I wish all of you good luck and many strong friendships in the new year! Here is a link to a site I just found when searching for octopus images for a model I am working on for my underwater scene. There is some adult drawings on the site - but the models are worth taking a look. http://www.zandoria.com/index.htm Here is the latest of my underwater - halibut images. I need to work on the shrimp - a quick model, too simple, no legs yet. Has anyone seen free starfish? Or a free octopus I can add to - a starter-pus? Again, Happy New Year! R

Happy new year to you too. Content Paradise had a free starfish at one point. Not sure if it's still free... but worth looking into. I like watching the prgoress... keep it up. Christina

Details do make a difference. I didn't think halibut would come so far off the ground tho.I think lighting and caustics will definitely add alot.Keep it up. Happy New Year!

Thanks to the both of you, Christina and ren_mem. I appreciate the suggestions. Funny thing about halibut, they do come up, even to the surface. I live in Alaska where I hear of all kinds of strange fish stories, but I do know I've had halibut follow up bait from the bottom and hit it twenty feet off bottom. They will even follow another fish up that is being brought up by a fishing line. Anyway, think I'll work on the shrimp. I was just at digimation, a 3d site that sells models and man, I don't know what I'm seeing. There are models that I've seen around before, for sale, for lots of money... The digital model market must be a hard one to defend. I will think twice before posting a model online now. Check it out. Question on caustics... when I use it without changes to the default settings, my scene becomes too bright. What is a good rule of thumb? 2 lights, turn down caustics by 1/2 or something? Robert

And I thought Turbo Squid had some high priced models... Yikes. I had a friend who lived in Stika... loved to hear her stories from popcicle land. Sorry not sure what to tell you re caustics. i tend to experiment until I find what looks good to me. Christina

Did you see any you recognized? I saw a dog model that looks familiar. Some look like daz models. Others look like I could throw them together in a hour - and priced over $100. Anyway, I played with caustics a little, not as bad as I thought. Never been to Sitka, but I've heard it is beautiful and full of game, fish, and totempoles. R

My friend would tell me stories of going for walks with a shotgun when the bears were feeding, just for protection. I would love to visit there. She also had whales in her 'backyard' I saw some models in the anatomy section that looked like I pile of dog.... (you get the picture) priced for over $200... I think you'd have to be tripping on some bad acid to spend that kind of money for those models.... unless you really needed something, couldn't find it elsewhere, and couldn't model it yourself. Oh and had more money than sense... ;) I like what you're doing with this... the star fish and the extra shrimp. Glad I don't eat seafood, or it might make me hungry. Did you use anything grows on the sea plants? I did pick it up Friday since I was having so much fun with the demo... there went my January 3d budget. :P But I had to have.

Yes on the AG for the sea plants - I think they're sea cucumbers... I need to go back and make the stems thicker, add smaller, finer whiskers on the "petals" along with the longer whiskers, and maybe add bones to give the sea cucumbers a more "alive" look. I have a bone problem that I will encounter - the starfish has only one boned arm because when I went to bone all the arms, I ran into the angle problem. Is C5 set to handle these angles? An "x" is doable since it can be aligned like a "+" and boned, then spun 22.5 degrees... but a five sided figure like a starfish will have odd degrees... has anyone ran into this yet? I'll have to figure this out for the octupus to work. Back to Sitka, yes, I want to visit some day. My wife and I just visited my mother in Texas - now my wife wants to move! I grew up here, but I don't think I'll miss the cold. New question to the group: My primary job is not in the 3d market, but I would like to freelance. May I ask, who works in the industry and what ideas do you have for someone who wants to do "side" work? Robert

I should have changed the subject for the prior post. Here is a test with adding bones to all arms of starfish. I could not get the ikchain to work, but bones did work ok... for now. I'd like to be able to have a working octopus with IK. For the starfish I just made one bone chain, added constraints, then duplicated it and with constraints off, I spun each and lined them up. Then attached bones to skin and posed. Any suggestions? R

Set up your IK chain to go from the end to the bone BEFORE the center bone (or maybe the 2nd one in, depending on how many bones you used for each arm,) that way the center can still be free to move the model as a whole and not be constrained to all 5 (or with the octopus 8!) IK chains. Nice modeling... I don't see why you bother with online $#! if you can do that yourself. :D

Thanks bluetone. I don't purchase models, as I love making them myself. But I do like to see how others go about making a model... I'd like to sell mine some day. I have tried what you suggested and it worked for the arm that came off at a nice 90 or 0 or 180 degrees off the base, but for arms that come off at angles like 45, for example, I have trouble. How do I force the x,y to rotate with the bones - as if they were in their own box... The x,y line up with the world box and the bones then twint up. I'll try setting up the arms all facing left and right (octopus - 4 left, 4 right ), add ik to bone tips and 1st bone from center : ), and then rotate the arms after... maybe. If the arms with IK were grouped they would rotate together as group, but I don't know if that will work. I'm thinking about changing starfish to be all moved by morph targets, as it doesn't need to be movied often, just for posing. The octopus should be bones, although they don't have bones in real life : ). Thanks bluetone. R

While I understand it takes a little longer to set up, I would setup each arm independently instead of doing the constraints and everything and THEN duplicating. The thing is that Carrara uses the ORIGINAL angles (in world space) instead of using the CURRENT angles (in local space.) So, when your 1st arm is 90deg from 0deg Y, then you duplicate and rotate the next arm to 30deg from that. When you move the second arm it goes 60deg from 0deg Y instead of 120deg from 0deg Y. (Does that make sense or hurt your brain as much as mine?) I would spend the extra time setting up each arm, instead of backtracking and fixing the offests. By-the-by, where you aware that if you haven't setup constraints for a arm yet, but add an IK chain 1st, the arm will be assigned constraints? They might just work out for you instead of setting them up then IK chaining it and have Carrara mess with your constraints. Just my 2 cents. :D Happy Rendering!

Definitely taking shape.I would like to see some lighting changes tho. Maybe some aquatic colored highlights in the back or near the surface Also the fish textures need some spark. I think iridescense or a sim effect and the eyes and under belly should be more lively with more detail. The fish doesn't look as alive...as it should.I realize this is a WIP so these are just observations. Looks good tho.

Here is a quick - although 3 hours isn't that quick - test of a little octopus. Little oc needs some work for the model, but the ik is working! I duplicated arms, and bones, then spun the bones and made more bones, worked the 0,90,180,270 and spun it, then agian. The ik worked okay to just assign... then I assigned constraints so it wouldn't twist, although they do twist in real life... again, want to keep simple. I'm ready for a more complex model. Thank for the help.