Work in progress

oh wow this is extremely different to anything weve seen you do before, more please :P

[img]http://www.pantmonger.com/scraps/ill_helga.jpg[/img]

While I?m at it tonight have another one, this one is a gift art. It?s a portrait of a friend of mine from a photo of her. I hope she likes it.

Pantmonger

Big steps forward Pants. Have honestly been finding some of your stuff a little repetetive of late.. Good practice I'm sure, but it's good to see that you're pushing yourself once more.

I'm really liking these, top notch stuff. Keep working that detail down.

one thing I'd like to suggest and see you try, is to make a palette knife brush for the smudge tool -- a horizontal line with a few breaks of imperfection in it (the knifes edge), set it up to be as fluid and smooth as possible, and angle set to directional.

The reason I'd like to see you try this is as a tool for refinement which mimicks that of classical painting. Instead of blending into things, the palette knife lets you move mass of paint around at different stages of its drying phase, and "scratch" paint into contextual directions... I think that would work quite well to retain your lines and stroke work, but allow you to refine at any chosen level for any area of the work (eg, breaking up the hair line, and scratching suggested layering into the hairs highlight).
anyways, just a suggestion really, I thought it may be something you'd be interested in trying out if you hadn't already [:)]

Sorceror Bob: Thanks, its easy to fall in to repetition even with learning exercises. I keep trying to pull myself up and think about where I am going. I so want to apprentice myself out to an old master *sigh* I don?t suppose you can do that anymore oh for the renaissance.

J.I.Styles: Thanks its definitely something I?ll have a stab at, it sounds interesting. Thanks for the directions.

Pantmonger

cool nice goin pants.

I really enjoy the first one. best ive seen from you.

Hi Makk

I'v spotted a few little things that may be issues, but otherwise it's a fairly clean mesh

# The bottom corners of the pockets on his shorts connect to the middle of another polygon which may look a bit odd when animated

# add an extra definition line across the front of his shirt sleeves to help smoothen things out

#You could remove the string from the pendant and texture it instead, unless it's going to be animated

#If the strap which holds his hat in place is paper thin you could weld the end of the first polygon down to the side of his head and replace the rest with textures

#Some of the polygon strips which your using to define the beard could be moved up slightly around the edge of the mouth, to help with blending

It?s nitpicking to the extreme, but I cant see anything else that needs improvement [:)]

Lovely work!

Djesnx, yeah his chest could use some more definition. Didnt know about the corners of the pockets cuasing some probs when animating, so thanks.
Thanks Kezza

Nice work Makk the only crits I could find was in the sleeve and the ear where it looks like there are 5 verts in some spots.

looking good.:)

For a deathmatch street-fighter he has puny girl hands! :P
Initially I thought it was a funny sort of concept, but upon reflection he would fit right into a 'Mad Max Thunderdome' sort of scene really well. Thanks for posting the texture map too, I'm looking at them through new eyes since the last 3d comp.

hmmm...yeah his hands are quite small, somthiung that can be fixed easily enough.
As for the concept, I dont think its that well design as its a bit of a mish mash. Like I wasnt too sure what I would do with the face mask. I should have concepted him out more before I began. Lesson learnt!!
Texture work too is pretty shoddy, especially the boots area.

At the same time there?s definitely some neat things about him. I think the anatomy generally looks pretty good. Possibly some of the smaller scratches on his skin might look a little too much like you would expect scratches to look on metal.

Overall it?s a pretty good job ? I could defiantly imagine him in a Mad Max type environment.

Are you planning on learning how to rig and pose? If you use max, character studio makes it a breeze.

Just looking at that id say the boots stand out the worse. They just dont seem to gell with the rest of the concept well. Other then that though its still a pretty cool texture, that mask looks ten times better in the flat then it does on the model. Which i know dosent help when people only see the model but i think this sort of highlights there might be more faults in the model then you can correct with a texture (the small hands, the mask etc).

Just a tip for you when your taking renders to help give a close rendition of what your character will look like in game and to accurately reproduce your texture, is to use play around with your antialising settings. I frequently use Catmull-Rom Antialising Filter with no filter maps, leave the super samplers on though for normal maps - You can tweak these settings in the 'renderer' tab in max 7.5.

