Here's the landscape for Jinxland so far. It isn't much to look at yet, but its getting there.

love the landscape!

Nice! Is it all one model? Will it be easy to animate on?

This one is for the aerial view from the balloon when they first arrive.
When I figure out what all goes where, I think I'll create a separate set for the village - at least the part(s) where the action happens.

Here's another look at Jinxland.
Spleen, I only have your observatory, so that's the only one of your's I used.
I think the roads are pretty much in their final places, but I still have a bit of work to do to make it easy(er) to assemble Jinxland and the Village - and to actually animate in them.

We still need a detailed flower stand of some sort for SC, Pon and Trot to hide behind when the guards pass.
We also need at least one merchant stall for SC and Trot to stop at when they first pass through the village.

That looks very good!
I will zip up the lighthouse Tuesday sometime and send it.

Jinxland is looking fine! Put in proxies for now and I'll get to these at some stage.

I am sure I sent my lighthouse in.
Did you recieve it Holmes?

Hey Spleen. I was out of town for about a week and I just spent all day figuring out what I was doing on SO before I left
I don't see the lighthouse anywhere in svn. Where did you send it?

I cant do SVN, I forget why.
I downloaded the progs.
I either posted it here or emailed it.
I know I put it somewhere though.
I remember doing it.
Bet it got lost during forum going downs.

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment[atta
chment=45002:tut1.jpg]
Click to view attachment

Thanks Spleen. Got it.

Hey Spleen,

Your model is asking for a material called Willow Pattern 1 MR.mat. Could you upload that?
Also, please correct the normals and remove the internal patches on the twisty part of the tower.
In order to remove internal patches, just delete any splines in the interior of a shape that causes valid patches to be created inside the shape. (Sometimes you might have to add CPs and/or splines to keep valid patches from being formed inside a shape).

Thanks!

right now my puter is doing a 20 hour render.
might be tomorrow sometime before I can get to it.

Wow, that's impressive so far!

Did TheSpleen ever get Willow Pattern 1 MR.mat to HomeSlice?

Never got the revised lighthouse. I think Spleen got distracted. But that's OK, the only things the village really need right now are more merchant tents/stalls and an outdoor flower shop.

I'm sorry.
I just searched and cannot find that texture anywhere

I don't know what you had in mind, Holmes, for merchant stalls. I'm not sure what a merchant stall would look like in Jinxland, but I had to take a break from my Nouveau imagery (my eyes were beginning to cross) and thought I'd give it a stab. Extremely handsome action figure not necessarily included. If the stand model would be useful I'll gladly donate it, but don't feel obligated to use it. It was a pleasant distraction.

Hey Myron, that looks great!
Would you please do me a HUGE favor?

* Put that all into a single model - barrels and all. (no need to include the incredibly handsome action figure)
* Flip normals as needed so all the normals are facing the right way.
( To see which way your normals are pointing:
Either hit [Shift 1] OR
Go to Tools > Options > Rendering. Check the "Advanced" box. For "Quality", choose "Shaded". For "Show Back Facing Polys", choose "OFF".
The first way adds little yellow spikes to each patch to show normal direction. The second way makes the back side of the patch invisible and only the
front of the patch is visible.
To flip a patch, select the Patch Mode tool and click on the patch. Then hit [F] on the keyboard to flip the patch. )

Make a folder named "Merchant Stall 2"
In "Merchant Stall 2" make another folder named "images".
Place all the images used inside the "images" folder.
Save the model to the "Merchant Stall 2" folder and update the model so it is referencing the images in the "images" folder.
Zip up the "Merchant Stall 2" folder and email me the zip file.
That would save me a lot of work.

Thanks Myron.

Nice stall Myron - love the roof line detail



Ms. Curious here...I've usually not paid attention to face normals (other than when working with hair, or funny patch rendering) - Can you enlighten me as to what problems I might run into for my slovenly ways?

Is it a "materials" anomaly/problem mainly?

It's possible you may never have a problem rendering scenes with backward facing normals, but I have had a few issues.

This list is not a "this is always a problem" kind of thing. It's more of a "these are some of the issues I have had in the past".

* If a model has porcelain applied, backward facing normals sometimes render weird on some frames.
* backward facing normals sometimes render strange with 5-pt patches and hooks on some frames.
* if a scene has forces or particles, they sometimes behave strange with backward facing normals.
* if a scene uses Newton Physics, proper normal direction seems to be important in many instances.
* If there are dynamic constraints in a scene, they sometimes do strange things when they encounter backward facing normals (in addition to the normally strange things dynamic constraints sometimes do)
* cloth and fluids seem to behave better with correctly facing normals.

Because of the above potential issues, I always have "Show Backfacing Normals" OFF so I can keep tabs on normal direction,
sooooo .... many times when animating, it is difficult to accurately position a character or object relative to another character or object when in shaded mode when there are backward facing normals.

