BTW, I like the church model; I forgot to mention it. I think it is simply and elegant. Nice. I never seem to do such low-poly things.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=749533&Start=1&Artist=waldomac&ByArtist=Yes

I nearly always start out with a cube, too. One of my latest Wings models was a Katsina doll figure that was rendered in Bryce 5 (See link above.). I started out with cubes for the hands, individually, legs and body, all from cubes that I later joined. The headdress, meanwhile, was started from a cylinder. I've done whole human figures from a single cube, but I like to concentrate on all the parts individually. It's just my particular preference.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=828577&Start=1&Artist=waldomac&ByArtist=Yes

Now, this is the one I posted yesterday, which has some toony filters added as post-process in Photoshop. It wasn't any longer as pure Bryce, but I liked how he turned out toony so well that I posted it. I can't decided. Which rendering do you guys like better?

I've used Terragen since the first week it was offered as beta software. It's just so cool. Above is an image I created about three years ago, using a DEM from the U.S. Geological Survey of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Gunnison, Colo.). Terragen is fun to use. Matt Fairclough just has one of the best sky algorithms around. I can't wait until the next version accommodates arbitrary objects and has some vegitation. My favorite Terragen artist of late is Jordano here at Renderosity. Check him out. He is amazing with Terragen, and his postwork is some of the best I've ever seen.

I understand where you guys are coming from on this, but, at the same time, it sure is nice once in a while to post a work and not get ripped to shreds. An "excellent" is pretty encouraging. I agree with pakled: I'd like to at least see works from people like Diolma who are hanging back because they're not feeling like they've gained sufficient skills to post. Not that it would bother me all that much now, but I remember when I was first starting out and I actually thought about posting something that I'd worked many, many hours on. I was new and wanted very much to improve. I felt halfway decent about the work and finally posted it. However, the responses I got were harsh, condescending, and, frankly, not all that helpful. It was a long time before I posted any work of mine again, simply because I thought I must be a total no-talent doofus whose efforts were completely useless. For those of you who know me, and, in fact, know me to be a total no-talent doofus whose efforts actualy are completely useless, you'll know that I'm over it. :) I post now every now and then to Renderosity, which is much more friendly than other communities I've been on. I hope the works are well received, and I would like to know if they can be improved in a way that would make them much better. But, perhaps more importantly, I try to encourage some of the more newby artists now and then who are making great strides and who genuinely seem to want to know how to improve. As to ranking, I'm not sure how that really helps, but I guess an "excellent" and a pat on the back could be pretty encouraging, based on my newby experience. I actually do 3D work now that is for professional publication, and, whereas I don't claim to be a genius at this, I'm gaining new skills every day and my work is actually looking OK. When it comes to Renderosity, I'm pretty much here for the fun of it and to share works and experiences with other artists (not that I would put myself in that category exactly). I'd much rather log on here and gain skills through encouragement than through peevish rips from jerks who think they've got the tiger by the tail. I think we should challenge each other and maybe even talk a little slap now and then, but I think most of us are probably here because we like being here. If people are tactful, I totally agree that constructive criticism is highly valuable. Some of us lack tact. I just think we need to be careful how we word things. That said, these IMs people keep mentioning from people who get mad if they say things, even in a tactful way, that are not just blatant praise, ignore them. Don't comment on their work; let them feel self-important and just let their skills stay stagnant. They deserve nothing more or less. I've NEVER seen anyone comment on my work that was less than considerate at Renderosity, so I think we all have the wherewithal to be encouraging AND spark improvement in one another. Have a great night, all.

I must confess here. I am aware that people can get very upset, so I've kind of taken the old addage, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," to heart. There are some artists that I comment on almost every time, and they are terrific, so I'm pretty safe. I don't comment on quite a few for the two obvious reasons: a. I cannot possibly take hours every day to comment on every image in the galleries and b. I don't really like the image. However ... If I get a sense that the artist truly wants a critique that is honest, no matter how harsh, particularly if this person truly is looking for comments on particular problems, then, if I feel like I (who am extremely far from perfect myself) can come up with something that is helpful, I will tell the artist about a problem or something I personally don't like about the image in question. I would be in favor of a 1-10 rating, too. However, I likely wouldn't give any rating at all, if it were an image that I would give less than a 5 or 6.

An empty? Sounds intriguing and pretty cool, but I don't quite understand. I think Blender is getting very usable now. However, I will say this. I've been trying smoothing via catmull-clark, and I keep crashing my system when I get the numbers up towards 6 (which I'm thinking must be the max). At 1 and 2 and 3, which didn't crash the system after activating sub-d, I'm not noticing any difference in the faceting of the model. I had a bit better luck on a simpler model last night. I was able to see the mesh visably smooth, but most of my models aren't much simpler than this one, so I'm not sure how things are going to work. What methods do you guys use to antialias? I see gaussian function, but I can't see that it changes anything in the rendering, so I may not understand its purpose clearly. I could try for a bigger rendering and anti-alias by reducing the image, but that will increase render times. Just curious. Believe it or not, I'm wandering through what documentation I can, but I'm having difficulty finding answers to specific questions. Have a great day, all.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=720250&Start=1&Artist=waldomac&ByArtist=Yes

I've been using uvmapper .25e beta, which was released as freeware. None of my Wings models have coordinates when exported as .obj, so I take them there and assign coordinates within uvmapper. Not too hard, actually, or I probably never would have mastered it.

