...THE HUMAN BEING! This fellow was rendered and created entirely in Carrara. The only Poser work was using the default male nude figure as a reference, but the model was built entirely from scratch. Every peice of the model was done in the metaball modeler. You will note that he has no face - most complex facial movements would require vertex modeller work and morph targeting, which I am not good at [yet]. I opted to go a different way - textured faces, ala 'Legend of Zelda,' 'Chrono Cross,' or 'Final Fantasy 7.' The eyes and mouth will simply be layered textures. The model is not actually fully finsihed. I need to finish the IK heirarchy and joint constraints, but the model is complete. Which leads me to some questions/complaints - 1. When you move a hotpoint on an object, the object[s] just below it in the IK chain move conversely - if I move the hot point up, the next objects move down, which forces me to de-chain it to work properly. However.... 2. When you chain/de-chain an object in the heirarchy with a constraint, it seriously screws up, and seems to disapear. Actually, the object just repositions itself, but at some extreme point - like, (100,-123, 590). So I need to turn off constraints before linking/delinking. 3. Constraints seems to disapear after deselecting the object. The constraint remains in place, but alll the editing options have disappeared. It appears the constraint has reset itself, but rather the options just look like they have. It makes constraints difficult to refine beucas you basically need to start from scratch if you deselect the object and then need to edit it later. 4. Layered shaders dont seem to work. I tried making some layers on the face so I could place the eyes and mouth, but the layered shaders dont appear. The layer is apparently invisible. The layer is created because it appears in the shader tree, but the selected layer area remains hidden. But, aside from all that, I'm proud of what I got. Stay tuned to see animations involving humans, especially sword play. 'Till then! Nebula [Supernova Studios](http://snstudios.dk3.com)

Corrections - The problem of constraints disapperring seems to be gone. Perhaps I didnt see it right, or perhaps this problem goes away after losing the file and opening later. Also, I failed to note that the model is fully articulated. All the joints may be moved and it will look fairly seamless, about as seamless as you can get short of boning systems. Nebula Supernova Studios

Wow - that looks great, especially the feet and legs. All of the parts are well proportioned to one another. I'd like to see the hands from a different angle, too. I've done cartoon-style characters in the metaballs modeler in RDS 5.5, but was never able to get the hands quite right. All of your observations about IK and linked objects are true. Unless they've made changes since RDS, you'll find even more trouble if you try to scale the completed figure (the poor guy will look like he stepped on a land mine). You'll be better off building your scene around the figure rather than re-scaling your figure. If anyone has a way around the hotpoint/scaling/linking/unlinking mess please post it. Great work Nebula! JB

Thank you, JB. Heres the image for the hands and feet. Also, I found my constraint problem - the constraint angles dissappear from the constraint editor if you move an object and undo the move. The entire chain's constraint angle options disappear. This is why they dissapeared first and came back later; in one i moved, undid, and closed without saving, when I reopened, the angles were there because I hadn't moved/undone. Eovia, hear our plea! Fix this madness! Nebula [Supernova Studios](http://snstudios.dk3.com)

You're very good at this, Nebula ! 8) Modelling in Metaballs is so painful to me ... Well done ! Since he is articulated, maybe you'll make an animation with him ? I'd love to see that :) FYI, i remember Antoine saying on Yahoo groups that bug reports can be directly addressed to charles@eovia.com . Also, there is a section on Eovia's site where we can report bugs . litst

Yes, an animation is very defenitely on the way. That's the main reason I made this - Normally I'd use Poser, but Poser can't do anything beyond the character - no special effects, explosions, that sort of thing (-: , and Poser chars arent animatable in C. I figured out something else on IK - if you want multiple indepent IK chains in one chain, (i.e. hands move arms but not chest, feet move legs not body) you need to make what I call a null target - make an invisible object, and make it the parent of the last object in the chain, and do not constrain it. Since it isnt constrained it will stop the movement at that point as it does not know how to interpret how to continue the movement. I used null targets for each finger (so they dont affect the hand) and after shoulders (so they don't move the body). Hopefully someone can benefit from that. If thats confusing Ill try to explain it better later. Nebula Supernova Sudios

Thanks for your useful trick, Nebula . Keep us updated with your anim ! litst