Archangel35757

I could not find any good reference images for Angela Harry to give me a solid front and side views. I have zero experience with ZBrush... I did just buy 3D-Coat... (but I still have zero sculpting experience...) but I prefer to model a good low poly model first-- which I could then take that into 3D-Coat and try to sculpt more details. But does my upwards shift of her ear in the sideview look natural? Both of these reference images are on her website gallery.

Yes, I noticed that her head was ever so slightly tilted to her right... but when I rotated it to get the inside corners of her eyes to be level... the nose look tilted the other way... nobody is perfectly symmetrical... I do have headshot pics from various angles that I can use to check the 3D progress of the head mesh. Besides, in the front image... I plan to mirror the right side of her over to the left so it will be symmetric.

Ok... so I've decided to use Mandy Amano ( http://www.mandyamano.com/Welcome.html ) as the reference model for the new Hi-def Jan Ors head model... The only issue I'm having in setting up my reference templates is that this is the best side profile picture I could find... and I had to scale it up to match the front view... but I'm having a bit of trouble getting things aligned. It all seems to scale well-- except for the ear. In the above photo, I copied the ear to a new layer and shifted it up to a more reasonable match. What do you guys think? Does it look alright? @@Psyk0Sith & @@DT85 -- any further suggestions?

Yeah, we certainly do need more coders... where would we go to recruit more of them?

@@Xycaleth -- I humbly request rend2 normal mapping be incorporated into the ModView C++ source code so that we can pre-visualize normal mapping on Ghoul2 characters and vehicles (from within ModView)... I suppose the same request could be made for the MD3View C++ source code as well. Pretty Please...

ok... I finally got my replacement PSU from EVGA today... installed... back in business. I've imported the Jan Ors .glm model. I will attempt to make a hi-poly version of her head and use her for my part of the Lip Sync GLA effort.

@@DT85 would need to make a debug build of the rend2.dll to run the debugger in Visual Studio... correct?

@@Xycaleth -- what Shader model version is required to be supported by the graphics card now?

Thanks to @@ensiform (and @@eezstreet) I have a working C++ function that parses the phoneme data UTF-8 text file... now I just need to restructure my code so that it stores the phoneme data (phoneme, startTime, endTime) in a struct rather than vector containers. I've currently been downloading/reading papers on phonemes/visemes/facial expressions, etc. Based on the IPA phonetic alphabet... the phoneme string could actually consist of one or more characters depending upon vowel/consonant accent marks and diacritics. So the next function needs to take the phoneme and map it to a viseme (possibly an enum) which would then put/key a stored viseme facial pose on the animation timeline. Additional facial expressions/emotions would be handled separately.

Aren't surface sprites used in EFX files? Will surface sprites be incorporated in the new renderer, or is there a better replacement?

@@Xycaleth -- is that from Nibbler?

All I'm saying is that it's hard to judge improvements when you're using a shitty shader-- you can only polish a terd so much!

But your glow effect appears to be uniform across the entire lava texture, no? There needs to be something in the Shader that only allows the cracks to glow... IMO.

I think I prefer the rend2 pics... however, they're still missing something-- and it could just be the lava shader itself needs improvement. Lava is quite complicated and has different looks based on many factors (just google images of lava flows). For example: In terms of the glowing-- I think the glowing should emmenate more from the cracks that show deeper into the lava and not so much where the top is cooling and darkened... it certainly is not a uniform effect... which leads me to believe the shader itself should be tweaked. No?

What bolt will you use to put the player in the shark's mouth during a shark attack?

Swimmers beware! Swim at your own peril!

New PSU is on it's way... in the meantime I've been researching and playing with various speech analysis tools. For example: The bottom row shows the phoneme breakdown. These will be exported to a text file and mapped to visemes in the character rig lipsync GUI.

My power supply unit has died on my PC... so my rigging will be delayed until I get a replacement PSU.

I can have the 3dsMax facial rig GUI generate the text files you need (once the user is satisfied with the facial animation & lip-syncing)... but for those that don't have/use 3dsMax it would be nice if the MODView code was modified to incorporate this open source SAPI lip-sync tool (for audio analysis & visemes placement): http://www.annosoft.com/sapi_lipsync/docs/ And also have MODView generate these text files as well.

Getting the bone transforms on a particular frame would also apply to individual facial motions like eyebrow (left, right, or both) raise etc. in addition to an entire premade facial animation (I.e., joy, sadness, anger, etc.) That way people can experiment...

So to get a 50% Anger I think you'd just grab the bone transforms on the frame that equates to 50% of the anger expression animation... wouldn't that be easier/more accurate? Likewise take a frame at some percentage of another facial expression to blend with 50% anger. Getting the bone transforms would also apply to individual facial motions like eyebrow raise etc. in addition to a premade entire facial animation (I.e., joy, sadness, anger, etc.). Edit: I get what you're saying with 100% static expressions...

Well, in your defense he did say Max 2011...

I would recommend that you uninstall Crosswalk 3.3 (since it doesn't work for Max2014) and then download and install the dotXSI exporter for Max 2013 x64... read the instructions.

Every dotXSI exporter I have uploaded includes the necessary XSI or Crosswalk DLL. The readme file also provides installation instructions. You should NOT have to install Crosswalk itself. Read the included instructions again. From your error screenshot above it appears you are trying to install the wrong version of the exporter into 3dsMax 2014. Please confirm the version of 3dsMax you are trying to use.

Did you put the crosswalk DLL (included in the zip file) in your main 3dsMax2011 installation folder (where all the other dll files are located)?