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Just a reminder that there is still time to work on an entry. The fortress of solitude is a great idea because there is so much that you can do with ice shaders. Plus, I'd be impressed with Krypto.
Wow entrants - there's some lovely &interesting; things being done for this competition - its been a delight seeing what everyone has come up with. And sharing their knowledge & methods on the way (as always) - thanks for that. Keep up the cracking inventiveness and I look forward to see the final results. Good luck. (would love to enter but no promises, sadly - i'm too unreliable. Will see what I can do...)
i haven't gotten far with the spline modeling :shut:
found nice photo ref for the key.
krypto http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3240/2997503094_d557265f36_z.jpg
what a gorgous GORGEOUS work of art!!!
gettin emotional looking at it
Keep at it Misty! If you need help, I can do my best. Just let me know!
H-o-o-o-l-l-l-y-y-y crap! I was able to open my scene. It looked like it was going to get stuck for awhile, but it eventually opened. I made a small change and saved, and it saved nice and quick (well, quick for having an M4 and Mil Horse with armor).
So here's a quick render to see how the clouds look. Obviously I still have lots of work to do with lighting and composition. I need to add another horse, work on the textures for the armor, which I realize is anachronistic, and not really "period." I claim artistic license. ;-)
Oh yeah, I'm going to rig the reins and use a target helper to make my Ra character hold them, no matter where I move the hand.
The reins were separate mesh objects, so I rigged each individually and use a ball joint constraint. I then had the second-to-last bone track the target helper which I had parented to the left hand.
That's very cool evilproducer, I always wondered how to set something like that up. :)
Rigging this type of object is really very simple. If you can click in a relatively straight line, you can rig it. No weight painting is really needed. The ends of the reins look a bit harsh at the bends, but more bones and a denser mesh can help solve that issue. IN my case, it won't really be visible, so I'm not to worried about it.
To help with less visual clutter, I could also have reduced the size of the first bone before creating the next ones in the chain.
There is more than one possible cause of nuclear fusion. One possibility is that the vertices of the cloak are too close together given the margin settings for physics. Another is that the cloak is bouncing too strongly against the figure. The first thing I would do is lower the margin setting of the softbody physics of the cloak and see if that works (and make sure it is checked). First try a margin of 30, and if it still explodes, try margin of 10. Also, make sure that the bounce and friction settings of the cloak in the effects tab are very low. Try bounce around 5 and friction at 10. If it still explodes, try 2 and 5 respectively.
Then cross your fingers. thank you diomede, appreciate that, will try ! Cheers :)
Also try turning the scene physics setting for collision distance down to 0. I had an explosion much like yours on my first attempt with the cloak softbody. Since I was doing a dynamic drape for an animation purposes but on a static figure it surprised me, but it's almost always due to the vertices being too close together and colliding with something that's within their 'margin'. A lot of Daz content conforming clothes has a *lot* more vertices than the usual amount of verts I would use for softbody cloth on say a plane or cylinder I inserted into the scene to make into clothing, and if the verts are within each other's sphere of influence, things can get crazy. Since my cloak was going to collide with no other mesh, I just left the margin field unchecked, seemed to work fine.
Very cool! Question though, did you have to rotate each bone along the length of the rein to make it curve like that or is that an effect of making an IK chain or something? I'm not 100% sure I followed what you meant by having the 2nd to last bone track the target helper, though I do know what target helper is and I do follow that the target helper is parented to the left hand. Is 'tracking' part of the IK process or am I completely misunderstanding? I don't know much about IK or how to set it up, but I suspect I need to learn, which is why I ask.
Hi Jon. The curvature of the rein is IK. It could easily have wanted to bend up, but if it did, I could select a bone somewhere in the middle and dragged it down. Since the ends are tracking the target, the rein ends would stay in place and allow the reins to bend down in the middle.
