sweasel.com

Ugg. Better you than me. Trying to be creative and artistic makes my head hurt…

I’ll go Scubafreak one better, because trying to be creative and artistic doesn’t happen for me. But I am SO GLAD it happens for you–and not just trying. Glad you got the software. . .

So where’s YOUR Wallace and Gromit?
}:-]

D’oh! I forgot to grab a copy! Oh well. Good job Stoaty! Looking forward to the really cool stuff.

If you’ve got any interest in this stuff, Mitchell, Blender really is very good. Especially for a freebie.

Pretty steep learning curve for the interface, because it’s all kinda different, but I really am liking it now I’m getting on top of it a little.

Mitchell, from what it said on the Web page when I just visited I gather that the offer is still open even though they’ve met their goals; the overtext said 5 hours and a bit remaining as I post.

Give it a try. The worst it’ll cost you is a few clicks.

Regards,
Ric
[who is now waiting for the email…]

Ooh! Good eye Ric. I’ll grab it the first thing when I get home.

Caturday morning stoatoons? YEH!
I’ll need to stock up on Captain Crunch.

I played with Blender for awhile and then my head exploded.

Hey Stoaty!

Yay! Stoaty is kind of a Blenderererer! Or a Messiahererer. Interested in seeing which you become once the transformation is complete.

Yes, the Blender interface is wonky beyond imagining, and 2.50 goes so far out there from 2.49b (I started with 2.3 something) that it hurt my head. Badly.

Google “Big Buck Bunny” along with blender and check out the full movie on youtube.

If anyone is still interested in Blender, yak my way and I think there’s probably a 8-point list that tilts it more level with less headache.

Mitch and Stoaty – if either of you ever get your hands on a Cornell Box model (heck, it is the easiest way to figure out how to do any tweak you want in a program)and render it in Messiah, could you post the image? There were no such renders in their gallery and I’m dying to know if I did “really stupid” by not buying it.

But, if you guys aren’t inclined, I am way cool with that, too.

Glad I’m not getting any of this because I don’t want my head to asplode. 🙂

I jumped in on the offer on the 12th to get the Pro version as a gift for eldest-daughter (she’s the one with the artistic talent.)

Thanks for posting the special they were running, Stoatie, I’d have never have known about this were it not for your post.

So now I wait for a serial number… Their site says it could take as long as Saturday. (Apparently they do this by hand, and it isn’t an automatic process for ’em. Wow.)

Good to see you, LK. Like Argentium said, we’re all waiting for licenses, so it’s “sit by the inbox” time.

I hope I haven’t steered you wrong, Argentium. Messiah is a rigging-and-rendering engine; she’ll still need something else to build meshes in. Like Blender.

I didn’t know that when I first posted; I learned it on their forums.

Sweasel – Ivana will be sending you yours any day now…
}:-]

Old School here…pencils, pastels, paints, brush and paper; hunks of wood or clay and tools to manipulate them. I appreciate the difference twixt the two paths to creativity.

Still most comfortable as a wordsmith…It just don’t pay the bills!

Do check out Sculptris (http://www.sculptris.com/) It’s free and I suspect you’d take to it like a weasel to a chicken coop (that works on so many levels heh). The mesh you posted in the pic would take about two minutes to do in Sculptris and come out about 1000 times more organic looking. Do check it out – you can thank me later.

Blender is a great app, especially more so as it is free, but I still prefer 3DSMax. Old dog, new tricks and all that. 3DSMax is pricey but it literally does everything (I’ve even made a kitchen sink with it!) and has some nice integration into the application development pipeline if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you get a double post from me, sorry. The first attempt timed out so I reposted.

Yeah, blog’s been really slow lately, gogman. Blue Host does this from time to time until a tech goes and kicks the server in its bits.

THANK YOU for the Sculptris link. I’ve heard it mentioned before, but I didn’t realize it was from the Zbrush people. I’ve seen some amazing stuff come out of Zbrush.

I was a Max user since it was just 3DS, but every new version had about twice as many buttons as the previous one, until I was utterly swamped.

My first one ran under DOS and had a parallel-port authentication dongle.

OH. MY. GOD. Sculptris is a freaking BLAST!

Takes about two seconds to get the hang of it.

GO! DOWNLOAD!

You’re welcome 🙂 It’s fun stuff! I eagerly await the see what sort of stuff you can come up with. It is a lot like ZBrush. Better in some ways and lacking in others. But I like it. Seems to do the putty thing much more consistently than ZBrush.