If you know for certain that your model will never be in a situation where there are particles, sprites, fluids, Newton Physics, cloth, dynamic constraints, or porcelain, I guess you are safe.

that material comes with Hash
C:\Program Files (x86)\Hash Inc\V15.0\Data\Materials\Misc

Thanks for the reply. Nice summary. I was aware of the other situations - but the above is a new one on me. Interesting.

Oooooo...I just tremble with anticipation of seeing Jinxland blown apart, set on fire, bombarded with ripe watermelons launched from Stian's trebuchet, all after the flood that, of course, ensues after the dam gets engulfed in lava & oozey mud, because the volcano was a direct hit by Johnl3d's psychedelic cometball.

(ever since I learned that Bruce McWedgeeguyMon likes reading about ooze - I make a point to include the word, if at all possible - relevant or not)

That one is only a problem if you have "Show Back Facing Polys" turned Off.




That sounds freakin' awesome. Would love to try that on Jinxland some day. And don't forget the castle!
Of course, if all the normals on all the models are already facing the correct way, that is a bunch of work that doesn't have to be done when we want to try the fun stuff!

Holmes

Where is the button for back facing normals off?

Steve

"Show Back Facing Polys = on/off" is under Tools/Options/Rendering/Shaded

Thank you Nancy. This is one I have looked for in the past and gave up thinking it was not going to be found.

Steve

Holmes, I'm in the process now.

WOW ! I had no idea how many flipped normals I had (waaaaaaay too many) and I even found some internal patches. This has turned into an educational exercise in modeling 201. I would have been embarrassed to have you clean up the mess that was. In some cases it is easier to re-model parts of the model than fix the normals. Part of my problems came from trying to bevel edges, but today before I started to fix things I had inadvertently watched Ken Heslips little tutorial on controling edges with group bias adjustment.

Give me a day or two and I'll send you the model bright and shiny!

Am I right in assuming that modeling with the "Show Back Facing Poly's" off makes it easier to fix the "normals" problem as you go?

There's a correct normals plugin that will try to get all your normals going in the same direction.

Yep, it is much easier to flip normals as you are building a model than it is to flip them after the model is done.

E-Mail Sent.

Do you still need a flower stand model?

Cheers

David

Yep, we still need a flower stand model. Trot, Scarecrow and Pon are standing in the town on the side walk when they see several guards and King Krewl, with Gloria, marching up the street. They duck behind a stand of flowers in order to hide from the approaching guards. The flower stand will probably be like a small shop with a sidewalk display large enough for three figures to hide behind.

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of a Street wheeled Cart/Stall with Umbrella - ie traditional, large old wooden style, big wagon wheels, umbrella for tarp shade with hangers down the sides to hold buckets of fresh cut flowers. ie the type of thing that the vendor has to push around.

That sounds good. As long as three people can hide behind it.

OK - Here's a quick model so far. I imagine I will have wooden boxes with more flowers and pots surrounding it and of course a Tarp roof etc.

Flower Stand WIP

That looks great to me
Oh, please try to use hair sparingly. There is already a ton of hair materials in and around Jinxland.
Thanks!

I wasn't planning on using any hair - maybe some alpha planes/maps for the flowers.

Flower Cart - WIP 2

New version of the cart is up (with Scarecrow Proxy to show effectiveness of hiding). I must say that it is a real pleasure modelling in AM again

Yes, that will work wonderfully. I'm glad you are enjoying it. I think that's important.

Latest version (untextured - but texturing is not my thing) of the Flower Cart. Buckets borrowed from the Props department.

Flower Cart - WIP3

I'll move it into SVN tonight when I get home.

Cheers

Perfect. Thanks David.

Very nice David. I am glad to see you back!!

Steve

Thanks Steve. Cookie cutters don't work well in v15 (I did all the modelling and rendering to date in v14). What is the best means of applying images with alpha planes in v15? I didn't see any obvious options other than cookie cutters in the stamp application options.

Cheers

Hmmm..what do you mean not well? - this was done in 15e (PC) - decal image was applied as cookie cut (it has an alpha channel). The vase thingy also has a different image applied to it as a displacement

What sort of problems are you having? What version of 15 are you using? 15e, 15f, 15g ? Mac? PC?

15g PC version (Windows Vista Home Premium SP2)



Since I added the flowers as their own models and combined them in the chor, I embedded the files and uploaded the .prj file and the images via SVN into the SO repository.

Cheers

David,
Sorry I didn't reply sooner. The "View New Posts" link didn't bring your new post up for me for some reason.
Please assemble the flowers in an Action and save the action in the Flower Cart folder.
Save all your models as separate models in the Flower Cart folder (or a sub-folder if you prefer).
Then delete the prj file.
That way all the animator has to do is drop the action onto the flower cart.

The cart looks great.

Should I also add a constraint to each flower bunch to point to the camera?