I finally have something worthy of posting. I really feel like I have to thank everyone in this forum for all the info that I have read here. I read this site religiously.

Very nice pumkin tkane18! It is a great feeling when you do something that even surprises yourself. Don't forget, even the "pros" had to start at the beginning. I agree that this is a good place to learn something.

Thanks willf. After looking at the picture later, I didn't realize that the color was so yellow and the bottom was so flat. A few touch ups make this one a little more worthy than the last.

Very cool pumpkin. I absolutely love Halloween.

-Kix

Kixum, How did you carve out the face? Booleans?? I tried booleans to do that and the process seemed to distort the outer shell slightly.

I did use booleans. It did change my shape slightly. There are lots of "steps" people take when they do booleans to improve their chances of getting something that will work. I built the original pumpkin in the spline modeler as a single outer shell. This particular image was made in Raydream and I know almost nothing about vertex modeling so my steps for making this I'm sure can be significantly improved. My recipe is as follows. 1.) I converted the spline model into a vertex model. 2.) I then went through the model and selected all the vertices which are the sharp edged indentions in the pumpkin and creased them. All other vertices are smooth. 3.) Then I stuck a duplicate of the outer shell inside the inner shell with all the vertices smoothed and subtracted to make a "hollow" pumpkin. 4.) Then I checked to make sure that didn't fuss up my creases. If it did, I fixed em'. Can't remember if it fussed them up or not. 5.) Then I subdivided. For me, the more subdivisions you have, the better boolean operations you'll probably get. It's a toss up in terms of what you're after and what you'll get and how many vertices/polygons you're willing to live with. 6.) I made "cutouts" in the spline modeler for the mouth, eyes, and nose. 7.) Converted them to vertex objects, creased the sharp corners, subdivided them. 8.) Plugged them into the appropriate spots, subtracted them, hoped it worked and it did. I textured it and put a light in it and set him up on this nice little concrete block. I think he came out pretty good but the texture could take some work. I also need to redo the stem but he's a nice pumpkin anyway. Some people think he's just too scary for kids. I think he captures the spirit of a scary jack-o-lantern. -Kix

-Kix

I haven't made good use of vertex modeling myself. I'm slowly making my way throught the Carrara 1 Bible. I'll get to the vertex modeling section one of these days. Thanks for the tips.

tkane 18, Kixum. Thanks for the Halloween inspiration. Absolutely one of my favorite times of the year. Hope you don't mind me getting in on the Halloween fun. But after seeing your pictures I made a quick image of a basement complete with a spectre and I wanted to share. unpleasant dreams memaci

Nice picture memaci. I'm hoping to get another Halloween picture up soon. I hope other people will post more Halloween pictures.

Nice images and model, all :) Tkane, for your information, there's an Halloween contest on Renderosity . See the link for the contest page . Also, don't forget we need images for our "Backyard" contest :) litst

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/contest.ez?contest_id=11

Oops, the link ;P

I created this image in about 10 minutes last halloween before the trick or treaters came. He's simple but his emotion is clear. -Kix

-Kix