Well a bit mroe doen on the Catdude. Did textures on his face UV mapped the whole dude and added a few lottle details.

Cat dude's looking good, looks like he could be lined up for rigging and animation...

Quote - Jeavans your approach to the bag sounds odd. I woudl have just gone with a cube subD and tweaked. I do more organic stuff and that is hwo to approach organic models. At least when you are box modeling.

Yeah, I really regret the way I did it. I started at the top and worked my way down, modeling all the little bits of hardware first. I have a lot more experience modeling things with precise edges than I do more organic stuff, and I guess I took the easy way out, then boxed myself into a corner, so to speak.

Captain Jack

My wrist is now terribly sore (I gotta get a new chair, it puts my elbow below the mouse) but the result look much better, and I'm having a much easier time getting my polys to behave themselves.

Captain Jack

Top perspective view is drawn over with OpenCanvas. (Showing what my next plans are.) Otherwise, it's just Wings3D modeling at the moment.

Nothing to show this time, but as for what I am doing: The battlestar Enterprise continues to advance SLOWLY. I have a serious brain freeze on what type of neck I want. Conny or Sov. But I'll sort that out.

At Scifi-Meshes a thread has me thinking hard. A steampunk starship. I am thinking about a serious rivets and girder Enterprise. Steam powered plasma engines. Yee Har.

I have a goth modelling comp that is causing grief. I am doing a 'Queen of the Damned'. It isn't pretty. I did one before using renders and lot of post work. This one has to be ALL modelled.

Lot of impressive work all around!!!
Sorry I didn't do it justice with comments, I was burried in a project that drove me crazy and sapped all my mental energy last week... eh.

I was wondering of any of you keep an idea sketchbook?
I tend to see things I might want to model or that give me ideas just about everywhere (thanks to ADD i suppose). I keep a lot of them in a sketchbook where I quickly jot something down, or a sketch it out, or glue a magazine clipping of a picture or a photo reference or whatever helps me remember the idea. Sometimes I print out something I already rendered, and jot down the changes I'd like to make to it...

When I get in an ocassional creative block, I go and thumb through the sketchbooks. I probably have 5-6 full sketchbooks by now.

Quote - ... Sorry I didn't do it justice with comments, I was burried in a project that drove me crazy and sapped all my mental energy last week... eh.

Fortunately, in my case, that isn't a long drive, so my work never interferes too much with my on-line activities...

Quote - I was wondering of any of you keep an idea sketchbook?

I'm terribly impulsive, and I'm rarely too far away from a computer. When I get an idea for soemthing, I usually whip out a quick model right away. I do carry a 2GB travel drive with me all the time, and I plug it into to any computer I'm working at, and I keep almost all of my models with me that way.

I used to keep a notebook for whole scenes I'd like to create in Poser, but that well kinda dried up when I started modeling, that being my (current) obsession.

Captain Jack

I do the sketchbook thingie too ConnieKat ( I have ADD as well) and I find that it helps me to hang on to good ideas. Sometimes I'll import a model into Bryce in its early formative stages and do a quick render, print, and sketch in additional details on the paper as an overlay. I do quite a bit of research on any real-world object that I'm going to model, even if it's not going to be an exact model of any particular prototype. Oddly enough, I've found Ebay to be a great source of pictures for lots of different objects.

Now... there's an interesting mini-statistic. I also have ADD (I take Adderall for it). I know that a lot of creative people in various disciplines have the disorder... I wonder how many modelers have it? I doubt it's any kind of a pre-requisite, but I bet it helps when your brain is telling you that adding another 10,000 polygons to the model isn't going to make it take any longer to tweak...

BTW, The first thing I do before I make a model is hit Google images for reference pics.

Very nice! And they're... er... well, anatomically correct, even. Seriously, good job on those, and very nice render.

Thank you, jevans69. Well, there's a chance we will see a lot of theese bots in the future. The Flamingo renderer is very good, but it took me some years to get to know it properly.

Oooh, those are cute! 
Greger and Gregina?  :D

As for ADD... I think you have to have a mind that can think in 25.67 different directions all at once to be doing this kind of a thing.
I would die without a sketchbook. Like... what would I do while I'm doing the two-minute plop renders in bryce to test something... I mean other then post here and cruise google, ebay, flickr, corbis, getty, and other stock photo, cgi and 3d sites???? In between fidgeting and pacing around the house and petting my kitties LOL!
I almost drove off the road the other day trying to take a snapshot of something I 'had to capture...' eh...

