iangregory

Woops, too late - the 250 came via UPS today. Newegg ships fast! I am really happy with it though! I installed the CUDA 3 drivers and the difference is like night and day from my old card. I'm actually able to sculpt on something with over 18 million tris (using the smaller brushes). I know, that's too many to be practical, but had to try it and it worked GREAT!. Ian

Thanks Geothefaust - nice to have some re-assurance. The card I have now isn't bad, but for 3D Coat it really lags in the vox room.

UPDATE: I went ahead and ordered it. I'm thinking of buying this card. Any thoughts on it, or do you know of a better card at around the same price range or less? Would it help speed up my brush in 3d coat? I don't have a cuda card right now, and sometimes things like 'move' are really slow. Thanks! Here's the card I'm looking at: MSI N250GTS Twin Frozr 1G GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card Here's a link, but it's on the daily deals page, so may not be a good link for long! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127478&cm_sp=DailyDeal-_-14-127-478-_-Product

I think this is the one... http://www.3d-coat.com/big/OT_Pack.3dcpack Then in 3d Coat goto File > Open Extension to install it.

I don't have any for you, but appreciate you posting the links. Thanks!

Beautiful pictures, Mary! Thanks.

Looks great! That's the stuff nightmares are made of.

Thanks Digman! That worked great. Much appreciated.

Hi, I think that B is the hotkey for the color-picker. I didn't think you could assign dual tools to one hotkey (but who knows). Try hovering over the brush tool, hit the END key and define the B key to the brush (you'll probably get a message that the b key is assigned to the color picker). Then, change tools to something else and hit the b key. It should bring up the brush and no color picker. Now, hover over the brush icon and hit the backspace key. Should un-assign b from anything. Hope this helps! Ian

Hi, I've modeled an object that has a raised area. When I retopologised I made the raised area a separate group - though maybe I could just paint on that group. I can't figure out how if that's possible, so my question is: Is it possible to isolate a group of polygons and just paint on them? I have a clean line I need to paint on, and it's an irregular shape, but my topology flows around it nicely. I don't want my paint to 'spill over' on other polys. I find it really hard to get a nice clean, smooth line around it. In Lightwave I would just select the polygons and color them. Anyone?

Looks good Phil, but you shouldn't trap pages in frames like that. You could use 'target=_blank' or something like that with your links. Example: in your WIP area, Medical Animation & Glen Southern, Glen's whole page shows up in a frame on your page. Anyhow, good stuff otherwise! Ian

@michalis Still a pretty good book in it's own way. Some of it is still valid, just the tools have improved by %1000! Got a bunch of old magazines too - they're always fun to look through on a rainy day!

I've gotten a couple of bad passwords from them before. Sometimes it takes a while to get the right one, but so far they've come through. The banshee videos are really good btw! Really wanting the PTex one now, but I think Leigh has to re-work it?

So true Tony! Unfortunately, the older I get the harder it is to keep up - but I try!

The really nice thing about living in these times is that the saying "If you can imagine it, you can create it" is actually true. I doubt there will ever be a one-program-does-all solution, but isn't it fantastic that we have access to programs that do indeed work so well together! Blender, Max, Maya, Modo, Lightwave etc. for poly modeling and animation, Zbrush, 3d Coat, Sculptris for that beautiful clay like feel, for retopo and painting. And not to forget others like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects etc! (If I've not mentioned your favorite prog. please forgive me - but you get the idea, right?) This morning I was flipping through an old book - "3D Creature Workshop" by the oft hated, but still, sometimes brilliant Bill Fleming. I bought this book in 1999. At the time, I was AMAZED at the work! Wow, if I could create things like that! But today's reality is that the images and models in the book, by today's standards are pedestrian to say the least. Like the old 8-bit atari graphics compared to today's video games. More importantly though, at the time the book came out there were very few really good, affordable solutions for creating such amazing characters. How lucky we are now! In just 11 years, things have exploded - as artists we are really living in renaissance times right now! I know I'm rambling, but I'm old so you have to forgive me My point is, that we should all count our blessings. Let's go create something fantastic - even if it's only our wife/husband or kids who say 'that's great!'. If I'm still around, I can't wait to see what today's kids/grandkids will be able to create. Thanks for listening, friends. Ian