Give it a crack youll find that exactly as Moony says - the texture looks quite blurry on the model, but on the sheet its actually quite sharp and gritty you should be able to clear alot of that away by changing the default max area filters.

thanks palantir. I had a quick go using a biped for rigging (is this character studio? or is that something like an add-on or plugin?) but couldnt figure out how to tweak the skeletion so it would align properly inside the mehs.
Moonunit, yeah for sure. I think the boots are a result of not planning out the concept before starting!
Haz, you posted when I was replying! Thanks for tip, I gonna try it out :)

Edit: just tried it, looking heaps better-
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/dmfighter_final2_new.jpg[/i…]

Hey Makk, when using CS for rigging and you want to edit the skeleton you have to enter figure mode first by selecting the biped, going to the motion panel, then clicking the figure mode button which should be a big button with a figure on it (suprise!). Then you go about scaling and moving your skeleton to fit your mesh and once that's finished exit figure mode by clicking the button again. Then of course you've got to move onto skinning...

? which is reasonably easy with the physique modifier. Once you?ve adjusted the biped to approximate the proportions of your mesh, add the Physique modifier to the mesh, then click on ?Attach to Node? which is the button of a figure with a + symbol on it, then pick Bip01, then in the initialise window that opens just leave the settings as default to begin with and click the initialise button.

So now you can grab any part of the biped and move it, and if all goes well the mesh will move with it. But then, inevitably, you?ll see the biped is leaving some verts behind and distorting the mesh.

So just undo the movement of the biped, select the mesh and under Physique select envelope (you might find this part easier with transparency turned on, by hitting Alt x). Now it?s just a matter of scaling and positioning the envelopes until it accurately grabs what it?s supposed to. This is basically a trial and error learning process like all things art, but with a little practice it?s not all that hard, and you?ll be setting up biped rigs in no time flat.

Of course then you?ve got to move onto posing and eventually animating?

Looks to me like the arms are a bit too short and the feet are too narrow. The texturing looks good on the unwrap but not that great on the model, it looks desaturated and flat, but since I ain't that great with texturing I'm not sure how you would go about fixing it.

cheers.

Did some tweaking...
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/dmfighter_final3_tweaked.jp…]
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rowanfamily/dmfighter_face.jpg[/img]
Enlarged the ends of his hands, made his traps bigger and rounded and enlarged the sole of the boots. Also change the texture overlay on the mask and had a go at getting some more colour into the highlights and shadows of his flesh.
Now Im definitly calling this one done, Im so sick of looking at it!!

Thanks for the tips on rigging, I'll have to play around with it

Mask looks a lot better now man, good work

nice goin makk.

Ok, I figured out the main thing that was bugging me. The torso is to long or the legs are too short, that is why he looks a little stumpy.

Hey, I remember this from a while back. When you say quick figure studies do you mean from life or reference or just from the top of your ninja shirted head? One thing I noticed straight away (because its the first thing I always look for) is that you seem to have avoided doing the hands and feet to the same level of detail as the rest of the figure. The rest of the figure looks spot on though, you've got a nice sense of weight going with the pose of the figure.

But yes, add feet. Unless she's re-enacting the end of T2, in which case your next drawing should have her on her knees screaming at the ceiling, about to explode.

the figure was from photo reference - much faster to get good natural pose. I left the hands and feet out simple because they aren't important to the concept. But just for you Azazel I have added some :P
Actually your comment made me think that it might be a good detail to include, especially as I want to use it in my on-line portfolio.

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/johnnewall/images/illustration/concept_creat…]

neat quick paint, looking at the side profile, it looks like she's going to topple forward.

cheers.

Heh cept you forgot image tags, so our bandwidth is saved. Love the "tentacle" shot, reminds me of old horror movies (you know the kind, "that murky thing from the swamp!" "the guy with the tentacles and such from under the bed!" etc.) especially because of the simple patterns and washed purple enviroment. Real nightmare before christmas flash back there :P

I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red. I am the one hiding under your stairs, fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair

the lighting on the dragon's body is good too with the overhead white light and gold reflection. You could make it really really atmospheric by reducing/removing the ambient light on the wings - even to the point where they would be partly in silhouette.

That's another vote for the tenticles too!

Everyone seems to like the tentacles...I wonder how well those hentai artists get paid.

