Doktor Gonzo

Okay, have some new stuff to share. This is me, after Tenjin. Think I got reasonably close. What do you think?

Looks good to me!

Gorgon: Looks great! Getting to the point though where that rendered jet exhaust is starting to look really hokey by comparison. Why not drop that effect entirely, and paint it in with Photoshop after the fact?

Fun, free seminar! Anybody else going to be at the NYC event?

Naaah. For a machine that may have been doing gritty urban battle for weeks on end, unserviced and unmaintained, it looks fine. Very cool!

Cool - thanks Hikuro

Ruakar, Great to see you back! Man, I wanna play this mod NOW....

Sorry to be so blatant in my begging, but I REALLY want to see this! Anybody have a fansub, or a link to a Torrent? Thanks!

Looks great! Textures are mighty fine....

Nice, Rico. Now how about some Washu?

Besides, while the fights may be technically poor, Jeffrey Falcon is terrific. That guy is the best (not to mention the only) special effect in the picture...

Tolkien himself covered this angle in the Appendices and his letters, albeit it's not explained any more directly in the text of LotR itself than it is in the films, but anyway: -the Eagles are emissaries of the Valar, the Lords of Arda (effectively, archangels or demigods), who rule from their thrones in Valinor, the Undying Lands. They are specifically the servants, the eyes and ears, of Manwe the Elder King (who is sort of the earthly viceroy of Eru Illuvatar, or God) - so any time the Eagles intervene, it is essentially an act of divine intervention. No (middle) earthly power can command the eagles - they appear unhoped for in the darkest hours as a manifestation of divine grace. As to why Manwe chose to lend a hand in the particular circumstances he did (rescuing Gandalf from Isengard and Moria, embattling the Nazgul at the Black Gate and rescuing Frodo and Sam), well, you'd have to ask Illuvatar....

I think so - if I understand you, you're saying that you don't like the "curve fitting" Maya is doing with the motion paths - i.e. when you set two keys for a joint, it's rotation starts out slowly, gathers speed, swings, and brakes slowly to a stop at the 2nd key, rather than rotating at a constant rate of speed and stopping without preamble, like a servo motor might? Okay, easy to fix if you know what to look for. Do this: -Highlight the object you've set keys on. -Go to Animation Editors>>Graph Editor. -On the left, all of the "channels" pertaining to the object will appear. Highlight the specific one you wish to change the motion characteristic of (i.e. "Translate X", "Rotate Y" or whatever). Select View>>Frame Selection. You will now see, in the righthand window, the keys you've set plotted against time on the vertical axis. -Select by clicking the keys whose motion interpolation you wish to "turn off". Select Tangents>>Linear. -Do this for all appropriate objects/channels/key frames. Quit the graph editor and replay your animation sequence. It should now behave as you want it to.

Well, got your name off of IMDB - then poked around, and found this interview... interview you talked about it here, and it sounded pretty cool. I'm working on a masters in cg right now, and I'm very much a stop motion afficionado - my prized possession is a personalized photo/well-wish from Ray Harryhausen.... so anything stop motion tends to draw my eye. And the subject matter sounded fascinating.

Hey Macrosso, thanks for posting that - been looking for images of this design forever. Funny thing is, it DOES show up in the movie - if you look carefully at several of the "invisible" predator shots, they were clearly produced using the red suit above, and not with any silhouette of the Stan Winston redesign we all know and love....

Wow, Steven. Let me echo what the guys posting above have said - this is one hell of an achievement, and you deserve some serious kudos. Gives the rest of us would-be filmmakers hope. Looking forward to seeing Leprechaun 6! (As well as Return of the Sun Devil - any chance you could hook us all up? )

...and of course an additional consideration, one not to be found on real-world-aircraft: paint would likely crack and abrade at transformation joints, where the parts are frequently subject to high-speed parting and/or slamming together....

Gammera, Probably a bit of a waste to use full-color images as a specularity map. Spec is a single scalar channel (Maya maps it by default to a color map's outAlpha). Looks good though. Az, Mech, I WAS kind of going for a bare material look rather than paint, though not necessarily metal. I was using the image below as a guide. It suggests the F/A-22 is largely unpainted, save for the large camo spots, and note that the specular component, particularly on the leading edges and left intake, is not just seemingly high, but also uneven, suggesting that different panels are made of different materials with a different spec index. Dunno, maybe I was misled by a bad photo example....

Yeah, this one. Why? 'Cause it's an incredibly obscure linguistic play that, I think, actually adds greatly to the meaning of the scene. How so? "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" in the Appendix tells us that, as a boy in Rivindell, Aragorn's true name and heritage were hidden from him. He grew up as "Estel", which is the Elvish word for "hope". If you listen to the Elvish in the scene, both Elrond and Aragorn use the word "estel" in their exchange. Also, the line of Elrond's just prior is an abjurement to "put away the Ranger, and become the King." So basically, I think the writers snuck in an extra shading of meaning for those geeky enough to find it, implying that Elrond is hinting to Estel/Aragorn that he needs to become the King, the man of the world, and that Aragorn is lamenting the loss of his old, private self...

I'll keep things rolling with another WIP texture shot This showcases further work on specular mapping in trying to realistically simulate weathered, dirtied metal

Yup, veery nice. But I'm a little confused by the subject line - will the Hasbro issue not be capable of being reversed like this?

Here's a pic of Ungoliant.... oh, and keep in mind, the dude in the foreground is Morgoth, who is assumed to be a towering giant, tall enough to crush a man under his heel....

That's EXACTLY what I was aiming for - and it pleases me to hear you affirm it! My understanding is that most F-14s are largely bare metal under a translucent sealant, with only the "colored" portions of their paint schemes actually painted over. I took a cue from that, and use a fine-grained aluminum texture for the skin base, then layer paint, markings oil streaks and weathering over that. Then I hide the paint and markings, desaturate the texture, and tweak the contrast levels to produce an opacity map. I'm still trying to figure out how to reproduce some of the subtler "large-scale" weathering striations I see in those F-14 photos, though, the ones that look like weather staining - was thinking of maybe mapping difference clouds to the spec map as a luminosity overlay....?

Tober: Thanks! Not too worried about the compositing - this was a texture test, I just threw it against a background without trying to match the lighting to liven it up a little - but I do appreciate any and all PS comping tips regardless, as even when I DO try it's an area I'm not too strong in. The blotchiness on the chest was meant to be a "patched" bit of battle damage. It comes across okay in extreme closeup but looks a little odd at distance - so you're right, I may remove it in favor of a more even grime job. Overall, though, does the amount of weathering and the technique used look good? I'm still playing with that...

Oh, almost forgot - here's a WIP pic showing how my texturing is coming along. Nose/chestplate/backplate/wings are done, backpack/tail and legs are not. Comments, please!