If you don't know Substance Designer it is a great tool for generating textures: http://www.allegorithmic.com/?PAGE=PRODUCTS.designer

I cleared sharing this promo on the forum with the people at Allegorithmic (it was originally emailed to me) -- here's the details:

Substance Designer is having a promotional sale until February 27th 2011 for a 50% discount (395€)

First you will need to obtain the evaluation version of Designer (http://www.allegorithmic.com/?PAGE=PRODUCTS.evaluation) as they can only provide the discount to people who have an account on thier support site. People interested in the discount should put the code “GETMORESUBSTANCE” in the “Comments” section of the evaluation request form.

Best,
Jason.

Amazing That must have been very hard to build in Sketchup.

Best,
Jason.

I like the new one too great stuff, excellent use of Sketchup's native rendering as well.

Best,
Jason.

That's the one -- author: Blochi, named: Milkyway... There are also some you can buy on the Dosch site but since I can't expect the people watching my videos to go buy the set I used the free one on sIBL archive (which is fantastic, free or not, thanks NASA!)

Best,
Jason.

here's a bit of post.

Best,
Jason.

I found a nice free HDRI of the milky way that I used since My ultimate goal is a space battle I thought it appropriate.

Best,
Jason.

This isn't exactly a worms-eye view because when we get too small the perspective gets a bit crazy (this thing is about 150 ft tall)... but here is a more aggressive camera angle.

Best,
Jason.

Thanks for the feedback -- I've been agonizing over which pose I should use... here's one of the better ones I think. Agree or Disagree?

Best,
Jason.

The most glaring things different with the current version (11) of Painter vs. Photoshop is the lack of 16-bit and 32-bit support.

For drawing and painting I think it is superior in almost every aspect -- for painterly painting styles it is far superior, but for gradient based "coloring" styles it can be too big of an adjustment for somebody comfortable in Photoshop... mostly because you cannot create gradients with transparency (although you do have the standard layer blending modes).

I have a video series geared towards comics creation that uses it extensively for penciling, inking, and coloring: http://www.vtc.com/products/Creating-Modern-Comics-Tutorials.htm

Here's a page I show from start to finish in the videos (Sketchup is used for the background, everything else in Corel Painter)

Best,
Jason.

Hey I didn't see you edit this to include the plugin -- very cool! Thank-you

Best,
Jason.

I know nobody asked me but I'll chime in anyway I like Corel Painter for painting, drawing, and inking... It's used very heavily in concept art for those things and I've used it for comics as well.

Best,
Jason.

I really love the smaller crop of that last one

Best,
Jason.

Cool Pic -- I've heard the JC take before, but my take is it's not what you want that matters but what you do.

Best,
Jason.

Hey! Cool stuff, I like the style -- writing, modelling, graphic design, rendering... the whole enchilada.

Best,
Jason.

Cool, Thank-you Didier

Best,
Jason.

Thanks for the response -- Alternately some sort of near and far plane preview mode where the planes are adjustable would work if that was easier than trying to do it the other way... I'm all about making it as easy as possible

Best,
Jason.

Nope, I don't see anything By Jim either... I think I must have stumbled upon a true request.

Best,
Jason.

I checked TIG's plugins and I don't see anything there -- I'll checks Jim's in a bit.

Best,
Jason.

That would be cool -- I'll keep looking.

Best,
Jason.

Ok, I just read through 32 pages of search results and I don't see what I need so I guess this is a request:

I would like a tool that allows the user to get feedback (a "heads-up" display like this plugin: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=232984#p232984 would be extra cool) as to the distance from the current camera location to any selected object... Ideally I need to get the distance to set up near and far planes for Z-Clip and Z-Buffer.

Best,
Jason.