I am not yet familiar with Cycles, but both your images on the top are rendered from the viewport.

This makes me think you are rendering with openGL, which renders the viewport and all of its cameras and grids ect...

By default F12 executes a normal render, or you can choose between normal and openGL viewport renders from the render dropdown menu.

How popular do we really want Blender to become? Are we willing to start paying for it? I for one prefer it like it is.

Sometimes the filters blender applies to the textures at render will blur the edges a little further than you would prefer.

Did you ever figure this one out?

1. Check your materials. Is it invisible? Try duplicating the model and deleting all materials, then render. This will tell you whether or not it is a materials problem.

2. Check your normals. Has it been flipped? If all the normals are calculated inside, that would make your model invisible. 

3. Check your layers. Is your camera on the same layer as the eyeball? Tell your camera to render all layers just to make sure.

4. Check your model. Does it even exist? Create a blank Blender file and append your model, then render. 

Thats all I can think of right now let us know !

This is very good work! Good visual style and excellent animation. You used python for the leg movements so it is automatic when animating the crabs position? Or is everything coded?

Sounds interesting I will check it out! Thanks.

Is it really fast? Or what makes it stand out I mean ?

Quote - Yeh Blender has a great uvmapper.

i see this said a lot, but i have no idea what it means because i've only used Blender for UV mapping.  that is, i have nothing to compare it to.  and maybe i don't know certain features exist at all.  could you say what about the UV mapping tool makes it better than other, average mappers?

I've used other uv mapping programs before and I can tell you from experience. There is really no comparison. I tried UVMapper, but all it seems to do is project an image of the model? It even leaves polys behind polys I dont understand who would use such a useless tool.The other two were below even UVMapper standards. (any UVMapper lovers out there feel free to correct me! Im always looking for an easier route)

Whoever designed the unwrapper in Blender hated unwrapping meshes because dude its almost a 1 click process anymore. You can literally stretch out the mesh, pin down the corners, release edge tension, and set up a beautiful map that any texture artist would enjoy painting. Very many of your good texture artists come from a traditional medium background and have no idea what we have to go through to get the uvmap to look like something paintable, you know?

Anyways, anyone out there need some pretty uvmaps to go with their model? Give me a buzz!!! (shameless plug)

Merry Christmas !

EDIT:: after seeing the latest screenshots from the UVMapper website, I see that it does open up the meshes now, apparently using some kind of seam type thing. When I tried it a year or so ago it did not.  From my limited experience, I think most artists prefer the method on the right (the monkey from the above link).The method on the left is better for your materials tho because it appears to be seamless. I will look into this soon and post back my opinions :)

EDIT AGAIN: I was looking at the gallery on the UVMapper website but all I see are renders. It seems a gallery for a model unwrapper should contain images of the uv maps created with it. Now I am confused. I tried to go to the forum but the link is dead. What does UVMapper do again ?

Quote - Hooho... We got some pretty advance commands here, I will try that software as soon as i can... But would need some advice from you guys if ever i have difficulties... thanks though..

huh?

Are you renting a holodeck? If so then YES!

You got the side view dead on man :D

Why are the first toes on each foot curled upwards ?

Quote -
If you mean you want to close the timeline window at the bottom for example, grab the top right corner of the window and drag it up (make sure the cursor is showing a little + I think it is) to join windows.

That was it sceyefeye. Thank you!!!

Oh thats cool. Ctrl+UpArrow does the same thing as Shift-Space.

ty for that tip!. But still trying to learn how to close a window :(

So far I don't like it. Its got too many open windows out of the box and I cant figure out how to close them! Anyone know how to close a window or four ?

But the new icons are ok I guess.

Thank you lyron !