Matt - Puppetman

thanks Phil, good tip. Matt

hi gang, having a ball sculpting with voxels and having no trouble at all making my favourite creations which are gnarled and interesting. It did strike me however, I think I will find it tricky to make things of beauty, such as a classically beautiful body (venus di milo)or child's face. Can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial for something along these lines? thanks Matt

fantastic, thanks guys! Matt

Hi all, sorry to mention the "Z" word, but is there an equivalent to Zbrush's extract tool in 3DC? This works by extracting a subtool of a masked area, you can also give the subtool the depth of your choice. thanks Matt

Hi Ricky, and you're just down the road from us as well (relatively speaking). We're based in Halifax, on a worldwide scale we could practically open the window and shout to each other!!! I'll keep you informed as I progress. speak soon Matt

Hi all, I'm Matt Howarth, UK based animator, film maker and digital fx artist. My day job is running my company Puppetman Productions, but I've recently started moving more into creating and pushing my own ideas and projects. I still have to pay the bills, so the day job will have to stay for the foreseeable future. Have a look at the website www.puppetman.net for some of the stuff I've been responsible for, but it's well overdue an update and the next time it's updated I hope there will be a lot more of my personal stuff up there. 3DC is fantastic and with me being an animator first and foremost, I am keen to get nicely animateable models out of it and into Lightwave (my 3d weapon of choice). Phil Nolan has very kindly been giving me some pointers and when I have it nailed to the ground I will upload my personal learning curve to help anyone else struggling in the same way. cheers Matt

I'm a big fan of cobbling together, for example, when using 3dsmax we used a midi slider deck (usually used by audio professionals) to drive morph targets allowing realtime addition of subtle nuances, worked like a dream. Sounds like I should go for the 3dconnexion kit to be safe in this instance. I'll probably go for the bigger brothers to the navigator, I like the assignable buttons, very useful. cheers Phil (again) Matt

hi all, has anyone had any experience of using a controller with 3DC other than the 3dConnexion models? I like the look of the Belkin Ultra Hi-speed Gaming Nostromo Speedpad, it has a joystick (good for rotating the model) and several assignable buttons. any advice would be gratefully received. cheers Matt

Hi Phil, thanks again for the tips, I'll leave you alone for a bit now and have a play for a while. I'll let you know how I get along, my learning curve might be of use to others. Thanks again Matt

Hi Phil, can I assume that you are the resident Lightwave/3D Coat specialist? If so, any chance you could send me a good example of a LW model and scene to show me what details are best served by geometry, which are deformation maps and which are normal maps etc? I've exported a test or two and I'm struggling to get the same level of detail in LW as I had in 3DC. I've bought the full version today and I haven't felt this giddy about buying a piece of software since the first license of Lightwave I bought over 15 years ago!!! cheers Matt

thanks Greg, I've been offered one and wanted to check it would work before buying. cheers Matt

Hi all, I know that 3DC supports 3d connexion space navigator, but will it support the space explorer or pilot? cheers Matt

thanks Phil, very much appreciated. speak soon Matt

Hi Phil & all, sorry for the triple posting, finger problems. had a go at the retopologising, works a treat, very elegant. I ended up with three models laying on top of each other, but I think I can figure that one out. If I want to set up displacement maps in LW, I assume I export displacement maps from 3DC and assign them manually in the LW scene (nodes)? Do I export them with black as zero, I think that's how LW prefers it? thanks for the assistance cheers Matt

hi Phil, thanks for the reply, I will have a crack at that tomorrow. I will watch the future developments with interest, but I'm pretty much sold and before the trial version expires (in 10 days), I'll be buying the full version. brace yourself for a bombardment of newbie questions. thanks again Matt Merged Posts together -Custodian