in Nurbs. Subdivision modeling that is what is best for character stuff. Silo, Wings, and programs like that. Nurbs is too picky and if you get a triangle or a multigonof some sort they really have problems. You shoudl do all quads but in Nurbs you have to or you get holes and other nasty things. In subdivision you just get a slight pinch in you mesh and you can tweak it or put if somewhere will it will not be seen.

I am nto good at real works style architecture so I think it is great.

why do i see a christmas cake with that house model on...hmm there you go do a christmas cake and place the house on it ;)

Hi Dann-o...
haha, no wonder my character modelling attempts with nurbs have gone goofy LOL!
I haven't tried subdivision modelling yet, past reading tutorials.

CrazyDawg, I like your idea :)  what does a christmas cake lookl ike though???

Anyway, I was poling around some unresolved recovery files from my 'great hard drive crash' of last year, and found that house moel survived.

one thing that I didn't find (yet..), I made a model parodying what I do for living, which are land, housing residential subdivisions, it was called "cookie cutter houses on postage stamp lots"... Imy have to remake it!!!

Hmmm, that gives me an idea for a challnge of sorts...  "render this idiom" or render this "catchphrase" ...   I dunno, something like the scavenger hunt they have in the photography forums... 

Character modelling... I dunno, I tried for about 2 hours to figure out just how to dress and pose the abyssal queen in P6 today,  her boobs kept falling out and the dress was riding up, she looked so uncomfortable that I started squirming... and finally gave up in frustration.

But yet I did a tiny bit of real sculpture... sort of real...
http://www.cb-design.net/cbdcrit.htm

Eh, their faces all look like they came out of the toy story... LOL, little ways to go in the skills department.

I like it better when I let my monsters out of the closet ;)
http://www.cb-design.net/cbdmon.htm

ack, I think now you guys are going to be convinced I'm really nutty... 
[ducking and running ---------------->]
Hugz, Connnie

Nice modelling Connie - that's what I call real 3D - and funnily enough, probably a whole lot easier to deal with than puter created ones as well :-)

Wow.. connie.. I did not know you did sculturing....   nice cute figures.....

you're a lot more talented than you let on..;) just taking care not to bruise our feelings..;)

Wow..haven't touched Autocad since..uh..1988 or so.. (v2.14, whenever that was, came on a boatload of 5 1/2" floppies..or was that 5 and 1/4th?..;) You know, if you make the objects like that, and could UVMap them (Wings 3d, UVMapper classic, Lithunwrap, Blender, and others), you'd have marketable items to sell here..they're that good.

Connie doesn't know what Christmas Cake looks like???? Must be Jewish......Happy Hannaka!

Connie what do you use for the skeletal structure in those guys?
I have a polymer guys lurking all about the house but I haven't done much lately because I never got comfortable with either foil or wire frame "skeletons"....and styrofoam just melts when you cook 'em!

Quote - Connie what do you use for the skeletal structure in those guys?
I have a polymer guys lurking all about the house but I haven't done much lately because I never got comfortable with either foil or wire frame "skeletons"....and styrofoam just melts when you cook 'em!

I used wire, I think it was a realtively thick aluminum wire. Thin enough where you can bend it by hand, but not so thin that it bends under a weight of jsut few pounds. I forgot the gage. I may have used galvanized wire too. I found a big coil of it at Home Depot.

I'd wrap crumpled strips of aluminum foil to get the basic skeleton, pack it tighter and tape it together. Then I'd take some of my scrap clay and put a thin cover of clay (about 1/4") around it so it holds it all together, and bake the first time. Usually I just cover the trunk of the body and leave wire for the limbs exposed, because I will still want to pose them.  With this intermediate baking, when I'm doing finer work and posing, I have a sturdy middle. If I don't, the foil never stops moving!

One thing I thought about doing, but haven't tried yet is dipping the foiled base into liquid polymer clay and baking. I'm thinking maybe it will get soaked with it and stick together well.
I was also trying to layer things, foil/clay/foil/clay ... I really don't remember how that worked out. I think it was fine, but I decided it was too much work for not much benefit.

I think I have one or two progress photos somewhere at home, I'll post them if I can find them.  

Quote - Connie doesn't know what Christmas Cake looks like???? Must be Jewish......Happy Hannaka!