I always just have to remember to export the texture for painting AND the .obj model with the new coordinates. Then it works within Bryce really easily, without any hassle at all.

I had a tri-plane that I put up a while back, which I mapped as "box". It worked pretty well, too, I thought, as I needed the crosses to be exactly placed and I needed the rest not to stretch, because there is a faint fabric pattern there, too.

Message edited on: 11/18/2004 10:31

Message edited on: 11/18/2004 10:33

Coolness, ysvry. Found sub-d settings in mesh edit. Yes, that works. I'm going to try it at the office on my character tomorrow at first opportunity. Thanks. Undo question answered on another thread with that "drag-down" menu. Pretty cool. Have a great day.

Wow, very cool. Thanks. That is a nice Easter egg. Is this drag-down menu documented anywhere? Just curious.

OK, several hours later, and you guys all are waiting to be bored stiff by my trials, so here goes: I discovered my apparent error on the black background: I had somehow toggled on the pre-multiplied alpha button. That nullified my background color. That's fixed, obviously. I have discovered formats and aspect ratios that appear to give me the desired size of image. That's nice, too. Also nice is the fact that I have gotten some oversampling settings that smooth the model pretty well -- not completely, but pretty well. Now I'm looking to see if I can apply filters to get this thing antialiased a bit better. Any help there would be appreciated. Toon shading relies on the edges, which I can go up to 255 on, and no farther. The results above are at the maximum edge setting. Not too bad, actually. I am getting a bit better with the camera, too, and the rotate command, which is similar, but not exactly like, Wings' alt>left click. Is it just me, or has the workability of this UI improved in the last couple of years? I couldn't get Blender to do squat a couple of years ago, and now, though I'm by no means looking at a decent workflow, I'm off to a MUCH better, faster start. BTW, I read that the multiple undos is new. That is awfully nice. I still haven't found the default number of undos yet; any help there would be appreciated. Learning a program from scratch is never easy. Thanks for all your help so far.

OK, here's a rendering (somewhat toony) with default lighting and a number of attempts to get the background anything other than black. Still no luck on that. I upload this image, because it also is showing some faceting, which is no better or worse with the toony lines turned completely off. I'm still searching for a way to smooth the model, which is an imported .obj, originally made in Wings. I haven't found in the manual or on the interface where to smooth meshes yet. BTW, thanks for f12 for quick render. Nice shortcut.

Cool. Thanks, guys. I'll work on things in depth later, with your suggestions. The real world keeps me busy for the next few hours, and then, hopefully, I'll be able to give these things a realworkout. Sad news on the camera. I was hoping there was a kewl shortcut that I didn't stumble onto yet. As far as the a doing an animation, that appears to be the case, though I'm not pressing any buttons with "a", so it apparently is buggy for me. As far as background, I'm still just getting a black background. I'm in world. I've set colors on the HO, and it's still black. I've adjusted ambient and Ze levels, too. Ambient changes did what I expected. Ze didn't do anything that I could see. Woohoo. Control Z for undos. Sweet. How many undos by default? Anybody know?

Maya is powerful, as regards modeling. Rendering a finished scene is terrifically complicated, because you have to have a pretty good understanding of nodes and things that relate to materials. Once you understand it a bit better (and I still don't understand it super well), they way materials are handled is pretty nice. Meanwhile, the use of all the various animation tools and being able to pipe your scene to a variety of renderers is mighty nice. Learning the terms they use? That varies from app to app. Bryce's interface is just the most intuitive around, so it is still easier to learn. The jargon is not all that important when using Bryce, but, with Lightwave, for instance, you'd better know what term to use, because everything is text on the buttons now. Blender is similar, only it is so convoluted, to me, that it is just a bit more of a pain than I'd like to sustain. Bottom line. What's the end product? Orbital and Rochr can turn out amazing things, and some of us aren't any slouch either. Who uses the product is what really matters most. Period. The more I learn to use Bryce, the better photorealism I'm able to achieve. If I were going to go into a studio, I'd have to be proficient at Maya. That's all there is to it. Rhino is great, and they do use it in some studios, but the ones who really make it sing are those who do models for die casting, engineering, jewelry design and so forth, not to mention sculpting and, more and more, architecture. Enjoy what you have. Make it sing. Use it to your ends. Have a great time. Happy rendering.

Now she's got this ambition to do a golf ball. If she can do it, then it's time for advanced testing. LOL. Her problems at this point are the same as my problems when I first started. For example, I showed her control>left click last night on objects to pick which one she wanted. Discovering that improved my life considerably about four years ago. She said the three objects in the mug were hard to get at and, particularly with the negative objects, she sometimes had a tough time telling which was highlighted. This morning, she discovered tree lab, so now she's a bit distracted from the golf ball, but I'm hoping. I'm just happy to see my children interested in learning the program. It's only been about six years since we got our first computer. I was a complete know-nothing myself until then.