@unknownuser said:

I remember a myth from school that if you were intoxicated while studying, you should be equally intoxicated at the time you take the test in order to achieve your best performance. Is that true?

Yes, it's an accepted learning technique - it's called recall by association. You can only recall the fact you are trying to remember if you are in the same state / environment as you were when you learned it. Hence revising to music is bad, because you can only recall the facts by listening to exactly the same playlist in your exam.

And if you learn drunk...

There's a bunch of tunes I can only play inebriated, because I learnt them at various folk festivals under the influence of lots of nice real ale.

AJ

Great crits - exactly what I needed. Not sure when I'll have time to work on it a bit further, but I'll sort out some of the stuff that was raised. Cheers!
Colleague of mine at work suggested adding rain, which I'll try as well.

Take care all

AJ

Lewis: This is the technique with which I do almost all my pictures - it's the quickest, easiest and most versatile method I've found. Really helps to nail down the perspective lines straight off, and choose the camera's FOV without having to do endless thumbnails... There's a point where any smaller details would take longer to model than they would to paint, and that's the point I stop.

Modelhead: I've only ever seen Painter sold as a separate application, no idea whether it's in the Corel Suite or not. There's some more work like this on my website, if you're interested.

Jeff: No, I guess I don't NEED Sketchup - I could do all the drafting by hand, and lay out all of my vanishing points on a huge bit of paper like I used to do at college. But I figured if the architects could get away with not having to do this, then I could too It's just a tool in a bigger process, it get used as long as it remains useful in the workflow, and then I move on...

Thanks for your comments. If you think it's appropriate to this forum, anyone got any composition/subject/colour/lighting crits? I've been staring at the pic way to long to judge myself, so it would definitely be appreciated.

Take care

AJ

Thanks for your comments guys -

Lewis: PainterX is Corel's latest version of their natural media painting software (i.e. Painter Version 10)

Eric: I often look at cgtalk, but I have yet to post an image. I tried to sign up over the weekend, but it didn't seem to work - I'll try again, and get this image up there. Cheers!

AJ

Here's the SU mesh I started with:

[Image link broken here: http://www.aj-concepts.net/skimmer_v5.jpg]

Credit to the Soapskinbubble plugin for the organic surfaces, that plugin is genius!

Here's a new personal project of mine, finally got to knuckle down for an hour or two this weekend and get it finished.

[image link broken here: http://www.aj-concepts.net/skimmer_v10.jpg]

Started off as a mesh in SU to get perspective, masses and shadows locked down, and then went into PainterX for 'rendering'.

I'll post the SU output when I get to my laptop, so that will follow shortly.

Comments welcome.

AJ

A lot of forums (particularly graphics heavy ones like cgtalk and conceptart.org) require members to host images themselves, and then hotlink them to the site.

Seems to work fine - I've never had any trouble with it. I think there are still some free online image dump sites that allow hotlinking too, so people without access to their own webspace can pitch in too.

This system does occasionally lead to broken image links, but that's because their creator has stopped hosting them - by which point the thread is therefore pretty much dead anyway.

Methinks I might be visiting here a lot.

Cheers!

AJ

Andy:

Even though it's hotlinked, you can get the image to show up as part of your post, instead of just a link. Like this:

(that's [img]...the%20URL...[/img], though you might know that already...)

Doesn't use up any more of Coen's bandwidth than the link, as far as I know - that's Photobucket's problem...

This is a really interesting technique, but the result is a little 'muddy' for my liking - have you been stacking up a bunch of layers on 'multiply'? It's made everything very black - like you've been adding shadow, without any light to go with it. You've been using soft brushes, too by the looks of things, which also kills the detail. Why not try going back over it with some nice hard-edged brushes, and bring out some of the detail again. Might solve both problems, and let you make the light direction more defined. I'd add a glint or two to the towers in the background, as well as bringing up the brightness of the sky - would make the sihlouette easier to read. You could then knock back the colour/contrast/intensity of the background elements - fade them down, so they look like they are receding into the distance.

I really like the idea of building a Sketchup model based on a sketch, rather than the other way round. Think I'll have to give it a go soon, when I get a minute.

Take care

AJ

The 'relighting' technique that was being demonstrated is fairly standard - I guess most architects already do this (or should do?) when rendering 3D visualisations.

The rpf file format export was very clever indeed - shame it locks you down to using just 3DS Max and Combustion (yuck). Never been a big fan of Combustion, but that's kind of a 'given' working in a VFX studio - where it is very much looked down on.

Apple's Shake is now only $500, and is much, much more powerful. I've been using Digital Fusion a lot recently, too, which is great - direct import of fbx and obj meshes, including textures, to your compositing package. Woo!

I can't use a mouse with SU anymore - WACOM tablet only...

Only works with the new intuos3's, though - I've got Alt, Shift, Undo and Redo mapped to the hotkeys on the side of the tablet, and 'zoom' mapped to the touch strip. Middle mouse and right mouse buttons mapped to the two sides of the switch on the pen.

Works a charm.

I've got an A4 one for home, and an A5 wide for traveling, since it fits perfectly into my laptop case. Expensive, but worth every penny.

AJ

I didn't know that - thanks Didier.

Seems a great idea. I just had to re-install SU, and realised (due to a stoopid oversight) that I didn't have any ruby scripts saved.

Hunting for them around the net took quite a time, since I couldn't remember what they were all called...

Be great to have a central 'ruby depository', so I'd be able to fine them again without endless searches.

Some of the really useful ones are found on other people's personal sites (smustard, tensile-structures.de, etc), and I'm guessing they wouldn't be too impressed with a direct link to download their scripts. Smustard sells some of them, after all.

Maybe, if the external site owners were happy, you could link to a site like smustard as a whole, but host a comprehensive list of the available scripts here? That way, the ruby deposity could be a kind of 'one stop shop' for any script you were trying to find, without treading on anyone's toes - external sites get some more publicity, and everyone can find what they're looking for.

Just a thought, anyways.

Take care

AJ