Hi KEITH,

Here's just an advice about some render engines I know.

If you've got the horse power, like a quad-core or better, unbiased render engines like fry or maxwell are interesting.

They are really easy to understand, more over if you know a little bit how photography works. Even the shaders are really simple to get,
probably not so easy to tweak because of the rendertime, but just with basic presets you can archive really incredible rendering.
Of course I'm only talking about stills image, as you need something like 5-20 hours of cooking for a final frame. (a simple image like the little truck
takes only 5-10 min don't worry :)).

Modo has also a really good engine, they are maybe 10 parameters to tweak in fact for the render itself, but the interface take some times to understand.
Same for the shading system which is not very usual (some kind of photoshop layers system).

Actually my favorite render tool when it's about productivity is still this good old fprime for lightwave. They are no surprises and you have a realtime feedback.
Forget hyper realism of course ... and you need to get lightwave workflow a little bit.
It seems that vray is coming with a realtime render too, curious to see it in action !

Of course it's just I personnal taste here =)

>>I thought I'd 'Pimp my Ride' slightly modified.

Hehe, I love your personal touch!
Dan

I know its mad but I'm going to have a go at this:

http://www.the-blueprints.com/index.php?blueprints/motorcycles/triumph/24435/view/triumph_bonneville_t100_2008/

I'll post back the result in about 6 months.
Keith

Hi Keith,

> Michael I hope you don't mind me using your Moi forum
> to talk about rendering.

Sure, it's totally fine, in fact I'd encourage it.

Certainly a lot of people want to render models after they are done constructing them. It is very much on topic to discuss what you want to do with the model data that you produce using MoI.

- Michael

Hi Danny,

> Michael is there an easier way to make 'text' follow a curve ?

Nope, sorry - currently there isn't.

- Michael

A difficult way?

Hi JTB,

> A difficult way?

The difficult way is just to place each character into position using Transform commands like Move and Rotate.

- Michael

Keith
Carrara is a fine texturing and rendering app. And, especially, one of the easiest to learn.
I suggest you not even consider another general 3D app untill you are fully conversant with it and, are aware of the full range of options included in it, and budget price plugins available fot it. (Some real frights when you find out what the "big" apps don't include in the basic price!)

Nice to see the great quick modelling that is being done on this thread.
Brian

More like a boring way, not difficult :)

JTB
Your repeated post!
Is this saying anything---loses me?
Brian

I commented Michael's answer... see above :)

I am confused by your addition **Modeling of Ideas*** in each post. It reads as part of your question/answer sentence but I gather it is not?
Brian

Brian,

I believe that is whats known as a 'signature' and not intended to be part of the message / post if you catch my drift?

;-)

Hi Keith,

>>1. How it looked in Moi with fillet radius set at 0.4
>>2. How it looked when converted to .obj

I am not sure if it related to the fact that MoI will allow an overlap when creating a fillet on a cylinder (that is too big) as I have not seen the problem you mention.
Care is needed when making fillet on a cylinder as it is not allows noticeable when the error I mention does happen.

Simple example:

A cylinder of 3 rad will fillet correctly up to a fillet of R2.99,... a fillet of 3 will fail, but, fillets above that (to a certain size) will be created incorrectly with a surface overlap at the top of the fillet. It is not always obvious, but to show the problem, I have a cylinder of rad 3 with an end fillet of 4:-



- manz

Hi All,

I see quite a few have taken part and put forward their own model, nice, I did build the model, but did not texture (attached image).


Any thoughts on what we should build next? Or should I find something a little more interesting that requires the use of more tools within MoI?


- manz

karter
I did grasp the signature idea eventually---it did not seem to appear as such to me--needs a line space !.

Manz
I have started in MoI to do this Jeep Tutorial.
(It may be a bit difficult though)

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/xsi/jeepmb/index.html

My first try at the Jeep body!
I need to go back to an early point where I made a naughty mistake!
Brian

Hi Brian,
I think this would be too involved for a group project, maybe if we were retired we could tackle the jeep ;-)

I liked the wooden truck because there was one popping up every day.
I think we should ramp up the challenge with something simple again like the truck with geometric shapes but maybe with some freeform shapes, I'm sure it will keep everyone busy and asking for methods to accomplish a certain feature.
Maybe a certain part on the jeep.

What does the rest of the group think ?

Cheers
~Danny~

Yes, the Jeep is pull out hair/go bald working!

Hi Brian,

>>Yes, the Jeep is pull out hair/go bald working!


You should start a new thread, I will join in myself,.. but, a model as you show can be a pain, not only with construction, but also the way you need to build in MoI, as following certain directions can lead to a lot more work due to problems with MoI.
I did forget myself, and started to build the body of the jeep, I constructed (see pic) the outer borders, then shelled, but due to that I am unable to fillet some internal edges to the rads I want, it would need breaking apart and faces rebuilding, so its easier to start again (this I have had to do on a number of models, for various reasons with MoI)



But anyway, if you would like to, start a new thread and lets build the jeep?

- manz