Anim8or Community

That works too  . One thing I've learned is that if you take an area lamp and put it behind the object, it will make the object pop out of the background a bit better. I've never really played with it much, but it is common practice to use the 3-point lighting system.

The animation of the character was excellent!

Just a bit of advice from a amateur pilot though; few aircraft could perform those aerobatics, especially as quickly as you had it portrayed. That plane in the real world is a sluggish transport, and would not be designed for any kinds of advanced manuevering. Also when planes do a simple roll, it takes a masterfull pilot in an overpowered aircraft in order to keep the plane going straight and level. When planes are upside-down, especially big transports like that, their noses tends to fall towards the ground due to the wing's aerodynamic lift pushing downwards. If you get the chance, try watching some videos of similar planes in Microsoft Flight Simulator. It'll show you about what those planes are capable of. I would slow down the animation to a more realistic level. Look for statistics about the turn rates and radii of different aircraft. I know an F-15, a powerful fighter plane, cannot get into a tailspin(where the plane rotates around it's nose and falls like a brick) without the pilot getting very nervous as to whether he can get out of it. A cargo plane has even more to worry about since it will not have the thrust to push out of a tailspin.

Here is a link to a site that shows the basics of flight. It might help you alot with the manuevers and timing.

http://www.flightsimbooks.com/jfs/page13.php


I know it is alot to learn, but all of it will make your flying animation much better.

What you can do is make the windows with a different material that is not glossyreflector, since a window with the light on inside will not show the reflection quite as much. Just select the faces of the windows you want lit up and apply the emissive material, and on the rest of the windows use the reflective material.

In UVmapper, move the points of your mesh around until they fit your texture.

The better way to do it is to fit your mesh in UVmapper so that it is neat, organized, and has the least amount of distortion, then file>export texture map. Then you should have a jpg or something with your object's UV on it. Then take that picture in GIMP and paint in that way. It will fit your texture much better.

What photo editing software are you using?

A few small changes.

The whole car(with high res wheels) so far has:
68,430 points
133,333 edges
67,305 faces

Without the wheels it's only:
3590 points
7069 edges
3433 faces

One tire alone has:
16,210 points
31,566 edges
15,968 faces

Since the tires are so massive I made a new tire that has only:
4746 points
9236 edges
4774 faces

I lost all the nice detail, but sometimes it's necessary. 

Wow, I'm really bad at speed modeling.

Anyways, since my attempts at a a tutorial explanation fell through, I'll just point you to an example.

For inspiration look in the gallery to the left <. In the first image of the building/shack all the grasses are trans maps. They can be very effective.

It's funny, in my college course we are studying shaders and alpha maps! 

I personally would use transmaps for all of that as well. If you were using Blender or 3DsMax instead of Anim8or, then you could model the hair and use physics for movement. Since Anim8or does not have that capability then transmaps are the better option.