I made this, well... because I can.

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Not completely happy with it as I could not get the specularity on the lens to show properly, but my skills at lighting are not that great. *sigh*

It's intended for widescreen 16:9 (1.35 Aspect setting in A:M's Camera) monitors as Windows 7 does NOT correct aspect ratio upon rendering the animation. The second image is an uncorrected 1:1 (1.0 Aspect setting in A:M's Camera)version here as well as the embedded project file (v14.0 only, sorry haven't upgraded yet) link.

EDIT: Here are the videos, as promised. 16:9 and 1:1 respectively.

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My farm is currently rendering the 16:9 .png files for the actual animation patch into Windows 7. When it's done I'll render some full QuickTime videos of the animation and post them here.

NOTE: If you are still using V14.0 as I am, the project saves the FPS rate, but does not load it into A:M for some reason, so I always have to manually change the FPS from the default 30 to 15 for this project when I load it. Also, the Windows 7 animation is limited to 105 frames and repeats frame 61 through 105 after it gets to the end of the animation the first time.

I'll probably change the colors to purple and re-render for my lovely bride's machine.

Enjoy!

I didn't know Win7 could have a boot animation. How does that work?

When you see the "Starting Windows" text and the four orbs converge into a glowing windows logo... that IS the boot animation.

In order to change that animation, you can use a publicly written tool called "Windows 7 Boot Updater" it strips out the stock animation and adds another based on a series of images. I'm using .png images, but you can use .bmp too. I think .jpg images work, but I have not tried them yet.

I've got to see this final animation! You are giving me so many ideas on how I can screw up my pc, haha.

Good to see ya back.

Jody, good to see you back. cool stuff

Okay, I've added the videos... enjoy!

Very cool!

For specularity...Of course have specularity onthe surface ON and set to a size greater than 0, but also aim a light at it that has Specularity ON. You can have a Specular-only light that that doesn't light anything but the highlight.

I completely forgot about Specularity only lights! I'll probably just play around with the one fill light I have. I think it's close, but I'll probably just render the lens to test it... those glows slow things down.

Specularity adds almost no render time, it's a fast trick rather than a realistic calculation.