I grew up in a communist country - we didn't have cake there!
And ... we walked to school, uphill both ways ;)

We made walnut strudel for Christmas.

you're from California?..;) j/k..;) Not actually the buckle in the Bible Belt 'round these parts, just the excess that hangs over the beer belly..[the location, not me..];)

Huh?   I'm not following what you're saying???
Not having grown up in the 'states, I don't have the full appreciation for some colloquial phrases like Christmas Cake or the Bible Belt... Sorry :(

Christmas cake Connie, is a very hard fruit cake that comes in a big pretty can... One would think, after bitting into one, that it took a year to get to you.....

There are still people who actually make this at home.......   then they use the slowest UPS option to send it around the world before it gets to you.....

Nurbs are indeed not the most usual character modelling tool, though i've once seen faces made by this guy who modelled with nurbs patches i maya and damn those were nice models! whatever works for u works for u :P but in general i'd say subd's are indeed easier.

Ngons and Triangles are always a subject of discussion, it depends on software ur using and how well it deals with them, but also it depends on what you'll be using the model for.

Triangles can be great for quickly modelling creases, but if you're going to animate they can turn into a real pain.

5sided ngons can be a great cheat on curved surfaces that just wont stop pinching and 3dsmax is known to handle them very well with it's meshsmooth, still they can form a problem during animating and u'll want to avoid them on surfaces that'll distort a lot during the animation process.

If ur modelling for use in a game engine u'll also need to watch out, some cant handle ngons too well, others start acting strange if u import a quad-model with a triangle stuck between all quads and split the triange into 2 or 3 triangles.

Christmas cake = Fruit cake? 

Nooowwwwww I get it.  Wow yeah.  Some are so soaked in rum you could get the kids drunk on it, and heat the house for the winter.  Some are so dense that even light cant escape their surface, and most home made ones are patently inedible and are regifted for years as some sort of sick family tradition.

But some... so my wife insists are absolutely fabulous... Supposedly Figgi's sells really good ones at incredibly inflated prices (20 bucks for barely a pound).  So I don't do fruitcake.

MDB

Quote - Christmas cake .....

Ahh!  I was wondering if it was the same thing as the fruitcake! I heard about those before. I knew people send it around for the holidays. I thought perhaps there was another notorious kind of a cake that I haven't heard of before! Tee Hee, now I'm going to habe to model a fruitcake
I need to start keeping the Idea list... You guys make me think of all these goofy things!

amazing work

Silo really seems to be  great value in character modeling (at least for lower cost packages.)  Their current version is 1.42  for around $109 and I believe you can get version 2 for free (if you purchase 1.42)

Anyway, take a look at some of the work being done with the beta versions at:
http://www.silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6806

Here's the texturing progress on the original model. I'd appreciate critique and suggestions. I'm going for a somewhat stylized textures rather then super relistic. 

I'm particularly ambivalent about the ground and the roof. Even though I like both of those textures on their own, I'm not so sure they fit the scene all that well.

nice model connie, reminds me of a collectable they have in the uk made by a firm called land of lilliput.  some of the limited edition ones sell for big money on the second hand market.

love the fiugures as well. i used to enjoy working with word when i was in the uk...also use to make custom jewlery out of gold, had my all the equipment then. made a bit of stuff out of milliput putty lol. it's a great material for repairing expensive pottery if you don want to risk putting it back in the kiln. would like to see it textured.

billy

i can see the thing with texture now o evil one lmao.

it looks excellent

billy

just doing an edit cos you're asking for crit....i'm not a modeller so i cant crit the workmanship and anyway that looks fine to me....if i had a comment it would be that it looks too pretty, needs some moss on the lower woodwork and round the eves, plus a bit of decay in general to make it looked lived in some smeg on the roof etc. other than that all i can say is it rocks

billy

not to worry. Drac's from a FCC (Former communist Country), and we teased him unmercifully, probably all the way into Carrara..;)

Don't worry about the California bit..it's just the most progressive state in the US (tho there are some that would doubt that..but don't mind me, I don't have good class origins..;)

As for the clothing problems in Poser; don't know what your skill level is yet, but Poser's very much about specific objects fitting specific characters. Quickest way to find out about the dress 'fitting' is to go to the menu, and (I think it's under Objects, but I don't have Poser in front of me) select 'Conform to', then select Figure 1 (which is usually your character, the Queen). Usually everything gets smoothed out, and all the naughty bits get covered. If not, the dress may not be for that Character.  Which means you have to find a dress for that particular character. Which is why there are so many more Poser downloads that Bryce..;)

I kind of was partial to the white roof (snow)....  but I like your textures any way....

Billy:
Well, modeling is okay, it got me to where I wanted to go. It's not exactly an extraordinary feat!!!
I think it was my first attempt of the house that detailed.