Good work with the lighting, but I think you should try to get your saturation up a little more. You seem to have the same problem as I had, by staying away from bright rich colours.

cheers.

heres another from the concept stage of the comic-
A Hellion Head Hunter.
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/drummonds/hellion.jpg[/img]

I dont have a propper name for this dude yet, but yeah, hope you dig it so far. also check out the sketching process of him in open canvas

heres the link to the [URL=http://members.optusnet.com.au/drummonds/sketchwithpickle.wpe].wpe file so you can have a look at him unfold[/URL]
[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/drummonds/larry.jpg[/IMG]

Larriett. shes preety in a squid way

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/drummonds/larryett.jpg[/IMG]

the idea changes abit while i'm sketchin her, so have a look [URL=http://members.optusnet.com.au/altiquek/squidman.wpe]here, you need opencanvas of this file dosnt work for you[/URL]

good stuff alti - your character design is becoming a lot more "solid" recently, showing exactly what you want to portray instead of leaving too much up to the interpretation of the viewer (which in itself isn't a bad thing either :D )

love the glasses on Larriett, but that front tentacle is positioned rather phallicly if you don't notice it curves back to the side [;)]

I just don't know how you sleep at night with all that going on inside your head. Great imagination.

good job, but just a quick comment - try and focus a little more on environmental interaction and unifying all the elements in the scene -- eg, what the base lighting would be on the ships given the environments structure, what the metal would be reflecting (like hinting more at the brownish ground). Little things like this are easy put in by just asking yourself simple questions, like "would the paint occlude that reflection more than the metal because it's more gloss?"

the other thing I noticed is a little more intangible - there's a few little elements which are confusing for a viewer to 'read' easily. The colours of the engine streaks for example teaches me as a viewer that the two ships in the left distance are the same type even though I can't see the ships themselves, however, that rule is broken by the lower right ships engine tail being yellow as opposed to the other two's blue. This sort of thing isn't anything big but it can confuse a viewer... maybe something to think about.

Heres a large render of bomberman skined and posed, chessey but oh well ;P

http://www.users.on.net/~firefox/bronson/explosive/wip/bomberman.jpg

and An ingame wip shot... looking plain atm

[img]http://www.users.on.net/~firefox/bronson/explosive/wip/bombermaningame…]

Looking pretty cool, keep it up.

who dosent love a bomberman clone :P nice work

looking good LiveWire.

he loves his metroid prime :P looking good

i love all things metroid! [:D]

heh, bloody metroid. looks cool so far.

love it, well done.

Phwoar, exploding drunken zombie!

Very cool. Great style.

Scott.

heh, very nice.

heh is that super zombie BO or is he just getting shot :P looks awesome

Oops, I should have mentioned that the zombie is getting his arm blown off by some wannabe hero. Speaking of heros, it's the Pencil Avenger and his arch nemesis Eraser Head.

Insert Image: [img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Lechy/2005811450_PencilAvenger_0…]

hehe, looks cool.

some awesome stuff there

I just came back from a weekend at thredbo. This is my first time on a snowboard going on the t-bar.

Insert Image: [img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Lechy/20059523446_Thredbo.jpg[/i…]

ha ha haa you gotta love the ole Tbars. As a snowboarder and skier i know how hard it is for boarders to get on those things (especially first time ones) also especially vs skiers. Still the snows a lot of fun :D awesome drawing man, youve got awesome style and seemingly the ability to knock up figures with ease (or maybe you just make it look easy)

hehe great drawing. i had somthing similar happen the first time also.

Great work, no crits here

Yep it will be a while before I'm brave enough to go on the t-bar again, I tried 4 times and stacked it every singe time. With people queing up and watching, I just gave up. I'll try again next season.

Good start Alti, love your nebula's, got a few things to say though. In the first image there's way too many stars, the image seems clogged up with a uniform wash of small stars which isn't really what space is like, there's a whole lot more blackness to it than that. The second one is much more balanced, but I'd recommend changing the colours of a lot of the stars too, they come in all colours, but are quite often red or blue. And also where the nebulas are, the stars behind these should be much dimmer than the ones surrounding them, in fact I'd remove all but the brightest ones.