I too remember the parallel port dongle days well. Autocad was the first app I ever had that came with one. Thank God those days are over! I really freaking hated those things. They always seems to bug out randomly and then it was off to the phone for support.

Take care, stay warm, and have fun!

No worries Stoatie, at $40.00 it was (and is) totally worth the risk. I’ll go grab Blender and Sculptris next to add to the mix.

(Coming soon, ambitious-father will need to go build a very powerful and expensive computer for eldest-daughter…) 😉

Hey there, Argentium G. Tiger! Good to see you here. I also took the $40.00 risk, and am awaiting the e-mail now. Mr. Dragon has been using 3DMAX for years designing things, and I figured I might surprise him with the rendering machine should the gamble go through.

Regarding the powerful computer; have you looked into AlienWare? My laptop is a (nearly) maxed-out AW M17x, and I love it. (I didn’t go for the full TB of HDD as I preferred to go the solid state HD instead, so I have two of those built in, one as the main, one as the back up.) I suggest AW because 1) it’s worked awesomely for me, and 2) they specialize in computers for gamers and people who need the high processing capacity.

On another note; Stoaty & Gogan – thank you for the info on sculptris, I’m off to check that out m’self!

*Dookadookadookadook-scamper-snag-flee!*

Hey there, Argentium G. Tiger! Good to see you here. I also took the $40.00 risk, and am awaiting the e-mail now. Mr. Dragon has been using 3DMAX for years designing things, and I figured I might surprise him with the rendering machine should the gamble go through.

Regarding the powerful computer; have you looked into AlienWare? My laptop is a (nearly) maxed-out AW M17x, and I love it. (I didn’t go for the full TB of HDD as I preferred to go the solid state HD instead, so I have two of those built in, one as the main, one as the back up.) I suggest AW because 1) it’s worked awesomely for me, and 2) they specialize in computers for gamers and people who need the high processing capacity.

On another note; Stoaty & Gogman – thank you for the info on sculptris, I’m off to check that out m’self!

*Dookadookadookadook-scamper-snag-flee!*

For Argentium:
You MAY not need go as expensive as you think. My bet is that those software toys take GOOD ADVANTAGE of mutliple cores and gobs of memory, so a machine like Sweas got should do quite nicely. You sound like you're talking West Pondian monetarily, and a home build or even custom build with 6 cores and 8 Gbytes of memory shouldn't be all that expensive…

Hey Frit, you are welcome. Have fun!

Frit: Hi back! I’ll give Alienware another look and if the price for value makes sense, I might let them build me a machine. (I usually roll my own, and have since ’86, but I’m open to letting someone else do the hard work if it saves me a few hours.)

Mark Matis: Hardware’s cheaper than I’ve ever seen it in my life, so I’m definitely using that fact to my advantage. I hadn’t thought of going above 2 or maybe 4 cores, but… 6 cores huh? Looks like I need to take another look at serious multi-core processors. Thanks for the idea! Don’t worry, I won’t scrimp on the memory, I’m thinking 12 or 16 gigs. “Go large, or go home.”

This machine is intended to last eldest-daughter many, many years. Guess I’d better begin my research, and go see what the Overclocking crews and hardware test sites have been up to lately lately. (I don’t overclock my own machines, but I use their research to find stable powerful machines motherboard/cpu/memory/vid-card combinations when run beyond normal specifications, and give that hardware extra consideration for what I might use at regular clock speeds. This has payed off for me in past…)

For Aregentium:
Make sure you look at what it’s gonna be used for and check the reviews for similar applications. Anantech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4164/budget-system-builders-guide-february-2011
tends to be one of the more reliable sources without an axe to grind. Of course, you’ll need a 64-bit OS, but Winders 7 has that at the same price as 32-bit, and so does Ubuntu. Don’t overlook the benefit of dual-boot if she MAY ever do anything financial with it. There doesn’t appear to be ANY malware out there infecting Linux systems at this time, so I boot there any time I play with my finances. Credit card purchases I still do in whichever I happen to be using at the time, though.

Intel has the absolute power crown right now, and has had it for some time. But they have run into a hitch in their Sandy Bridge get-along (major recall), and depending on the applications one intends to use AMD may be more cost effective. Do note that the video card war is still on betwixt NVidia and AMD/ATI. However, most of THAT is aimed at 3D gaming, so let that enter your consideration if the expected use does not go there.