ive heard great things about this app if it were between rhino and it i would stick withit as the tol provided will take you the same distance but if your thinking of going up a level to lw or c4d then id consider it kind depends on what your planning on doing with it

Well thanks everyone for keeping this so clean and informative you have my apreciation !

are pal feng just got on at ilm by the way episode 3 might actauly be really good with him filling in not that others were bad

oh yeah one realy cool tool that some studios use ! listen to this i want this program for home use badly its like deep paint for premire man say you have a character in a rendered scecne already on tape and you have him sitting next to a window ! the technical director comes up and says hey theres sunlight blaring in the window but no reflection at all on the characcter ! this is a problem like i said its already on film , well this software is made so that he simply paints on a specular light Just one fram of the video tape and then the highlight is apllied until he wants it gone takes like 5 seconds how cool would this be !

haha hey i think i can shed some light on that elusive stuff you were asking about be prepared to be bored LOL ;) first off the rneders your seeing from ilm are actauly broken down to some extent for example the ball your talking aobut doesnt have textures except for the teeth mark etc it probaly has some specularty marks etc but even given the spec maps and the bumps applied its still missing something real i feel the pain heres where thomas knoll and other ilm old timers come into play with some very sweet propitary software One of the best things IlM an Weta do to there films is called digital grading Its way to long and boring to explain here but you can find alot on thenet about it im sure its simply a way to alter colors and light after a film has been made and makes all the difrence in the world ifyou look at a before and after shot its like looking at a actor on film with no make up and standrd lighting vs a model shoot where theres perfect lighting tons of make up and no flaws That alone doesnt mean squat though its the combination of things one huge thing i have seen ilm do is render the scenes with lighting which looks good but not quite real like your saying wven with perfect maps and models but then volumetrics and effects are actauly renedered sepreate and composited in the things like dust particles clouds etc make the biggest difrence ivbe seen get the star wars 2 video it comes with a second disc and on that disc is a before and after shot where it takes you through smooth shaded animatic to completed scene youll see what a difrence the digital grading and volumetrics make! matte painings help tons too I know your probaly thinking that there isnt dust coluds etc in everything but take a look at the dvd of starwars youll see what i mean ok now for a soultion i think we can get you to the point where you can render a realistic ball ill try to do a tut with reflections and lighting set up etc in lw in here this weekend feelinglike crap now for now you may want to try downloading a free plugin call hdr shop that will help but not cure your problem

This is a great point one brought up in a discussion with stahlberg about indian women of the country inda not native etc also brings to light another questoion of what makes a face beutiful There was a study done on this with a facial map in a popular science magasine i have on refrance somewhere ill post when i find for you good luck !

Nice man the first one is pretty cool ! keep them coming im hoping thismovie will be good

well its difrent depending on the task but from what i know alot of models are scanned and then cleaned up ! one cool thing about how ilm does alot of there models is that for the bump map of there characters they just scan the maquette giving you perfect texture to create the color maps over

Great job everyone ! I just wanted to add that often the app you start with ends up bieng your favorite regardless of the features i personaly use lw , but often am required to use maya and xsi both whic i also love alot but my workflow is just the most solid in lw i can do everyhthing there without having to stop and think about it ! This stems most likely form me starting out the hard core way with lw I used carrara and a few other apps but never was too serious til i got lw then i had to work hard for all the cahs i blew so this is something to consider as well ! Trav

hey old freiend glad to see your still around see you there man !

Man i didnt realy expect such precise descriptions you guys are doing a great job with this. I think anyone considering switching or buying one of these apps would be greatful for the information given here keep them coming !

im sorry but would you care to give me an example im prety sure i know what you mean like making cuts but it would help ?