Anim8or Community

I liked happy, smiling molecules In your video voice commentary is very important part, because when I first watched it without turning sound on I didn't understand your video's meaning.

This forum needs gender symbols under our avatars or something.

Nahh.... not necessary IMHO + it's pretty funny when you see people are tricked by themselves you're male, because stereotype is that "females are not interested in 3d graphics", and finally find out you're female instead

I knew that but I was asking if the rays would do the exact same thing as in reality ^^

That depends... Classic raytracers like ART can't do caustics and GI so for example you won't be able to do prism or to see focal point of curved mirror or transparent lens as a bright spot on a plane (mind that any other renderer will require a lot of tweaking and long time of computation to be able to reproduce these effects with precision), but this specific experiment you mentioned can be easily reproduced.

Here's my version. Distortion comes from fact that I didn't use true parabolic mirror but only two 1/4 parts of sphere.

Articles I took a look at while making this image:
http://www.optigone.com/3D_hologram.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_reflector
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curved_mirror
http://dev.physicslab.org/Document.aspx?doctype=3&filename=GeometricOptics_RealImages.xml

I believe that computer you have is able to handle scenes/objects of complexity you work with. I have even slower machine in terms of CPU speed and RAM and the maiin problem is still speed of rendering. I encounter slow viewport (on all machines) only when working with lots of instances i.e. grass. Subdivision should not be problem as well, because as somebody mentioned you can lower preview value. You may have problems with importing high poly objects with hires textures from various sources or from sculpting software (Sculptris, Zbrush) without prior retopology of the models.

For your problem I'd possibly blame either GPU or system clogged with old drivers, unused software, well hidden viruses (you don't know they're in your system, so you can't hunt them down).

uCould you post problematic scene so we could see if the scene is so heavy that it should slow your system that much?

If it's not case, then full reinstall sounds reasonable.

Now I remember the thing! I mean, I remember drinking it like 10 years ago. But it was modern incarnation - in plastic bag rather than jar.

Btw, was it necessary to model inner and outer part separately? I thought that the project is going to be rendered in other renderer anyway? (so material is node based and can have multiple maps in it) That's why I wasn't working more on textures for can - deciding 'they can be better done with procedurals'.

Nice cans, by the way... have you ever tried to sell them on turbosquid or somesuch?

I haven't got a lot of models around, so I've never thought of selling anything. I consider myself quite weak modeller.

Heh heh... 'Nice cans'!  That's a phrase I never thought I'd read on this forum!  Sorry, dumb sense of humour.

You're welcome

Excellent work dwsel, I will certainly incorporate these into the scene.

Just a slight tweak of key location, after more looks on the reference - just before it'll be too late to switch models. Textures the same as in the *.zip pack.

The overhead lights are casting soft shadows in the scene, the hard shadows on the floor are actually being cast by the sun through the triangular windows to the camera's right.  This external light is a remnant of the external scene; the internal scene was originally a copy of the external scene to ensure everything lined up correctly.  At this stage I don't know whether final shots will be daytime or nightime, when that is finalised the entire lighting setup will be adjusted accordingly.

For visualization works I still give sunlight slightly soft shadows. It's a bit slower but it's not that disturbing. Possibly regular person watching a movie wouldn't noticed difference either, but eye sharpens with experience and people working with 3d would spot it easily and express it into comments questioning quality of whole work...

Maybe a bump map might help give some of the striations seen in the image attached to the original post. Other than that, my lack of experience leaves me with few suggestions.

Thank you for looking at! Bump and transparency maps will be added at the next stage, after I finish model and UVmap it. Then your response on map qualities will be very helpful. Now I still try to focus on mesh itself.

I like the jellyfish you've chosen to make - should look awesome
The concept looks really good too,  but the start on the model might need some refinement. I think the tentacle-bases are sticking out too harshly pronounced. The whole surface I think could be a lot smoother ( see http://www.ecardmedia.eu/data/media/863/jelly%20fish%20sting%201.jpg )
I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll come up with.. I'm sure itll look awesome.

First of all, thanks for adding me on FB Now, back on topic - your feedback is always very valuable.

What you mention here is because of 2 causes:
1. hard crease at the edge of tentacle bump (I'll move it towards the rounded parts so it will blend more nicely)
2. parts extruded too much - especially at the top

What concerns me more than that is that I tried to reduce number of polys while moving up the bowl, so I collapsed vertices hapilly till I saw how introduced triangles interferes with the subdivided version. And what can happen while animating, Can you suggest different divisions that would minimize number of triangles (other than 36 sided * subd level - edgec verticle at the top)?

Still- I hope that the daunting task of animating it doesn't scare you off

Yes, it does badly!
I'm very weak in animation area, and that will be animation of such a fragile and smoothly moving creature...

Wow!
Quite impressive showcase of what can be done in Anim8or. I watched it without prior reading description, and during it I wondered how much of the work was done in Anim8or.

My crits for future works are:

- I liked the idea of basing plot on the song lyrics.

- Grass could be blended better in the forest scenes. I can say that adding more emissive instead of diffuse, transparency like 0.5-0.7 helps blending a lot. Grass planes didn't look good viewed from the top. You might have spent 4-8 times more polys to make grass clumps like these (that would look good from any direction)):
http://0.s3.envato.com/files/3202732/preview.jpg
http://www.game-stuff.com/collection/grass_collection_2/13.jpg
http://www.game-stuff.com/collection/grass_collection_2/23.jpg
http://img147.echo.cx/img147/8067/fernwire0wb.jpg
http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/plants_preview1.png

- Camera movements and turns in canyon were too rapid in some moments, but I liked a lot smooth zoom on the mountain.

- When she's running to meet with the dragon walk cycle seems to be a bit too stiff for such a fast run.