you could also try 11:58 pm or 23:53.......2 minutes to midnight, in reerence to the Iron Maiden classic.

I usually set cloks in scenes to either 22:22 or 23:58

~~CM!

...thanks for the imput guys...i had meant to type 10:29 for my birthday...and the 11:34 in digital type is Hell as everyone knows...6:66 could be kinda cool going outside the bounds of regular time altgether...and i'm diggin' the Maiden reference...now i just need to get eddie in there somewhere...lol...11:11 is supposed to be a paranormal time too for some reason...and i notice i look at the clock at 11:11 a lot...so maybe thats the way to go...oooh...or i good go with 6:36 the length of "creeping death" by metallica....hmmm....too many choices...

lmao!

I tend to look at the clock when it is 22:22!

I cannot tell you how many times it happens! But actually I see the number 22, everywhere I go, about 100 times more than any other number.

Maybe it's just me noticing it because I think it means something.

If 11:11 is what you see often, I'd go for that if I were you, because it is directly related to you.

~~CM!

still no deciscion...altho i'm ruling out 11:11 b/c when i googled it it came up with stuff about fun loving spirits and angles...and that's not really what i'm going for in my image...so i'm gonna move onto something else and come back to this i guess...

textured the spider...i would go ahead and throw some hair on it...but its small and you're not really gonna be able to tell if there's hair or not...and i need my 8 instances of saslite for the rats and such...

...i could probably get away with using one instance of saslite but i don't want to waste them all on spiders...in theory i could make several spiders on the same layer in modeler all surfaced the same...and the rig them all in layout with indavidual bone structures ultimately having multiple spiders but only one object...kinda of a convoluted workaround i guess but if it comes down to it i can always give it a shot...

...okay...finished up some final texturing issues with the kleenex box as well as made some adjustments to the kleenex itself...left the spider in the render just for fun b/c i still had him open from his texturing session...

[note: kleenex is intentionally spelled "kleanex" to avoid any copyright issues while remaining similar enough to the real thing that it won't be a distraction from the rest of the piece]

:beer: One crit is to make the transparency a bit lower...Just so you can't see the box through it.

...thanks for the crit...i'll definately be fixing that...its been buggin' me the whole time...i keep turning it down but never seem to get it low enough...i wish viper did transparency...

...alright here's the updated snake...i've revamped the textures on his head so that there are some larger scales on top and on his nose as well as around his mouth...ignore the lines in his eyes...kinda forgot i still had outlines on from the last wire version i rendered...

looking at it now, the 6:66 does look really good, and the fact that it cannot be a real time makes that add to it.

Kinda like a clock striking thirteen!

As for the transparency issue, just do test renders using the Limited Region option on the Render tab, and select a small square with both tissue and box.

I often use that option when adjusting a little bit.

~~CM!

hmmm...limited region...i'll have to give it shot...thanks merlin

...yeah i'm liking the 6:66 too...i may even do the 11:34 upside down and backwards to that it reads properly or i could go ahead and just spell it out...i do like the idea of it saying something that it really couldn't tho...

Looking cool!

...well i think i finally got the kleenex box/tissue thing sorted out....

...merlin...thanks for the heads up on the limited region thing...saved me some time....i'll be using that in the future i suspect...

...i spent all day working on this...well except the part of the day i spent looking for a friggin' reference which was the better part of 3 hours maybe 4...and couldn't find anything so i finally called it quits and decided to wing it...so i dropped grey's [anatomy] skull into the background and went to town on it...and i guess this is what happens when you wing it...:confused: :headbang: :eek: :alien:

...you can ignore the weird creepy half smile that its got goin' on...

...also note...there are no ears as of yet...you would have realized that for yourself...but i felt like pointing it out...

[needs sleep...this project is starting to exhaust me...:zzz: ]

Wow! this is some very nice modeling!!

I can't wait to see this finish!

Good luck:)

...vedic kings...thatnks for the comments...i can't wait for this to be finished either...you're is looking cool too...i don't think you could have squeezed anymore blood in there tho....


...and i said..."let there be ears" ...and then there were ears...maybe not the best ears...but they shall serve the purpose [yes...my sanity is slipping...]

Wicked....he's just asking for trouble :attn:
Well, Jesus did say "Ask and you shall recieve." didn't he?

