Artists

Edit: I?ve deleted my original response because the thread topic and first post was completely changed and I don?t wont to sound like a complete ********

I like ninjas [8]

This game is pretty old. Its also pretty crap. After the initial fun wears off from peeing gas on ppl and then lighting it up your left with a rather poorly made FPS that relies only on its shock value.

Erm, I posted a reply, went away, something happened, and now that reply sounded like shite....

So now you get a smilie.

[:)]

Instead of editing your topics for a new question why not post a new one. It ends up making peoples replies more relevent. Also, it would help if you posted the right question in the right forum.

Blizzard, please don?t do that. Now we all sound like fools talking about some game when the thread topic is a technical question?

Please note all the different forums and post your threads in the appropriate forum. An art question should go in the art forum.

well, i'm confused...

Blizzard, I tried that tutorial you linked to, and got the cloth reactor to work with no worries:
[img]http://www.thoughtvalve.com/nucleus/media/3/20050125-cloth_test.jpg[/img]

Not sure what your doing wrong. The only thing I could do to make the cloth pass through the rigid body was to move said body after reactor had calculated the animation. So don?t do that.

Hey Blizzard!
To change the UNSELECTED edge colour you can just select your object then on the modify tab, there should be its name and a coloured box at the very top of the panel. Change the colour of that to change your edged colours while they are deselected.

If you want to make the selected object's edges colour change from the standard white you need to go to CUSTOMIZE > CUSTOMIZE USER INTERFACE > (click on the tab) COLOURS

Then you see at the top a drop down list. Select GEOMETRY from the list. Then In the scrolling box underneith it, scroll down and select the word SELECTION. Over to the right you will notice the colour box is white. Change that colour to whatever you desire then make sure you click the APPLY COLOURS NOW button at the bottom of the window. Close the window and your edged faces will be a different colour.

I hope that works for you [:D]

Hey thanks alot for that :)

fpghastyys!!
:D

Oh his art so owns! [:D]

Well, i think that the tutorials needs some more explanation.... you need to have some deep information about it before redthem... or you just can't get them. Anyway, the improvment of his work from the old website to this one is gigantic.. maybe because he was working with Ryan Church in the creation of concepts for Star Wars Episode 3.
Rizo

I know what you mean about the tutes. It?s a bit like this:
Step 1: Draw a quick but really cool looking sketch
Step 2: Colour it in
Step 3: Add highlights and shadows
Step 4: Add heaps of detail
And done! An awesome piece of artwork in only four easy steps [:P]

I shouldn?t complain, it?s great to see the stages of development for some pieces of his work. Those tutorials obviously aren?t meant for amateurs.

The new site?s awesome, anyway.

Personally I think thats excellent, there does seem to be a certain attainable skill level of artwork in which a mojority of tutorials are made for - and once you obtain that level, youll soon find that the chances of finding a master tutorial, or like Zhu's workflow tut's very slim.

Its like Palantir said, Those tutorials are'nt really aimed at amatuers.

Yeh, it's great to see how Feng's work has progressed. Everyone knows of his quick concepts with line art and grey blocking in. It seems howadays he's doing full scale coloured masterpieces! It's great because he's a very creative person and it's being able to finally see his creativity as almost finished art instead of roughs.

I know many people here admire Feng's work, and there's a new article at CGNetworks on Feng's new studio that he co-created called [url="http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3097"]Gamma Ray Studios[/url]. Worth checking out!

Wow.. a bit freaky, but very cool! [:D] Everyone should definately look into this if they're interested in anatomy.

awesome man, thanks a lot for the link

nps, heh.

No Normal Maps? Gah! I'm gonna write in and request them to code it in!!! [;)]

Sounds like somebody needs to borrow my Ryan Church dvds, mainly the Rendering Matte Vehicle and Rendering Shiny Vehicles ones.

argh, I feel like a junky returning to his pusher! But that would be great :)

do you have CS? (character studio) it's physique modifyer on a heirachy is quite a bit better than max bones and skin

Nah I don't. Is there a download I can get it from?

The current issue of 3D world has a good tutorial for character rigging in max with bones. There should still be a few copies left in newsagents.

cool, thx for that souri [:D]

yes. [:P]

Too be honset no one really knows what its going to be like just yet, we'll have to wait til a few games get released I'd say.

