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As any real snakes kicked out would have been Adders this is what they would look like http://homepage.ntlworld.com/highexplosive/SARG/08000-TheAnimals/SpeciesPages/NativeAnimals/Reptiles/Adder/Adder.html
However as the use of the word snakes was an euphemism for Druids, you could make them more blue in colour as blue was used a lot by druids.
thanks evil, nice collar :) you going to drape that ? or push the verticies ?
Push and pull the vets. I have C7.2 Pro, so no Bullet love for me.
As any real snakes kicked out would have been Adders this is what they would look like http://homepage.ntlworld.com/highexplosive/SARG/08000-TheAnimals/SpeciesPages/NativeAnimals/Reptiles/Adder/Adder.html
However as the use of the word snakes was an euphemism for Druids, you could make them more blue in colour as blue was used a lot by druids.
If they're Druid snakes, don't forget the stereotypical beard. :lol:
I would post results on my scene, but I'm having a hard time getting my lighting. Well, actually, I'm having a hard time getting the lighting I want on my clouds. There are a lot. I want my Ra character riding in a chariot through a darkened tunnel of clouds with his sun staff held high. I also want massive pillars peaking through or partially concealed by the clouds. The trick is finding the level of opacity, density and shadow level for the clouds and still have them look like clouds and not smoke.
A not-so-quick test render.
There is still lots to do, such as improve lighting, add horses, etc. I may try making the horse hooves look like they are flaming with the use of particle emitters. We'll see if I have the time.
This may be one of those images that will be best served by rendering in "layers" and compositing together later.
Nice render here Head Wax, yes Dart's environment sure suits your composition real good, waiting to see what you'll do with the snakes.
I see another smoking hot E.P. render is cooking.....
I'm sure you can see where this is going!
Take a disc, add one of PhilW's ocean textures. Throw in a terrain or three....
(I do *so* wish that terrains didn't have to be rectangular!)
They don't have to be if you add another terrain layer to your shader and a circular distribution map, then use an alpha channel....
EP: Now there's a thought.
Last WIP for tonight
I'm wearing my "death speaks in CAPITAL LETTERS" t-shirt as I read this. :)
Oh, man! I may have been bitten by a bug!
It seems my file is stuck at 20.6% during a save operation. Non-compressed. My scene is still relatively light on geometry, as I have been working on clouds, so I didn't get to the point where I would normally save by version numbers. D'oh!
I'll let it go for awhile and see what happens....
Damn! I notice my viewport in the Assembly room even went blank! I have a bad feeling about this.... :shut:
Neat idea! I actually toyed around with the turtle concept myself, but I didn't have a good looking turtle.
Well, it's been awhile, disk activity and Carrara's lack of processor use tells me that the save is FUBARed. Time to force-quit and see if I lost my scene. Fortunately, my assets were saved to the browser with the exception of my clouds and atmosphere.
Neat idea! I actually toyed around with the turtle concept myself, but I didn't have a good looking turtle.
I'm just using the Daz sea turtle - $1.99 to PC Club members. And the elephant is the African elephant by Daz/Debra Ross ($6.97)
I'm just using the Daz sea turtle - $1.99 to PC Club members. And the elephant is the African elephant by Daz/Debra Ross ($6.97)
I have the elephant, but not the turtle.
With the elephants, is that an asian inspired myth?
Some native American cultures have a similar myth, as well as some Pacific Island cultures if I remember correctly. I think in the native American myth, the earth is actually on the shell, and not on a disk.
The myth is reputedly Hindu, at least back as far as the 16th century.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/PSM_V10_D562_The_hindoo_earth.jpg
"A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!" - Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
And of course the myth has been popularised most recently in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
I'm really terrible at participating because I hate showing any thing except a final render, especially not the fudge-ups. But I'm consciously working to change that.
So I've made the cape of my character a softbody, introduced a directional force, and I've got dynamic hair ready to drape too, I want a natural 'in very slight wind' look for both the hair and the cape, so I'm doing a small (around 3 and half seconds) animation at 24 fps to make the hair and cape settle into position that I like.
Oh by the way, the cape has morphs in it, so I could just as easily have played with parameters tabs to make it swing slightly out like it's in the wind, but Carrara has excellent and quick-simulating clothlike softbody physics that give a much better/realistic look (imo) and it's fun to play with, so I'm going that route instead (and since I need to modify some scene elements anyway...)
