Fantastic!. I've been wanting to do a "crowd" scene for a while now but haven't started working on it because I just didn't want to adjust the faces of 10-20 characters to make them unique enough that my crowd didn't look silly.

Your script probably just saved me about 3 hours worth of work on one render!  Thanks again!

Stepdad

Quote - I did a search in the freebies and didn't find one.  Anyone know where there is a free fireplace I can pose people in front of?

Thanks.

If you haven't found one yet that suits your needs let me know, I'd be more than happy to model one for you.

Stepdad

No problem at all, happy to be of assistance.  Anything else you need don't hesitate to ask.

Stepdad

It would be possible to make a V3 version, though it would require a bit of time in the setup room and I don't think you could redistribute it since it would basically be a hack of the V3 obj file.  

First you'd have to export all of V3 to an obj file, then you'd need to export a second object file for the right and left arms, hands, fingers... etc from the original obj file for V3.

You'd need to import both obj files back in, reposition the additional arms to where you wanted them, then use the setup room to add back in V3's original skeleton and add additional bones for the new arms, hands and fingers.

It could be done, but it would take a bit of time and I don't think you could redistribute the end result as the object file.would primarly be V3 with some additional bits hacked in.

Barring that you could also just export the arms, hands and fingers and make a new figure out of that, but again you'd need to do some hacking to get them to conform to the V3 figure in the proper position and move with her when you moved her.  Again possible to do, but somewhat time consuming and not something you could redistribute.

Ok, it's uploaded.. I've added it to the renderosity freebie section but it takes a while for those to 
get approved, so if you'd like you can go directly here to download  it:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/20902/poser/Football-Goal-Post

Any questions you have just let me know.

Stepdad

Already finished the model, just need to get it textured and packaged.  It has seperate material zones for the pad around the base, the post itself, the crossbar and the uprights.

Should get some materials finished for it tonight, hopefully have it packaged and uploaded sometime tommorow.

No problem at all, I'm currently in the process of learning a new modeler so I'm looking for project ideas so I can practice with the new software.  Give me a day or two and I'll see what I can come up with for a goalpost.

Quote - Does anyone know where I can find a (hopefully free) American football goal post like the one in the picture? Or since it's geometrically pretty simple, is there anyone who might be able to make one for me?
Any and all leads or help would be much appreciated :)

If you haven't found one yet let me know, be more than happy to model one for you.

Stepdad

Quote - 1939-45, Big Win by US, Britain, USSR 3, Japan, Germany, Italy Nil, extra innings by China with surprise upset in '49...that's all I remember...;)

Funny, don't remember reading anything about this in the local paper.  :)

Quote -
Which is why I didn't make a fuss over that particular aspect of the matter in my opening post, and I instead put the emphasis on the CG aspect.  Some debates are appropriate for this forum: others are not.

Issues like the atheism angle can be debated at Townhall.com (linked below) -- a place more suited to that sort of subject matter.

However -- I will mention that I suspect that we agree on a great many things, Stepdad. 

Lol.. not used to having people agree with me, I'll have to adjust to that. :)

Quote - Oh, man, are you out in left field with that one.  One of the criticisms of the movie from fans of the book series was that the script toned down or eliminated many of the elements critical of religion in order to pander to a religious public.  This despire the fatc that (a) Pullman's problem isn't with the idea of a deity or faith, it's with religion and how that's corrupted by people and (b) the atheistic elements are very subtle and dont' get explicit until the third book anyway when Pullman lets it get away from him.

In point of fact, Hollywood and the TV industry is incredibly sympathetic toward religion.  If anything, it's we atheists who are getting the shaft.  Quick, name a fictional TV series or movie where atheism plays a major role or there's a major character who is an atheist and a normal person.  Takes you a while to think of one, if any, doesn't it?

Well, fans of the book series probably aren't too religious to begin with, so consider the audience there.  Hollywood may have tried to tone down the antireligious themes from the book, but most peoples objection to the movie (as far as the moviegoing public was concerned) was that it was based on an antireligious series of books.

Hollywood is certainly in no way, shape or form sympathetic to religion, in fact they are normally quite caustic about it, but that certainly isn't a debate suited for this particular forum. 

Quote - @Stepdad --

We agree 110%.

Brokeback Mountain was one of the most MSM-favored, over-hyped under-perfomers of a movie to come along in decades.  To read the press clippings, you'd think that the entire country was lining up at the theaters -- unable to contain themselves waiting to see this brilliant, inspiring film.

The reality was quite different........but hey, the movie was incredibly cheap to make by today's standards, and it eeked out a couple of dollars in profit (no CG required) -- so that meant that BM was the biggest movie house success since......since........A Beautiful Mind ! 

No, I haven't seen it.  In fact, I haven't even seen A Beautiful Mind.