I'd say we've seen some pretty good examples already ..eg. Doom 3 and Unreal 2.
They were amazing graphically/production values wise, but in terms of actual gameplay and the overall experience games 4-5 years older still have em beat (and by quite a margin IMO). Seems like so much was invested in the look and graphics that the gameplay side was underdone.
I do think sooner or later a company will nail all aspects of art/design/gameplay with a next gen engine though (i've yet to play HL2 incidentally, though the first was too linear for my tastes to be best game evar material and i suspect i'll feel that way about the sequel too).
I do think we're doomed to suffer quite a few more beautiful turds in the future.

quote:[i]Will you be expected to dig a bigger hole
with the same size shovel?

I disagree, only because I think the analogy is a bit incorrect. I would say a bigger hole will be dug, but with a more advanced and larger shovel. I think there is definately more work involved for next gen, but not a multitude greater than it already takes.

I think polygon editing/sub division tools are becoming more sophisticated to encourage faster ways of getting the general shape of those high polygon models done, and tools like Zbrush cap things off by allowing you to paint on the high details with ease. I think the real challenge for artists, however, is with texturing.

All the new tech is gearing towards normal mapping and other texture layers like specular etc so there's no need for artists to paint a textured flat like usual. All this is pointing towards computer generated textures, so the challenge is to get things looking less procedural or computer generated. I mean, for artists to be given a large texture sheet (say over 1024 x 1024) and to add detail (like bumpmapping) to it, it's quite tempting do it quickly with filters... just don't make it so painfully obvious that you did. Subtlety is the key. [;)]

I'd hate next gen artwork to be paralleling the early days of computer CG. You know, quick fix procedural textures that don't look natural/right, bump maps for the sake of bump maps, shiny chrome, all the bells and whistles of CG tech on every damn object. Or for a better example, look at any episode of [url="http://www.optimusprimal.hpg.ig.com.br/ratrap_dinobot.jpg"]Transformers: Beast Wars[/url]. [:D]

Actually Souri its probably going to be more like:

"We need a bigger hole, drop that shovel, use this new electric shovel, oh and btw you don't get any extra time to learn how to use it, oh and yes the hole needs to be done quicker than before, what are you complaining about? The shovel is electric?!" [:P]

Texturing isn't really that hard for next gen but there is alot of bad stuff out there already, check EQ2, way too much bad normal mapping! and Flat shaded diffuse maps!! Argh they look like poser models!!

I actually think modelling is the hardest thing for those attempting next gen, no more lame excuses like "oh its the low polycounts", that stuff is always used to hide a shoddy understanding of anatomy and the deformation needs for animation, oh and it'll finally put to rest the wierd belief that polyflow isn't important, try modelling a 10K character correctly and efficiently without it. [:)]

I'm looking forward to this next cycle of games, the timeframe, cashflow and level of committment for a company to make a next gen title 'should' stop a 'few' dodgy games being made at least.

Using CP curves ...( Control Point ) and EP curves ( Edit Point ) and loft a surface using the Birail tools.. and if you want poly to can convert surfaces to specfied poly counts.. not much more complicated than that.. I'll see if I can find some Tutes on it.. but experimenting should be your best friend..

[url="http://www.bigkid.com.au/2004/07/28/ambit_salary_survey/#more"]Ambit Game Development Salary Survey[/url]

Thanks Souri,

I have a little info to bargain with now.

Cheers

A number of Professional 3D programs are available in Legal, Free, but limited versions.
For example: Maya PLE, SoftImage|XSI EXP, Houdini (PLE?)
Google around a bit and you'll find that you can learn on the real, top-end stuff, as long as you don't need the elite level suff (ie: hair, fur, fabric etc).

Wings3d is another 3d app

g'day beefcake :)

a couple of free programs that measure up to the rest are

-theGimp, imho latest version is as good as PS6, which is enough for game stuff http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

-blender, with all the exporters it has these days, you can export any 3d work u do in this to most engines.

you can do a lot with these two, and your supporting opensource :)
ciao!

heh most of that maya thread is me the maya newb getting confused and aven coming to my rescue :P

We will be looking into maya this coming year - We use max at the moment - but im liking the Maya / Zbrush2.0 combination at the moment. Will let people know how it goes...

