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I've never been a FFVII fan but after watching this trailer, I'm about ready to convert!!!

you guys have got to check this out...

http://na.square-enix.com/dvd/ff7ac/

Go to the trailer section...there are 4 trailers, each one is just a different cut...Trailer 003 is by FAR the best cut I suggest you watch that one

EDIT: by the way this is a MOVIE not a game

I'm not pushing Max, although I disagree with it being more complicated...I think it gets it's popularity from it's being the simplest one to learn

Chains of Night
Darkness Everlasting
Whispers of Sanity

I think NURBS are pretty much dead, and good riddance...

3ds max is a great program but it's not a MODELLER although it can model, that's not the easiest place to model

same with C4D...

check out Silo, download the free 14 day trial

after that try wings

Well, I messed with it for awhile, and it's the most powerful 3d-sculpting tool in the world, It seemed. Even 3D n00b as I am can make realistic 3d face, which is total pain in 3ds max  for example.

Most people disagree with you, and choose to use a program like Modo/Silo/Max/Maya/XSI to model the head, and then use ZB2 only to add details to the head.  Using ZSpheres to construct a decent head is a bit unintuitive and doesn't produce the nicest results IMO.  Not to mention the fact that after modelling it in ZB, you would still need to export into another program to set up proper mapping coordinates, then import back to ZB to subdivide and add details.

But since there's no ways to keep lower polycount and export 3D into something useful, such as... ...games!, this has no much use.
At least, exporting 3ds format would make sense...

You are missing the point of the program.  You make a displacement map for the low poly, and this allows you to use low poly in other programs, and render with the displacement map so that it LOOKS like the high poly even though it's not.

You can export the low poly in OBJ format, which is the most standard object file format, and easily converted to .3ds format or any other format for that matter.  The displacement maps are made in tiff format which is also easily convertable.  So it's very compatible, you just need to learn how to use it.

if exporting it makes it look different/worse, than that's the one we should be critiquing anyway.  I'm not downloading a file just to crit...it's bad enough when I have to click on a hyperlink because they didn't use a regular image link

ZBrush 2 is a very powerful, yet very limited, tool.

ZBrush 1 was really a 2D art program that used 3D features to get the effects.  Sort of like the 3d objects in Photoshop, the texturing effects in Photoshop, or the thick paint effects in Painter.

ZBrush goes a lot farther though, allowing you to actually make some objects, manipulate them, and then "drop" them onto the canvas (dropping means turning it into a 2D image).

As a result, ZBrush is sort of fun simply because you have all kinds of crazy wacky 3d tools to use to make art with.  It takes a lot of practice to be able to use these tools effectively though, mind you.  A lot of it has to do with learning special tricks, which you might pickup from tutorials...or being a clever SOB.

Pixologic lets you download a free copy of ZBrush.  This has got to be the dumbest move they could have possibly made...because their product did not get famous until ZB 2 came out.  So of course everyone is going to download the ZB 1 demo...and discover that it's just a silly little play program that does nothing good.

ALL of the features which makes ZBrush 2 famous and good are not found in ZBrush 1.

These features are:

1) Projection Master:  Projection master is a tool that allows you to rotate your 3D object into any position, and then "drop it".  This makes it a 2D image, but in this special case, it remembers the 3d shape.  Now you can paint on the screen like a paint program (although the painting tools are much weaker and more difficult to use than simple brushes like in Photoshop in my opinion).  When you're done, you can "pick up" your model again, and ZBrush will have allowed this 3D painting to create a texture for your object. (it can also be used to deform the geometry).  You can continue to pick up and drop from different angles.  This is sort of like DeepPaint 3D, but a lot more difficult to use because the seems/edges don't come out so well.  But if you have millions of polygons, it can be useful for adding geometric details to your mesh.

If you make your model in ZBrush, it will automaitcally calculate mapping coordinates, where it breaks up the UV map into small squares assigned to each polygon, by the way.  This can be very good if you don't take your model out of ZB (ie, you do your final render there as well) but it's pretty much useless if you need to have clean mapping coordinates later on.

