Hi all Just showing a particle image. All the asteroids around the planet are from the surface generator. You can actually fly through them (if ya wanted). There are over 60000 rocks. The planet turns, each asteroid rotates, and the asteroroid belts rotate too...all done with no keyframes. very cool still using the beta tho because I still havent gotten my upgrade email. Im playing the "we sent it, did you get it" "no I didnt get it" game...but I'm sure it will all work out. :) BT

I'm having that issue with the content CD. All I really want is the new stuff... not 400+Megs of the same old-same old... but... Meanwhile... no keyframes? NICE! Spin behaviors? Any chance for a animation of it?

Very nice image! I'm curious about the animation of it -- do the rocks dance and jitter or do they move smoothly? I suspect that will be altered by your render settings, but thought I'd ask. As soon as I finish working on my movie, I'm upgrading to C5; just don't have time for the learning curve right now, but I'm so excited seeing stuff like this and the other C5 postings here! - Dex

Incredible image! 60000? Wow! holly

tnx all the animation is performed via modifiers (spin) applied to the main object(s) before surface replication. There are 12 different stones that I used to replicate over tubes that have the sides deleted. This gives the belts some depth. the belt 'base' objects (the ones the rocks are replicated over) has an alpha driven by "spots" to help give the belts more volume. My gripe is that the stones dont look very realisitic up close..and I think this is my fault. When I set them up, I set up things at a very small scale, so no matter how good of a material I put on them..they still look plastic. But for the purpose of testing the replicator and seeing what c5 can do, it serves. the planet has displacement applied..and the background is a image from NASA's site. (www.nasa.gov) You can get lots of kewl images for backgrounds there. sfdex: "dance?" lets see, they dont really dance but they do flicker while they rotate. While doing this I had a suggestion for future updates of the carrara replicator. For instance, I'd like to see the replicator work in "volumes"..ie, if I create a cube and tell the replicator to create objects inside that cube, it'd do so. This'd help make images like this look more realistic up close. But, this is by far one of the best tools introduce to C in a while. I love it :) I'll try to post a gif animation of it later. Not sure if I can (due to the size) :) BT BT

Very nice, would like to see the gif animation also.

Never Give Up!

Very nice, but I would give the planet an atmosphere.Looks more like an orange than a planet.Lovely tho.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.