Nice work MelCat...

Liking the second one...
Frustrating when the cores can't keep up...Are you able to change the camera lens on your program? If you go wide angle or fisheye, it can generate the perspective for you...also blur foreground and distant background can produce depth too.

Good stuff..

Thanks cyb, I'm digging your new banners too. You're definitely honing your skills and distinct style. Keep it up.

I'm using 3ds Max so I don't believe there is a way to swap out the camera lenses but I could be mistaken. I'll look into it and also see if there are options or alternatives to the blur foreground and distant background. Seems like that kinda stuff would be in there somewhere.

Just posted a new one today...
You can blur later in Pshop...easy peasy...

OH yeah, very nice work MelCat!' I'm really loving the direction of the second one, as it has a more centralized focus. Like Guyomech mentioned earlier it would be cool if everyone had like a central object/area as the highlight of the show .. Oh and yeah, I'm definitely down for a SHE when all of this is live, great idea.


If you create a separate camera entity it has all kinds of settings you can play around with, including lenses, depth-of-field, motion blur, etc-..


edit: Orion i can feel it that painting is going to be incredible...

Cyb - I'm digging the hellish aspect of the new banner. Sometimes you gotta go through hell to get to heaven.

Daeda - Sweet, I'll dive deeper into the camera settings this evening and see what I can come up with. I've only touched the surface of Max... There is sooo much to learn.

Really, really excellent work. I'm seeing 3DS Max in my future.

Excellent work everyone, seriously, once all this is stitched together it's gonna be ridiculous. I want this layer to freaking dry so I put the last ones on, gonna use a faster drying white for the last ones before the color glaze. I have not glazed any of my works in this technique yet so I'm slightly nervous of that... so long as i keep em thin and transparent everything should be good. Dry baby dry!

I don't know, guys. I'm not feelin' it like I should, but I guess it might look okay once it's cropped to fit the box.

I'm open to a different direction, but I can't merge the subtools in order to pose his limbs - the file's just too big and my machine won't take it.

Interesting background symbols there. Did you come up with those or are they from something? I like the hieroglyphic feel they have.

No, they're mine. Secret martian cookie recipe.

I think he looks awesome Art. Since your theme is About, would it possible to kinda cock his head like he's questioning something? I know you're limited on the limbs but some kinda puzzled look might add a bit something more to it. Either way, I'm digging it and the background symbols too.

Orion - Looking forward to the paint drying Sir!

The head cock was definitely part of the plan, but I have so many different assets here that posing anything (even a head tilt) without being able to merge them into one movable unit becomes a complete logistical nightmare.

I'll keep trying.

Art- there's so many things that have gone right with this piece... What aspect aren't you feeling? Or is it just not matching the picture in your head?

I do think the gold jewelry is a little too orange, and a bit satiny in finish... Can you add more of a metallic gloss? And a lime green specular halo might be all it needs to balance out the orange.

Glad you kept the pimp jewelry!

His overall look is kind of monumental. My only real concern is that once this is reduced, the facial features might be a bit small. You may want to play around with the size of the head-possibly just in Photoshop-and see if it's possible to push that at all without it starting to look cartoony.

I think the background is really cool (and very uniquely you)... The half-contrast repeated mandalas are a great touch.

The Art-glyphs in the background, along with the fine radial lines in the mandalas, may be too small to translate well once everything is reduced.



MelCat, I haven't had a chance yet to tell you how freaking cool I think your design is! Don't have a favorite version... The molecules are a striking touch with strong visual rhythm... The top one has more of a zen quality to it.

Would love to see what a wide angle lens would do to this (I do most of my rendering in wide angle). I like how it exaggerates the depth of things.

The infinite horizon is breathtaking. Not sure if it's the best approach for the tiny little space we are each working with here...

I'm actually very happy with the model itself, other than the posing issue (which is really pissing me off). It's the most complex one I've done so far, and I felt that it all came together pretty well. I wanted to do three more!

It's the composition that's feeling flat. I hadn't given it any thought prior to starting last night, and I wasn't really getting any thunderbolts of inspiration, so I re-used a few elements from other pieces. It just feels a little lazy, but I'd like to see what it looks like cropped in the panel. Feel free to lop him off at the waist.

I've got to agree. I'm really very impressed with this.

Thank you so much guys. I've been doubting myself and my skills this entire time. It feels really good for my work to be so well received. I'm just glad I haven't let you guys (or myself) down!

Good stuff people, I have earned a new respect for you folks working in 3d. I got an open source 3d program called Blender and it was quite difficult to wrap my head around, spent over an hour watching tutorials and slowly figuring out how to make a basic shape. Mad props!

This page will be beautiful!

Archaic- the 3D learning curve is steep, but once you get past the worst of it you'll have an amazing new toolkit.

Art- may I suggest a background gradient for depth purposes? Also try making the runes biggest toward the top, getting smaller and fainter toward the bottom... Would work nicely with a gradient.

Art..
I was wondering if your posing issue couldn't be helped by passing the file over to someone with a fast machine?
I don't see this a 'cheating' since this is a collaboration...
People send stuff off to Render Farms all the time..

Perhaps using someone else's machine to sort out the pose for you (with your guidance) and then send back the file for you to finish.

I would certainly offer to do it but my machine struggles with 3D due it's crappy GPU...perhaps Daeda has a capable unit, since he's up there on the Max and coding etc. (Zbrush is available free to those who know where to look...if not I have a copy)

Just a thought. What do you think?

Thats a good idea. I would really like to see that Ganesha in a sitting/meditating pose, similar to the statue cyb posted earlier, cos then it would also fit better for the screen. So if Art's computer is struggling with that and there's no other way to do it, then yeah I could give it a try. I mean I'm not sure if my computer is any better since it freezes alot with >200mb PSD files with hundreds of layers, but I think thats just an extreme case because it does run modern games with 3dvision pretty smoothly.