Cerbera

Ooh yeah - I like that :) Good job ! CBR

Ditto here. And I positively hate its modelling - takes far too long to do the simplest things and looks almost as awful as Maya in the viewport. Has driven me mad every time I've tried :) CBR

Hi Dave I think the plugin developers themselves did a thread about this just the other day ! The general consensus there was that yes, this is better than the default boole tools because it sets up bevels for you right away. But as you say, it is based on the original boole tool, and therefore is unsuitable for use with subdivision. Personally I wouldn't pay $50 for a boolean plugin unless it did work with subdiv, and created sensible all-quad topology like Max's ProBoolean. The developer says they are working on this, despite it being a furiously difficult thing to achieve apparently :) My own instinct is that this is OK for small-scale nernie action (ie you only need a little bit of that), but you wouldn't want to be doing too many of these in a single scene before the limitations of booles catch up with you and your scene slows to a crawl while it tries to live-calculate all the booles in the scene. I think that would make it impractical if you were greebling a Star Destroyer for example... There are a great many tools out there for greebling, not least of them the extrudifier in MAXON labs, PolyGnome, being developed by cafe member @C4DS, and this incredible JS generator for making instant 8K displacement maps. Speaking as someone who values quality topology, I would have to say that all these are preferable to doing nernies with boole-based methodology, but it can't hurt to also have that method in your list of go-to options for when topology doesn't matter... CBR

Alas no. You have to set them up individually in each layout I'm afraid... CBR

Yay - bite marks looking a lot better now, though I do still wonder if there is a case for some SDS edge weighting to get sharper ridges / teeth marks... had a quick little play to see what that looks like... CBR

Just be patient. Someone with the right area of expertise will invariably be along in due course. CBR

Lovely work - textures look awesome ! The only thing I would say is that they are all a little low-contrast for me - I think they'd be more striking with less haze / darker dark bits ! CBR

Excellent - superb modelling work as well ! - IQP GOLD STAR for you :) May I borrow that wireframe for inclusion in my 'flawless victories' gallery over in the Colosseum of Topological Delight club ? CBR

Very cool :) Can we see some wireframes ? CBR

Ah the classic catenary arch :) It's a nice setup - thanks for sharing ! CBR

Thanks Thomas. Couldn't agree with you more about the far distance. Did a bit of editing to get some orange into those clouds, and made the rear mountains sit into the sky better by feathering the alpha slightly... I quite like the lighter blue of the clouds but have dialled it back a little - perhaps not far enough though... So, any better ? Am working on another scene for the series, so I'll pop that up when it's looking half decent... CBR

Sounds good to me, and I'm up for making some models in between other projects... CBR

Oh, you don't get alerted when someone wants to start a club ?!

If you can activate his club, you go for it !! But I bet you're as puny as me in this instance ;)

Yeah, you need admin for that - my moderation powers are insufficient for club approval ! :)

The clubs functionality we have here is quick and easy enough that you could just start one and see who joins ! CBR

I do like that fat little robin :) Textures working very nicely too, although I also liked the matte 'no reflection' versions you had the first time you rendered him... CBR

Indeed - you can never have enough HDRI's - thanks for the share :) CBR

Ha, I noticed that too - no - it's not people - it's a random texture thing that sort of looks like it might be :) I agree with you about the sky behind the far-most mountains, but am also struggling to know what exactly is wrong about it ! Also - good spot there, @digitvisions - you are correct that there is no reflectance at all in this image ! I had convinced myself that the mountain rock didn't need any, but of course the snow does, doesn't it ? :) I do have a fresnel multiplied with my terrain mask in a luminance channel going on - I had hoped that would compensate, but perhaps not, or maybe just not enough... CBR

Ha ha - that's my band's Christmas outing this year too :) And yep - I'll be on maximum helmet scan mode on the day :)

Ha ha - yeah at those prices I treated myself to the face hugger one just for the joy of watching him do it :) CBR

Inspired by that masterful Eric Smit landscaping lecture I re-posted the other day I have been playing around with mountains and terrain masking to see if I can get a vaguely convincing result in the terrain department. I'm going to do a few images in this series, but here's the first. Physical sky (fog, atmosphere, sky, sun channels, no GI) is doing the lighting, but sky later swapped out for photo. 20 minute render. You can tell me if I'm winning or not - happy to hear all suggestions for improvements in the next round... CBR

Hey Cafe Felt like a 1-night modelling challenge, and whenever I'm in one of those moods I always find myself looking at Star Wars Helmets. I've already done DV and stormtrooper helms, but another one high on my list of things to try is the Emperor's Royal Guard. Their helmets don't look that difficult initially, but there are definitely a few 'gotchas' once you get into the details and curves of it. However I emerged largely victorious with 100% quads, a minimal 674 polys and no complex poles. Having thrown a highly enjoyable 4 hours at it so far, this is what I've got... CBR

I quite like tuts from cmiVFX. They tend to be high end, very thorough, and usually show complete processes from start to finish. It's not often you get 70% off anything, but cmiVFX.com are doing just that for another 4 days, or the first 100 orders, whichever is sooner, using the code 4DayHalloween70. https://cmivfx.com So just sharing that in case anyone here would find them useful... CBR

Ah, I thought I could see an ngon in the center of your forward hole, but it may just be angle of the screenshot... if there truly aren't any ngons, then that's a very good thing... Not really. These are the sort of skills you only learn over years of doing it every day, and just can't be covered properly in a forum thread... However I could elaborate a bit more if I get time later today to show you how that mesh should look... If you want to improve your modelling skills, you could do a lot worse than to enter mine and @VECTOR's SDS elite modelling challenges which are running for the rest of this year and beyond (see clubs). CBR