2) ZSpheres:

ZSpheres offer an entirely new approach to modelling.  Basically, you have a red ball, and you can drag more balls out of it...and the balls are connected by more balls.  This is sort of like "sketching" because you could use these balls to form the shape of a creature or person or something.  Then at any time, you can click a button, and see a geometric mesh made that surrounds this configuration of balls.  The mesh will be clean, and based on quads.  This makes it really quick to generate organic models.  It's not very good for creating inorganic, or precise details, though.

The ZSpheres also have some serious flaws, in that it's very difficult to control the way the mesh is produced aroud them.  Often times, the mesh does not properly follow the ecaxt shape you intended...due to the fact that it bases it around cubes.  You can also get some nasty twisting.  There is a freely available plugin for this you can download that makes the process EASIER, but not easy.

I still find it easier to model using Subdiv surfaces, for inorganic and organic shapes alike.

One of the other cool things about ZSpheres is that as you are modelling more details onto the object, you can swithc back and change the position of the spheres...and your model changes accordingly.  It's sort of like you have a skinned and rigged character from the start.  Unfortunately, these arent real bones, and you'll still have to rig and skin it later on if you want that.

3) Displacement Calcuting:

This feature right here is what makes ZBrush popular, and this alone.  If you took this feature out, nobody would care about ZB...except a few hobbyists.

Because ZB only allows you to have 1 3D object "active" at a time, they have managed to program a very efficient memory management system (albeit, a very UNautomatic one), which allows you to mess around with more polygons on your objects than any other program in existence.

You can be easily messing around with objects that have 7 million polygons on them.

...

The number of polygons on your objects is limited only by the memory of your machine.  If you have 512 MB, you can get up to aroudn 3  or 4 (maybe 5) million polygons. 

Now, combine this with the displacement mapping feature...which allows you generate a displacement map between 2 meshes.  What you can do is import a regular low-poly character into ZBrush, then subdivide it a bunch of times so that this char is now 7 million polygons, and now you can start sculpting the model like putty using some basic tools -( basically you have a bump up and a bump down brush, and a smooth brush).  This allows you to add some cool details, like skin folds, wrinkels, scratches, rotting flesh, whatever you want.  Then you can have it calculate a displacement map for this to your original mesh.  Theoretically, you can apply this image map to your low poly mesh in another program (like Maya or Max) where you do all your rendering, and it will APPEAR the same as the high poly model!!!

This process is easier said than done.  My models usually come out looking a bit lumpier than they looked in ZB.

Using only 512 MB of ram, I have discovered that it is NOT POSSIBLE to achieve the kind of detail that ZB2 is used to gain its fame for, in such films as LOTR, Skycaptian, etc.

I would not consider using ZB to model scenes of any complexity, because manipulating objects in space is very difficult...and hard to judge when to drop your objects...remember you can only have 1 3D object at a time...

Nonetheless, there are a lot of people who produce fantastic and impresive artwork using NOTHNG but ZB2...

You should all check out pixolator.com ... this is the official forum where all the ZB masters go to post, this is where you download the manual, etc.

There are also some really cool videos at pixologic.com, check out the Angler fish video for sure.

Basically, if you're into 3D modelling, AND you use displacement maps, you NEED ZB2....but you also need 2 GB of ram.

That's a lovely character portrait, Coffee Lady.

Keep working on this game, I'm started to get interested!

It's a very nice sketch.  I'm not going to try to nitpick details because a sketch isn't meant to be perfect in the details. 

He's got character, his eyes look a little unique...but it gives him character.  I think the pupils are a bit small and that makes them look slightly inhuman.

Keep it up

I think you should use a different color to distinguish the emblem on his breast

It is not true thayt 90% of the choices lead to death.  It is true that sometimes there are unexpected deaths, but most of the time this is punishment for cocky or dishonorable actions.  I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy the books, but a lot of people do!!

over the last week, I've dredged through thousands of pages and searched just about every bookstore in the US, france, UK, australia, etc to find good deals.  It's difficult because a lot of them go for $100 or $200 each nowadays regardless of condition, which is just too much.  I've been lucky enough (or determined?) to find some of those for reasonable prices.

cosmic, yeah...I love those too and I'm collectiving some of those too.  But none of them ever compared to the LW series in my opinion.

