Hexagon and SharpConstruct

Well, so much for Hexagon. It doesn't work on my computer, and if the posts on the bug tracker forum are anything to go by, it's not too good on other people's computers either. The displacement mapping function and the painting function don't work at all.
As for SharpConstruct, I'm sure it will be fantastic once it's been developed a bit, but at present there are issues - one in particular with importing models from Poser. One of the things I'd like to be able to do with this program is produce morphs for figures, but the program won't display them properly. I might post something on the SharpConstruct forum to ask if the developer could build in some kind of function to centre the model in the window.

2 more programs

Have started using two more programs recently. One is Eovia's Hexagon 2 - Eovia have recently been bought by DAZ productions, and they're doing an offer where members of their "Platinum Club" can get the download version of the program for $1.99 (about a quid in English currency). The attraction of this program for me, the intriguing-looking modelling features notwithstanding, is a function for "painting" detail onto models, and another function for painting textures. Also the UV mapping feature looks very interesting. Texturing is something I've avoided like the plague so far, since the whole business of trying to paint a flat texture for a 3d figure is SUCH a fiddle. (There is, apparently, a program out there called Deep Paint 3d that allows you to paint textures directly onto models, but it is very expensive.)
Alas, these things are never without their drawbacks, as I discovered once again on trying to use the program this week. The "Paint" window, which is supposed to be a part of Hexagon's interface, has disappeared, and nothing I do can bring it back again, thereby making it impossible to do any painting onto models with it. There are other bugs as well. I've emailed the technical support people for the software, but that's about all I can do until they release a new version or service pack to address these issues.
The other program was brought to my attention by someone on the Deathfall website - it's an open-source modeller that's supposed to be similar to ZBrush. Again, it allows the user to paint detail onto models, but it's still in the developmental stage, so there are issues with the interface and other things. However, my fiddling around with it has yielded some promising results, and I can't wait to see what the programmers do with it in the future.
Work is progressing, on and off, with my lizard character in Wings. I gave him some teeth last night.

Progress report

Progress report:
Been focussing on modelling lately, as opposed to setting and rendering scenes in Poser.
Still working on lizard guy model in Wings, fiddling with bits here and there. At some point I need to make him some teeth and eyeballs or he's going to have trouble finding a lady lizard to go out with.
Going great guns with Shade. I'm really enjoying using this package and have so far produced a space gun and a rocket pack for one of my Poser characters with it. The nice thing about it is that everything I've made with it so far has come out looking clean - and the fact that you can draw shapes with it instead of box modelling really speeds up the modelling process.
Fiddled about a bit with Carrara last night. Have had it installed on my pc for months but haven't done anything with it yet.
Searching for 3d lego men to use in one of my jokey pics, came across a package on the internet called LDraw. It's fantastic - a whole software package, complete with a huge library of parts, to build 3d lego models. I get the impression that there is a big, cultish following of grown-up kids using this software and producing parts for it.
The down side: Used it to make a model, used another program to convert the resulting .dat file into .obj format, but when I tried to import it into Poser and Wings, it looked all wrong. Bits missing, leaving square-shaped holes all over the place.
The strange part - I imported the same model into Anim8or, and it looked fine. Tried exporting from Anim8or, and into Poser and Wings, and the holes appeared again.

Lizard guy

This is the model I mentioned in my previous post. Having got over the hurdle of modelling characters in Wings, I'm now being a bit more ambitious and attempting to produce a character whose mouth can be opened and whose expressions can be changed.

Ongoing stuff

Okay, my plan to post one image per week on the Animotions site hasn't quite worked out, but my intentions were good. In my defence, I have been doing other things, like learning how to use Shade, and modelling a new character in Wings. I shall post a pic as soon as is possible - at the moment Internet Explorer is refusing to display the Blogger homepage, and Mozilla doesn't allow me to upload images onto the site. (Sigh!)
With reference to a couple of Poser problems: There is a service pack for Poser 6 that deals with two very precise problems that I've had with the program - one is characters not being saved with morphs, and the other is the program refusing to save a file because it is "out of memory" and creating a blank file instead. I've lost several scenes due to the latter problem. Anyway, service pack now installed, we'll see if it makes a difference. I just sort of assumed that both problems were due to my heavy use of toon shading in Poser, but it appears that they are actually bugs.

Shade

Got a copy of Shade LE version 7 off a cover disc with a magazine this month. I'm always on the lookout for modelling packages with a nice, easy interface - there are a load of modelling programs on my computer now, many of which I've tried, and just given up on because you have to press a combination of keys on your keyboard, rotate your mouse precisely 180 degrees, touch the tip of your nose with the big toe on your left foot and perform the secret handshake before you can extrude a face. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but as a guy with a full-time job, I really don't have the time for a huge learning curve before being able to do any modelling.
However, Shade, so far, seems pretty blinking simple, and it "seamlessly interfaces with Poser" - I have yet to explore that aspect of it, but if it enables me to make props, import them into Poser and toon-ify them without any complication, then brilliant.
Have decided to aim for producing one image per week to post on the Animotions site.

Have posted a few of my "Mr Snout" pictures on the Animotions website (www.animotions.com) and have had some positive responses. It's so nice to finally get some images out there - I spend so much time agonising over whether my pictures look finished enough or not that nobody else ever gets to judge them.
They've been done using the technique that I described in my post of 27/11/2005. The one above was done using Poser 6's toon shading facility, but I'm not entirely sure about it. The outlining on the character looks a bit weak, but when I try to increase the size of the outline, Poser refuses to comply beyond a certain thickness.