I applied the IK tracking modifier to the second to last bones, so that I could manually rotate the end bones to get a dangling effect. If I had wanted more of the reins to dangle, then I could simply have bones further down the chain track the target. In this case, I didn't have quite enough "slack" in the model.
I have some IK based animations on my youtube channel, but none with a rope or anything. I should change that.
If you can stomach the un-realsitic pose in my Bikini Car Wash picture ( ;-) ), I used a target helper parented to the model's hand that is holding the hose, and IK tracking on the hose, which is set up very similarly to the reins. Remember the IK tracking tracks the hot point, so in my images I have the target helper offset from the mesh a bit.
All these videos use IK tracking and target helpers to help animate the character or lock a hand or foot into place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQhoy3hB9J0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWBRuJlQhA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5mq9Sdpwc
Also try turning the scene physics setting for collision distance down to 0. I had an explosion much like yours on my first attempt with the cloak softbody. Since I was doing a dynamic drape for an animation purposes but on a static figure it surprised me, but it's almost always due to the vertices being too close together and colliding with something that's within their 'margin'. A lot of Daz content conforming clothes has a *lot* more vertices than the usual amount of verts I would use for softbody cloth on say a plane or cylinder I inserted into the scene to make into clothing, and if the verts are within each other's sphere of influence, things can get crazy. Since my cloak was going to collide with no other mesh, I just left the margin field unchecked, seemed to work fine.
thanks Jon, good thinking, makes a lot of sense, will try later today!
Try to picture a golden apple that says "for the fairest" in the hand of the giant goddess (Vicky 3). Cleaning out my old content attic with Poser as a plugin for this project.
- For Paris (M4), I converted a Hercules outfit designed for The Freak 3 to M4 using Poser's wardrobe wizard. I then combined the Freak armor with the Spartan warrior helmet, greeves, etc. that Daz sells for M4.
- For Helen (V4), VAL sells a "Helen" outfit for V4. Very convenient. The hair is a Naomi "5 Times a Lady" hair designed for Carrara.
- For Aphrodite (V3), I used Poser's cloth room to drape a HMann dynamic V3 outfit for use in Carrara.
* in poser, load the figure (V3 in this case), uncheck any IK chains, then use the joint editor to zero the figure.
* in poser, load the cloth obj and fit it over the figure so that there are no intersections with the figure
* in poser, advance a few frames and morph and pose the figure how you want it
* in poser, save the morphed figure and posed figure to your figure library
* in poser, save the pose to your pose library
* in poser, use the cloth room to drape the dynamic cloth to the posed figure
* in poser, export as an obj, but choose only the draped cloth
* in poser, import the recently exported posed cloth obj
* in poser, save the newly imported posed cloth obj to the prop library
-- Carrara should now be able to load the posed cloth directly from the prop library
-- Carrara should now be able to load the same morphed figure directly from the figure library
-- Carrara should now be able to apply the same pose directly from the pose library
-- If you want to make slight adjustments to the pose, because you did not save the figure as an obj, you can attach the posed prop to the skeleton of the posed figure!
Aphrodite is supposed to be holding a golden apple in one hand and creating a protective force shield for the fleeing couple with the other. Try to picture a crew for the boat, some Greek warriors rushing to the docks but blocked by Aphrodite, and a polis in the background.
That looks good diomede.
If I can make a suggestion for the final composition, go for a lower angle (not extreme). It can help the giant goddess seem taller and more dramatic.
Here's an example of using a lower, yet not extreme angle to add drama and sell the scale of the airships.
Good suggestion. I will definitely use it. She has nice... ahem... airships. ;-)
Ah, cool concept Diomede! I don't know why the Iliad never crossed my mind for the challenge.
Some people didn't like the movie Troy because it didn't hew very close to the mythological source material, but it's got one of the greatest sword fight scenes in all of film history in my opinion (Hector vs Achilles). Anyways, excellent idea, seems to be taking shape quite nicely.
