Try setting up your render as a "batch que". When I rendered the animated gif direct from the render room it rendered the thing but didn't save it (player not available or something like that). When I render from the batch que it will automaticly save the gif batch file.

I guesse I'd call it a subconscious influence. If I were a lawyer from Pixar I might call it plagiarism. If I were to have made it, I'd call it a one-of-a-kind artisitc excersize to see if anyone would recognize (that's legal). Just kidding, they arn't identicle anyway. Besides, I think Pixar copied their character from that Punch finger puppet! As for AG2, that would be difficult to do with any real fine control. If there was an un-wrap feature in Carrara or UVMapper then it would be fairly easy.

I have Infini-D 4.5 for MAC also. Bought it as a "special" from MC for 1/2 price. They didn't tell me they were going to drop it a couple months later (that part was special). In any event, you may consider upgrading to Carrara 1.1 for a special (really) price before version 2 comes out. I belive the upgrade option may expire at that time.

Pixar studios won an award a couple years ago for the short cartoon Geri's game. You can see an animation at their site: http://www.pixar.com/shorts/gg/index.html While you're there ask Steve Jobs when they will release Rederman for MAC OS. As for the Punch pupet, I havn't seen one for over 40 years. If I come across one I'll let you know. I'll have more sucess with that then with getting Renderman!

Wonderful characture, reminds me of a foam figure pupet of "Punch" many years ago and/or the chess player in a Pixar short cartoon.

Indeed a job well done JWB, congrats. This was a difficult competition to judge as there were so many oustanding aspects to all entries. I agree with Julian Boolean, Mark has gone the extra mile on this. Not only with the "prize" but also by providing several hours of professional critique. Thanks again willf

Very good tutorial & great model/image. Good to see another believer in the Spline Modeler.

If you can get it "on the cheap" then go for it. The full version of Painter3D (notSE) is a very good painting program in it's own right & is similar in function to Painter 5.0. It includes layers (floaters) which are great to paint on & "nudge" into position on your model. Also has a great variety of paper textures (rice paper, crackles, pavement, eggshell etc.) which make for nice bump maps. Terrific amount of art brushes, filters, image hose nozzels etc. There is a steep learning curve to it as there are so many options. Also, it is much easier to create your base texture map in UVMapper & use that to apply as an "existing" texture map to your imported model instead of trying to create it within Painter. The problem with UVWrapping (as Jaager pointed out) can be solved by creating masked selections to paint within. That way you won't paint over a hand that may lay between the front & back of the torso. Or, you could create a seperate layer for each "front & back" for each part & and paint upon that layer. I.E., make a new layer with just the front & back for the head only etc.

Three Times a Charm! Thanks much & a "fantastic" sign at your site! Is that a photograph or did you model it? If it's a model then you already have my compliments in the last sentence. If not, I like it anyway!

Very nice image & sentiment.

Gee, even children can use Poser!

Very cool site!

The "similar" features in RDS is the "Better (but slower) sampling" in the shader editor for a texture map. However, I get the opposite effect in Carrara as the default "sampling" seems to work better. The "Gaussian" filter is useless as there is no control over the blurring of the pixels, much better to use the filters in a photo editor. It is essential to make sure that your proprtions are 1 to 1 to avoid pixel distortion, I.E., an 8 x 10 plane with a 576 x 720 ppi @ 72 dpi image.