The uni I go to switched to maya this year, from 3dsmax.
As a result Ive had to learn both packages and im very glad for that, but I have found maya to be much better for my workflow, though max does seem a little more sensible in some things, albeit slightly less powerful.

Im a maya convert i must say.

gone to XSI from MAX because of the price

ive had it for a while now ... but havnt had a good chance to get stuck into it ... tho that will change soon

This is something I posted at cgtalk today, thought I'd test the Maya groupies here with this question. [:P]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does anyone know off a way to invert the direction of the W channel for UVW's?

I can play around with the U and the V but there is no where in Maya I can see of defining or modifying the W channel.

I've always thought that they relate as such, RGB, XYZ, UVW all correspond but in Maya 6.0 I have found you only have access to the U and the V.?! Did they neglect the last channel? Or is it so hard coded into the vertex or face normals that you can't modify it without modifying them also.

To put it in context, I have modelled something with symetrical components and I need them to be a contigious mesh, as such they use the same UVW coordinates.
Now if I apply a map that relates to the pixel normals of a mesh (normal map or similar) the coordinates are taken from the UV's therefore one is correct and the other is inverted, logically.

If I could select the offending UV's and invert them in the W channel then my problem would be solved, I know its possible in most other packages.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, if its not accessable then thats a major oversight on Alias' part.

Cheers,

Malus.

On a side note, following my attempts after our chat - setting the w channel to -1 didnt seem to change anything regardless of what I tried, so figure out what the hell you did at work today to make it work! I want to know dammnit !! [:D]

Im probably missing a small ingredient also.....

My understanding was the use of UVsets with the order determining their depth... not sure about this thou....

www.kaydara.com

grab the filmbox exporters from the downloads section....
maya 6 already has them built in and you need to turn them on in the plugins menu
so grab the max plugins for what ever version your running...

cheers

o..kaaay well i managed to get a exe which appears to do absolutely nothing and theres links for a plugin which only seems to have a Max 6 option...
btw is this going to allow me to import max files?

hehe... theres no way of importing max files directly into maya... you have to export your existing scenes into a new format... ie.. *.fbx
which is a basically a go between for the two programs.... thats about it really... fbx will export most things.. meshes materials and animations..

yeah i fiddled around a bit and ive gotten things working smoothly, thanks a lot

www.cgtalk.com - You should be able to find some diamonds in the rough there.

www.raph.com - Another source of high quality work.

www.gamasutra.com - Check out the artist section and have a gander through the professional section ( these guys are mostly over the age of 35 ) some of the students portfolios are also exquisite.

Hope that helps [:)]

One of my personal favs goes to Jason Osipa. His demo reel just has an unusual way of presenting itself :)

http://www.jasonosipa.com/SS_Movies.htm

Get the Legolas test as well. Funny.

that demo reel was by far the best and most engaging ive seen!

I've never seen that option in any version of MS Paint I've ever used, sorry.

Just checkd it on mine and it works.
my version is 5.1

It depends what operating system you install. Did you install the same OS when you reformatted?
I'm not sure exactly which have it and which don't but...
XP Proffesional definitely has it
Win95 and 98SE (and i assume 98) definitely don't
I'm pretty sure Win2000 has it.
I'm not aware of their being an "option" to turn it on off, i'm pretty sure it's just related to which OS you install.
CYer, Blitz

Win2000 definitely doesn't have it.

I wouldn't use MS Paint for anything unless it was the absolute last option available. That program is just terribly sucky.

If you need a simple program to save things out as JPG (say, you make a screen capture and want to paste it somewhere then save it as jpg), maybe look around at some free small picture viewer utils out there. I use XnView which is great. It'll save out in a tonne of formats, view pics and movies, and it's real small in size. Search for it at download.com

Thankaz for that everyone, I will look into that program Souri. Also, I was using windows ME, and still am at the moment.

The GIMP is a fully-featured but steep learning-curve piece of software that is free. It's a "competitor" to photoshop in the same way that a Jaycar electronics kit is a competitor to Sony.

However, it works, it's free, it's open-source, and it's infinitely superior in every way to MS Paint.