Here's a little more work done on my scene. I still need to do some lighting on the horses, and I also need to work on the clods a bit more.
I'm thinking the armor for the horse would look better if I changed it the black to gold with Lapis Lazuli where the red is now.
Some good stuff happening here.. looking forward to seeing all the end results
After losing my 4gig Thor file I reverted to M4 Thor to get rid of 8.5Beta
with postwork ;-)
Looks great Evil, but I kind of agree about changing the horse armor to gold instead of red, it makes them look like they're sticking their tongues out as it is :)
Haha! Thor smash!
Poor little 8.5 is sploded...
M4 Thor before postwork
Funny concept! :lol:
It will also help prevent the armor from sucking up all the light!
Impossible. I've heard from a very reliable source (an unimpeachable expert!) that all Carrara users on this forum hate and revile postwork, so I know it can't possibly be true that a Carrara render was ever postworked. :)
This might be cheatin' but I've read through the rules a few times and not sure, and I kind of dig the concept so I'm gonna pursue it for now.
You know many years back, last time I was wandering in a mall (do they still have malls anymore?) I was arrested outside a curio shop by a bunch of 'moving' paintings. They were colorful still art, usually lit from within, where it was usually of some nature scene were the whole scene was a still image, except some certain part of it that was moving, like a waterfall that appeared to be in motion splashing down, or water running by, or clouds in the sky slowly moving. I don't have a clue what this type of artwork is called, and they were charging a small fortune for these electric pictures, way more than I could ever see spending, but I do remember stopping as I was wandering by and how my eyes were drawn to the moving bits and thinking it was cool. Wanted to try something similar, a still image but with parts of it subtly moving, not sure how close I came.
Also I like the way my character looks, but in the black/red armor and with the dark hair he looks a bit like Vlad the Impaler, and I was going for a different villain entirely. Someone who will 'cut your heart out with a spoon' :)
A man pledged to uphold the law, surrounded by greedy nobles grasping for power who look down on him for his common birth, nobles who were willing to employ murderous outlaws and mob rule guerilla tactics, while robbing honest hardworking merchants of the fruits of their labor who were supposed to be under the Crown's protection, all in a bid to subvert his ability to protect the people and administer his sworn duties. Then, in the end, he was betrayed by the very king he was pledged to serve.
I thought it might be interesting to invert the story a bit and see the Sheriff of Nottingham in a different light. From a certain viewpoint, his story is a lot closer to Ned Stark's then Joffrey's. :)
Very cool Jon!
Here's my latest attempt. I do like the lighter armor on the horses, although I think I will have to bite the bullet and add reflections to get the gold look I want.
Next up, I want to see if particle emitters will work. I may just render them in a separate scene and composite them. Gasp!
Here is the setup for my picture.
The lights are :
one main light (the sun)
26 lights for fake skylight (by Tim Payne : http://www.sharecg.com/v/30481/gallery/5/3D-Model/Light-Dome-presets-for-Carrara-6 )
1 light for fake water-reflection
The mountainside is made up of a terrain that are converted to a vertex model.
It is then remodelled and reshaped. Onto that, there is replicated stones, so they cover everything.
The water is also a terrain, converted into a vertex model. It is then scaled in the y-direction, and then carefully reshaped, using soft-selection into the mountainside.
When it was in place, it was duplicated, and moved just a bit lower than the original.
The shader was a lot of trials and errors.
The Fossegrimen, is a Genesis figure.
I used a multichannel mixer, to get the lower parts made of water.
Nice work here Jon, I like the experimental nature of this image, and you just might be starting a new trend with the monthly challenge, a trend with lots of possibilities. It also strikes me that it might be possible to make 'moving paintings' with 3d art. I mean moving images people can buy and hang on their walls. So I took time off after typing the last sentence and found the following examples of how that is so possible right now!
Example 1.
Example 2.
Example 3.
Thanks Jon, you made me discover something today.