I'm no expert on starsystems but a few colours on the stars would make it more believable, as for the density of the stars, I suppose it depends how close you are to the center of the galaxy.

planet scapes

[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/altiquek/firstplanetscene.jpg[/img]
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/altiquek/secondpla.jpg[/img]

planatary scapes year 2440 mars city, teraforming for 300 years has made mars a brown colour, it has lost its redness over a few hundered years of rain.

Mars city has over 4 million people calling it home, mostly research tecnitions and terraforming personel.

hope you dig it.

[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/altiquek/population.jpg[/img]

I like it looks better then just having a 40 litre drum as a prop.

Nice work.

this was created in just a couple of days - its good work, considering Wizen' had to guess how our inhouse shaders would look (such as the mixmaps)

it has been set-up to be pretty much destroyable (definately not a static prop) and looks great dropping 1/2 tonne slabe of concrete on it and watching the bonnet spin off and the doors swing :)

cool, looks like fun to come across in the game too!

looks cool but also looks like it could use some more detail passes, what i want to see is some graffiti! it would fit the theme i think

It's weird, the bricks have got this wave like look emanating from the top left corner going to the bottom right. Probably an artifact from the tiling. I like the bent over street sign.

not sure about that wave in the bricks. When I render closer it is not there at all - and not even too much closer.

May frig around with the lighting settings and see if that makes a diff.

Graffiti coming soon :)

Hehe... kez likes the girlies... but then again, who doesn't! The best thing going for all three, I'd have to point out the foreshortening in the second image especially. On top of that, the second also conveys a lot of subtle emotion. It's kinda that line between looking normal, and looking blank and lifeless (eg, they don't need to be drama queens to look like there's cogs turning in those little penciled heads of theirs, and you've captured that quite well).

first one has a few basic pose and proportional problems that don't look like stylistic choices (namely the head angle and size in relation to the rest of the body, then the resulting spinal twist), the last one looks more experimentive so I'll refrain from crits since I don't feel I understand it enough on first glance.

Good job... now I'm expecting you to crit my artist code when I post some HLSL shaders ok? [:D]

quote:Originally posted by J.I. Styles

Good job... now I'm expecting you to crit my artist code when I post some HLSL shaders ok? [:D]

Sure thing [:)]

Another attempt
[img]http://kez.dontknowdontcare.com/gallery/img/draw/idreamof_cen.jpg[/img]
I have a real thing for beads for some reason... I blame my tormented youth. Turbo pascal and assembly is no way to raise a child.

Pretty cool little sketches, I've noticed that almost all of your faces paticularly the lips and eyes look identical!?

It's not really intentional... more just a lack of practice i think

[img]http://kez.dontknowdontcare.com/gallery/img/draw/pez.jpg[/img]

Great movement in that last one.

heh. cool stuff.

very very nice forms going on, unusual and creepy is my cup of tea.

its great brushwork too. mmm painter 8

awesome work, the limbs are a little confusing but thats probably my mind just glazing over cause of the hybrid character, id love to see quick orthos of him though to fully understand his form.

Here is a quick skecth I did of sharkboy, its not exactly a set of orthos but it should give you the idea. This may even be closer to what I was after but its still not really there. I was after the look of a slightly starved 5 year old child but unfortunately my own inexperience with drawing kids and my fondness for drawing distressed muscle got in the way.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Azazel/sharkboy_sketch.jpg[/IMG]

The painting has come up really well, Sharkboy is truly hideous. I would love to see the highlights slightly reworked to make him look a bit slimey/mucussy(sp?) just to top off the revolting and pathetic nature of the character.

The character would suit a Tim Burton type of 'childrens' story really well...

man those legs are really trippy to wrap your brain around, the sort of definition of two legs merged into one thing. Its a brilliant character and you pulled off that posed image well, hope to see more sharkboy adventures :D

Great concept and great penciling.

looks great (wires?) but is that plate in the middle of his chest supposed to be a sort of crude peice of armour, just out of curiosity

Thx MoonUnit

Yes its an iron plate thats the way it was ment to look, but I still think I need to make him less clean as he is ment to be a rogue. so I think I need to dirty him up a bit.

Insert Image: [img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/3DArty/20057219548_linesrender.j…]

Yeah maybe do that, especially if hes sort of living life on the move. The reason i asked about the plate is allthough im sure he didnt buy it from the store, it seems like it would be a bit larger then just covering the sort of center of his chest. Also now that i look at that again, the sort of sash/belt he has strapped around, what is that exactly. It dosent quite look like an ammunition belt... again just curious :P

Im not really the best critic just sharing my thoughts. Speaking of which the wires look good!