Lol... A Beautiful Mind.. don't bother.  Even if someone offers to bring it over on DVD, don't bother. Even if they tell you they'll pay you money to sit and watch it with them, don't bother.

Sadly I sat through about 30 minutes of Brokeback mountain.  My wife is a big movie buff so we saw it on cable TV - and to call this movie awful would be the understatement of the century.  Funniest thing was, after half an hour of agony wife turned to me and said "You know, even if this were about a heterosexual couple it would be an awful movie".  I scared the dog half to death diving for the remote,.. lol..

I saw all of a Beautiful Mind, again thanks to cable TV.  That was one of those that my wife actually apologized to me for afterwards.  "Sorry honey, I kept thinking it was going to get better and it just never did".. lol..

Sadly Hollywood just churns out a lot of crap and not much in the way of good entertainment anymore, and the problem is not so much CG or the lack of it, it's a lack of talent for writing good characters and storylines and a lack of understanding on the part of Hollywood execs that not everyone, in fact very few people share their core values or worldview.  Mostly it's a total lack of clarity about the fact that for myself and others like me, when we pay the kind of prices you have to pay to go see a movie nowadays in the theater we want to be entertained, not preached at.

Quote - Maybe I Am Legend will do well, maybe not.

At least one reviewer is referring to it as a "B-movie schlockfest".

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_-D2Ja3xa5ZaDs6Y-XG3nKIMNig

shrug  That might be a guarantee of its success.........

Not a lot of flim critics who's opinion I respect to be honest with you.  Most film critics seem to enjoy the kind of movies that I can't stand.  Take "Brokeback Mountain" for example.  Ok, here is a movie I had zero desire to see, and yet you read the reviews and you hear things like:

*"It is simply one of the greatest love stories in film history."

*That one really made me laugh.  Now a movie like Casablanca or The African Queen, those were great love stories.  Brokeback Mountain?  Not even in the same universe IMHO.  But the critics loved it and it got 8 oscar nominations, despite the fact that it was a terrible movie. 

Critics seem to love movies along the lines of "Terms of Endearment" and "Ordinary People".  The only thing "endearing" I found about Terms of Endearment was it is a wonderfully non-addictive cure for insomnia.  Ordinary people is so mind numbingly dull that the CIA was considering using it as an interrogation technique at one point, but decided that waterboarding was far more humane than forcing even your worst enemy sit through this movie.

Remember when the first Star Wars movie came out years ago?  Critics hated it - at least until it creamed every box office record imaginable and became a huge success.  Then suddenly they started changing their tune just a bit, but for the most part most movie critics have an intense dislike of any movie with any entertainment value whatsoever.

So when it comes to the opinions of professional movie critics I generally pay no heed whatsoever, they seem to think that every movie should have some social significance or explore yet another ultra boring aspect of the human condition.   Not me, when I spend my hard earned coin going to a movie theater I want to be entertained, not preached at.  I want a good story, characters I can identify with and enough special effects and action to keep me on the edge of my seat.

Just my 2 cents worth.

CG in movies.. well, I think most people have summed it up fairly well, no matter how good your graphics are it won't save a movie from a bad storyline, and frankly Hollywood is chock full of bad storylines.

Look at some of the movies mentioned - lets start with Golden Compass.  The story simply doesn't appeal to the vast majority of people because of it's atheistic undertones, and while that might be all the rage in Hollywood, they simply haven't figured out that the majority of the population of the US (and most other countries, for that matter) are religious in some shape or form.

Another movie mentioned was the Davinci Code - ok, have to put a disclaimer in on this one, as a fairly devout Catholic I wasn't at all impressed with the book on which it was based.  From a "historical" perspective the story is nonsensical at best.  The "priory of psion", for example, was a based completely on a hoax.  These facts were readily available when Dan Brown wrote the book, and his slipshod research and claims that this was "historical fact mixed with fiction" were totally off base.  This was historical fiction mixed with more fiction.

But I decided to peruse the movie anyway, not really certain why,  maybe just to see how offensive it could be in comparision with the book.  Sad thing was the movie was so terribly boring I really couldn't even work up the energy to be offended by all their backhanded slaps at my chosen faith.  

But so many big Hollywood "blockbusters" it seems are like this nowadays.  Plot holes you could drive a fleet of semi trucks through, poorly thought out storylines and of course the terrible "hint at a sequel" endings.  Honestly the realism of CG graphics is the very least of their worries at this point.

When you look at a movie like Beowulf,  your probably not going to see a huge box office draw regardless of how well done the graphics might be, it's just not a story that most people are terribly familiar with or drawn too and as such the box office for the movie isn't going to be much regardless of the quality of the film.

Nope, I think Hollywood really needs to start working on some new material - and writing stories and characters that most people can care about to begin with, instead of hashing and rehasing the same old overdone plotlines and expecting to be able to cover up their lack of story with massive amounts of special effects or computer graphics.

Just my 2 cents worth.