So both of these are really basic operations to do, and I figure most everyone who is participating in this thread already knows this stuff, but nevertheless in case someone coming along doesn't know how to do this, here's a step by step with screenshots.
Now bear in mind the cape and the hair operate using different physics simulations, so I can run either the hair simulation or the cloth simulation first. In either case, the simulation 'bakes in' to the cloth/hair, and if I were rendering an animation they would move at the same time in the same direction (because the same directional force is affecting both).
For no particular reason, I'll start with the hair.
Now this hair I'm using is one I built and put on sharecg for free community use to anyone (you can find it here: http://www.sharecg.com/share.php?upload_section_id=1&upload_type_id=5&upload_id=79903) and also uses a primitive low-poly 'chest collider object which is also on sharecg for free use: http://www.sharecg.com/share.php?upload_section_id=1&upload_type_id=5&upload_id=79904 (the chest collider is vaguely female in shape but easily made male by a quick soft-select modeling to flatten the 'breast' areas, not that it much matters).
First up, I uncheck 'collide with objects' and 'collide with hairs' on every single object in my scene (which isn't many) in the effects tab of each object after selecting the 'actor' for each object in the instance tray. The idea behind this is I only want my hair colliding with the low poly objects that are part of the hair and the chest collider.
I drop my hair (and the low-poly genesis head object I grew it on - which I took from the low poly genesis envelop that Diomede generously donated to the community for use) into the scene on my character's 'head' in the instance tray. Since my character isn't going to be moving in the scene, I really could drop it on any bone, but I'm a creature of habit, so I drop it on the head. Similarly I drop the 'chest collider' low poly object on the chest bone, and I also drop the 'face shield' object (which I got from PhilW's training course, but anyone could easily make something similar) on the head.
Next, since I put this hair on sharecg in a fully draped/down position (unwisely) and since it's important that the hair not be colliding or intersecting with any of the mesh it's going to collide with at the start of the animation (or else it will go bit crazy and jiggle about weirdly) I go into the hair modeling room for a second by selecting the 'hair' in the instance tray and clicking on the modeling wrench at the top of the screen. I use the straighten tool (see pic 1 below) to pull the hairs up and away from the head, again not wanting the hair to start the simulation already colliding or intersecting through any of the mesh before we start.
In pic 2, shows the hair up and pulled away from the mesh, same with pic 3, but in the assembly room. Looks pretty weird and frightening at this stage, but it's actually just where I want it - which is not yet colliding with any of the low-poly objects it's going to collide against when I run the hair simulation.
Pic4 is just to make the head envelope, face shield, and chest collider objects visible, but they aren't terrible visible, so I made the rest of the character invisible just to show these 3 objects, as these are the only objects the hair is going to collide against in the simulation, which you can see fairly clearly in Pic5
The 3 low poly objects (head, face shield, and chest collider) are the only things other than the hair itself that have the 'collide with objects' and 'collide with hairs' checked in the effects tab.
Pic 1 below shows the scene setup with the directional force, as does Pic 2 from a different angle. The directional force is pretty weak, set to pulse between a strength of 0.0 and 0.5 every second of the animation, so I can get a range of the hair drifting to the side just the way I want (to match with the cloak simulation which will be next up)
I select the 'hair' in the instance tab (Pic3) then in the General tab for the hair under the hair simulations tab I simply click on 'simulate' and watch it rip through the simulation pretty quickly. I run the animation to see if I like it and it looks natural, and I do, so moving on to the cape next.
Pic 4 is just a panned out shot of the scene setup, so camera, directional force, character are all visible, along with the lighting I'm using. I'm using Rashad's excellent method of replicating bulb lights (you can see the 12 to the right in a square) They are each low intensity (about 8%) and also I've got the infinite light on from over head at a lowered intensity, plus the single bulb light that all others are replicated which is over on the left side. I really like this method (again credit to Rashad) as it gives very good detail when animating without the exorbitant render times of full GI rendering. But it's all neither here nor there, since I'm just doing simulations at this point, still I thought I would mention it.
Next up is to make the cloak dynamic.
First though, I have to go to the 'actor' of the cloak in the instances tab, and in it's effects tab I need to check 'collide with objects' again (otherwise the directional force I'm using for wind will pass right through the cloak with no effect :) )
Also I went and unchecked 'collide with objects' and 'collide with hair' on the hair, the low poly head envelope, the chest collider, and the face shield. Actually since I'm not using the face shield or the chest collider anymore, I could have just deleted them from the scene, but oh well. Can't very well delete the hair or the low poly head envelope the hair is growing from, since I need to keep it for the shot :)
Ok now that that's done, time to turn the cloak from a conforming figure to a softbody cloth that can sway in the wind, and this is surprisingly easy to do.