Thx MoonUnit

The belt is just that a belt :P But I do see your point making it look more like a ammunition belt would make more sence.

Yeah don't get me wrong it looks cool but itd make more sense if it actually had a purpose (ie an ammunition belt, or attatched to a backpack or pouch etc.).

reminds me of the video killed the radio star music video [:)]

Shame no one has commented on this yet as it is coming along really well.
Im no car buff, so I guess it is looking authentic. I like the grill thing at the back of the side of the car. Tires look well done too :)

Hi Wizenedoldman, it's a difficult one to comment on without seeing the wireframe and only a single image, but I can see some inaccuracies and a few places, and areas where it could use some smoothing out.
The headlight surrounds for instance look lumpy towards the lower outside extemities, the bonnet appears a bit too flat at the front and the curve seems wrong, theres something about the alloys that don't look right as well.

I would say that overall the model lacks a smooth flow and it has shape issues and looks inconsistant.

But don't let my comments dishearten you, cars are difficult things to model and can take a lot of practice before you find a technique that produces consistant models, just keep at it mate. :)

Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.

Red 5: I totally understand what you mean, considering that this is essentially my first car (I started working on it about two years ago, and have been coming back to it on and off since) it has been more than anything a learning experience and has shown me what to do and what not to do when modelling cars. little inconsistencies in the mesh are very unforgiving, it needs to be smooth as.

I've posted the wires and a clay render so you can see where my mesh is a little bit messy. It's to a point now where it would be more productive to start a new car with my new knowledge than to try and iron out all the little problems with this one.

[img]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pwiffen/reel/porsche_clay.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pwiffen/reel/porsche_front.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pwiffen/reel/porsche_rear.jpg[/img]

and yeah, the rear has some real problems I never got to fixing.

i really dont know anything about cars so this is what your joe average notices when he sees the model. Two areas stand out as being kinda messy, the headlights and much less so the bit where the front panel meets the door panel. Theres sort obvious faults on the back course, but you know that well enough yourself :P

Yep, it definetly needs a lot of cleaning up.

Awesome. I love when you guys do this.

Clash of the titans like the olden days of Pants VS Malus!

Scott.

Can i play? I've been playing around with normal mapping quite a bit lately, wouldnt mind some incentive to push it a little,,

pop

maaaaan i remember this stuff, pants takes on all comers :P

Ah, senior Pantmonger haz found heemself a nu bandito to go up againzt eh?

Padre Goldenchocobo, eez goin' to git messy, I hope you brought a sombrero.

Yeeehaaaa!!!!

Good idea.... I've got a couple of things to finish... but I fancy butting heads with someone too.. *eyes up malus* [:D]

Ok This one is my pick to attempt. Good Luck Pants.
Its ON!! :)
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/goldenchocobo/200571975649_MyPic…]

heh, cool :)
Thats a nice concept to start from Goldenchocobo
Should be fun to watch

OHHH IT'S ON!!!!!

Scott.

iiiiiiin the red corner....

sounds cool.

someone should do this guy:
http://privateerpress.com/images/warmachine/gallery/Mule.jpg

Wow that?s a lot of positive feedback, the pressures on now.
The War Jack I shall be attempting to construct.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Pantmonger/200571921568_Berserke…]

popawheelie: Feel free to construct a War Jack using the same constraints stipulated here, but I would ask that start a new thread for it, just because more then 2 people posting WIPs and getting feedback in one thread gets a little messy and hard to follow.

Pantmonger

Nice one guys! :D

Those Warmachine deisgns are really cool...
cheers

Cool idea, this ones going to be interesting. I like both of your warjack choices.

nifteh [:D]
will you both be recreating the models (eg, cool little display dias included), or interpreting the design in your own way?

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Pantmonger/200573134225_WIP-Temp…]

Just thought I?d post a WIP so that people didn?t think we had died, we have just been milestone coloured busy.
Got a chunk of tightening to do and a lot of detail to add to this the basic mesh. Currently about 3500 triangles.
What can I say but trying to figure out what the hidden joints and internals are supposed to be has been an endeavor. Hopefully I?m not to far wrong.