Lol, yeah no more blood is needed thats for sure;)

By the way vedic kings, saw your entry.... duuuuuude, that's sick (in the best way, of course)
Here's a cold one on me, you must be tired after chopping all those body parts :beer:
What the heck, here's another one :beer:
Keep up the good work.

P.S. I hope it was a rusty saw... :D

Hey thanks man!

Here one for you :beer:

Yeah I hope i'm not warp from this challenge lol!!

..."rusty saw" ::shudders::

...oh you're warped alright...both of you...

...anyway here's a little sneak peak at where i'm heading...still a lot to do with the expression and what not...as well as popping some veins and all that good stuff...but this is where i'm at now...

...ever get one of those bright ideas like..."instead of weighting and rigging...why don't i just endomoprh?" ...yeah :headbang:

cool!

Hey! Watch who you're calling warped...I'm just twisted :D
Anyway...


:cough: Gollum... :cough:Gollum
At least the eyes and the momentary texture remind me of him.
Again... anyway...

It looks cool, really, but like you said, the expression could do with a little bit of work. I don't know but right now he seems to be thinking "What the f...heck !?" in a very exagerated way. Which is, in the end good, if that's what you want him to say/think.
On the other hand, by the look of how the hands are holding the (probably) bed I dare to think that he's just a "tad" scared :eek3::eeek2::mg::eeek2::eek3:

So, and this is completely hypothetically speaking, like I said in another post around here, dilate the pupil, just a bit, to give the impression that he's indeed scared, and open the mouth eavenly.
Just think of what you would look in that situation and try to act it out in front of a mirror.
The size of his terror is entirely up to you, of course. Hey, if you wanted you could open his mouth so the jaw reaches the stomach, like some movies I saw (vampires, I think, and if I really put my unused brain cells to work, I think it was Van Helsing, when father Dracula yawned :D, kinda ) it al depends on what you want the mood to be...nightmare-ish, with a man in the middle of all those little critters, or hollywood-ian like horror flick.

If I think of this better, the mouth doesn't have to be open. Just think of this scenario: After a couple of hours of relaxing sleep, you feel something slithering past you. You don't pay much attention to it, as it may be just a trick your brain plays on you (read near the end for an explanation)
Then you feel another touch, something walking over your hand. You make an effort to wake up and open your eyes, you turn your head to one side and then...you see how some wise guy has put a hole sh load of nightmare-ish animals near your bed. Before you can think what you'll gona do to him if you ever catch him, the primitive brain kicks in and the normal reactions which occur when you're scared begin to emerge: Pulse skyrockets, the veins in your extremities shrink to minimise loss of blood in case you accidentally hurt yourself :D. Breathing rate increases, the nostrils expand, and after that mouth opens, so you can suck in more air to power your muscles, etc. All these changes are known as the, and I quote, "The fight or flight response".

So, got any ideas yet?


(it's a fact: the different receptors in the body work both ways: they send electrical impulses to the brain, which cause the senses( five or six of them) but it can happen in reverse and the brain can send electrical impulses to the receptors which think they sensed something and in turn send el. imp. to the brain to try and deciphre them. Kinda weird....but it's a proven fact. Just think of a simmilar situation to this: you're at school/work and you think what will you eat when you get home. As these toughts become more exact, you begin to feel the taste of that nice juicy stake or the smell of those french fries. This can cause different things, from feeling some-one/thing touching you to massive hallucinations. And the examples don't stop here, the experiences can be a lot 'more' real to the point of actually believing that you saw a ghost or you got abducted and experimented uppon by little grey men from Mercury :D
)
Now why do I have the feeling that I've been all over the map?
Anyway...

P.S This is for all those who will not agree with me:

Don't hurt me....

P.S. II
Sorry if the post is so long, but I kinda went from one idea to the other and somehow....Sorry again!

P.S. III
God, my fingers hurt!

Found a picture...

I might have made a slight mistake about the movie where i saw yawn. It's eiher The Mummy or something with zombies (told you I was twisted :D) but I just can't put my finger on it.

Anyway... Really nice job, keep it up and good luck!

...nostromo...thanks for the post dude...that's killer response...i think the movie you're looking for is one of the Mummy's...the first one i think...he unhinges his jaw and yawns really big...