Kinoko,

they're like adventure games, but more plot oriented because they're books.  it's like you're reading a story, but you get to make decisions about once a page, and your decisions branch off into different stories.  there are many ways to die, besides combat...and often a lot of puzzles mixed in their too.  over all I find them a lot more enjoyable than the dry adventures of computer games.

you guys should check out projectaon.org, where they have legally published most of the first 20 books where they can be played online or downloaded

when I was a kid, my parents would always drag me around to garage sales to buy stuff, because we didn't have a lot of money and maybe they thought they could appease my childish hunger for new toys that way

well, I always hated garage sales because they made my feel cheap...but there was one thing I got which I may have never found otherwise, which was a beat up old book of Lone Wolf, Flight from the Dark, missing the cover, filled with scribbles, and some very dirty stains on it that I think was poop.

I was 11 years old then and I played that book and loved it.Ã,  when I discovered there were more of them, I started saving up my allowance to buy them...and I would regularly call my local bookstore to see ifÃ,  they had them in stock and try to order them

as the new books came out I bought them up, but I never managed to get them all...I was missing a few which bothered me because I wanted to get the true experience by playing them all in order from first to last.

Back then the internet was still pretty new and I couldn't go search around for things across the world that way.Ã,  If I could have, there's no doubt I would have the whole series already.

I've just discovered that there's another 10 books in the series (putting the total up to about 30) which I never even knew of.Ã,  Apparently, they weren't even published in the US.

Well, now I want to get them...fill in all the holes in the series...and play the whole damn thing from start to finish like I always wanted to!

I've been calling around and managed to get some pretty good deals on some of the missing books.

My collection as it stands:

1. Flight from the Dark
2. Fire on the Water
3. The Caverns of Kalte
4. The Chasm of Doom
5. Shadow on the Sand
6. The Kingdom's of Terror (in the mail)
7. Castle Death
8. The Jungle of Horrors
9. The Cauldron of Fear
10. The Dungeons of Torgar
11. The Prisoners of Time
12. The Masters of Darkness
13. The Plague Lords of Ruel
14. The Captives of Kaag (in the mail)
15. The Darke Crusade
16. The Legacy of Vashna
17. The Deathlord of Ixia
18. Dawn of the Dragons
19. Wolf's Bane (trade in progress)
20. The Curse of Naar (in the mail)
21. Voyage of the Moonstone (don't have)
22. The Buccaneers of Shadaki (trade in progress)
23. Midnight's Hero (don't have)
24. Rune War (don't have)
25. Trail of the Wolf (don't have)
26. The Fall of Blood Mountain (don't have)
27. Vampirium (don't have)
28. The Hunger of Sejanoz (don't have)

The ones in the mail are books I have never played...I hope that I can hold out on playing them until I have completed the series.

I'm almost ashamed to be spending this money on such small things, but...it makes me so happy to have things like this to hold on to

I like the original sprite, but I think his shoulders should be a little wider so he doesn't just look like a triangle

If you wish hard enough, maybe it will come true.

That's much nicer, it looks like a real scene now.

The grass clumps could have some overlap in their strands, so that they don't look like image planes.  They are also a bit overlay green/healthy for this environment, no?

However, the biggest issue I see with this tutorial is simply the fact that one need not actually look at any of the intermediate steps, because the steps and layering are all quite evident from the final image!

Is this an indication that they haven't been turned off?

If you didn't intentionally program them to turn off and you didn't use anyone elses code, then they're not off!

What code controls the walk cursor could we access it at all without going too lowlevel?

Nope that's all pretty hidden

Show us a screenshot of your walkable areas

There are options on the play video command to allow regular game sound to override the movie sound, and you can also play the video so that it does not take up the whole screen...so I imagine you could then display text below that for annotation.

However, don't you think it makes more sense to have the proper sound effects and subtitles be PART OF the avi?

Code: ags

Ã,  else if (button == eMouseLeft) 
Ã,  Ã,  {
Ã,  Ã,  if (GetCursorMode() == eModeWalkto)
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  //animate character

Ã,  Ã,  ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
Ã,  Ã,  }

Use AnimateCharacter function to animate the loop, make sure to set Blocking.