Praying Mantis- 3DS Max WIP-FINISHED 12-11-02

[Dan Huff]

Steve, please check out http://www.wings3d.com/

It really IS an incredible app and the price can NOT be beat(free) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] Not to mention easy to learn,fun to use, and really, really [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img], !!!

Danny Huff

[weldorman]

From what little I have played around with my 3D app this must have taken you many hours to create.Looking forward to the finished rendering.
Mike

[Gary David Bouton]

Hey, Steve...

You appear do be doing jes' fine with XARA and the creation of 3D work.

Hey, folks, check out Steve Newport's link. Awesome stuff!


Gare

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Gary David Bouton]

Hey Danny...

You know, that if the mantis were photographed, the f-stop would have to be wide open (usually) to get exposure on a really small object. Therefore, if you took a snapshot of some grass at eye level and Gaussian blurred it, then put the mantis into the scene, the whole scen would look cool and realistic,

My 2¢, marked down from 4¢,

Gare

[Dan Huff]

Thanks Gare! That is an excellent suggestion I WILL use for the final version! Still have some more tweaking to do, though.... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Danny Huff

[Ross Macintosh]

I'd give you an A+
The mantis looks wonderful. Great job modeling and those textures look unbelievably believable!

Make him a little santa hat and then you'll have a wonderful seasonal card too. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[randyrives]

Wonderful detail model. The texture looks good also.

[Steve Newport]

Even after a lot of reading and exposure to 3D, several things still confuse me! When you make a model, it's just that, like a carved stone. Then you do what? Take it into 3DSmax and put 'bones' in it so it can move? Then the whole other world of muscles (purpose?) and fat, skin, collisions, real world gravity and stuff. I guess I'm just confused as to how this all works? How much of it is human and machine. Say you wanted a spoon to drop, you'd place it in the air and click a button and it would drop? Or you'd have to move it frame by frame.... I feel so dumb! It just seems really sureal! If anyone would be so kind as to explain as much as they could in depth about this field, I would be soo greatful
thanks!

Steve Newport

-My Gallery-

-Featured Artist 2002-

[randyrives]

Steve,

First let me say that your work is 1st Rate!

A 3d model is just that it has 3 dimensions. You can take your model and rotate it and view it from any angle. So once you have your model you can change the point of view without having to redraw it. To me that is the big advantage of 3d. It takes longer to create something in 3d, but once you have it, it is finished and can be used over and over.

Animation varies from package to package. Some 3d packages only model, while others have animation, modelling and rendering. To animate the spoon dropping you would use keyframes. Keyframes are a traditional technique in animation. Your top artist would draw the keyframes and your other artists (tweeners) would draw the remainding images to create the final motion.
Well in 3D animation you create the keyframes and the computer generates the tween images. So to drop the spoon on the floor you would have to position the spoon in several key "poses" and record keyframes (Usally a process of pushing a button). The computer would then calculate the inbetween frames. The hard part is making it look real. When the spoon hits the floor how will it bounce? etc..
Some packages include some dynamic tools that you give a model charateristics such as weight, density etc... and let the computer fiqure out how it will react when the model hits other models.
Now to bones. Again this varies alot from package to package, but bones allow you to deform a model. Lets take a human model. You would add a bone structure that represents a real skeleton makeup. Then you would attach the bones to the model (varies from package to package). Now when you move a finger bone the models finger will move, and if you move it enough the hand will move, then the arm etc...
Setting up your bone structure requires attaching the bones to the part of the model it will infulence and then setting up things such as angle limitations, you wouldn't won't your knee to be able to rotate 360 degrees, you would be one strange dude if your knee rotated that much. Another key feature is to make sure the bones are stucture heiarchy(sp?) represent how things work in real life. If a bone finger is attached to a leg bone I don't think you will get the results you want.

Now that you have your model, your skeleton, and your bone constraints setup you can start animating. Again it is just a matter of setting up your keyframes.

All of this is very hard work but once you have it done you are ready to animate! In some cases you can take your skeleton set-up and drop it onto another similar model and make the process easy.

Hope you can make some sense out of my ramblings.

[Gary David Bouton]

Randy---

You are an INCREDIBLE resource, and to take the time out...I'm giving this thread four stars.

To add, probably unecessarily to your thorough explanation:

3D-101: Primitives (those shapes that cannot be broken down to a simpler shape---spheres, cubes, and a doughnut [a torus] are primitives) are often created by performing a 3D operation in space with a 2D path. Attached are 3 ways you can create objects. As shown, if you push a 2D path through space, you get an extrustion. If you sweep a 2D path through space as one side of it is stationary, you get a pottery wheel sort of shape.

Steve, if you got CorelDRAW, you can create extruded shapes and actually do a world of interesting things by grouping extruded objects.


My Best,
Gare