zandoriastudios

If giving up your "free" time to work on a project with someone more experienced doesn't have any merit with you, then apprenticeship is NOT something you should consider. If I am going to tutor someone and help them on their project, then it is not an apprentice program, it is a tutoring program. In that case, it would have to involve a tuition. Just as if you wanted to take piano lessons, you wouldn't expect the teacher to just show up at your house and teach you out of a sense of community spirit. We are talking about something more involved than just answering a few questions on the forum. Here is a different analogy: consider different ways you might learn a martial art. You might just join a class, pay your dues, show up for class, and then go home... You might instead join a more traditional dojo, participate in class, do a few chores around the place after class, showing a little commitment. You might find that the sensei will give you a little more help. You might find that you learn at a faster pace. The relationship of sensei to student is a mutual commitment, it builds a stronger dojo. The members of the dojo aren't just strangers showing up for a class--they are part of a community. There is loyalty and friendship that goes beyond just taking a class... If I were to take on the task of mentoring an apprentice, I would feel that it would be my responsibility to help that person learn what craft I have to teach. What they would get out of it would depend on how much effort they are willing to put into learning what I could teach... They aren't paying for tutelage. Instead they ARE doing a type of internship. They might be working on commercial projects--which they would not get the opportunity to work on without some experience otherwise. They would have their name in the credits, and would have work that could be shown on their demo reel. In addition, that apprentice may have their own projects that they need help and advice on. This person has already shown loyalty and dedication in the relationship of master and apprentice, and If I can help them achieve their own dreams then I will. As they go off on their own as "journeymen" their former master will feel a sense of pride in their former student... That kind of relationship is not really something that is going to work with a bunch of ad hoc rules defined by someone else. It is between the master and the apprentice. If the idea of becoming a "humble student" is offensive, then I suggest you are not ready to learn anything....

Smudge, I just stumbled onto this thread, and finished reading it and looking at all the in progress stuff--it is simply amazing!! You are a wonderful artist and it is really inspiring to see you bring your vision to life in A:M. Thank you for sharing!

Wow! Great job Ken! I love the job you did on the texturing too!

Fantastic! I loved the little touches--like where the dad pushes the plate away and the little fish slide on the plate like they are frozen--You guys are simply amazing!

Wallpaper

Noah, Great work!!! Very impressive!

all of that programming stuff is over my head. I just love playing isometric style games (like diablo), and would love to design and make the elements for something like it. The whole "World of Zandoria" is based on a D&D campaign that I ran years ago...I would just like to develop those ideas into something in A:M. Unless I can team up with someone, I'm stuck with "The Games Factory" as the limit of what I could do on my own

COOL!!! This is something that I am interested in doing with A:M too, can you recommend some sites or books that could help me?

Did you set key color to "not set"? If it is excluding the black (default) then that might explain it....

Yes, it will have everything. I will send him the Dwarrowdelf too

....

Well, Everyone can have a chance to do it their way when the next A:M CD comes out. I've told Martin that he can distribute it for the community to play with. I'm not really good at taking constructive criticism...I've been an artist long enough to understand that everyone else has their "2 cents" on how they would have done it. But if you listen to that pretty soon you find yourself swamped under a mountain of pennies, and all you hear is criticism...and as it crushes your soul, you may wonder what is constructive about it... Any artist who manages to "survive" the helpful critiques of his life and work, has to have developed enough self-esteem or just "attitude" to keep doing it their way, or it eventually crushes them. Because the fact is that blank piece of paper would have stayed blank if they hadn't poured a little of themself onto it. It is a little bit of a vulnerable feeling when you do something creative, because it leaves you a little exposed as you open up to put it on paper. What ever you put down is unique to you, and no one else whould do exactly the same thing. The whole world seems full of "helpful" people, parents, teachers, critics who have suggestions on what you SHOULD have done...but then, they aren't the ones who were creating it. If they had done it, it would have been something else of course... So, that's how I feel about it... I just wanted to make something "cool" in A:M, as a flaming defiant answer to the complainers who whine that somehow A:M is holding them back... But the blank paper is in front of them... In front of all of us.

I'm done

The camera is a little under 6' off of the floor. The pillars are so huge that the Balrog doesn't seem as big without a human sized figure for comparison, but he is 20' tall.

Animation! http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=907

By popular demand... Here is an animation http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=907

The "shortcut to pillar" is exactly what an "instance" is. There is one pillar model, and multiple instances of it arranged in the choreography. Yep. I could have beveled them all, but that would be a lot denser in geometry. It is in dim lighting and they aren't going to be the center of interest anyway. Besides at their scale, the bevels would be hard to notice. yep, still just doing this on the side...

The set is ready! He is coming....drums in the deep....we can't get out..

I had some of this information up on my WIP page, back when I started this thing, but I deleted it last time I updated my website... I modeled it in a couple of days, the head taking the majority of the time. Before modeling I watched the behind the scenes a few times, and I also did a number of pencil studies of from photos of Weta's maquette. I probably have a whole day of sketching and researching (which would be typical). I did all of my UV mapping (and wrote the tutorial webpage)in a day. And I spent another day (if I remember correctly) painting the textures. I uploaded them as I worked on them. I spent a few hours working on the sprites for the first image that I posted. But after rendering an animation, I realized that they needed a lot of work to look realistic. So I totally redid my fire and smoke for this last example, tweaking it over and over, rendering a shaded mode version as a .mov to get a look at the motion of the particles, then reworking the settings. I spent all day before I got what I wanted.... The rigging took a while, even though I used the TSM. And the wings I had to do from scratch...Probably a good part of a day. I did the wings the same day I tweaked my fire settings, somy timeline is a little screwed up... (sorry I didn't take notes) I didn't work on this model full-time, since I had other projects plus a full-time job. but it would be about a week long project done all at once, I guess. So that would make it a $3,000 model, if it were a contract job (just in case someone wants a custom model of similar complexity). The good news is that I've told Martin that he can distribute this model on the next Hash CD--so everyone will get a chance to play with it

Is there anything you can do for the lack of shadows? That is the thing that I find distracting. Maybe if you keyframe the hair brightness to make it darker near the roots to simulate self-shadowing, and put a diffuse map on the skull to make it look like the hair is shadowing the head a little.

Well, I've been doing a little more work with the sprites getting them to look how I want when rendered in an animation. Here is a test I did yesterday: http://www.zandoria.com/firetest8-30-04.mov Now, time to start working on a scene

Thanks Yves! I scaled up the skylight model in the choreography, so that the fall-off radius's were completely outside of the skydome and that solved it.

I'm trying to get the skydome to give a colorcast to the models, as described in Yves's tutorials, but I'm not having any luck... But wow, I love that lighting!!!

Yves, It is really an amazing tour de force! The modeling, skylights, skin shader, hair --You really set the standard for mastery!!! Something about the model seemed familiar, I had seen Mike James's figurines a few years ago but it didn't click until you said(wrote) the name. Thanks for the explanation of the skydome settings, I was having trouble understanding this and I think that will help me Thank you SO VERY VERY MUCH for the skin shader!!!!!! I have been wishing for something like this forever! You are my hero!

I thought I'd try out Yves's skylights for indirect lighting. I really like the look, may make this my default lighting