I tend to do a LOT of drawing. Any time I get an idea I'll scribble something down. Later I'll produce something a bit better and then add it to my Mount Everest sized pile of sketches. Working in a paper factory helps. Plenty of surfaces to start scribbling on.  

Most of what I do is sketched out beforehand. I get a better idea of how to run the edgloops after I sketch something. I have reams aof sketches mos tof them get thrown out.

I tend to sketch if a modeling problem arise. The sketching nearly allways produce a solution. Also because I think differently when I'm sketching.

Captain Jack

Well if you are doing it for yourself then think of the level of detail needed for it. You can then decide what you can get away with. You can always do the sheets and transmap approach which will work better than making a mesh for it.

Here's a progress snippet from my 'wharf'. The texture is not the final one, I just picked one that was sort of close and put it there as a place holder.

Well more done on the Amphibidude. He is colored need to get soem more textures bump spec diffuse maps to bring it out and going to give him some gear to make him look authentic.

Nice character Dann-o makes me think of Stingray! :)

Thanks, Dann-O....I like your woodpecker.  My computer won't do Hexagon, either....not sure why...but has no problem with anything else.  You might want to try the zb demo, just to see. 

Awwwww, the woodpecker is just too cute!!!!!!!!!!!   Awesome job!  he's got that cuteness and mass appeal!

Thanks connicat and poppi It is not an original concept thoug. Woody was quite popular in the 50's and 60's. So I tried to bring him into 3d did OK but I am not really fond of how I did the eyes. On the drawings they are very verticle and really something that does nto translate well into 3D. That was part of the challnge to me was trying to bring a 2D character into 3D.

Very cool sub. I really like what you did with the texturing/color.
How do you like hexagon?
I just purchased 2.0, but didn't install it yet, since I read it's rather buggy. I hear 1.2 is much more stable.
Did you ever compare hexagon and zbrush?

oh, and for you z-brush users... I took couple items from my wharf model (editable meshes) and exported them from max into obj, brought them into zbrush, and they are all garbled... Any hints?

Are your normals ok before exporting to OBJ?

ZBrush 2 is a very solid modeler with excellent free downloadable and included tutorials.  The movie industry uses it a lot.  But of course it costs more.

Hexagon 2.1 is unstable for now.  I've gone back to 1.21 for modeling.  It has a better GUI than 2.1 as well.  I'm hoping DAZ makes things right again for Hex.

I am curious can those of us who have 2.1 go a downgrade to 1.2 for us hexagon users. I think it woudl be nice.  Really been having stability problems with 2.1 and my vid card just can't handle it.I don't think Daz can fix hex soon. All the original programmers were fired and live overseas. So they will have to recode it from the ground up. Well I have been gettign into AC3D which is solid and stable wish it had a few more tools but hey I got it for free.

I think my normals are okay. The thing was modelled in 3dmax, converted to mesh. I don't think the normals ever had a chance to get goofed up. I'll take a closer look though (when I'm at the other computer).

I got hexagon for 39 bucks after discounts and promotions, fogured can't go wrong for that much... I like some of the lower end programs for quick and simple tasks, so I thought hex may fill that purpose, and be a backup app to zbrush... But I thought I'd check out what others say about it before I rush off instal it and get all frustrated...
Sounds like my time is better spent improving my zbrush skills.

Here is what I am working on in AC3D. (won it in a contest ) Some cool features in the program but not suited for character modeling but I can make some cool mechanical stuff. It runs only 70$.

Emperor's layer (3dsmax8)

err lair, there doesnt seem to be an edit button up there

Attached Link: wire model

Attached Link: And the render

Looking good Dann-O. I've got to start learning how to make character models, so I can stop using these 1/2 million poly Poser models :rolleyes:

I'm working on a dungeon set. Treasury room for a Thief to loot.
Have the shell done, no props in place yet.
About 40,000 polys. Less than half are in the render, so I'm guessing about 15,000 to 18,000 shown.

http://members.aol.com/dvlenk6/work/treasury.jpg

My blog has what I'm working on
btw, very nice work everyone.

Hey there can't get to your site from here. ( Not unusual I live in the PRC)

An ATAT Walker, is for ingame, and havent created normal maps yet, also gotta model the canons yet.

Started working on normal maps in photoshop this weekened for my walker

Nice work on the nomal maps. Are you posing this at sci fi meshes. They love this kind of thing.

never heard of em, may have to check it out :)