...as for the expression on my character...i'd go with the big mouth open in shock/fear...but i want to get the disgust in there which is why i've pulled it to one side...i think i need to wrinkle the nose a little...curl that bottom lip up some more...and i've got dasterdly poly flow which isn't helping the cause any :headbang: ...as far as the eyes go i totally forgot they where even there...i modeled the charachter vertically as you'd be insane to do it in the current postion...and then when i rotated him over and what not...i forgot to move the eyes with him...and when i got to layout and render it...they weren't there...so i had to track them down and get them close to where they needed to be...which i part of the reason they seem a little wierd...and i need to paint the texture before i go ahead and dilate the pupils so that it dilates with them..hopefully when i finish that i'll get rid of that gollum look...altho it wouldn't be a bad thing if i didn't because gollum's pretty cool for CG...anyway...i'll defintaly be re-working that face...maybe starting anew since it hasn't taken but a few minutes to do what i've done so far...i'm definately trying to force three expression in there tho and that's what's gonna be the trick...fear...abhorration...shock...so much to do...and only a couple days to do it in...so i should probably stop typing and go do it...on that note...i'm out...thanks for the info it shall help... cheers :beer:

Glad you like it...

Yeah... I think you might be right (allways wanted to say that) about the movie, thanks!

Good idea on the expression, I think it would look killer if you get it just right, I mean scared of what's in his bed but at the same time disgusted; only try to lower the side of the mouth and rinkle the nose and his forehead a bit.
Other than that keep up the wonderful work and good luck.

Gollum is my hero (one of them, anyway), especially after I saw the MTV movie awards for best CG( I think...) when Serakis accepted the PopCorn and then Gollum showed up and started f.cking everybody... it was cool.

yeah...gollum's acceptance speach was awesome!!! i love the clip i can't tell you how many time's i've watched it...

:headbang:

It's going that good? :D

oh yeah...its going wonderfully...modelling in a morph traget was a brilliant idea [don't know how came up with that ::smacks forhead::]...so like apparently you can't effectively use knife, bandsaw, weld average, and/or a host of other modeling tools in a morph with out unintended effects...leaving me with extender and thr drag tool to make everything...which i guess is all i really need...but sheesh...what was i thinking...

...on a non rambling note...here's my "progress" if you can call it that...i've currently starting work on modeling sheets into his other hand...then he needs hair...and i guess textures wouldnn't be a bad thing...and then...and then...and then....and then....and then...and then...and then...and then...and then i might be done...

...i got the hands grabbing sheets all finished up and it took forever...so here's a nice close up shot of the finished product...

The idea is great but don't the sheets look just a bit too jelly-like? I mean too soft, with no resistence? They look more like a piece of... well...clay...
Try making them a little stiffer at least at the tips of the fingers so they don't sink so deep.

Of course, if no one agrees with me I will personally delete the post and begin self flagellation.... :D

...i totally agree with you about the sheets...that's been one of the problems the whole time...i'm thinking i'm gonna put a weight map on them to stiffen them up some i think...

Why don't you use cloth FX.
Do a small scene with the hands and the sheet, give the sheets a cloth dinamic and make the hands collision objects and animate them just a little, then tweak the cloth material so you get the desired effect. After the deformation is just right (or close enough) save the transformes object and you should have a very nice sheet.

I'm not sure it will work the way I imaginded it....it's just an ideea...

Cheers and good luck...:beer:

...i don't think i have cloth effects...i'm runnin' 7.0...i've got 8.0 sitting on my desk lookin' pretty but i need to upgrade my operating system to install it...and i don't think my current system will handle XP and LW8 so rather than wasting money upgrading this one i'd rather just get a new box...so until that happens i guess i'll be slowly working with 7.0...


...anyway...here's where i'm at with my scene now...i'm trying to get enough light in the scene so you can see everything while not blowing it out...i'm using two area lights right now...one light blue one at 25% and one red one at 10%...i tried adding a little global illum...about 5%...but i hate global illum so it went the way of the dinosaurs...i'm thinking maybe just another area light shining up from the bottom not casting shadows...we'll see...

You could use MD controller or what's his name. It's pretty much the same as clothFX.

Very nice texturing and I like all those 'little' creatures just strolling along his bed...cool.

Just a thought: could you raise the upper part of the body just a bit... like he was just about to jump out of his bed and start screaming and run outside...