You nabbed it... Liliput and Dept 57 and David White and similar collectibles etc were the inspiration for it.

The moss and some more rustic detail is a great idea, I'd like to do that. Right now I'm doing the basic texturing of the model, to incorporate it into scenes later. I'm never sure whether I should try to build in more rustic detail now, or do it later with postwork. It would be interesting to hear how others do it. The whole thing is procedurally textured, no image mapping. It has crossed my mind to create a procedurally textured UV map, then do Photoshop touchups, and then image map the model. I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Still tinkering.

So far this has been good exercise in getting a little better hang of procedural texturing.

Pakled:
Thanks  I’m hoping I can withstand the merciless teasing around here   You guys are way too hard on me here!!!

My current level of skill with Poser is frustration… Does frustration qualify as a skill? LOL
I got the basic conforming down, but then as soon as I touch the dials to reshape the figure, things start falling out… I know about turning body parts visibility off, but for example, on ‘the queen’ model, if I turn off the boobs, and leave the clothes be the boobs, then part of her chest goes away too, and a semi-invisible queen…
Maybe I’m lost in morphs. I’m not sure I got the hang of the morphs as well as I should.

For example, if I take V3 and twist and turn the dials to get her to a body shape and pose I want, do the conforming clothes conform to the pose and the body shape dials, or just to the pose?
Looks like it conforms to the basic bones, but not to the body morphs… Like I said, it’s the morphs I haven’t spent enough time with – I think.

Anyway I have a LOT of questions about poser stuff, but I don’t really want to digress into that too much right now, no time to tinker with it.  Thanks for your suggestions though J  I may have more questions later J

Quote - I kind of was partial to the white roof (snow)....  but I like your textures any way....

I think you're onto something... I could make the spring, summer fall and winter textured version :)
But that flat gray wasn't much of a snow texture. I want little bumps, birdie footprints, a few fallen leaves and some icicles, and unevenly windswept part, where a part of the original roof shows up, but not in a full color, but with a very thin frostily translucent layer of snow over it, where you can berely tell the roof tiles and coloring below it.

Someone please stop me from creating more work for myself!!!!!

This is impressive!

connie.

some of david whites out of stock stuff is so expensive now..

you lost me with the word procedural and went on to confuse me wuth the word texture. i know nothing of either lol. i guess postwork using layers word work. giving the opacity button some welly. gives good results lol. a nice grey with a low pacity setting would give the wood a hint of oak feel. if you do it in layers you can make it darker at the floor and eves where it gets wettest.then a tinge of olive again with the opacity set low on differrent levels will give the mold. making sure to have it darker along the edge of the planking.  after that your on your own cos as i say i know nowt about anthing lmao

billy

You guys re killin’me with being so nice…
here, I’ll go first... Things I don’t like and think need improvement about the texturing are numbered to follow what's on the image:
 

1.                  Roof is a nice texture, but it doesn’t look aaanything like the roof tile that goes with a wooden cabin.

2.                  roof supports are too thick, and need to be a bit darker. Even a freshly painted ones seem to pick up dirt pretty quickly, there’s too much ambient and diffusion. The wood grain is in the wrong direction, by 90deg and little too car

3.                  Window molding, if it’s painted wood, the wood grain is too coarse, if it’s weathered wood, the coloring and texturing needs to be different.

4.                  Chimney’s, I wanted the look of weathered dinged up copper, but managed to get the coloring and the look of “wet poop”. The long downspout looks better.

5.                  balcony railing should look different from the window molding, the house needs some decorative visual detail. I just got too lazy and clumped it all together.

6.                  The wood scaffolding structure need to look older and more weathered then the house wood. It’s made out of lower grade wood then the cabin siding.

7.                  texture grain id in a wrong direction, but since I modeled it as a same piece as the rest of the downslide, I can’t remap it without messing up the rest. Need to edit the model.

8.                  There should be a barrel or a pile of something at the bottom of the slide, not a bale of straw.

9.                  This should be a muddy cobblestone. In spite of an interesting looking texture, it doesn’t look much like a muddy worn down cobblestone.

10.              windows need work, some transparency with a drapery visible inside would be nice.

11.              main entry… burls should be on main door panels, and long grain on connecting raised panels. It’s all over the place. Material groupings on the model got mixed up.

12.              Straw bales need little more grain and color variety.

Main house texture, even though I like it is too even, little too sterile.
So, it just might be back to the drawing board.