JI: Well I can?t speak for Golden but I am going an amalgamation of the two but with preference given to the concept sketch. I also would like to include a little diorama thing to give the final pose and shot some character, and so I can do a quick try at normal mapping before I attempt to do it for the main mesh.

Pantmonger

Currently about 6130 tris. Still a long way to go.
JI: I am just trying to make some thing that represents the thing, not being to concerned with stylising it. I am mainly using the shots of the model as reference and sometimes going back to the concept for clarification. It might end up like something inbetween. I will defineately be taking liberties on certain sections of the model.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/goldenchocobo/20057317535_progre…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Pantmonger/200586233250_WIP_Orth…]
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Pantmonger/200586233336_WIP_angl…]

Basic Mesh pretty much done, now just a matter of a few tweaks here and there, then on to the unwrap.
Edit: Forgot to add, 5989 tri.

Pantmonger

looking neat, gotta love that hunched over look

Do you by any chance own an Alienware computer? ;)

very sleek, communicates the smooth curves and style you where going for very well; only two crits I would give are that some lines get lost in that smoothness, like the front green propulsion hole -- my brain knows that it has some form of contour by the receeding edge in the skirting, and combining that with the assumption that it's similar to the back hole, but my eye keeps on only seeing it as a flush hole to the side. Silly brain and eye... they're so confused! Second crit was the interior - intentionally left messy lines, but those lines detract from the pieces quality instead of attracting attention to the other areas.

hope those crits help; I think the first could be resolved with some more indicative and consistent light source to help pop the form and contours out a bit more, and the second... just 10 more minutes roughly painting in some subtle hints of structure in the cabin could go a long way.

lol , no I don't own one :)

Thanks J.I. Styles , I will use those tips to try to fix it up. I really appreciate it champ.

ur very good in photooshop(i think it was made there)so nice work

hey mark god to see you posting up here. i've been telling you it's a great way to get feed back and improve, it's about time you listened [:)]

yes the hand has way to any polys, particually underneath. the density is much less elsewhere on the model, so unless you're going for a huge polycount overall then take a lot out of that. also if you're normal mapping then you can do that bumps on the hand that way, unless you want them really big in which case you might want to model them in.

likewaise the knees have a bit too much detail compared to other areas.

finally, i would work on the sholders, there is not enough detail there, edges a re clearly visible from the front and more lops will help with the definition and defomation.

keep working on it mate it's looking good.

Hi Jebus, from first glance I see that you need to balance the poly's a little better across the entire model, meaning you have too much detail in some areas and not enough in others.
For starters with a 3k car you could spend about 300 poly's for each wheel/tyre and the rest for the bodywork, and as you've said, there are a lot of little tricks you can use to make it appear as though there's a lot more poly's in the model.
Try using alpha maps to punch out the wheels arches and vent/grill recesses, even use alpha to get rounder looking wheels/tyres... Polyphony are masters of these tricks and manage to get great looking cars with around 4-5k triangles per car.

Actually 3k for a car model is quite low for current consoles, you could easily go to 5k for PS2 and 10k for Xbox.

Keep practicing tho, maybe try a few different approaches to car modelling, there's plenty of tutorials to be found on the net.

Good luck!

Hey Red 5, thankyou very much I appreciate your comments. Your home page shows that your obviously talented at car models and thats exactly the type of response i was after.

I know i said i didnt want to go higher then 4000 poly's but im very tempted to start rounding edges such as around the corners of the windows and around the wheel arch's. One thing i was puzzled about was your comment on using alpha maps for the wheel arch's as ive never seen this done before. To me this would seem like the wheel arch's would not reflect the light properly????

The grill will definately be using alpha maps to get it looking shmick though. The wheels are at around 300 polys at the moment (spot on with your estimate) so i think i might take your advice and up the poly's all around.

One thing you could (or anyone in the know) really help me with are the lights. im puzzled as to whether or not i should extrude the lights a little just to stop them looking as if they are stuck on and too flat.

Oh and before i forget, if anyone knows a good link to getting really good car textures (much like on Red 5's cars) then send away.

And againthankyou for your response Red 5, it is greatly appreciated.

Great job man! I really was impressed by the polish on those animations. Not to mention the rest of your folio. Can't wait to see more work from ya!