Oh, and could you also spin the clock just a little so we see what time it is....

wow ... amazing work !
your progress is nothing but ...stunning.
the crawling snake from under the night stand is great idea.also the rat up on the bed head... gr8!
it seems to me that he just woke up in this freaky situation, and simply freeze , don't know what to do. only his fingers grabbing the sheets....slowly ..... and then jumps in terror!
nice wood textures!
my only crits:
the pillow...where the snake head is, seems..leaking downward.
not solid enough.
the sheets where the lower scorpion is, need more tweaking...now it looks like two sheets appart .
the red glow on his feet is too red than it should be IMO... there must be a falloff to the clock red light. i agree with NoStr0m0 about turning the clock a bit so we could see what time is it ... especially after you gave it so much thought:)

is this the final composition?

I must agree with sandfish and also with my own little brain. The work is great and the composition is stunning.
The only reason I said to raise the upper body a bit is to make the scene more dinamic by catching him exactly when he realises what's going on and begins to freak out and jump out of the bed. His muscles begin to contract for the leap, his fingers dig deeper into the sheet so he doesn't loose grip, and then... the jump...

On the other hand, it's just a noob's oppinion so...

Good luck! :attn:

...hey guys thanx for comments!

...nostromo...i've never used motion designer and i didn't feel that with two days to go i should start messing that...its bad enough i decided to teach myself UV mapping on the snake in the midst of this project and then turn around and use precedurals in the end anyway :eek: ...what you said about raising the upper body is a valid point...however i was wanted that sick feeling...the one where you're so afraid/nervous you want to react but you get that sick sinking feeling in your stomach and it saps all your strength...in any case...it would be far more work than i have time to do unfortunately...as he's modeled entirely in that pose and sheets modeled over him and all that...if i had actually rigged him like i should have then i would definately give it shot...but i just can't go back now and start moving all that geometry:(

...sandfish...thanks! i'm glad you like it...to address the issue of the pillow i was going for that fluffy pillow and try to get it to curve around his arm like his arm was being pressed into it...i may look into tweaking that quickly...the cloth by the low scorpions is definately getting changed...its been bugging me as it didn't quite turn out as i wanted and since you commented on it i'm not the only not liking so i'll definately be looking into the geometry there...as far as the red down on his legs go...there is a fall off on the clock...its set to an inverse falloff of 2 and a half feet...it just seems to continue on forever sometimes tho...altho my alarm clock does that in real life too...its really bright at night and seems to fill my whole room if thats the only light...its close to the final compostion...i've tweaked the camera to deal with the negative space a little bit better in some of the areas and also lowered it to build a little more tension by the brining the viewed into the scene a little bit more....

...to both of ya...thanks for commenting...i'm glad you guys are liking it so much....all the textures are strictly procedurals...excpet the guys eyes...those were image maps...the clock has also been fixed...in the other angle you can read it if i have antialiasing on which i did not when i rendered that frame...but its all moot b/c its definately more readable in the new composition...i don't want it to be overly obvious and become a focal point for the whole image...i want it more of something you pick up on as you look further into the image...

..nostormo...you're definately right about it not being overly dynamic...that's what happens when you don't spend time sketching and just go at it off your first sketch...i knew that was a mistake...but i jumped in anyway...and now i'm stuck with what i've got i guess :(

...thanks again guys...its always helpful to have others look at it with fresh eyes b/c i know i've been staring at it for so long i don't see it the same way everyone else does...

...here's my updated composition and what not...still need to tweak the geometry issues discussed here...i also changed the hair from a modeled object of to SasLite and gave him eye brows...kinda had forgotten that ppl tend to have those :eek: ...AA: enhanced low...render time: about an hour mintues...resolution 800x450 [as that's always my choice res]...i'm looking forward to finishing this up late tonite [circa 9 AM server time] and rendering it out at 1600x900 over night! ...let me know if you guys have any more imput as i'll be checking back here a few times before i call it finished yet...

...about wrote a book there:eek: ...someone want to publish that...:p

My hero!

Thanks for the nice words....you make me :blush:

It's a lot better now...

Just one last thing... then I promiss I'll shut up...at least a while...
About what sandfish said about the sheet next to the scorpion on the bed... It looks like it's sinking into the bed...hm...an idea... to be eaten by your bed.. I saw that once in a movie... a guy tricked girls into sleeping with him and in the morning the bed would eat them...nice.
Anyway... the rest looks good enough to win...
Good luck!

P.S.
About the book... I might write one some day with all the huge posts in the forum :D. Who knows, maybe I'll even buy it..

P.S. II
Glad you went with the 6:66 :D