First, I select the 'Actor' of the cloak (see Pic 1 below) and then on it's 'Modifiers' tab I click the + and go down to 'physics' to add a sofbody modifier and then once it's added I click + (and go down to 'phyics' option again) to add a soft attach modifier.
Now the modifier tab looks like Pic2 below.
In the soft body section, there's a whole host of parameters you can change to get different behavior from softbodies and I could play with the a bit to turn the cape into something like paper or jello or cloth. I didn't know what would work well to make a cloth like effect, so I left everything at the default except I checked 'Self Collision' as I didn't want the cape falling through itself as it swayed. Turns out I liked it when I ran the animation, but I could have changed parameters around if I'd wanted to, to get a better cloth effect if things had been too stiff or whatever.
Notice in the 'Soft Attach' section on the bottom of the pic there are two options. First I select on 'Select Tree' and it pops up a new window (see Pic 3)
In the new window, I select whatever bone in Genesis's body I want the cape to be 'stuck' to and move with. As Genesis will not be moving in my scene at all, any bone would have done, but I selected 'chest' since the cape is mostly strapped to the chest.
Next I selected the 'Edit' option in the soft body attach section.
Now it switches the assembly room a little bit to give some more tools at the top of the screen and also lights up every vertice in the cape in white. I use the select tool to select whatever vertices that are part of the cape that I want to be fixed in place on the chest bone, and it lights them up in red as I do so. Pic 4 and Pic 5 show what I selected. These are the parts of the cape that essentially won't move, as they are now going to be 'soft attached' to the chest bone of Genesis, and since the Genesis chest isn't going to be moving, then these red parts of the cape that I selected aren't going to move or sway either.
Now in the upper left of the screen one of the new tool icons that appeared while I was working to select the vertices I was soft attaching says 'Validate' when I scroll over it with the mouse (Pic1). I simply click on that and voila my cape is now a soft body that is attached at the sections I wanted it attached, and is soft and ready to sway by the scene forces everywhere else. After I click on 'Validate' it brings me back to the regular assembly room view, and the regular tools at the top that I expect to see there.
Yup, back in the main assembly room again, as expected, and ready to simulate, see Pic2.
Now I'm ready to do my physics simulation to make the cape sway. In the top left there's a funny little icon that says 'Physics' when you hover the mouse over it. I click it and the simulation begins. See Pic 3
A couple minutes later (the simulation runs very fast here since the cape isn't colliding with anything in the scene except for the directional force) and I've now got my cloth sim 'baked in' to the cape. As I'm running it I can see that the hair sim which I did previously is working just fine, and the hair is swaying naturally out with the 'wind', reacting in similar manner to the cape. (see Pic 4).
Now I take my whole Michael 5 character (clothes hair and all, which are grouped as one object), as one object and save him to my objects tab where I can re-use him in the actual scene I'll set up next, and he'll have the hair and cloth sim baked in and ready go when I import him into the full scene for rendering.
Next, got to build that scene... :)
thanks Jon, really appreciate that and the care you took re process.I followed your steps with my cloak and it is having nuclear fusion ! Back to the drawing board>
Pam, thanks for the link on the adders :) I will go with the metaphor of the devil ;)
you're on fire evil :)
Nice render here Head Wax, yes Dart's environment sure suits your composition real good, waiting to see what you'll do with the snakes.
thanks Dada ;)
Tim-A love this myth, but I'm happy to believe that it's no myth !
Whew!
I think you've been taking lessons in Dart-speak or Rashad-talk! ;-)
Seriously though, I will read through it tomorrow as I try and rebuild my scene. Thank you for taking the time to post such detailed descriptions of your process and illustrating it with screenshots.
(Ahem! Dart, are you taking notes?) ;-P
Thanks also for sharing your incomplete work with us. I know from what you've said that you are uncomfortable doing it. For what it's worth, it looks like you're well on your way to a great entry!
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.
I really appreciate your willingness to share your WIPs and the care you take to explain each step. I learned a lot .
Thank you.
Sorry, EP. Bad month. Hope you didn't lose too much. Looked like a great scene.
I thought the world was inside a one eyed giant named Macomber. Great scene setup. Especially like the ringed clouds.
This WIP is already better than anything I could do and I hope you consider making it your final entry even though you wanted to make changes.