It's quite possible I am my own worst critic???

s'ok. We have a Poser forum that will give you any amount of information you can handle. Just as long as you don't start a quesion with 'I know this is a stupid question'..9 times out of 10, it's something like parsing Python code, or some esoteric thing I'll never need to know. They are helpful, as long as you don't say nice things about Daz Studio..;) j/k..;) Drop by, ask questions, learn stuff..;)

Yeah, the Poser characters are divided into 'chunks', which usually include the shoulder, which can be a problem.  I tend to Pose first, clothe later, but that's just my style. I've noticed the more extreme the pose, the worse the 'fit' on clothes. But that's probably something you can find out in the Poser forum.

As long as your model isn't a copy of a copyrighted item, you could put something like it in the Marketplace and make..oh...tens of dollars (or more, you won't get rich, but a little extra in the bank is nothing to worry about..;) It's that good.

just do a bit at a time connie. though i do have a question...how do you get stuff say a barrel o the top of the slide? i can't see a door or hoist.

billy

Well done Connie - can't wait to see it textured. Keep up the good work!

I went on a day trip today and took a number of photos that have texture potential formy own use, rocks, gravel, bark, wood, concrete etc.... Is there a lot of demand for those things? If there is, I'd be happy to share the photos. Pretty high quality 8 megapixel jpg's.

Billy... If I remember correctly from the reference materials I used, the slide is for the woodchips, and the brrel should sit at the bottom tocatch them. It's a part of some sort of a logging assembly, but I didn't model the whole thing.

so i take it it's a saw mill of sorts..

did you do any bump maps connie, not that i know what one is or how to do one lol. i just hear the word bump map bandied about a lot and thought...would a bump map add some detail....the roof looks better but is too flat and i as you say. the floor looks like..well not a floor hehe. how about a similar texture to the stairs but a little darker.or even the roof texture that you had. i forgot to say i liked most of the ideas and self crits you had though i don';t think you need to go that far.

whilst the above may seem to some like crit (it is lol) it doesn't take away from the fact you did a dam good job of modelling. i don't think the walls need much doing to em grain wise though i think if you know how (i don't) you could texyture the glass to look dirtier, darker and much more reflective like the blue floor is but blacker jmo

billy

Hi connie if you want to get soem cool textures try out wood workshop. It is free but needs another program to run. It does excellent tilable wood. (sorry the URL escapes me but google it) In bryce you can map it like object top object cubic to save time if it is not UV mapped.
   How is it lit. It might be tiem to get out of texture mode and see hwo it looks with proper ligting. I have a sort of patterend way I light now. I use an ambience sphere of 32 lights that is deep blue that is my fill light it is for shadows etc. and my sun is 17 red to yellow lights this makes nice soft shadows and renders faster than the soft shadows in Bryce.

   Crits I think the roof texture now is too coarse need to bump up the resolution. Also need the occasional crosspeice to break it up. (I understand if these are Bryce procedurals if you use wood workshop you can set those up. ) White is too white and the yellow needs a bit of noise or something to break it up. Try a cloud texture with two slightly different shades of yellow.

or failing that, check out Tony Lynch. While they wouldn't work for this scale (too far away) he's got about 80 different wood mats in every wooden shade there is..;)

Thanks for the suggestions guys :)  I really appreciate the resources you guys have mentioned :)  They're very cool. I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings I don't use them. I kind of set the goal for myself on this one to do the whole things from scratch, without using outside products (textures and objects) as much as possible, for the sake of the learning process. :)   But, it really helps to look at other resources and see how things are done, so thoughts and suggestions are very welcome.

I made some modifications to it last night, it's rendering at home right now... I'll post it when I get home.

Billy.... your mention of the bumpmaps and Danno's remark about the wood reminded me to try something...
I made a height map render of seferal rows of roof tiles and added those to the roof wood texture (which is a two a pretty copmplex procedural), so now I have roof tiles... They're still little too regular... I may try to fix that by roughing up the tile bump map in photoshop. I ran out of time for it last night. This is the first time I'm trying to mic procedural with an image map in one texture.
Right now all roof planes are one piece. I may go back to max and split it into individual planes so I can do more individualized texture mapping on each.

I tinkered with the windows a tad, but not a whole lot yet. There's a light inside the house which is on. That one will need more fine tuning once I decide on more final lighting. I think I'll add couple more lights inside, and couple little sparkling gas lights outside at the entry. 

...image coming later this evening....   :)
Hugz, Connie

Wood Workshop is from Spiral Graphics at:
    http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm

Their main product (big brother of Wood Workshop) is Genetica 2.5.    With it, one can knock out seamless tiles quite easily.  Nice  program.