Aye, "politics" stems from the root "polite". Which is an amazing concept, considering there's nothing polite about politics at all. No more beef between me and you, Quest? You got it. I think you're an amazing artist, regardless of our "political" differences. I don't mind having my intelligence insulted on occasion, it's the only thing on Earth that helps to keep my ridiculous ego under any sort of control. But in the spirit of perspective, I'll refrain from being even MORE obnoxious and unorthodox, and just give everyone interested something to ponder for a bit : "I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept you own extinction?" --The Stolen Journals (Frank Herbert, "God-Emperor of Dune")

"These characters always think they know better than the rest of us and when someone differs with their opinion, they curl their lips like wild hyenas and come at you with bullsh*t jingoistic rhetoric" Aye, Quest. A bit too much mirroring going on here. Take a good look at your hatred, your scorn, and the energy you put into insulting me. How, then, are you any different from the "terrorists" then? Well, they act. You just type a lot.

Don't get me wrong, Mizrael... I'd love to see them make it all happen, too! I just don't think it's very realistic. DAZ hasn't impressed me in the least yet, but that's just between Bryce 5.5 and DAZ studio, which is a joke to me. And an even LESS funny joke than Poser, which is a horrible joke! But we'll see. I'd really like to be wrong about Bryce, DAZ, and version 6...!

Aye, well Ang I fear I have misrepresented myself then. I DO have emotions, and they cover a wide spectrum, all the way from anger to pure rage. I am, and have admitted this before, "damaged goods". War, death, and terror have been a commonplace occurance in my life, in many of the places I've called home. I was born in Korea, of all places... But that doesn't mean I don't empathize. I really don't wish MORE pain on anyone, and I had high hopes that other countries including Britain wouldn't be dragged into the mess that this nation I live by currently (USA) has perpetuated, in my opinion of course... But no more politics? I hope the survivors heal quickly, and Peace will settle in again in Britain, and everwhere. Just because I am a force for Evil on this planet doesn't mean I'm necessarily malevolent. Evil backwards is Live. And what could be more ultimately evil than humanity surviving and flourishing?

Well, as a pimp of emotions and a whore of every sort, I have to disagree, Quest. Nobody cares about YOUR bleeding heart, your recycled emotions that you don't really feel at all but overstate in an attempt to win the hearts of other bloody hearts to gain attention. You don't express any real compassion, because if you understood empathy and compassion then truly you would be able to translate it into other mediums and along other paths as well. And the reason I stated "nobody cares" (even though I'm certain someone cares) is to point out how completely inane your "you convince no one" arguments are. You obviously let yourself be convinced that you should feel something. Shield your emotions, they are easily controlled and accessed by anyone : the media, me, Red, and prettymuch any random force of propoganda. To sit and insult myself and Redfeather, after pretending you care about people who've died that you NEVER KNEW, is just plain hypocrisy. Me? Callous? Insensitive? Of course I am. I take no insult in that, at least I'm not hiding behind some shield of decency just to fit in with the rest of the hypocritical, teeming masses. Hell, more people die every day in my city than have in this incident. I certainly am NOT promoting useless death, innocent bystanders being used as tools for those damn terrorists OR for the huge transnats that fund them (including the country I live in, whose single largest export is WEAPONS). I don't want anyone to die violently and in massive pain and gore. And were they close enough for me to help, I would be out doing so. But for you to say that WE turned this into a political thread? That's poppycock. The entire thread is political, fronted under the guise of compassion. If this thread were truly about compassion and understanding, then it would be universal, and also pertain to those of us with differing opinions. IF you were truly a compassionate individual, why can't you find any compassion for people you DO know and have known for years? But, Quest, like I previously stated : hate heals. Keep up the good work. But one thing you really need to work on is your insults. They aren't even up to chatroom levels yet. I suggest Seattle : 2 on Yahoo, the center of text-based pain in this Universe. Practice makes perfect.

Aye, but like we talked about in another thread, Mizrael, it'll never happen. Not without a complete re-writing of Bryce's boolean coding. See, Bryce doesn't actually "boolean" anything. It merely sets up boolean filters inside it's "hide" system, and dosn't actually cut or intersect anything. How is another program to know what is what? No exportable format includes extra coding for such things, not .obj, not .3DS, none of them. Also, since Bryce has almost ZERO actual modeling features, look at it's boolean methods as an "Intro to the concepts behind 3D modeling", and that's about as far as it goes. Even the free modelers have a million more features than Bryce, that's why they are modelers! Bryce can already export the only thing it does particularly well, which is heightmapping.

So is that FOUR wave-motion guns, or just one?!? (grins) "Who the hell would need FOUR wave-motion guns, anyway?!?"

Indeed, Mizrael. I ditched all of the trees, though. Without foliage, the Treelab trees tend to look too sharp, stark, and mathematical. Perhaps I'll import something from TreeFactory or just model some rounder types of trunks in Rhino, but there's no sense in using something that doesn't work so well when I have other options. Just takes some patience, apparently finishing this image/scene this weekend isn't really realistic, but that's okay... Frustration and inspiration both come and go in waves. It's just the way of things. "Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them." --Bene Gesserit Advice to Postulants (Frank Herbert, "Chaperhouse : Dune")

Aye, it's a wonderful model! And I LOVED Starblazers, and Alien of course... Good work. Hope to see it rendered in a nice image soon.

Aye, Shinyary... But I don't "find" skies. I take photos of them, and use them in my pictures... My days of using other people's stuff are, for the most part, over. Now if I could just figure out how to make people in Maya...!?!?!?

Aye, the trees are pretty stupid-looking, though, now that I stare at them some more. (nods) And I think you're right about the portal being TOO bright, Ek. Also, the dark area on the ramp seems to suggest it twists, but it doesn't, and shouldn't look that way... A ranged light should fix it. Here's the non-postworked version, in case anyone wants to see it.

And here's a (postworked) version of the new setup. Any improvement?

Aye, I like them both but the second one is much nicer! Interesting use of volumetrics, perhaps the best-looking mats I've seen of this sort for some time....! Good work, my friend...

Anyway, Erlik : I wasn't ignoring your input on the composition. The whole gateway, crag, and path need to be rotated to either side, creating a more diagonal composition and finding the "sweet spot" of eye-travel... So I'll rig the camera and photo-sky I'm using now, and figure out which side it all looks best on. I've failed once turning it so that the gateway is on the right, but a few tweaks and it might be okay... Back in a few with another updated render. This one will NOT take five hours, hopefully!

Aye, well Rhino's cheap, Pakled. Think about a job, and think about the job cost. Now factor in your expenses... At my exteriors job the average Sunroom sale is $30,000. I use SolarCAD 3D to assemplbe the sunrooms, and Rhino to make any extraneous parts that aren't already manufactured. Now consider that, on average, my company sells 10 sunrooms a month. And that's not even including the 15 vinyl window jobs (averaging $10K apiece) and the 20 vinyl siding jobs (averaging $20K) we pull in monthly. The cost of Rhino and Maya were a drop in the bucket, all it took was some convincing on my part about how much we "needed" them! Nobody buys high-end software just for fun, well I suppose SOME people do, but that's silly. Better to get outside financing for such things... Anyway, here's a quick update. This was finished last night, and rendered for 5+ hours. I'm now going in a totally different direction with this image, closer to the version in #1, but I thought people might like to see it, anyway? Tell me what you think of the Darkness... (this version tells more of a demon's emergance kinda story, as opposed to something hopeful and somber...)