Code Warrior was just released recently and I gotta tell you, the work is F-I-N-E fine!  Makes me think that all my tinkering could be put to good use provided that I could motivate myself...

Ken

Attached Link: Polyloop

Ken

Attached Link: Team Dystopia

Attached the link to Team Dystopia.  Good place to visit if you want to know what these guys are up to.  They've got a lot of stuff coming down the pipe and all of it too cool.  Register and (once they get the download area fixed) you can pick up some of the freebies they're putting out.  Cool stuff as well... and, at current, only available from the site.

Ken

Clean lines, styling flows, creased edges blend well with the curves of the main hull.  Everything works well, except, as muse says, the back thrusters.  They don't seem to stylisticly match the front ones and that's kind of distracting... try matching the flaring from the front housing on the back and duplicate (within reason) the breaks between the hull, joint, and the engine itself (does that make sense???).  That might be what it is... there is some disparity there...

EDIT:  See attached image... I drew lines to show the corresponding change areas that I would make.

Top and rear views (quick and dirty is fine) would help in determining what seems slightly off..

Otherwise, it's a fine example of what I've come to expect from you... sci-fi art-deco (robby being the prime example).

Ken

Attached Link: http://www.kenzden.com/images/crop.jpg

Here a render I did back in C4Pro when GI and HDRI were first implemented.  The HDRI file was created using C4Pro, HDRShop, and Paint Shop Pro 8.  There are NO lights in this scene.  The lighting was driven by the HDRI file only.  The size of the file (1300x1440) is cropped from the original (which was 4400x2200) and took a whopping 48 Hrs to render (this was even with a Dual Athlon 1.3GHz machine with 512 MB of RAM).  I took the original BMP and compressed it in a JPG which accounts for its small size.

Ken

Geez, Drac!

First Bryce, then Wings, now Carrara.... Is there anything that you CAN'T do???  (Aside from having babies that is.... [grin])

Great work from a jack-of-all-trades, mastering them all....

Ken

Geez, Scott, that's too bad... for Rendo... Good for you, however, and MONDO good for us, since it means that you'll probably be able to do more posting of WIPs and stuff...

Best of luck in other matters, and we'll see you around the block!

Ken

Attached Link: http://www.kenzden.com/tutorial/hdrtuto.htm

try this link.  This is a tuto I created a long time ago when Carrara first started supporting HDR.  It's a bit intensive with detailed images to start, but you can generate a fairly decent light map in short amount of time.

Just $.02 from a lurker...

Ken

Alias,

When I wrote that tutorial (gods, it was that long ago?!?), it was intended for carrara 3.  Morph targets hadn't been implemented yet and it was a way to get cheap effects from the program.  A-kuro Digital came out with the Multi-morph plug-in, then Eovia came out with C4Pro and that tutorial became semi-obsolete.  It does still have it's points in teaching deformations by bones, but for the most part Mark is right.  Morphs are the better way to go.  Dial spinning is infinitely preferable to manual movement of bones for facial animation. 

As for the path morphing,  give a specific example.  We're pretty resourceful here and we can surely come up with a way to help you out with a specific problem.

Ken

O RLY?

I can only name one name to discount this.  Granted, this was quite a while ago, but as I recall Rudy Herczog (Rochr) manged to get the AOM for April 2004 AND Artist of the YEAR that same year.  Rudy is a phenomenal artist, IMHO (not that I'm discounting your work Duo, it's better than anything than I could put together), and he's out there in the public eye.  He works in multiple apps and is quite efficient in his work style (as I've seen in some of his tutorials).  I always believed that he deserved that award...

As for poser artists getting these coveted (?????) titles?  Look at the availability of content from the merchants and what do you see?  Figures, clothing and props for??? Poser/Daz Studio.   Most of these merchants are truly talented, and you have to admit, most of the content being sold on R'osity is geared toward Poser or Daz (not that some of the wankers get this content only to play pocket pool at home [OHHHH Vicki, you vixen!  Unh, Unh, ahhhhh :blushing:]).  Besides, when was the last time that you saw a majority of Bryce only content that wasn't sky presets or mats?  Can OBJs be considered Bryce only stuff?  Not really...

On that note, since content is king when it comes to some artists, it is not wonder that most of the artists will work with Poser or Daz Studio.  Premade content can make the creative process easier.  Some of these artists not only insert, pose and render the images, but take great pains in post work, which is why I can see them getting the AOM.  Not that all of them necessarily deserve it, but a majority do.

Who am I?  Just a really long-time lurker here (and former Brycer) who tends to step in and put in a commentary or two.  Besides, you asked for opinions and that's my 2 pfennig worth.

Ken

[EDIT:  I just checked out your store and site, and I must say, there's a nice bit of content there.  You're more talented than I thought and I like to think that I'm an impartial judge of quality.  Your Bryce stuff looks quite nice, but limited in selection to the sci-fi realm and I guess that was the point that I was trying to make.  If you want anything remotely human you have to make it/pose in something else and port it in... Still I applaud your efforts and your skill! :thumbupboth:]

Ken

DENIED!  Oh well, I guess that I'm gonna have to settle for VS2.  I use SWISH to create some programming and animations, and this will be a little easier to work with...

maybe I'll find something else in another couple of days....

[meh] at DAZ...

Ken

:b_grin:

One word... morph targets...

er... :blushing: that's two words... but anyway...

Bones are a cumbersome way to make mouth movements (other than the obviously cartoonish "jaw drop" that we see in Tex Avery stuff).  Using C5Pro I create morph targets in the vertex modeller (using the morph tab) for the phenomes and let the software build the sliders.  The manual does an adequate job of explaining the basics so I won't go into details.  The nice thing is that you can combine phenomes with the sliders and make permutations that you hadn't thought of (or reduce the number of phenomes that you need by setting 50% of, say, "oo" to be "oh", etc).

Hope that helps...

Ken

Me Wanna! Me Wanna! microdisplacement, UV unwrap and mapping, 3d paint... SO worth the upgrade! Ken

arcady What looks like may be happening is you have some kind of open polyline or maybe multiple split verticies. Tighten the circle #1 by welding vertices with a tolerance less than the distance between 2 of the vertices. This should close up any holes or multiple vertices. My usual tolerance it .1, but judging by the magnification of your mesh it might have to be less than that. Repeat with circle #2 and try to loft to 3. Hard to see if there are any open polys or stuff... Hope this helps Ken