@loewenkatze said: Mike, today Little Francis is 6 feet 2.8 inches tall [attachment=0:1nvc4g1v]<!-- ia0 -->shoe.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1nvc4g1v] AND - I can really see Coen's eyes now... coool. Ahhhh, 'Little Francis', I'd need a stool (to stand on) to look into your eyes BUT Coen would have no problem even today at your 6' 2.8"

Well done igor, sounds like you all had fun and learned a lot. The experience should set you up well for the future.

Looks like there was fun at the Grand hotel also. The Avante crowd was a bit quieter.

OK, that's it. No more posting any of my drawings. Now you know why I don't draw for a living.

I attach a couple texture images that strike me as being kind-a drum like. I don't know who originally made them. I found them on a sharing site years ago. Regards, Ross [image: Jt9j_Mohavel.jpg] [image: DSRy_Navahol.jpg]

if you have too much money left at the end of the month (what, of course, always happens ), I would advice you to buy a gamer mouse. I bought the Logitech MX518 one or thwo years ago. and it is the best mouse I ever bought - very precise, very responsive and comfortable to use for hours! I will probably only discard it, when the era of mouse aided input ends (which hopefully with the technology of iPhone and Microsoft Surface won't be too far away )

you are right alan, same people that did sultans elephant. and no, its more complicated than a giant webcam with no sound. use the link in my first post, you'll see

Guided By Voices http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqmcINr4JKA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_OBGMj2KfE Queens Of The Stone Age http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T94Z1Gy3MfA Aaaaaand ... the irreplacable Mark Lanegan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xerAy1wLVAs

Yes, I got the same impression, Lewis. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out a way of parsing the 3Dxml file to 3ds or whatever before too long. I thought the Convention was excellent...well, apart from cancelling the shuttle buses and causing queues for the taxis that took hours to clear. Thank God for the T. Sorry I missed you too. I haven't been to Boston for years...well before the Big Dig...Wow! but it's changed some. It always amazes me how quickly the thing gets dismantled. They were rolling up the carpets past our booth within 5 minutes of the final whistle. When we went back Sunday morning the entire place looked like the last shot from the first Indiana Jones movie...just a giant hall filled with packing crates.

ok, never mind. i looked at the wikipedia article on ruby and im way out of my depth. i know baisic computer code, but this seems way complicated. you can go ahead and tell me what to do, but i probably wont try. thanks ayways.

hey, thanks guys, taht helped a ton! the push/pull thing hasnt been resolved, but i did eliminate the clipping and heres how: i simply took the geometry i wanted to not clip and copyed it to my clipboard (ctrl + c) and then oppened a new file and ensured that there was no clipping going on. then i saved the file and then pasted the previously copyed geometry and it worked! thanks again for the help.

Well, Justin, it often depends. With a brick wall and light mortar, you would create a negative but when the kmortar is darker, you can leave it like that. Actually to create a really good bumpmap, you need to tweak that image a lot more. What Remus posted, has darker and lighter areas and the wood board bumped with it would seem not to be well sown at the minimum. But basically this is the method. If you wish, you can Google for "Crazy Bump" which is a beta tool for generating and tweaking bumpmaps (and specular maps and displacement maps and all those funky ones not even mentioned here). Also, the folks at the Podium forums have shared a bunch of them as well as have a nice collection of material site links (like we do, too) some of which contains bump and/or specular maps with the texture diffuse maps. Look around a little bit and you will find a lot I bet.

jim, i welcome your intention of creating both a written manual and videos. i find it the right combination to show what an application can do. for what it is worth, the written guide that is available for podium is quite good. i have learned all the basics from it. besides, it goes a little beyond that. @unknownuser said: However, for rendering, you really need the facility to stop the tutorial during the render process and resume afterwards. If I knew how to do this, I would create video tuts for V2, so if anyone has any information in this regard, I would be grateful if you could pass it on. i suggest you post a request for this kind of info as a new topic. i am sure lots of people will give you good tips about video tutorial apps.

my advice for ganeral use of mouse and key board is: keep one hand on the mouse to use for orbiting and tool use, and the other hand on the key board for short cuts and modifyer keys (ie ctrl, alt, shift, ect). i personaly think that having to take your hand off the mouse to press a bunch of keys is slower than just pressing the button on the screen. i dont think the same for often-used tools like the orbit tool. thanks for the idea though! my class today went very soothly! we learned how to make a sphere, advanced select tool uses, and the wonders that are groups and components. some other mantra i have for my students is this: always keep a high vantage point. you shouldnt even be able to see the "sky". this makes modeling much easier. you guys like it?

in the same project i got to make a tennis ball cannon out of PVC pipe (i go to an awsome school). basicly how it works is : i stuff a tennis ball down the 5 foot barrel (about 1 and a half meters), then me and a friend pump like heck on a bike pump to fill a compression tank, then wee stand back and pull a cord wich pulls open a ball valve wich releases the air in the aforementioned tank, producing a loud "phooooom!" and sending the tennis ball an easy 100 feet (30 meters) in the air. it is now my weekend toy. i used SU to design part of it.

Hi igor Wow, you seem to eat, live and breath SU & Podium. Do you ever do anything else but model and render? You got some really good stuff on here. You obviously enjoy it. Are you hoping to get into the 3D biz after your studies? Hope you have lots of fun with your new computer. My new one arrives next week and I can't wait!! Its about time you started using bumpmaps. No excuse now with all your new technology on your desk. And it will really improve your renders. If you haven't already then you ought to post some of your work over on the Podium forum http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/supodiumforum Kev