A magnet, eh? Very clever use of the magnet. I was tinkering with metaballs trying to do that, and came up with an oddity. I noticed that my transparent positive metaball and my transparent negative metaball actually created a visible "glow" where they interact. It might be a different way to make comets and such. My leaf was made completely in Bryce. I photographed a leaf, and made a mask in Photoshop. I took the mask and created a terrain from it. Then, I made a simple gradient (dark to light to dark) in Photoshop. I applied the gradient to the second picture slot in the Terran Editor, and blended them so I ended up with a curved leaf shaped terrain. (The jagginess that Erlik saw is the terrain, not the material) The terrain was solid (I couldn't figure out how to make it not solid and leaf shaped, I think that's due to the edges, but I'm not sure) so I made another negative terrain with the leaf mask, but I widened the mask a bit in Photoshop so I'd get all the edges. Then I applied a grayscale version of the leaf photo for the texture. I tweaked the photo a bit to get the bump map, and also added a procedural bump as well. With this method I was able to get all different shapes of leaves with different curls right in Bryce 4. I also had success with making a terrain and making the leaf only with textures and transmaps, but it was less convincing, and it was something of a pain to work with in wire frame. Well, the cats out of the bag now. I'm going to go play with magnets. Great exercise afr!

Yeah, the shadow gives it away. And the place where the net slices the ball does too. But, it's a very creative use fr a terrain!

Wow. This is great. Since it's a wip, I'll offer a few suggestions, but only since you say so. This is really quite nice already. I'd add wax first. Thos little votives have been hard at work, and that one on the box has already dripped onto the table. I'd put the wax drops there. Second, the wine is a beautiful material for sure, but I'm not sure I can tell what sort of wine it is. It's a bit translucent for most reds, and a bit cloudy for a blush. This is all trivial, I know. The only reason I mention it is that realism is the challenge, and I think that half of creating realism is recognition. Great, great work here.

Make them from a couple of metaballs in a group if you have Bryce5

click the thing under the spray can on the right

I use the old free Strata 3D, it was called simply Strata3D. That's before it was called Base, and it's quite useful. If you can find a copy of that, you'll be able to boolean, and export in VRML and dxf. The animation lab is there, but I've never used it. I only use Strata for modelling, and it does pretty well at it. I've used it for extruding and lathing as well as reshaping planes and other primitives Too bad it doesn't support .obj files. But, hey, it was free! I downloaded Base, and I'm soooo happy I never installed it.

Hey, that's cool! Can you increase the magnification? Wait a minute... you don't work for the CIA or FBI do you? just kidding. Cool Telescope!

If we must change the system, humorix's point suggestion seems most viable. But I'd do it a little differently: Every voter gets 3 points to assign as they wish, the artist with the most total points wins, the second most is second and on down the line if you feel like tallying votes for second to last place. For example: in the last challenge I could have voted: 1 for Alleycat169, 1 for Rochr and 1 for humorix. OR, I could have voted 3 for me, OR 2s for Alderan and 1 for vasquez.

The only suggestion I could make is that if the door isn't parented to the body, I'd do so to make it posable! Nice job!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=191498

I agree in that Bryce can do it, and I applaud your undertaking here. So far, it looks great. That last challenge sparked me too. I wonder just how far can I push Bryce, and then I think about the efficiency of it. I do think that other apps are better suited for a lot of tasks, however. I've been using Strata to model recently, and I've done things with it that Bryce simply cannot do. OK, so maybe with several terrains, I could get a renaissance style drapery, but I can do it faster and with greater precision in Strata. (probably faster still in Maya or other pro app, but I'm on a budget here.) I think it's great that you are using a skeletion as a base. In art school, that's the first thing they teach about figure drawing. I am eager to see where this project goes, keep us informed!

Congrats to the winner(s). I'm confused. I know it's nice to vote for more than one, but can't we just say that the one with the second most votes is runner-up? It's a keep it simple kind of thing. Agent Smith, I know a little about web design, and I believe that there's an easy (and automatic) way to put the URL in the body of the page itself. So, at the top of the page it would say the URL for those who wish to link. Send me an email if you need a hand with the web work. Alternately, why not put thumbs in the backroom which link to the artist's actual gallery page with the piece? It solves the whole problem. When the artist submits for a challenge, they upload to their gallery, and then submit the URL for the contest. To make it one better, the artist will submit not only the URL, but also the thumbnail.

Hmmm... I just re read your first post. I see you are trying to change the material over time. I just tried it, and I can't do it either. I tried it in world space first, and it didn't work, so I tried it in Object space, and then parametric. No dice. I've never tried animating a mat before, I would assume it's possible, but maybe there is, as you say, a bug in the works.