Check it out at http://www.wingimp.org/

quote:Originally posted by codyalday


I was using windows ME, and still am at the moment.

heh heh that could be your problem right there, shoddiest operating system ever.

quote:Originally posted by pixelpusher

If anyone is interested in private Maya training, I can help out either with training for individuals or small groups, from basic modeling and texturing all the way to character rigging and MEL scripting.

I'm based in Melbourne and have been using the package since Maya 1 (5.5 years).

I've deleted your 4 other duplicate topics in the other areas, but I've left this one in the relevant area of "artist discussion".

Please refrain from duplicate topic posting, it's an obscene form of spam and will not be tolerated. Consider this a warning.

this is the link http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7106630472&s…

Are you allowed to do this on the forums [:p]?

Also, did you win that control freaks competition? Which car is yours in NFSU?

They don't actually put the car in the game. I thought they would but they said it was all a myth someone started up. It's any audi anyways I can post some pics if u want.

I didn't know i couldn't put this on the forum if it's not alloud i can take it off if possible.

Some of the better books are the New Riders. Inside Maya 5 is good and takes you through the process of working on a short animation, from basic modeling to rigging to lighting and rendering....a good rigging book is Maya Character Creation: Modeling and Animation Controls, though it is quite advanced.

Some others are the Savvy ones once again rounding knowledge and Mata Character Animation brought out by Cybex, the one i have is for Maya 4 and its good, just takes a bit to convert some of the old ways of doing some of the activites to the newer versions, since the newer versions have easier ways of doing things, i.e. subdivision texturing.

cheers

I'm not a big fan of too many Computer books, as they cost a bit, and you can usually find better info online.

That being said, I have two Maya books.

Stop Staring (well worth it Me) and MEL Scripting for Animators. I haven't used the MEL scripting one too much yet.

when unwrapping for high density models, soft select and relax uv's are your friends. Experiment [:)]
ideally, you would relax the uv's out so every area has texture space (inside of nostrils included) and the resulting distortion spread out evenly through the rest of the mesh so that it's not at all noticeable.

Ive sent you an Email Makk [:)]

Texporter does works with max 6.

PSD unwrapper is another one if texporter doesn't work for you.

hopefully this is right
to slice a poly try pressing ctrl+k, when selecting polys or verts just hold down shift to select more. Also, in case you didn't realise, you can hold down the right mouse button to use a lasso for selection. Anyway, hope this helps

yeah thanxs conundrum, i think you and me are the only lightwavers here. Does anyone know what happened to that Lightwaveoz.org site, it;s never updated any more.

I used to do lightwave a few years ago... Although I am a programmer... Soul uses Lightwave too...

David Coen is a lightwave person too.

What is it with Lightwave and programmers? My programmer friend swears by Lightwave as well...

Just about that lightwaveoz.org website, i bought a copy of inside lightwave 8 today (it kicks arse an i've only read 2 chapters) this site gets a mention in it. Dan Alban the auther calls it his freinds from down under [:)]. Oh and who's Soul?

think you can hold down shift to add to selection (one caveat, i'm still using lightwave 5)
if you have nothing selected, action effect everything
if you have a selection, selection events act to deselect
shift ' [shift and single quote] inverses selection
square back brace flows selection
slash / deselects
right mouse lasso select
= hide unselected
- hides selected // hiding points seems not to hide triangles attached to them
space cycles edit mode [points, polys, exclude, include]
forslash, unhide all
shift + add point mode, left to position cursor, right to place vert
p to constuct triangle (plane) on selected vert
k to delete triangle and leave verts
.... i could easily go on but need to go now

thanks for the "p" tool, thats really helpful

Got another question, like moony's maya help thread this will become my lightwave help thread [:)]
Firstly how do you turn of snapping. When i drag a point i want to get it to a particular spot but it keeps snapping to another bit.

also is it possible to do instancing like in max, where you can mirror a half and instance it, which means everything you do into one side happens to the other as well. I have mirrored and turned on symettry for a object. but when i select a poly on one half and knife it, it doesn't happen to the poly on the other half, even though it appears to be selected. Here's a picture to help you understand:
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/bullet21/200492621949_prob.jpg[/…]

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