Doktor Gonzo

That's the way to do it. But.... aren't final gathering and sourced lighting kind of mutually exclusive? Your results do speak for themselves, but I've found that adding actual light sources to a scene tends to cancel out the final gathering effect....

And the specifics? What renderer, settings, and lighting solution did you use? Looks great, by the way...

Heh, Az, looks like we're thinking on the same wavelength

Wolf : looks GREAT! Love the pose! That's gonna make an absolutely kickass background for our pic... Might I suggest an alternate framing, though? I'd frame it tighter on the upper half and right arm of the Macross, like so. This'll give the Destroids and non-flying valks a more prominent display, as well as emphasizing further the humongous size of the Macross and giving it even more of an "in your face!" feeling. I'd also suggest (and this can make a LOT of difference to the look) tweaking the camera settings to make the apparent scale of the ship larger through lens distortion. Easiest way to do this would maybe be to make the focal width of the lens LARGER (say, around 55-60 degrees). This should make the Big Mac initially look a lot smaller onscreen; compensate by pushing the virtual camera closer in to the tip of the ARMD. You should notice more "fisheye"/perspective distortion, with the body of the ship now looking "farther" from the tip of the ARMD. I diddled in photoshop to try to show how this might make the ARMD look, but didn't try to alter the body of the thing - but hopefully it should look cool! I also might suggest rotating the right shoulder down a little and bending the elbow up, lowering the camera so that it remains at "hand"/deck level and rotating it up a little so that it still frames the tops of the gun booms - this might buy us a little more sense of scale. Anyway, just ideas, you are the man ultimately in charge of the background.... what do you think?

Of course, we all know what happens next: JMS, author of the Real Ghostbusters episode "No One Comes To Lupusville", sues EVERYBODY for infringement! We Got'cher Stinkin' Lycans Right Here!

Hmmm, I guess the first order of business would be to start working on the background. If wolf13 can generate a few preliminary poses, then we can pick one and then.....THEN..... well, then we try our damnedest to crash wolf's machine with some ungodly huge render of it! ....er, whatsay, Wolf?

Dat: Looks pretty much dead-on to me. Chronocidal: Welcome, and nice work so far!

Big sucker! Looks good, David....

Az, you lucky bastard. Better buy a bigger toy shelf!

All right Brian - now get over to the "Mass CG Project" thread - we need your input!

Heh, most definitely. Brian, care to step in and take a well-deserved bow?

Wow, Megatron's clearly been lifting, while Prime has really let himself go. This fight's gonna end worse than the first Rocky Balboa/Clubber Lang bout.....

Still lookin' mighty fine, Rod! I concur - bump map those grooves!

114: Wow, nice work! Looks like you do some scaling of the components during transformation, yes? Very cool....

Wolf: Sure, I'd love to do that shot. 2 issues with it: first, I would guess that most of our modelers will want to display in battroid mode, not fighter, as it would show off our work to the utmost that way (and thus, they'd all have to be "flying" - not necessarily a big deal, but worth noting) Second, as per your suggestion to put an arm forward, it's a necessity that it be large in frame. We have quite a few destroids, including a Monster, to get on there! But yeah, this seems like it's going to be really cool....

Az, Yeah, I plan to scuff the inside of the intakes along the arc of the covers - if and when I get back to texturing! I'm scrambling around trying to scare up some badly needed cash at the moment, haven't touched the VF-1 in a few days... As for the photo references, HELLS YEAH! I'd love to see 'em, and I know they'd be a great help to a number of people here....

Hey gang, Since I've never been very successful at describing my suggested composition for our big group shot, I figured I'd make a visual aid. This is exceedingly crude (I had 10 minutes upon getting back in from lunch early) but at least gets the angle across. The white "blob" under the mecha is meant to be the right ARMD arm of the Macross, specifically the top deck of it, projecting hugely into the foreground. Almost as if it were doing a "Daedalus Attack" right at the camera, with the mechs standing atop it. What do you guys say?

Dat, Looking GREAT! LOVE the proportions of it. I'll have to repost some shots to show mine off to better effect, had some weird lens settings that made my legs appear "stunted". And yeah, all parts are modeled, the only texture on there is on the chestplate and heatshield, and even there, all the panels are modeled in. The background is just a quickie thing from Google, I just wanted a ruined city type thing and that was the closest I could find in 10 mins Az, yeah -- I am also tempted to do 1/48 style gills Wolf, let's shoot for door-sized then! -if not shaped. I think we need to do a shot that's wider than it is tall, as we'll have a lot of mecha standing side-by-side, and a waist-up shot of your Macross in Storm Attacker mode will also be wider than it is tall. As for detailing - The model as a whole looks more than detailed enough - if anything, I guess hyper-detail the right arm, as that's going to be the part that actually is in the foreground....

Hey Mathieu, Maya exam, eh? Where are you in school, what are you focusing on, and are you still there? -dg

Can't change my name, can't leave the county, I'm in a bad way all over....

SWEET.

Looks great, Vic! You just might give Tober a run for his money...

Right. THIS THREAD MUST NOT DIE!!! Here's a quickie